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July 01, 2004 (Globe and Mail)
This Parliament could be a clean, green machine...

The minority government elected on Monday could be a surprising boon to the majority of Canadians who hold strong environmental values. There is an intriguing parallel with the mid-1960s, when the minority government of Lester Pearson developed social programs that are widely cherished today, including medicare and the Canada Pension Plan.

An extraordinary degree of agreement about the importance of protecting the environment exists among the four parties represented in Parliament. The Liberals, led by Paul Martin, made repeated references to the environment as one of their priorities during the election campaign. Prime Minister Paul Martin has a long-standing and strong personal interest in the environment.

The NDP and their energetic leader Jack Layton put forward one of the strongest environmental platforms of a major political party in Canadian history. The Bloc Québécois platform also emphasized the goal of a sustainable future. Both parties received A ratings on election report cards from Greenpeace and the Sierra Club.

The Conservatives may be perceived as environmental heel-draggers in light of their dogmatic disavowal of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Yet their platform calls upon Canada to become a world leader in clean air, water, land and energy. Preston Manning has pushed the Conservatives to take a stronger stand on environmental protection. Mr. Manning says that he has been influenced by the commitment of many young people for whom creating a sustainable future is a top priority.

Parliamentarians must also take note of the unprecedented support for the Green Party. On Monday the number of Canadians supporting the party was six times higher than in 2000. Despite failing to win a seat, the Greens received nearly 600,000 votes, about one-third the support of the Bloc Québécois, which won 54 seats.

Where are the areas of convergence among the four parties? Common ground includes tackling air pollution, promoting clean energy, increasing energy efficiency, ending subsidies to environmentally harmful activities, stronger enforcement of environmental laws and reducing the release of toxic chemicals into our air and water.

To address air pollution, new regulations are needed to reduce emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter. Such regulatory limits were proposed by the Conservatives but fit with the other parties' stated desire to tackle air pollution.

All four parties are enthusiastic (to varying degrees) about boosting the production of clean energy, particularly wind. Despite our huge natural potential, Canada is far behind nations such as Denmark, Germany, and the United States in harnessing wind. The Liberal Party's modest promises should be pushed further, as the Bloc and NDP suggest, so that Canada generates at least 10 per cent of its electricity from clean, low-impact renewable sources by 2008.

All parties except the Liberals have expressed support for regulations requiring vehicle manufacturers to produce cars and trucks that are 25-per-cent more fuel-efficient by 2010. The Liberals would prefer to rely on a voluntary agreement with manufacturers but this approach has a dismal track record. Other innovative policies would include quotas for the sale of low-emission vehicles (used successfully by California to spur technological innovation) and laws requiring vehicle manufacturers to recycle or re-use all parts of their products (as done in the European Union).

Taking action in the preceding areas will have the added benefit of addressing the critical challenge of climate change by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Other climate-change policies that should receive broad support, even from the Conservatives, include energy-efficiency standards for new homes and commercial buildings, retrofitting existing buildings and providing GST rebates on energy efficiency expenditures.

Another area of convergence between unlikely allies is the support of both the NDP and the Conservatives for stricter enforcement of environmental laws.

Environmental enforcement in Canada has declined precipitously in recent years because of budget cuts at both the federal and provincial levels.

The Liberals, NDP and Bloc all support sharing part of the federal gas tax with municipalities. However the federal government must not simply write a blank cheque for infrastructure, but should impose conditions requiring that sustainability criteria be met in areas like public transit and water conservation.

The final area where progress could be made involves ecological tax reform: eliminating environmentally harmful subsidies and lowering taxes on activities society wants to encourage like employment and investment, while imposing taxes on negative activities like pollution and waste. Both the NDP and the Bloc are strong supporters of these tools, while the Liberals and Conservatives have endorsed the polluter-pays principle. Pollution taxes have produced significant environmental progress in Europe in recent years but remain untested in Canada.

The unexpected allocation of seats in Parliament provides a remarkable opportunity for parties of all political stripes to stop talking the talk of environmental protection and start walking the walk.

In considering the priorities of his minority government, Mr. Martin should pay close attention to the social legacy created by Mr. Pearson. The Liberals and their allies in the House of Commons should strive to implement policies that aim to achieve sustainability within a generation. This is the kind of positive and visionary goal that a majority of Canadians will clearly support.

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