Canada faces climate crisis We’re dangerously unprepared to deal with impact of changes, report warns

OTTAWA— Canada is more vulnerable to climate change than any other industrialized nation but is dangerously unprepared to deal with the “ unavoidable” impacts, warns a study specially commissioned by Prime Minister Paul Martin. The unpublished report lists damage to forestry, fishing and agriculture caused by higher temperatures and less reliable precipitation. Large swaths of Ontario’s boreal forest are likely to die over the next century. The danger to the country from climate change is “ perhaps unmatched in times of peace,” says the draft of a blunt report from the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. Created by the federal government in 1994, the round table is a blue- ribbon advisory body of business and labour leaders, academics, environmentalists and civic activists. The 24 members are appointed directly by the Prime Minister, giving the group an inside track in Ottawa policy discussions.

Although the report also suggests cozying up to the United States to get a North American approach on adapting to climate change, the overriding emphasis is on handling the issue here

at home.

“ All Canadians will be touched by climate change impacts” that “ pose new risks to human health, critical infrastructure, social stability and security,” the group says.

Already, “ dangerous” climate change has hit some parts of Canada, such as the North, and is inexorably on the way for the Prairies and some coastal areas. But because the federal and provincial governments have so far fumbled the issue, most Canadians are cynical about climate change, taking a waitandsee attitude. Political leaders must move climate change away from being a strictly environmental issue, urges the report.

“It must be seen as an issue that touches on the foundations of Canadians’ way of life — jobs, economic competitiveness, human health and cultural values.” The report warns that man-made climate changes would continue for decades, even if all emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases stopped immediately. A two- degree- Celsius rise in global average temperatures — seen as unavoidable in many computer projections — would boost average temperatures in the Canadian interior by three to four degrees. In the North, average winter temperatures would jump between four and seven degrees, says the report.

“This level of increase, therefore, would almost certainly incur what many Canadians consider to be dangerous levels of climate change impacts.”

Although the round table’s analysis largely echoes the prevailing scientific views on climate change, its report is a forceful excoriation of both the public and private sectors in Canada for failing to rise to the challenge. The report is critical of the leadership of Martin, who in February asked the group for advice in time for a United Nations-sponsored climate change conference that opens in Montreal Nov. 28 and runs until Dec. 9. The Montreal conference is supposed to approve detailed rules for the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases but concentrates mostly on how the world will tackle climate change when the Kyoto pact expires in 2012. Canada is spending $ 10 billion on a Kyoto plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels during 20082012, but the report is looking at the period beyond that. The most recent federal figures placed 2003 emissions 26 per cent above the 1990 levels. The round table’s final report, sent to Martin and other key federal ministers last month, contained only minor changes from the Sept. 27 draft obtained by the Star, according to a participant familiar with both versions.

The report singles out the Prime

Minister’s Office and its bureaucratic

counterpart, the Privy Council Office, for failing “ to adequately initiate

and co- ordinate Canadian strategic

policy responses to climate change.”

It recommends that Martin:

Take personal charge of the climate change issue.

Address the nation to drive home the urgency of climate change to Canadians.

Call a first ministers’ meeting to launch a national clean- energy strategy.

Lead a new public- private campaign to promote measures for adapting to climate change impacts.

In an interview yesterday, round table chair Glen Murray, a former mayor of Winnipeg, said the report should be made public before the Montreal climate change conference.