June 15, 2010

Good morning and thank you for the invitation to speak with you here today.

This is the first opportunity I've had to get a look at this newly-renovated Museum of Nature. Congratulations.

Sadly, I am at that difficult age. I am past the age where my young daughters drag me from exhibit to exhibit proving that I am more of a child than they are. But I am a still a little too young, to have grandchildren to do the same.

This is an exceptional facility. Every Canadian family should experience it. 

I mean it when I say thank you for this invitation: The Environment portfolio is never a dull one. I have just returned from Gwaii Haanas, where I took to my kayak, to experience Canada's newest National park-the Gwaii Haanas Marine Conservation Area-the Canadian Galapagos, protected from the depths of the ocean to the peaks of the mountains. This is again a Canadian first, a planetary first.

And before that I was in Ilulissat, Greenland watching the Arctic's giant icebergs calve off of the Greenland ice sheet.

The last six months have also been exceptionally action-packed from a policy development perspective. Preparing this speech has given me an opportunity for some extra reflection on our policy direction, to tally all the things we've accomplished and to give it all some context.

Those who take great pride in what Canada has accomplished on the environment can point to all we've managed to do in the past 18 months.

We also continue to pursue the Clean Energy Dialogue initiated by Prime Minister Harper and President Obama during the President's visit a year and a half ago.  Energy Secretary Chu and I established joint Working Groups that are working on delivering 20 joint initiatives on clean energy in three key areas. 

The first is carbon capture and storage (CCS) which both countries see as holding enormous potential to control greenhouse gas emissions.  The second area is focused on building a more efficient electricity grid, based on clean and renewable generation.  And the third focus area of the Dialogue is to encourage clean energy research, development and deployment. 

All in all, there is great potential for collaboration on climate-friendly and low-carbon technologies under the Clean Energy Dialogue.  We're in a global race toward technologies that reduce our impact on the environment.  The countries that lead will be the countries who will build prosperity for generations to come.  We also negotiated and signed a new international climate change agreement at Copenhagen.

The United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen was a solid success. Canada stuck to its guns and emerged with what it wanted: an international agreement that has the support of all major emitters and acknowledges climate change as a global issue requiring a global response.

We then aligned our Copenhagen targets on a continental basis-harmonizing our commitment to reduce our emissions by 17% by 2020, calculated from 2005.

This international process is an ongoing one, with the next climate change summit planned for Mexico in November. As it has from the outset, Canada continues to play a very active role in transforming the terms of the Copenhagen Accord into reality.

For the past two weeks, we've had a team in Bonn participating in the first full negotiating session since last December. I'm happy to report that significant progress was made on a number of key issues, Issues like monitoring, reporting and verification-which is a tricky one for many states because it requires exceptional transparency. Adaptation, finance and technology also advanced in this round as well.

It's also worth noting that Canada has shouldered its fair share of international responsibility for the environment. At Copenhagen we committed to the "Fast Action Fund". We have stood by that commitment. Canada emits 2% of the world's green house gases. As the first tranche of that commitment, two weeks ago we announced Canada's enhanced commitment to the Global Environment Fund.

Having established a working international framework and a clear continental objective, we have now begun to regulate Canada's emissions, source by source, acting responsibly to move our emissions onto a downward trajectory.

We began with the transportation sector because that is where 27% of our carbon emissions come from. So, to do that, we announced tough new continental tailpipe emission standards for passenger cars and light-duty trucks. Doing this with the United States was the very first thing we discussed when President Obama visited our country after his election.

We didn't stop there. We announced the same approach last month for each of the 15 categories of heavy trucks-continental standards, developed in Canada and the United States-applied across the economy. And there's still more to come. We have working groups in place for ships, for trains and for planes.

We have brought in new regulations requiring biofuel content for gasoline and diesel fuel.

We have tabled new regulations requiring biofuel content for gasoline and diesel fuel.

As a result, commencing in September 2010, gasoline will be required to contain five per cent renewable content. We will also have a 2% requirement for diesel and heating fuel by 2011. Along with co-ordinated provincial regulations, that means that greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by about four megatonnes annually-the equivalent of taking a million vehicles off the road.

So, don't let anyone say that Canada is not aggressively engaged in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, nor shouldering our fair share of international responsibility.

