NOW Toronto: Canada's rep still slipping

[marmar]

Direct From Copenhagen


Canada's rep still slipping
Who knew it could get worse

By Alice Klein


It was already a bad day for Canada yesterday. Who knew it could get worse.

The gov had been brilliantly spoofed by the Yes Men, and tarred with oil sands favoritism by the premiers of our two most populous provinces. Then U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chiu wouldn't even get his picture taken with Environment Minister Jim Prentice before their bilateral meeting. And then the CBC broke the leaked cabinet document that shows there were high-level discussions or maybe even plans about seriously reducing the already weak emission reduction targets that the government promised Canadians last year.

In a press conference today, Prentice was quick to say he had no idea what was in the paper and that it didn't represent Canada's position. But he also did not rule out giving the tar sands special treatment as a "trade exposed industrial sector" which is a term borrowed from the U.S. Waxman Markey bill. But it doesn't matter how much he publicly denies or covers up the determination of the Harper gov to continue ignoring its climate change comittments. All his fellow negotiating partners in the talks will have gotten the message loud and clear. Canada's already the only Kyoto partner to not come close to keep their first round promises. There will be a cost to this bad faith bargaining. It will be our job to extract the price. But the U.S. will be the first cost centre. To deal with their own political problems, they will need to drive as wide a wedge between their position and Canada's as they can. Just not standing in the same photo ops is only the start.


http://www.nowtoronto.com/daily/story.cfm?content=172868

[GliderGuider]

1. Macleans: Suddenly the world hates Canada

Suddenly the world hates Canada

For decades, Canada has taken pride in punching above its weight on the international stage. Now it appears we’re the ones absorbing the body blows. As scientists, activists, diplomats, and political leaders gather in Copenhagen for the United Nations’ 15th convention on climate change, Dec. 7 to Dec. 18, the northern hemisphere’s “helpful fixer” is undergoing a radical—and unrelentingly negative—image makeover. Canada “is now to climate what Japan is to whaling,” George Monbiot, a columnist for the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, thundered late last month, citing the Harper government’s go-slow negotiating stance as “the major” obstacle to a new global agreement on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. “Until now I believed that the nation that has done the most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States,” wrote Monbiot, a green campaigner and bestselling author. “I was wrong. The real villain is Canada.”

And he is not alone in that opinion. At a UN climate conference in Bangkok in October, delegates from developing countries walked out of a negotiating session (en masse, say environmental groups who were at the meeting; just five or six countries, counters Michael Martin, our ambassador for climate change) to protest Canada’s suggestion that the Kyoto Protocol—the basis for the Copenhagen negotiations—be replaced with an entirely new anti-warming pact. In early November, at another UN meeting in Barcelona, Canada was named “Fossil of the Week” by the 450 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in attendance for its efforts to “block or stall” climate negotiations. (“If the price for having strong, capable, tough negotiators at the table is being singled out,” Environment Minister Jim Prentice said at the time, “then so be it. Bring it on.”) (GG: emphasis mine - be careful what you wish for, Jim!)

During the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago at the end of November, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon pointedly called for Canada to pick up the pace of negotiations and adopt “ambitious” greenhouse gas reduction targets. And a coalition of scientists and NGOs asked the 53-nation body to suspend Canada’s membership—a punishment that in the past has been meted out to such rogue states as Zimbabwe and apartheid-era South Africa—for “threatening the lives of millions of people in developing countries” through its inaction on climate change.

“Canada is effectively negotiating in bad faith, undermining the whole agreement,” says Saleemul Huq, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who joined in the suspension calls. “At least everyone else is trying to reach their Kyoto targets. Canada is doing absolutely nothing.”