Canada’s Paris pledge deserves scrutiny too

While all of the headlines about the Paris climate agreement have centred on U.S. President Donald Trump withdrawing from the deal, Canada should also took a critical look at what’s in it.

The other week, our MPs stood in the House of Commons and voted to reaffirm support for this deal.

At first glance, it’s an aspirational agreement that you can shape to suit your own needs. Our nationally determined contribution (NDC, as they call it) is, as it sounds, set by us. Nor is it legally binding. If we’re going to be part of a globalist agreement, it might as well be one where we set our own terms and execute according to our own methods. But there is one part that we won’t control. That’s the Green Climate Fund, which the Paris deal reaffirmed.

The fund’s goal is to raise up to $100 billion a year by 2020, mostly from industrialized nations, and give it to developing nations to spend on various green schemes.

Trump referred to this as “yet another scheme to redistribute wealth”.

Canada has so far contributed $277 million. The idea is for this to be converted into a larger, annual contribution.

That’s taxpayers’ money, to be thrown into a global pot, to be spent based on the whims of the unelected people who run the fund.

This is all happening at the same time Ontarians and Albertans are facing escalating carbon prices that will undeniably have a net negative impact on regular family incomes.

Why do we have to pay for infrastructure in other countries when we have enough challenges paying our own bills?

We need to keep a close eye on this fund as it ramps up.

Sadly, it looks like our government is more concerned about optics.

“Environment Minister Catherine McKenna says Canada has no interest in renegotiating the Paris climate change agreement in order to bring the United States back on board,” a recent Canadian Press story reports.

The truth is Trump, far from isolating America, has been a leader on this file by drawing attention to its oddities.

Rather than just following the green fad, Canada needs to start being more critical of this so-called Green Climate Fund as well.

The truth is Trump, far from isolating America, has been a leader on this file by drawing attention to its oddities.”