The Chair: It’s my understanding that after round two there would be unanimous consent.

Would that be the case, Mme LeBlanc?

Hélène LeBlanc: We have many questions to ask.

The Chair: It has to be unanimous. No consent.

Dan Harris: Maybe ask again after the second round.

The Chair: Maybe we’ll ask again.

I’ll be glad to ask as many times as you allow me.

Elizabeth May: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to members of the committee for allowing me a chance to ask questions.

Do I have five-minute time limit, Mr. Chair?

The Chair: Five minutes, that’s correct, Ms. May.

Hélène LeBlanc: Mr. Chair, can we make sure that the time allocated for the opposition is not used for this and that we would still have our time to ….

The Chair: That’s correct.

Hélène LeBlanc: Thank you very much.

The Chair: That said, that means I’ll have to stick very tight now to the five minutes. So for the questioners and the answerers I’m going to have to stick a lot tighter because we only have 27 minutes left.

Hon. Mike Lake: Just to clarify, where are we with questions?

The Chair: After Ms. May is done, then we’ll go to our third round. It will be Conservative, NDP, Conservative, Liberal.

Ms. May.

Elizabeth May: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll attempt to use my time efficiently. Thank you witnesses.

I want to go back to the competition policy review panel and their advice before the amendments were tabled in 2009. I’m really going to ask questions specifically around the fact that these amendments through Bill C-60are attempting as I see it to bring greater clarity around certain concepts and to extend timelines for national security reviews.

What I want to know is if whether within Industry Canada, whether you received advice that it would be helpful to review and clarify the term national security which currently isn’t defined within the act?

Paul Halucha: It’s been something that has been mentioned by I would say think tanks and certain legal firms that represent foreign investors. Again in their efforts to have maximum certainty, they wanted to have a prescribed definition of it or a list the way that some other countries do like the United States.

Elizabeth May: Yes, I think the United States, the U.K., China, Japan and Germany that would have reviews that would be triggered by an actually defined term of national security.

What I’m wondering is whether Industry Canada, whether you’re aware of any studies in the Canadian context that, as you said think tanks have recommended this. It’s in the Canada Gazette from when the 2009 amendments were accepted that there were recommendations at the time that the term national security should be “explicitly defined and national security reviews should take place according to concrete objective and transparent criteria”.

Are you aware of any empirically design studies that would in any way question the benefit of having such defined terms and such transparent reviews?

Paul Halucha: I’m not. We don’t have any studies on that. I’d clarify, it was a policy decision by the government to not have a prescribed definition for national security on the basis that the types of threats that Canada could face from period to period can change. Given the evolving nature of threats, you wouldn’t want to have a definition of national security that precluded you from considering certain specific types of threats.

Elizabeth May: But you’d agree with me that other countries haven’t found a defined term to be an impediment to applying their investment tests in relation to national security.

Matthew Dooley: I would point that the United States, as a clear example, has an non-exhaustive list—it’s exhaustive in that it’s very long, but it’s non-exhaustive in that they can add more to it if they want to. I would argue that they don’t have a clearly defined definition for “this is national security”. What they have done is list their sensitive industries or sectors that they’re going to be concerned about and by the way if another sector comes up, as Mr. Halucha said, the threats change and they’ll add that to the list.

Elizabeth May: Yes, Mr. Dooley, you may find their list exhausting but it’s not exhaustive. In any case, it might be a model we can look at.

Those are all of my questions. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. May.

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The second point is that for all that CETA has more attention than the Canada-China Investment Treaty, it does not have enough either.

Unlike the Canada-China Investment Treaty, this trade deal is one the Prime Minister has not kept under a barrel.  It has already been over-hyped by PMO with Stephen Harper claiming the deal will bring $12 billion worth of benefit toCanada. Even though this figure was called into question by an assessment conducted by the European Commission, a study that put the benefits at a more conservative $3-6 billion, Mr. Harper continues to use the exaggerated figure.

