Harper To Slash Environment Canada Climate Programs' Funding By 80% - Leak

The new Conservative government has decided to slash spending on Environment Canada programs designed to fight global warming by 80 per cent, and wants cuts of 40 per cent in the budgets devoted to climate change at other ministries, according to cabinet documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.

The documents also say that the Conservatives' campaign promise of tax breaks for transit passes would cost up to $2-billion over five years, but would result in an insignificant cut in greenhouse-gas emissions because the incentives are expected to spur only a small increase in the number of people willing to trade using cars for buses and subways.

The section of the documents on the budget cuts, written by an unidentified government official after a cabinet meeting in late March that approved the reductions, also said the Tories want to try to claw back $260-million the Liberals had pledged to the United Nations to fund its international climate-change programs. Federal funding for wind power, considered by environmentalists to be one of the cleanest new energy sources, "is also uncertain," the documents said.

EDIT

The Tories have indicated that they are ambivalent about the Kyoto Protocol to fight climate change, planning to neither pull out of the treaty nor meet its emission-reduction targets. According to the documents, the Tories have yet to develop their unique Canadian-based set of actions. "No process has been put in place to determine next steps on climate change or to develop the new 'made in Canada' climate plan," the documents said. The documents said that while the Tories are trying to save money by cutting the programs designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, they won't cut government staff positions, so most of the money earmarked for climate change will be going to salaries for bureaucrats.

EDIT

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060413.CLIMATE13/TPStory/Front

Congratulations, Canada - you've got a George W. Bush of your very own!!

two steps back..

:banghead: