Layton wants climate bill sped up

NDP Leader Jack Layton says a private-member's climate-change bill is being delayed to stall its passage before a key United Nations climate-change conference in Copenhagen in December.

Bill C-311, the climate change accountability act, which sets strict targets for greenhouse gas emissions, has passed through two readings in the House of Commons since it was introduced by NDP member of Parliament Bruce Hyer.

It was set for a final vote after it had gone through a House environment committee.

On Oct. 8, however, the committee requested an extension of 30 sitting days to consider Bill C-311, saying in its request it "has been disrupted by several unforeseen items of business, resulting in a delay of its clause by clause consideration" of the bill.

Layton said the delay, to be considered Wednesday when the House sits, would undermine efforts to have the bill passed into law before the Copenhagen summit, which hopes to yield a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, a global greenhouse-gas treaty ratified by dozens of countries, including Canada but not the United States.

"If that motion passes, it would be impossible for the bill to come back before Copenhagen, and Canada would simply have to go and stand naked before the world with Stephen Harper’s terrible position on climate change," said Layton in Ottawa on Monday.

Layton urged the opposition Liberals and Bloc Québécois, who helped support the bill during earlier readings, to deny the delay request.

Bill C-311 calls for Canada to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050. It also gives the government the authority to make regulations to meet the targets, including penalties for contravention.

The Conservative government has pledged to lower greenhouse gases 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020.

An identical bill was introduced by Layton in the last session of Parliament. It passed its final reading in the House of Commons in June, but died before making it through the Senate when the election was called in the fall.