As part of our efforts to ensure Canada is clean as well as green, we also announced Canada's first-ever national standards for the treatment of municipal waste water-addressing what some describe as "Canada's dirty secret'. We will continue to work with provinces and municipalities to bring an end to dumping untreated effluent into Canada's rivers, lakes and oceans.

It is a big job-and an expensive one. But our responsible stewardship of water is a top priority.

While it varies from community to community, the bill for cleaning up our nation's wastewater is expected to run in the range of $10 to $13 billion over the next 30 years.

The federal government has already committed to contributing to financing this work.

Since 2007 it has spent, or committed to spend, over $3.25 billion for wastewater and water infrastructure. That includes $740 million for 1,100 wastewater projects across Canada funded by the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund. Additionally, the government has made the Gas Tax Fund permanent, doubling it to $2 billion per year.

This is funding municipalities can count on and can apply to meeting future national standards for wastewater treatment and for facility upgrades.

Water is also a factor in another area where we have been hard at work. Conservation is something for which I have a personal passion and I am proud of our accomplishments on that front.

For those who have been watching, we have expanded Canada's National Park system by 30%. We increased the Nahanni Park by six times its original size. We finalized the Gwaii Haanas Marine Conservation Area. We announced a new park at Mealy Mountain in Labrador. It's bigger than Yellowstone and Yosemite combined. We announced a new Marine Conservation area in the Arctic at Lancaster Sound. We have taken Sable Island and with the agreement of Nova Scotia brought this fabled island into our National Park system.

We are working with the province of Alberta and with the oil industry to ensure our current environmental regulations are rigorously enforced based on the best science available, and as well, consider additional policies to ensure the development of resources such as the oil sands are done in an environmentally sustainable manner.

So we have accomplished a lot and we are proud of this record. Just last week, even Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society applauded our work on the Gwaii Haanas Marine Conservation Area, indicating that this was a welcome step in the right direction.

And, David Suzuki called it a "world-class, ground-breaking approach to conservation."

Let us return to electricity.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have accomplished all that we have in reducing our carbon emissions by adhering to our core principles: firm commitment to a workable international climate change accord; adherence to GHG reduction targets that reflect Canada's economic and geographic reality; close policy and regulatory harmonization with the Obama Administration in recognition of our integrated economies and geography; ongoing consultation with provinces, stakeholders to ensure that we properly calibrate the policies and regulations required to address climate change domestically, continentally and internationally.

Those principles will continue to shape the next steps in our quest to reduce carbon emissions, building out on the work we are doing in the transportation sector.

The Government of Canada is determined that Canada maintains and builds upon our credentials as a clean energy super power. And to do so, our electricity system must be the cleanest in the world.

We already do a pretty good job of this. Seventy five percent of Canada's electricity system emits no carbon whatsoever. Canadians take pride in the fact that we are one of the world's most successful producers of hydroelectricity.

We aspire to do even better. And we will.

Canada has an opportunity to define unique, regulatory policies that will move Canada to the cleanest electricity system of any G8 or G20 nation.

We have repeatedly underscored the need to co-ordinate key environmental decisions and actions with our continental partners. This aligned approach is grounded in the practicality that, in areas such as transportation, we drive the same cars and trucks. Moreover the heavy trucks, planes, trains and ships which we use are, for the most part, common across the border. The same can be said of the standards we would apply in the North American marketplace to things such as electronics and appliances.

But this is not always so. Our countries are different and, in areas such as electricity, where Canadian circumstances and American circumstances are not the same, we will not hesitate to pursue a policy direction that reflects our differing circumstances.

We recognize that, in certain strategic areas, we will have to strike out on our own. And this is just one of those-it's a sector where we are focusing our attention, calibrating the needs of Canadian stakeholders with our specific environmental objectives. It is a process that requires careful consideration and consultation as well as courage and conviction.

Nonetheless we have a responsibility as a country to reduce our carbon emissions, and until such time as technology advances the burning of coal remains as our country's largest point source of emissions. As a nation we have the technological skill, the alternatives and the resource blessing which allow us to reduce those emissions. Our government intends to do exactly that.

We are not short on the expertise or the qualities to bring about meaningful change on a timely basis. But ultimately, it is not about us. We owe it to ourselves and to our children and grandchildren to make the right decisions for the future of Canada and for the environment.

Thank you.