The proposed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union (known as CETA) is an ambitious attempt to cover huge aspects of our economy – impacting health care costs, supply management in agriculture, procurement, arts and culture to name a few.  As well, like the Canada-China Investment Treaty it would create opportunities for arbitration for claims for the EU investors against Canada and vice versa. It has been on a three year negotiation track with the goal of concluding negotiations by the end of this year. But Matthias Brinkmann, head of the European Union Delegation to Canada, thinks the deadline may not be met.  Speaking in Halifax on October 22, 2012,  Brinkmann confirmed that little to no progress has been made on most of the key issues.  The issues identified as among those Brinkmann describes as leaving the most difficult until last include patent protection for pharmaceuticals, procurement rules for public projects, supply management in agriculture, rules of origin and investor-state provisions.

That’s a long list to get done by the end of this year.  And then there’s the approval process.  The EU must vote to approve and so must each parliament of the 27 member states. And some member states are already angry with Canada over more restrictive Visa requirements (Czech Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria) and quite a lot of parliamentarians, certainly all those in green Parties in the EU Parliament itself, as well as Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, France, UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Italy, to name a few, are concerned about Canada’s efforts to over-turn the Carbon Fuel Standard, disrupt global climate negotiations, undermine the Kyoto Protocol,  our appalling obstruction in June 2011 at the Rotterdam Convention asbestos discussions, to name a few.  Even if this agreement were negotiated between Canada and the EU, approval is far from a sure thing.  One thing the Prime Minister cares about (CETA) could be sabotaged by his record on things he thought didn’t matter (Kyoto, climate, asbestos).

Take it as read that the Green Party will support the civil society groups that are opposed to higher prices for pharmaceutical drugs by granting greater patent protection to EU Big Pharma. We will oppose any agreement that undermines our ability to ensure municipal water systems remain public, or that undercut the Canadian arts and culture sector.  We will insist that any new trade agreement be about fair trade and a fair deal for Canadians.

There is no need to rush the negotiations to a desperate last push this year.  Given the EU approval process, it is more important to get the right deal than a rushed deal.

Elizabeth May is the Leader of the Green Party of Canada and the Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.
Originally printed in Embassy News.

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1992—The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

The story starts 20 years ago with the over-arching climate treaty. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was negotiated between 1990 and 1992, and was signed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (the ‘Earth Summit’).

Canada was the first industrialized country to both sign and ratify the UNFCCC, doing so in 1992. Signing is the easy part, usually done at a conference. Ratification is necessary for an international instrument to have legal force. It is typically conducted by a vote in a nation’s legislature.

In Canada, ratification can take place by a decision of the Privy Council (Cabinet). The UNFCCC ratification in 1992 was by Cabinet.

In the United States, ratification of treaties requires not only a vote in the Senate, but that it pass by a two-thirds vote. This additional Constitutional hurdle is why even when the US Senate has a Democratic majority, the Administration has not submitted Kyoto for ratification. However, the US did sign on to the UNFCCC under the Bush Administration, and the US Senate ratified it.

The Climate Change Threat—Assessment and Action

The UNFCCC confirms that climate change is a real threat. Its objective is ‘the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.’

The difficulty, of course, is the word ‘dangerous.’ When does the additional loading of greenhouse gases from human activity (an amount far smaller than the beneficial natural levels) cease to be beneficial and become dangerous?

The answer to that comes through the guidance of another UN agency, one established for this purpose back in 1988. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is comprised of scientists appointed by governments. Their summary reports, Advice to Policy Makers, tackle this question. Whereas the danger level was once thought to be twice the pre-Industrial Revolution concentration of carbon dioxide (going from 275 parts per million to 550 ppm), the IPCC has constantly revised downward as evidence of danger comes into sharper relief.

The head of the IPCC has confirmed we should work to halt the global rise in GHG emissions such that by 2015, global emissions stop growing and begin to fall. The growing consensus is that emissions need to stabilize at 350 ppm, even though we are now at 390 ppm.
As well, the UNFCCC established the ‘precautionary principle’ which sets out:

‘Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures, taking into account that policies and measures to deal with climate change should be cost-effective so as to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost.’

There are many other provisions within the UNFCCC, including calling on governments to both reduce emissions (‘mitigation’ in convention-speak) and adapt to those levels of climate change which are no longer avoidable (‘adaptation’).

What’s Missing

What the UNFCCC did not do was assign timelines and deadlines to the general promise to reduce emissions. Prior to the Rio Earth Summit,
former US President George HW Bush said that if the UNFCCC included deadlines and timetables he would refuse to attend the event, declaring, ‘The American lifestyle is not on trial.’

