International community slams Canada’s climate priorities

OTTAWA— Prime Minister Stephen Harper is facing some stiff international head winds on Canada’s climate change ambition as he heads to a G7 meeting in Germany next week.

Canada is being publicly blasted as a climate laggard in a report coauthored by former United Nations head Kofi Annan, while the government’s chief climate negotiator fielded skeptical questions about Canada’s greenhouse-gas reduction policies at a UN climate conference in Bonn this week.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made climate action a priority at this year’s G7 summit which begins Sunday, in advance of a UN conference in December that aims to negotiate a new, post-2020 global climate agreement.

Harper will arrive in Germany with plenty of baggage, including a report released Friday by the Africa Prog- ress Panel that lumps Canada in with Australia, Japan and Russia as countries that it says are effectively withdrawing from constructive engagement on climate.

The atmosphere is already chilly in Bonn, where Brazil, South Africa, the European Union and the U.S. were among those seeking more information from Canadian negotiator Louise Metivier about whether Canada is doing anything to close the gap on its 2020 emissions-reduction target.