Guy Saint-Jacques
Agence France Presse reports that, “The (Harper) government (on) Tuesday announced the appointment of (senior diplomat Guy Saint-Jacques as Canada’s) new chief negotiator and ambassador for climate change… Saint-Jacques will represent Canada at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Mexico later this year, officials said.”
“(Saint-Jacques) replaces former top negotiator Michael Martin who led the Canadian delegation in Copenhagen in December 2009.” Postmedia News reports that, “the (Harper) government had left (the position) vacant for six months through key negotiations on the international stage, including this summer’s G8 and G20 summits in Ontario.” Martin was appointed on March 25 as the deputy secretary to cabinet in the Privy Council Office.
Another Postmedia News article reports that “The government said that Saint-Jacques would be in charge of promoting Canada’s climate change goals and providing policy advice on how to achieve them.”
Our climate change goals?
Likely the Harper government doesn’t mean that Mr. Saint-Jacques will promote our legal obligations under the Kyoto accord. It must be remembered that Canada had pledged under the 1997 Kyoto accord to a 6 per cent cut in emissions below 1990 by 2012. In reality, our greenhouse gas emissions have increased by about 26 per cent between 1990 and 2007.
Nor does the government likely mean that Mr. Saint-Jacques will work to promote the emission reduction targets outlined in C-311. In May, the House of Commons voted 149 to 136 and passed Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act. The Conservatives voted against this bill, the opposition parties in favour of it. The legislation calls for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut by 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
More likely Mr. Saint-Jacques will promote the Harper government’s ‘climate change goals’, goals which have been widely criticized. This past February, environment minister Jim Prentice said Canada’s new goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions was to be 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020. He said this goal matched the US target. But the 17 per cent target Prentice announced actually equates to emissions 2.5 per cent higher than 1990 levels for Canada.
The Council of Canadians will be on the ground at the Cancun climate summit this coming November 29 to December 10. Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow, climate justice campaigner Andrea Harden-Donahue, Blue Planet Project organizer Anil Naidoo, Mexico City-based Blue Planet Project organizer Claudia Campero Arena, and I will be there.
Between now and then we will be demanding much better from the Harper government and Mr. Saint-Jacques. We will be carrying the climate justice message of the Peoples World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (that took place this past April 17-19 in Cochabamba, Bolivia). We will be supporting:
– “The reduction of 50 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions for the second period of the Kyoto Protocol from 2013-2017, the limit on the increase in temperature to 1 degree Celsius and 300 ppm.”
– “Respect for human rights in the operative part of the text, not in the preambular part only, and clear paragraphs in relation to Indigenous People’s rights and climate migrants’ rights.”
– “A climate court of justice.”
– “Not promoting market mechanisms that develop offsets from developing countries in favor of developed countries.”
– “Using 6 per cent of the GDP of developed countries to address climate change-related issues.”
These demands are now part of the official negotiating text that will be discussed in Cancun, http://canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=4351.
For more on the Council of Canadians climate justice campaign, please go to http://canadians.org/climatejustice.
