May 24, 2009

As delivered

It's certainly a pleasure to be here, and as a politician, meeting with business leaders, knowing full well that in one of the earlier panels, there was some anticipation about having the chance to examine some of the politicians on these issues. 

Canada plays a constructive role in these negotiations.  Our ambition as a country is to be mindful of our environmental responsibilities, to be a full partner in the Copenhagen process and in the MEF process, which I'll speak to in a moment. 

I approach these negotiations actually with a lot of confidence.  I don't think that failure is an option at Copenhagen.  I say that because I don't think that any of us who are associated with this and the countries that we represent can afford for the sake of our children and our grandchildren to not succeed in the battle against climate change, and so this is a pivotal meeting.  We know that.  We go into it with very heavy responsibilities on our shoulders.  From my perspective, I have a lot of confidence about what's going to happen at Copenhagen, and I'll speak to that in a moment.

I think the fundamental question for business leaders here today is how do we build confidence and momentum towards Copenhagen, and in particular for the business leaders and the companies that you represent, what responsibility do you have and what role do you play in that process? 

So dealing firstly with the prospects at Copenhagen, I derive my sense of optimism from a couple of things.  I don't think that we should ever let fear replace confidence as a driver of public policy development, and I'm mindful that I think all of the countries who are taking part in the process have spoken up in a positive way about the importance of the commitments they've undertaken in the past, and the importance of achieving at Copenhagen a robust agreement that applies in a more fulsome way to all of the emitters of carbon, and so I take confidence from that. 

I also appreciate what President Obama has done in terms of striking the major economies' forum.  I think this has been immensely helpful.  The first meeting was held about three weeks ago in Washington.  The second meeting begins actually tomorrow in Paris, and I agree with my friend Minister Xie about the fact that the Copenhagen process will have to be resolved within the context of the Copenhagen process, and the UN process is its own entity in that regard.  I think what President Obama has done in terms of striking a major economies' forum that has essentially 17 economies in the world that are emitting 75 percent of the carbon is proving to be a very useful parallel process, a complementary process, really, to lead to a fulsome resolution.  It's proving to be an opportunity for a frank exchange of points of view on many of the difficult issues that have been raised so far in this panel even.

Three comments I would make for the benefit of business leaders who are here relative to the position of business as we go forward and the items upon which I think you can be important advocates, and they're threefold.  Firstly, the importance of free markets.  Secondly, some comments I'd like to make about the importance of technology, and thirdly, a caution about green protectionism, as Ban Ki-Moon mentioned earlier. 

Firstly, dealing with free markets, I think an essential part of success at Copenhagen is to ensure that we enable the development of a more robust global marketplace for credits.  While public finance is an important part of this as well, I think it's essential that we focus on the market-based mechanisms that will be available, that we go beyond the European trading regime.  I know certainly in Canada we favour a trading regime that initially in our country would then become part of a continental approach, eventually part of a global approach, and I think the sooner that we arrive at that sort of robust, global regime, the better. 

The second point I would make is about the importance of technology, and I think this was mentioned often this morning - the challenge before us is all about technology.  That just cannot be overemphasized, because we're talking fundamentally about a transformation of the capital stock, the technological investments in our society.  This will take time.  It will take massive investments, and as an illustration of that, today globally something in the nature of 40 percent of the carbon emissions in our atmosphere - anthropogenic ones - came from coal thermal electricity plants.  The world is currently developing new coal thermal electricity plants at the rate of in excess of a hundred per year.  And in the time between now and 2030, we're going to see somewhere in excess of 2000 new electricity facilities constructed.  And the technologies of clean coal, and in particular, of carbon capture and storage become of fundamental importance if we're going to deal even with the growth of emissions from future world economic growth.  And that's going to take significant public investments.  I know in our country that's a priority.  Canada, between our federal and provincial governments, is investing in excess of Can$3 billion in public investments, and it's going to need us to accelerate commercial demonstration projects, working in a collaborative way across all of the countries that will be participating.  And as others have said, we need to then determine the way in which those technologies will be shared, ways in which the technology will be available to the developing world so that they can make progress in this regard as well. 

And the final point I would make, which I think is extremely important to everyone in this room who is a business leader, is a caution about green protectionism.  Protectionism of any colour is something that will spiral the international economy into a place where we do not want to take it, and we have to be very careful about this.  In particular as we develop domestic regimes that apply in each of our countries, we have to be sure that we don't have such mechanisms.  I know there's been discussions in the United States about the so-called border adjustments.  We have to ensure that we don't dismantle much of the rules-based WTO trading relationships that we have internationally, because this will not be good for prosperity.  And at the end of the day, much of what we're trying to do will require a certain amount of prosperity if we're going to achieve the level of technological advancement that we're going to need.

Those are three cautions, but from my perspective, I am cautiously optimistic about Copenhagen, and I think that there is a spirit around the table.  As Minister Xie said, it is very much about the art of political compromise at the end of the day, about all of us taking our responsibilities seriously.  I know that from everyone I've talked to, there is a real willingness and a desire to do that at the upcoming Copenhagen process. 

Thank you.