Ontario to join Western Climate Initiative

by Globe and Mail — July 18, 2008

QUEBEC CITY — North America's largest green partnership has agreed to recognize Ontario as a member of its regional climate change program.

The Ontario government announced Friday that it is joining the Western Climate Initiative, a group of provinces and U.S. states working together to find regional solutions to climate change.

The coalition will now include four provinces representing just over 70 per cent of the country's population – British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. It also includes seven U.S. states.

Members are required to have aggressive plans to tackle climate change.

Ontario is the only province in Canada that has not signed on to California's plan to reduce tail-pipe emissions, and that had been a stumbling block to its inclusion in the WCI. However, Ontario is being accepted on the basis of its plan to close the province's pollution-spewing coal-fired electricity plants by 2009 and replace them with cleaner sources of power, including nuclear energy.

Premier Dalton McGuinty said in a statement that he is committed to working with leading provincial and state jurisdictions in tackling climate change through a cap-and-trade system.

”Our government believes that cap and trade is a fair and effective approach that is both economically and environmentally sound,” Mr. McGuinty said.

Dale Marshall of the David Suzuki Foundation said, ”This is big news, with all four leading provinces part of the same cap-and-trade system, which has hard caps.”

Mr. McGuinty made the announcement in Quebec City, where provincial and territorial leaders are holding their annual meeting.

He is joining the WCI as part of an effort to burnish his green credentials. He also declared this week that one-half of the province's vast boreal forest in the north will be made off limits to industry.

”He wanted to have that in his back pocket before the meeting,” a government source said. Climate change will dominate the agenda at the premiers meeting today, where their sharp differences will be on display.

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach dismissed the work done by the WCI.

”There is no agreement on policy, the best way to achieve reductions,” he told reporters.

Source:Globe and Mail