Baird Talks Tough, But Emitters Win

Don Martin, National Post
Monday, March 10, 2008

While government committees and group-hug consultations roamed the land bracing polluters for their emissions target Armageddon, John Baird could often be heard chanting in the background: The regulations are coming! The regulations are coming!

Just wait for those devilish details, the Environment Minister would boom into any open microphone. Big industry will scream. Oilsands plants will beg for environmental mercy. Power generators will go into shock.

But phasing in tough, then tougher and finally the toughest regulations anywhere was justified, he would caution. This is about saving the planet, after all.

So ... insert drum roll here ... the long-overdue grand regulatory announcement late Monday afternoon, minus any technical translation from bureaucrats (a sure sign of a government aiming to duck serious analysis), was expected to produce a dream scheme for hopeful environmentalists and a nightmare for large emitters.

Well, perhaps it's the snowdrifts obscuring all things in Ottawa these days in a climate that refuses to change from winter, but industry would have a hard time seeing anything to protest in Mr. Baird's plan.

The eight-page synopsis of a 45-page background paper promoted itself as The Detailed Plan, but delivered little more than the promise of details to follow.

Even department spin doctors struggled to extract news from the document, which was supposed to impose greenhouse gas discharge limits on 17 categories and only delivered firm targets for two sectors without including penalties for non-compliance.

Oilsands projects built after 2012 will be forced to incorporate technology to capture and bury "the vast majority" of their carbon discharge through a future pipeline subsidized by the federal government. Good news there.

But existing oilsands plants and those now under construction must only curb the "intensity" of emissions per barrel of output, which means today's carbon discharge will double by the year 2018 before it flatlines.

The push to stamp out "dirty coal" power generation sounds impressive because it will banish new plants of that type entirely after 2012. But the department only knows of two or three coal generators still on the drawing boards anywhere in Canada.