All countries have signed and ratified the UNFCCC, making them ‘parties’ to the agreement. Once enough countries had ratified to make the treaty enter into force, annual meetings called the Conference of the Parties (COP) began.

1997—The Kyoto Protocol

The third Conference of the Parties, COP3, under the UNFCCC was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan. Its goal was to bring forward the timeline and deadlines that had not been possible in Rio. There was optimism it would be possible to come to agreement. Optimism came from two events: the replacement of Bush with Clinton, and the success of a protocol to protect the ozone layer.

The Montreal Protocol on the Ozone Layer had been concluded in 1987, dealing with the Reagan Administration. (I was part of the Canadian team in Montreal. That’s another story, but I recall US Interior Secretary Don Hodell trying to block progress by saying we didn’t need to get rid of ozone-depleters. We only needed sunscreen and broad-brimmed hats!)

As early as 1995, at the first COP in Bonn, Germany, the model of the Montreal Protocol was mandated for the climate protocol. The Montreal Protocol had gotten all countries on Earth, rich and poor, to sign on.

The core principle was called ‘common but differentiated responsibilities.’

All countries agreed that as the problem had been caused by the wealthy industrialized countries, those countries would face specific time-limited commitments while the developing countries could actually increase their use of ozone depleters in the short term.

Once the industrialized world has demonstrated it’s bona fide (and developed the alternatives), the developing world takes on firm cuts as the agreement moves forward. The protocol also committed that parties would be influenced by the scientific advice as it changed.

The only significant difference between the Montreal Protocol and the Kyoto Protocol was that the ozone agreement had effective enforcement mechanisms. If any party violated the protocol, other parties could bring trade sanctions against them. With the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995, and the mere questioning of whether environmental treaties might impede trade, Canada announced we would not sign any agreement in Kyoto that included trade sanctions. And we were not alone.

That failure is why there are no financial penalties should Canada stay in Kyoto and fail to meet targets.

Kyoto set out a combined set of firm emissions reductions that should have taken the industrialized world to 5.2% below 1990 levels by the end of this year. In fact, of those countries that made serious efforts, they collectively did reach the 5% goal. The EU, having committed to 8% reductions, actually hit a goal closer to 20% below.

But the United States under George W Bush reneged and never ratified. And, as we all know, the economies of China, India and Brazil grew enormously. Today, China is the world’s biggest polluter, but it is still a relatively small contributor to our existing problem. It only overtook the US as largest polluter recently.

Looking at the atmosphere as though it were a garbage dump (which is how we treat it), the overflowing mess from the last 100 years is still there. The mess from the last few years is certainly serious, but the industrialized world’s ‘historic’ pollution is not history. It operates every day to disrupt the climate we used to know.

As you know from the Durban updates in the past two editions of Island Tides, there is now a second commitment period under Kyoto. Without that commitment, China, India and Brazil made it clear they would not take on any hard and fast cuts down the road.

We need Kyoto. And we need to keep Canada in Kyoto. Under Article 27 (2) of the Kyoto Protocol, a party can file a legal intention to withdraw. It takes effect one year from the date it was received.

Canada is in Kyoto until December 2012. And we need public pressure to keep us there.

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The newspapers along the route are finally noticing that the climate is getting hostile. The Saskatoon Star Phoenix has a story “Pakistan floods, Russian heat fit climate trend around the globe: extreme weather events become more frequent: scientists,” while the Globe and Mail front page shows a dramatic image headed “Crisis in Pakistan: 13 million: The Pakistani floods have now affected more victims than the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami…”

Bill McKibben writes in Eaarth that these catalogues of global events, inventories of disaster, are how we most often describe climate impact. “The trouble with this endless collection of anecdotes,” he writes, “…is that it misses the essential flavour of the new world we’re constructing.” He calls that new world “Eaarth” in an effort to distinguish it from our old planet. The message of his book is sobering. We do not live on that old planet anymore. Everything we had taken for granted — relatively stable climate, changing over millennia, not decades — cannot be taken for granted anymore. It is not exactly the “Brave New World” of Aldous Huxley, but it is a new world and we have to be brave to figure out how to live on it. We have to be resolute in moving off fossil fuels quickly to keep the world liveable.

