Prentice consults Nunavut leaders on climate change

Environment Minister Jim Prentice met with Nunavut's premier and his territorial counterpart in Iqaluit on Monday, as part of his consultations with all provinces and territories on Canada's national climate change action plan.

Prentice's consultations came ahead of a major UN climate change meeting scheduled for Copenhagen in December.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference, which will begin Dec. 7,  is when world leaders will set new targets for greenhouse gas emissions and negotiate a new UN-brokered climate treaty to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Earlier this month, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said climate change is the greatest challenge facing a world beset by crises, and called on governments to reach a deal on the environment at a meeting in Denmark.

Prentice, who met with Manitoba Premier Gary Doer on Aug. 12 to discuss the action plan, said Monday that Canada will be a constructive player at the international table, but that Canada's targets have already been firmly set.

"We've put forward our objectives — which are, frankly, quite ambitious — of reducing our emissions by 20 per cent by 2020," Prentice said.

Nunavut Environment Minister Daniel Shewchuk stood by his federal counterpart: "I think Minister Prentice is working out some very good plans and we're still in consultation up to going to Copenhagen."

But those targets aren't enough for Canada to fight climate change, according to many environmental groups.

"Unfortunately what Prentice does not tell us is that the proposed reduction is actually from 2006 levels and pretty well all the other countries in the world are using 1990 as a base year," said Mike Buckthought, national climate change campaigner for the Sierra Club of Canada in Ottawa.

The federal government's target works out to only a three per cent reduction from 1990 levels, Buckthought said, and that's far below what international climate scientists say is absolutely essential to slow the warming that's melting the ice in the north.