Part 2 in a series about Canada’s Emissions Reduction Plan

How is Canada working to protect its citizens and fight climate change? What are we trying to accomplish, by when and what is the plan?

When you look into these questions, you realize that Canada has been working to figure that out for over 30 years now – ever since it first signed onto the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992.

Think about how long ago that was: George Bush was president of the US – George H. Bush – the older one. Later in the year, he would be defeated by a fresh-faced Bill Clinton. The Soviet Union had just dissolved and a whole handful of new spinout nations were figuring themselves out. Brian Mulroney was in his eighth year as Canada’s Prime Minister. The Silence of the Lambs swept the Oscars, Madonna was causing controversy with her video for Erotica, and Sinead O’Connor tore up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live. Americans were consumed by a vote over whether a picture of a young or old Elvis should appear on a new stamp.

E-mail hadn’t even been invented yet. In 1992, no one had mobile phones, there was no internet and the big tech innovation of the time was the new “Windows” operating system that would allow a computer to run more than one software program at a time (barely).

It was the year that the first ever text message was sent – as a lab experiment.

It sure seems like a lifetime ago for me. In 1992, I had just finished university, had moved to Toronto and was in the early months of my first real job. It’s now more than thirty years later. I’m retired and my kids are going to finish university this year.

Looking back, it’s hard not to feel a sense of regret over Canada’s early efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The work was slow, the targets were not sufficiently ambitious and the progress moved in fits and starts as the political will to take action ebbed and flowed. Years passed without action.

To be fair to Canada – back then the whole world was slow in getting serious about climate change. But in retrospect, had our leaders taken things more seriously in the 1990s and 2000s, we could be well along the way by now in the transition off fossil fuels, and not in the climate crisis we are in today.

It’s a shame that it has taken the span of my entire adult life for my country to get serious about its commitment to fighting the most serious threat to humanity that we face. But we can’t change the past, we can only learn from it.

At least we can say that Canada now has a set of climate goals, a plan, and a structure for accountability that seems pretty robust.

Canada’s goals and plans began to gather momentum around 2015.  In that year, as part of the negotiations to finalize the Paris Agreement, Canada agreed to cut its emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 and to align with the global goal of limiting temperature increases to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with efforts to pursue a 1.5°C limit.

The following year in 2016, Canada reaffirmed these commitments and officially signed the Paris Agreement.  It also released a substantial plan to achieve these emissions reductions.  The Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change (PCF) established the groundwork for Canada’s climate strategy.

The PCF plan included:

• Implementing a national carbon pricing mechanism.
• Sector-specific actions across electricity, buildings, transportation, industry, and waste management.
• Enhancing infrastructure resilience and supporting vulnerable regions.
• Investing in clean technology to drive economic growth and emission reductions.

In 2018, the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act became law, establishing a mandatory federal price on greenhouse gas emissions that would be implemented across the economy as a fossil fuel surcharge, ie: the carbon tax, and on industrial emitters through the Output-Based Pricing System.

Canada published a revised plan in 2020 – A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy – which added additional detail and new measures over and above the PCF.  Importantly, Canada’s plan projected enhanced emissions reductions, reaching 31% to 36% reductions over the 2005 base year by 2030.

Targets Become Law

Perhaps the most encouraging part of Canada’s plan to cut emissions is that it is now the law.

With the 2021 Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act (CNZAA), Canada enshrined in legislation our commitment to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050 and created a formal framework of accountability and transparency to deliver on this commitment.  

It’s pretty easy to be complacent about a target that is more than 25 years away, so the Act establishes a legally binding process to set five-year national emissions reduction targets as well as develop credible, science-based emissions reduction plans to achieve each target. 

The Act requires that these plans:

1. Be developed at least five years in advance of each milestone to ensure sufficient time for implementation.
2. Include specific reduction targets for the relevant year, supported by sectoral strategies, federal operational strategies, and detailed implementation timelines.
3. Contain annual projections of GHG emissions reductions by sector and describe cooperation with provinces, Indigenous groups, and other stakeholders.
4. Explain how each plan contributes to the 2050 net-zero goal and reflect any new scientific findings or technological developments.

In addition, the Minister must report regularly on the progress made toward these targets. Progress reports are due two years before each milestone year. Post-target assessment reports must follow to evaluate whether the target was met and, if not, outline corrective actions. 

It’s great that the Minister is required to report regularly on progress, but there is always a risk that a government might be a bit biased when evaluating its own work.

That’s why the act also requires the independent Auditor General through the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development to, at least once every five years, examine and report on the Government of Canada’s implementation of the measures and strategies in the current plan.

The CNZAA also requires the Minister of Finance to prepare an annual report on key measures that the Government of Canada has taken to manage its financial risks and opportunities related to climate change. 

Public participation is integral to the whole plan, as the act calls for input from provinces, Indigenous groups, and advisory bodies throughout the planning process.

The act also formally establishes the Net-Zero Advisory Body – a group of experts from across Canada with expertise in science, business, policy-making, rural economic development, and governance to provide independent advice to the Government on achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Shortly after the CNZAA was passed, Canada published its 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) – the first plan under the law to set and achieve Canada’s milestones towards net zero by 2050. Subsequent plans will set the formal targets for 2035, 2040 and 2045.

The 2030 ERP aims to cut Canada’s 2030 emissions by 40-45% of what they were in 2005, as one of the key steps towards achieving net zero emissions by 2050. It also establishes an interim objective to reach a 20% reduction by 2026.

It has taken too long but Canada does now seem to have a solid framework of credible targets and plans aligned to achieve the goals that the world’s climate scientists believe are necessary to keep warming below 1.5˚ and avoid the worst effects of climate change.

It’s frustrating to look back at how much time was squandered and how it has put our climate in such a precarious position today. What we have to take from this is that we can’t permit any more delays or setbacks – we need to stay on track with our plans and even accelerate them.

The question now is – what are the details of the plan, are they being carried out as anticipated and what is the evidence that they are working to cut Canada’s emissions?

In the future article in this series – we’ll look at the latest data on Canada’s emissions, the reduction plans by sector, and the progress to date in rolling them out.