Okalik hops onto Tory anti-Kyoto bandwagon

Canada’s western premiers — including Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik — have endorsed Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “made-in-Canada” scheme for tackling global warming, and didn’t even mention the Kyoto Accord in a statement last week on climate change.

Instead, their news release says, the premiers agreed on “the importance of working constructively with the federal government on the development of a ‘made-in-Canada’ climate change plan.”

The annual conference brings together the premiers of Canada’s four western provinces and three territories.

At this year’s gathering, held in Gimli, Manitoba last week, the premiers signaled that they support Harper’s abandonment of the Kyoto Accord in favour of a “made-in-Canada” approach to be announced this fall by Rona Ambrose, the Tory environment minister.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, said this week that she’s worried that territorial and western premiers actually don’t know anything concrete about the Tory plan that they’re endorsing.

She said that’s because Harper’s government haven’t announced their climate change policy.

And she said that the Kyoto Accord is the only international process that exists for tackling global warming, and should not be abandoned prematurely.

“We can’t do it alone,” Watt-Cloutier said, expressing scepticism about the “made-in-Canada” approach that Okalik and his colleagues have apparently endorsed.

But this time, Nunavut isn’t fighting any move by Canada to abandon the Kyoto process.

This stands in bold contrast to the position that Okalik took in August of 2002, at a meeting of all provincial and territorial premiers.

At a nationally-televised press conference, Okalik publicly confronted Ralph Klein, the Alberta premier, after Klein warned that the terms of the Kyoto agreement could reduce oil-rich Alberta’s equalization contributions to have-not regions of the country.

“You can keep your money,” Okalik told Klein in 2002, saying global warming presents a direct threat to the Inuit way of life.

But in 2006, that’s all changed.

Press coverage in western Canadian newspapers suggests that premiers are ready to make peace with each other on the issue and support Harper’s yet-to-be-announced climate change plan.

In a May 31 article in the Calgary Herald headlined “Western premiers give boot to Kyoto,” Manitoba Premier Gary Doer is quoted as saying that although his province has supported the Kyoto Accord, he’s now “ready, willing and able to work on tangible plans to make a difference for our region.”