For the last decade, the federal government has held two grand but contradictory aspirations for Canada.
Shortly after assuming office, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced, in a July 2006 speech in London, his ambition for Canada to become an energy superpower. His speech focused on developing the tar sands, an enterprise Harper described as bigger than building Egypts great pyramids or Chinas Great Wall.
Yet in Berlin a year later, the prime minister called global warming perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today and said the governments plan positions Canada as a leader in fighting climate change.
The problem is that those two ambitions are fundamentally at odds with one another, since tar sands oil is one of the dirtiest transportation fuels on the planet. And investing heavily in its production has resulted in soaring levels of carbon pollution.
So which role did the Canadian government embrace tar sands cheerleader or climate champion?
To the detriment of both the environment and the economy, the federal government became an unabashed booster of the tar sands. The unfortunate outcome of that decision is that Canada continues to have an abysmal record on climate change.
The latest data shows that Canadas carbon pollution is 18 per cent above 1990 levels as of 2012, the year we committed in the Kyoto Protocol to be 6 per cent below 1990 levels.
Worse, the governments own projections show that Canada is going to miss its even weaker 2020 targets by a mile.
The reason is pretty clear: continued expansion of the tar sands has meant soaring pollution levels. The oil and gas sector alone is responsible for two-thirds of the increase in Canadas carbon pollution.
How did the current federal government contribute to our poor climate change record?
Both domestically and internationally, the government weakened existing policy and undermined attempts by Parliament and the UN to take climate action.
When opposition amendments at the federal Environment Committee produced a Clean Air Act that would have set strong carbon reduction targets, the government refused to bring it back to the House.
When the opposition parties passed the Climate Change Accountability Act, with strong climate targets and accountability measures, the Senate killed it without debate.
Parliament Hill watchers said it was probably the first time in Canadian history that the Senate had ever done that.
Opposition parties were able to make one bill into law the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, which enshrined Canadas international commitments into domestic law. But it was repealed in 2012 after the government won a majority.
Renewable energy and building-retrofit programs that reduced carbon pollution have been axed or -defunded. But the governments international climate change record is arguably worse than its record domestically.
In January 2006, Canada was the chair of the international climate change negotiations. However, our environment minister at the time, Rona Ambrose, didnt bother to attend some meetings and dropped in just long enough for a photo op at others. Documents leaked to Cana-dian media showed that the government had instructed its international climate negotiators to block progress in the talks.
Canadas role as international climate spoiler was on full display in December 2007 at the UN climate summit in Bali Canada was the lone holdout on a decision to deepen in-ternational commitments under the Kyoto Protocol.
Eighteen countries took the floor to admonish Canada before then environment minister John Baird finally relented and signed on to the agreement. The government eventually took Canada out of the Kyoto Protocol, and we are still the only country to have done so. The targets that Canada had under Kyoto have been weakened twice.
The government has also attempt-ed to silence and undermine anyone pointing out the gap between what climate change science says is necessary and the governments approach.
Hundreds of climate scientists have lost their jobs with the federal government, and those remaining have been muzzled, forbidden to speak to media unless authorized to by the prime ministers office. Government funding for the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, the Climate Action Network and the Canadian Environmental Network has been completely cut.
Why has the federalgovernment taken such an adversarial approach to action on climate change?
Consider the tar sands and the many measures the government has taken to ensure that as much oil as possible flows from northern Alberta into the worlds gas tanks.
The 2013 omnibus budget bill weakened or cut a whole suite of legislation that was protecting the Canadian environment but also restricting what tar sands companies could do. Leaked documents show that many of these changes were requested by the oil companies.
The Fisheries Act and Navigable Waters Protection Act, which protected rivers from the pollution caused by tar sands companies and other industries, were gutted. The environmental assessment process was curtailed, artificially constraining the amount of time to investigate the impact on the environment of new energy projects like oil pipelines, and preventing most Canadians from expressing their opinions on such projects. The government even spent $25 million on an ad campaign to convince Americans that Canadian tar sands oil causes no environmental problems.
Last December, when the PM was asked whether he would regulate carbon pollution from the tar sands, as the government has promised repeatedly since 2007, he said it would be crazy to do so when the price of oil is so low.
If there was ever any doubt, that response made it clear which of the two ambitions the government is still favouring, dirty-energy superpower or climate leader.
But Canadians know we dont need to choose between our environment and our economy. Both can be healthy together.
Dale Marshall is the national program manager for Environmental Defence.
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