The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, was invited to speak at the Climate Ambition Summit which is being held this Wednesday in New York, at the invitation of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres. However, this will not be the case for the Prime Minister of Quebec, François Legault.
Mr. Trudeau’s office confirmed Tuesday to Duty that the latter will speak as part of this international meeting designed to raise climate ambition, two months before the next United Nations conference on climate change (COP28).
However, Justin Trudeau’s office did not provide additional details on the Prime Minister’s speech and the United Nations media relations department indicated by email that the list of people who will speak, as well as the order, must be revealed on Tuesday evening.
The Prime Minister of Canada, a major producer and exporter of oil and natural gas, could take the opportunity to discuss the federal government’s plan to cap and then reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the energy industry fossils.
The details of this future regulation should normally be revealed during the fall and the Climate Action Network urges the Trudeau government to take advantage of the visit to New York to clarify its project, supposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the most polluting sector in the country.
Oil Change International wants this cap to take into account “the entire supply chain” — therefore including emissions produced during the use of exported oil and gas. These emissions totaled more than four billion tonnes between 2016 and 2020, according to a report from Environment and Climate Change Canada
“Leader”
Prime Minister François Legault will not speak at the Climate Ambition Summit, despite what the headlines and articles published in certain media in recent days may have suggested.
“There was never any question of a speech at the UN. We are invited as part of the Climate Ambition Summit. Quebec is one of nine states or nations that received an invitation from the Secretary General of the United Nations. It’s quite an honor and recognition,” his office said in a written response.
“Mr. Legault has meetings today with governors and representatives of other states and countries and he has the opportunity to exchange and talk about climate change and the environment,” it was specified on Tuesday .
Équiterre has also invited Prime Minister Legault to present himself as a “decarbonization leader” during the meetings being held in New York this week. “Our ambition and our collective pride must be calculated differently than by the number of battery factories that will be set up in Quebec. We will evaluate our ambition based on our ability to reduce our carbon and material footprint, protect our natural and agricultural environments and reduce inequalities,” argues Marc-André Viau, director of government relations for the organization.
According to Équiterre, for Quebec to stand out on the environmental level, “it will be necessary to facilitate changes in the population’s habits through better regulatory supervision of several industries. We will also have to tackle head-on certain issues such as the size of our vehicles, energy consumption, urban sprawl, consumption of single-use items and food, to name a few.”