Fossil fuels | Ottawa to end subsidies in 2023, says Guilbeault

Canada will deliver on its commitment by mid-2023 to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, which still supports it with billions of dollars.

Jean-Thomas Léveillé
The Press

“It will certainly be done in the first half of the year”, indicated Wednesday to The Press Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, on the sidelines of the 27^e United Nations Climate Conference (COP27), taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Ottawa will thus become the first country in the Group of 20 major economies on the planet (G20) to stop pouring public funds into the oil, gas and coal industry, after the G20 set the deadline for 2025.

This commitment was an election promise of the Liberal Party of Canada and was included in the “support and confidence” agreement reached with the New Democratic Party (NDP) to ensure the survival of the minority government of Justin Trudeau until 2025.

“We are in the process of aligning all our flutes, but things are progressing really well,” indicated Minister Guilbeault.

The march was set to be high, since Canada was still in 2021 at the 2^e rank of the G20 countries that subsidize the most this sector, at 8.5 billion dollars per year on average, according to a report by the organization Oil Change International published in early November.

No to “non-proliferation”

However, Ottawa does not intend to impose a limit on the production of fossil fuels, as Tuvalu demanded at COP27.

The small Polynesian state called on the international community on Tuesday to conclude a “fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty”, which would ban all new production and exploration activity, and plan the phasing out of oil, gas and coal. , as well as a just transition.

The initiative is supported by Vanuatu, another island state in Oceania, and a dozen “local governments”, including the Canadian cities of Toronto and Vancouver, as well as more than 600 organizations and some 1,300 scientists.

“Just as 50 years ago when an international treaty defused the threat of nuclear weapons, today the world needs a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty,” the website reads. ‘initiative.

However, Canada could not adhere to such a treaty because it does not have the powers to implement it, argues Steven Guilbeault.

“From a constitutional point of view, the federal government does not control the use of natural resources and what the provinces want to do with them,” he says.

The federal government can act on pollution, explains the minister, in particular by requiring the reduction of methane emissions from the oil and gas sector or by reducing the carbon content of fuels, but it cannot limit its production.

To be able to fight climate change effectively, the actions of the Canadian government must therefore be “without reproach from a constitutional point of view,” said Minister Guilbeault.

“If we start to play clearly in the flowerbeds of the provinces, well, we risk having our fingers slapped by the Supreme Court, having these measures canceled and we will not be any further ahead,” he anticipates. . It won’t help fight climate change. »

Work with industry

Minister Guilbeault also defends the holding of a “panel” on Friday that will bring together representatives of six Canadian oil companies at the Canadian pavilion at COP27.

The event, reported by the daily The duty Wednesday will focus on the Canadian oil industry’s goal of carbon neutrality, which relies primarily on carbon capture and storage technologies, which are still at an experimental stage.

“The commitment we made in the fight against climate change is to work with all regions of the country and with all sectors to decarbonize [notre économie] “, declared the minister to The Press.

The federal government is also working with the aluminum and cement manufacturing sectors, which are high greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, present in Quebec, as well as the automobile sector, argues Steven Guilbeault.

“If we started to discriminate on the basis of emissions [de GES]there would be nobody, because all the sectors [en émettent] he exclaimed, acknowledging that the fossil fuel sector emits “a lot”.