Maybe this summer’s round of news clippings will wake people up to the climate reality. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released data demonstrating that June 2010 was the hottest June on record — for both land and sea temperatures. If you look at NOAA’s global maps (www.westcoastclimateequity.org) you will see that our part of the world was about the only place on the planet not super-heated through June. June was the 304th consecutive month with a combined global land and surface temperature above the 20th-century average. NOAA data put the first decade of the new millennium as the hottest decade on record, with the last 12 months the warmest 12 months, the last six months the warmest six months, and April, May and June 2010, the hottest April, May, and June on record. Highest ever temperature record for Asia, a record set in May in Pakistan, was just under 130 degrees F. As Bill McKibben commented, “I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.”

Russia’s heat wave caused a doubling in the daily death rate due to heat stress and from the smoke from fires that ringed the city. Wildfires covered 1,740 square kilometers. The street temperature in Moscow was 40 degrees C (104 degrees F). And the drought decimated the Russian wheat crop. President Putin ordered a ban on wheat exports. Ukraine also has suffered serious crop failures. It is simply too hot for the wheat to grow well. The Russian export ban will cause the price of grains to rise globally, threatening global food security.

Drought has also gripped much of Africa, with Niger reporting the worst drought in its history with villages being abandoned, leaving dead livestock behind.

Torrential rains hit much of Asia, with significant downpours also impacting Poland and Germany. China and Pakistan were hard hit. Nearly 1,500 people have died in the landslides in China. Approximately 1,600 people have died in Pakistan due to the flooding. The humanitarian impact extends far beyond the death toll. Thirteen million people have been affected. Millions are displaced. The floods due to a combination of torrential rains and illegal logging. Warmer air holds more moisture than cooler air. We are all seeing the results of our changed atmosphere in more frequent, extreme events of torrential rainfall.

Glaciers have collapsed. From July 6-7, Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier lost a nearly 7 square kilometre chunk of ice and retreated one mile. On August 5, a different Greenland glacier, the Petermann Glacier, lost a 251 square kilometre “ice island.” Meanwhile, Arctic sea ice was at its lowest extent ever for the month of June.

Climate scientists are always careful to say that any one event cannot be blamed on the climate crisis, but they are clear that it is highly unlikely that the spate of climate disasters could have occurred if not for the dramatic changes in global climate caused by human activity.

The first task on this new Eaarth is to end our addiction to fossil fuels – quickly. We must avoid those “tipping points” in the atmosphere that condemn us to an unlivable planet. Its grim characteristics were described by scientist Stephen Hawking who fears Earth “could end up like Venus, at 250 degrees centigrade and raining sulphuric acid.” Such an end point remains unlikely, but possible. Avoiding it requires a dramatically different course than that set by the current government of ever expanding tar sands and no domestic plan to cut carbon. Once that new course has been set, the next steps require figuring out how we live on a new and less hospitable planet. We need strong, resilient communities, greater local food security, a green energy revolution. And we need governments around the world to wake up to the reality that there is no larger threat to our economy, our society, our future—and our present—than the climate crisis.

Elizabeth E. May is an Officer of the Order of Canada, Leader of the Green Party of Canada and nominate candidate for Parliament in Saanich Gulf Islands.

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There is always a certain amount of last minute media coverage about such events, but very little context setting. The fact is that Canada and virtually every other nation on earth signed and ratified the Framework Convention in 1992. It committed the world to reductions in greenhouse gases such that their build up in the atmosphere would be halted before they could become ‘dangerous.’ After seventeen years of further meetings and negotiations (including the 1997 meeting in Kyoto and the protocol produced there) we are rapidly approaching the danger zone. We are already experiencing the loss of millions of square kilometres of Arctic ice, the retreat of glaciers around the world, persistent drought in much of the world, unprecedented shifts in rainfall patterns and sea level rise.

There are many excuses and reasons for the failure to act over the last two decades. Some nations, mostly within the European Union, have achieved serious reductions. They have done so with improvements in their economy.

Germany is rapidly taking over the world market as provider of solar, wind and other green economy technologies, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs. China is catching up, this year investing $600 billion in green technologies. Sweden has de-coupled carbon reductions from economic growth, growing its economy while cutting greenhouse gases. Yet, globally we have only taken baby steps toward the goal of avoiding dangerous levels of greenhouse gases.

