Home » News » Joint cabinet meeting a chance to chart green Canadian future
News
Joint cabinet meeting a chance to chart green Canadian future
News Articles | The Star | Sidney Ribaux and Rick Smith | June 15, 2010
Read the full article on the originating site
We tell stories about ourselves to make sense of who we are and where we are going. We do this in our personal lives, and we do this alongside others to explain society as a whole.
Canada has told several big stories about itself throughout its history to do just this — for example: two founding nations, coming of age at Vimy Ridge, middle power punching above its weight class on the international stage.
As the Quebec and Ontario government cabinets get together June 16-16 in Quebec City, energy and climate change will be on the agenda, and this is an opportunity to begin to tell ourselves a new story. It is a story about our two provinces, still home to the majority of the population of Canada, leading the post-carbon revolution.
The tragic television images of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico seem to go from bad to worse, reminding us that our dangerous addiction to oil is allowing the oil companies to take ever greater risks now that the most accessible oil reserves are tapped out. Offshore drilling and strip mining the tarsands are examples of this.
Some western provinces, supported by the government in Ottawa, are trying to tell a story that ignores both the lesson of the gulf spill and the even bigger challenge of global warming, throwing open the doors to everyone who has a buck to spend on getting more fossil fuels out of the ground. Part of their story involves telling Canadians that oil riches are floating everyone’s boat, so oil production should not be criticized in any way.
But that story has an unhappy ending. Already it is falling flat with allies who once knew Canada as a responsible actor, and who thought well of us. It is falling flat with young Canadians who are starting to wonder whether their elders are lazy, uninformed, mean, or all three, in passing along the climate crisis to them without trying to fix it. And, it is a story that, should we cling to it for too long, will have us fall badly behind in the transition to a new energy economy that our competitors are already embracing.
What is the alternative?
There is a new and exciting story that Quebec and Ontario have just begun to tell, and one that we really have no choice but to fill out and embrace. A new low carbon economy is not only possible, but essential, and with tremendous potential in renewable energy, an innovative workforce, and good policy design, Quebec and Ontario can lead this story, and invite others in.
The early stages are already underway. Quebec was first off the mark with a levy on wholesale oil sales, generating revenues for investment in transit and energy efficiency. Ontario joined in with its Green Energy Act, which has already resulted in billions of dollars of new investments in renewable energy, with the promise of thousands of jobs. In recognition of common cause, the two provinces have signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on battling greenhouse gas pollution.
While all of this is a great start, to truly prosper in the new energy economy, Quebec and Ontario need to press ahead, both implementing past commitments — such as regulating large polluters — and in forging new initiatives.
Chief among the new initiatives must be catching up with other leading jurisdictions investing in the infrastructure needed to electrify our vehicle fleets. We can and must stop sending billions of dollars to oil companies and instead create jobs at home by supplying electric vehicles manufactured here with renewable energy that we have produced ourselves.
This story we will increasingly tell ourselves about the new energy economy is also a story about what kind of people we are, and about what really matters. It is a story about showing leadership in the world and about restoring Canada’s reputation. It is a story about doing right by our children and grandchildren by building them a brighter future. It is a story about responsibility and about caring for others.
We believe this is the kind of story that should guide the relationship between Quebec and Ontario over the coming years.
We look forward to this week’s joint cabinet meeting as a part of that story, and look forward to hearing the how the results will build toward making it a reality.
Tagged with: climate change, ontario, quebec, green future
