As Environment Minster John Baird touts the government's successful role in building a bridge to progress in the climate crisis, Liberals are heavily denouncing the claim as a "fraud."
Baird, fresh from his return from this week's G8 summit in Germany, said Prime Minster Stephen Harper achieved Canada's main goal at the summit: to help get countries like the United States, China and Japan to agree that the world needs mandatory targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"I think there is a growing consensus that Canada's 50 per cent (goal to reduce emissions) by 2050 is a good one, and we have to absolutely turn the corner by 2015. We want to do that here in Canada, (to see) reductions in greenhouse gas emissions as early as 2010," Baird said Sunday on CTV's Question Period.
"I think that the prime minister played a key role working as a bridge between Europe and countries like Japan, China and the United States."
Critics, however, have blasted the plan for its lack of binding commitments on capping emissions -- something environmentalists say are crucial in order to avert dangerous climate change.
Dion has accused the Harper government of laying down a "bridge to nowhere."
In a separate interview Sunday on Question Period, Dion said in an analysis of the government's plan, Germany's Deutsche Bank concluded that emissions in Canada would rise steadily through 2020 and will fail to achieve even its mid-term targets.
"The Pembina Institute said that his plan is six to seven times less effective than the Liberal plan that we had and that Mr. Harper killed," Dion said.
"So it is a big disappointment."
The Tories have long claimed Canada has no chance of meeting targets under the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty ratified five years ago by a former Liberal government -- and one that they opposed at the time.
But Baird reiterated the need to get the Americans and nations with fast-growing economies like China on board to come up with a successor treaty.
"I think that Canada was probably the closest country to the European ones and helped bring everyone on board with a good vision of where to go from here. I think you saw the United States finally buy into an international process. They came forward with their own one to supplement it," said Baird.
The U.S. agreed to "consider seriously" the global target backed by the rest of the G8. Bush also said he recognized the UN as the "appropriate forum" for negotiating a successor to Kyoto.
German Chancellor and summit host Angela Merkel announced that a new agreement replacing the Kyoto Protocol -- which expires in 2012 -- should be reached by 2009.
The G8 summit "was not a meeting for decisions to be made," said Baird, "but we have a good path forward and it is a good day for the environment and for Canada."
A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found global warming is largely the result of human activity -- and the only way to stop global warming is to limit carbon dioxide emissions.
International experts believe that it is essential that global warming be limited to 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius in order to avoid the wide-ranging, catastrophic consequences, and that deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are necessary to achieve these limits.