The prospects for Copenhagen look better now than they did one month ago. We may owe Stephen Harper and his government a debt of gratitude. Harper’s pronouncement after the APEC summit that the negotiations were doomed to failure may have been the catalyst for a number of significant rescue attempts.

Significantly, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Brazilian President Lula teamed up to make a compelling appeal to industrialized and developing nations to take on meaningful targets. Brazil committed to over 30% reductions in GHG below 1990 levels by 2020 through arresting deforestation. Lula noted, however, that to make this target, Brazil needed financial assistance from the industrialized world.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon took the unusual step of attending the Commonwealth summit to plead for movement, singling out Canada as an impediment to progress. So too did low-lying island Commonwealth nations target Canada, with some suggesting we should be expelled from the Commonwealth. Even Her Majesty the Queen took aim at Canada. With the news that both President Obama and President Hu of China would attend the climate talks, our Prime Minister finally caved and agreed to join the over 100 leaders already committed to attend. The commitment of Obama and Hu increased hope that an agreement was possible.

However, these first few days have not gone well. Day 2 saw the revelation of a secret draft text from the US, UK and Denmark, proposing to sideline the concerns of the developing world, scrap the Kyoto Framework and move forward in a fashion that breaks faith with the poorest on the planet. This leaked text has led to a mood of distrust and anger within the negotiations. I am going to share a fragment of an email from a colleague already in Copenhagen. I am keeping his identity confidential, only noting that he is on a government delegation.

The issues on the table are very complicated—technically, economically, equitably and morally and politically. The Parties are far apart on the text—mitigation, adaptation, finance, tech transfer—all are part of the package and depend on each other—this is more like the Doha round and the WTO than climate! But unlike the trade talks there is a disaster clock ticking…

The mood is ugly, distrustful. The Danish police and security service are scared stiff. They raided some NGO residences today and confiscated lots of stuff they said could be used for civil disobedience.

I am normally a calm guy and not prone to anxiety but this place has me jumping. Next Thursday and Friday will be wild and unpredictable with over 100 heads of government speaking. There are 40,000 people on the attendees list. There are 5,000 journalists here. The Bela Centre capacity where the COP is being held is 15,000. The COP is chaired by the Danish Environment Minister. She and the Prime Minister cannot stand each other and do not talk (so it is widely twittered). The responsibility for bringing all this together rests with the Danes. Some optimists say that the G2 will come next week (Obama and Hu) and strike a deal that everybody can take it or leave it. But this is not a Yes or No deal; it is endlessly nuanced. Even if they embrace each other and everybody cheers all the critical details will remain to be worked out…let alone ratified and implemented. I cannot believe there is anything like this on earth—it is heroic in a way but mostly it is frightening!

So as I leave for Copenhagen, we have a clear description. The moment is perilous. We stand between heroism and disaster. You need not sit back and wait. Please continue to keep up the pressure. Post comments on news media comment websites and blogs, write to the newspapers and phone the Prime Minister’s Office (613-992-4211). To stay up to date on the negotiations, sign up for daily reports from the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, www.iisd.ca/climate/cop15/. These are pithy, no-nonsense reports prepared through a non- government ENB team of graduate students working within the International Institute for Sustainable Development. For activist news check out the www.350.org site or international Friends of the Earth. To keep abreast of the science Salt Spring Island’s own Dorothy Cutting maintains a great site, www.westcoastclimateequity.org. And I will be reporting daily on the www.elizabethmay.ca site.

Realistically, what are the options for the outcome in Copenhagen? A successful agreement will mean that the world stops the growth in greenhouse gases so that they peak no later than 2015 and begin their decline from there. Overshooting 2015 could commit the world to a catastrophic runaway climate crisis.

Failure in Copenhagen could look like two things: the decision of all leaders to call it a failure and admit they fell short. This is less likely than the more dangerous form of failure: a happy photo op of world leaders smiling and calling their failure a ‘good first step.’ We are now seventeen years past ‘good first steps.’ The citizens of this world, our children and grandchildren will thank us only for embracing real success.

Elizabeth E. May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada, candidate in Saanich Gulf Islands and Officer of the Order of Canada.

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