WWF-Canada: Ontario Adds Momentum to Cross-Border Climate Initiative

“Ontario has joined with leading provinces and U.S. states to do what the vast majority of Canadians support, which is to place a hard cap on greenhouse gas pollution from large industry,” said Keith Stewart, manager of WWF-Canada’s Climate Change Campaign. “This adds momentum to cross-border efforts to take real action on climate change.”

Ontario has joined British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec—together representing nearly 80 per cent of Canada’s population— as well as seven U.S. states in rejecting their respective federal government’s inadequate plans for tackling climate change, proposing the WCI as an alternative.

Under the WCI system, participating states and provinces will agree to economy-wide limits on greenhouse gases and an absolute limit on emissions from industries within those jurisdictions; these absolute limits would be reduced over time. The Canadian federal government’s proposed intensity-based trading program has been criticized as inadequate because it would allow total greenhouse gas emissions from industry to rise.