POLICY

 

1. Canadian environmental policy should focus on providing clean air, land and water and sensible adaptation measures to prepare for inevitable climate variability.

2. Canadian energy policy should seek to ensure the secure and reliable availability of competitively priced energy services; predictable investment, regulatory and market access rules for energy investors; and broad support for Canada’s economic, social and environmental policy objectives.

3. Climate policy has widespread and diverse impacts on Canada’s regions and people. Climate policy development should take place in an environment in which different interests and regions are represented and respected, and all constructive views are welcome.

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ECONOMICS

 

1. Abundant, inexpensive energy has been a driver of Canadian prosperity for the past century, providing us the wealth to fund social programs and the other activities needed to provide a prosperous, stable society.

2. As governments consider the range of options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they should employ best practices with respect to cost-benefit analysis. Further, they should take advantage of the lowest cost and most cost-effective options in preference to the more expensive and less cost-effective ones.

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CLIMATE SCIENCE

 

1. Global climate is always changing in accordance with natural causes and recent changes are not unusual.

2. Science is rapidly evolving away from the view that humanity's emissions of carbon dioxide and other 'greenhouse gases' are a cause of dangerous climate change.

3. The UN IPCC Summary for Policymakers and the assertions of IPCC executives too often mis-represent the conclusions of their own scientific reports.

4. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant - it is a necessary reactant in plant photosynthesis and so is essential for life on Earth. CO2 should not be included in the list of toxic substances regulated by the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

5. Research that identifies the Sun as a major driver of global climate change must be taken more seriously.

6. Global cooling has presented serious problems for human society and the environment throughout history, especially in Canada and other high latitude countries, while global warming has generally been highly beneficial.

7. It is not possible to reliably predict how climate will change in the future, beyond the certainty that multi-decadal warming and cooling trends, and abrupt changes, will all continue, underscoring a need for effective adaptation.

 

* United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

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ENERGY

 

1. Canada’s oil, natural gas, coal, hydro and nuclear industries are among the most efficient and technologically advanced sources of income, investment growth and export earnings of all industries in Canada. They are vital to the economic prosperity of all regions.

2. Regulatory certainty, efficiency and predictability are important for industry investment planning. These conditions must be restored in industries affected by climate policies. The federal government must play its proper role as protector of the Canadian economic union, and address by legislation or other direct measures as necessary the use of political and legal tactics to block interprovincial trade and the legally-approved construction and operation of interprovincial and international energy infrastructure.

3. Variable renewable energy (VRE) technologies are extremely expensive and rely on huge government subsidies. To use such intermittent and diffuse power sources requires that the consumer pays between three and ten times the price of power from conventional sources (coal, oil, natural gas, hydro and nuclear). Regardless, it is not currently possible to safely replace a significant fraction of Canada’s conventional energy supplies with alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and most biofuels.

4. New VRE have only a minimal effect on carbon dioxide emissions because none of them can be relied upon to be available when needed. Therefore, conventional fossil fuel-fired power stations must be kept on standby in case the wind drops or a cloud passes over the Sun. This leads to additional emissions of carbon dioxide that, to a large extent, offset the reductions made by the renewable energy technologies.

5. 'Energy independence' is not a good reason for promoting VRE technologies. Energy independence is more easily–and much more cheaply–attained by exploiting abundant national fossil fuel reserves, and spending some of the wealth created on research into potential new energy technologies.