Baird pledges $86M to help Canadians adapt to climate change

Environment Minister John Baird has promised $85.9 million over the next four years to help Canadians deal with the effects of climate change.

The announcement was made Monday at a UN climate conferenceon the Indonesian island of Baliwhere 190 countries have gathered to work toward a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.

Themoney will be used to help communities already feeling the effects of climate change, such as areas in Western Canada where pine beetles are surviving warmer winters and stripping forests.

It would also go toward researching the effects of climate change in the North, where communities say roads and buildings are crumbling as permafrost melts and ancestral Inuit hunting patterns are being disrupted.

Asked how the plan will differ from the one his government killed upon entering office, Baird appeared caught off-guard and said he'd check the details, the Canadian Press reported.

Over the weekend, Canada also pledged $7.5 million to help developing countries deal with the effects of climate change.

However, environmentalgroups and opposition parties have accusedCanada of trying to derail the conference.

Asked point-blank if Canada was trying to sabotage an agreement, Baird responded, "It's not true."

The accusation comes after Baird's insistence that Canada won't sign any global treaty to reduce carbon emissions unless it is bindingfor all the world's major polluters, unlike Kyoto.

"If we're going to stabilize worldwide emissions and see absolute reductions we need all the big players aboard.We need countries like the United States. We need, in our view, to have countries like China and India on board," said Baird.

Withouteveryone on board, Baird said, countries could shut down their ownpollution producers, then import what's needed from countries that didn't sign an agreement, creating the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions.

"What we need to do is ensure that we don't simply close a coal-fired generating station in Ontario and then just import the electricity from the United States," Baird told CBC News on Monday in an interview from Bali.

The U.S. has saidit won't submit to binding emission-control targets, as have the world's two other worst polluters — China and India.

"We believe in mandatory binding targets and we've got to convince the United States to take that similar view," said Baird.

But environment ministers from Ontario and Quebec distanced themselves from the federal position, saying Ottawa doesn't speak for the provinces and urging the federal Conservatives to take a leadership role.

The federalConservatives argue it would be illogical for Canada to launch climate negotiations, which are expected to take years to complete, by promising to sign a deal at the outset.