A new environmental study warns that other regions of Canada would suffer if a national cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions made allowances for Alberta's oilsands.
"We're calling on the provinces to ask the federal government that the system be set up equitably across all regions and sectors," said Gillian McEachern of ForestEthics, one of six groups behind the study sent to federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice.
Its release came on the eve of a Tuesday meeting of Canada's environment ministers in Whitehorse, Yukon. The issue is also likely to come up Thursday when U.S. President Barack Obama is to meet in Ottawa with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Canada has expressed interest in a North American agreement on reducing greenhouse gases. But Obama's administration prefers hard caps that would result in absolute reductions, while Harper's Tories have backed an intensity-based approach that would allow emissions to rise with growing output.
That proposal has been criticized for letting Alberta's oilsands -- where greenhouse gases are increasing faster than anywhere else in Canada - off the hook.
In interviews in recent days, Prentice has said Canada may be forced to review intensity-based caps. Monday's report suggests a review is inevitable.
"At a minimum, a North American cap-and-trade system will mean that the Canadian government will need to abandon its flawed 'intensity target' approach and adopt a hard target for ... emissions reductions," it says.
That means that if Alberta's oilsands continued to develop, greater cuts would have to be made elsewhere.
"If Canada is still to meet its overall national targets, that amount will have to be made somewhere else in the overall national economy," McEachern said.
Federal estimates calculate oilsands greenhouse gas emissions under Ottawa's proposed reduction regime will increase by about 20 megatonnes a year between 2006 and 2020. That increase could wipe out more than half of British Columbia's planned reductions of 36 megatonnes or two-thirds of the gains Ontario plans to make by closing four coal-fired power plants.
McEachern acknowledges those figures were reached before the current recession. Major projects once on the books have been postponed or cancelled. But she predicts at least some of the developments will eventually go ahead.
Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach has long argued that hard emissions targets for the oilsands would constitute an unfair penalty on the province's economy.
"He will not support any system that amounts to a transfer of wealth between regions and does nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," said spokesman Tom Olsen. "The premier would rather the focus be on technology to use science to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
Alberta plans to spend $2 billion on carbon capture and storage.
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall has also said that caps and trades in themselves don't reduce emissions and that he would prefer a technology-based approach. Saskatchewan has oilsands deposits of its own, although they haven't yet been developed.
