Ottawa, December 1, 2009 

Canada's Chemical Producers' take climate change seriously. Our members have greatly exceeded Kyoto targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To continue to improve, we need investment. To win new investment, we need to remain a viable, globally competitive sector.

CCPA members will reduce GHG emissions 65% by 2010. These are actual emissions reductions. These reductions result from investments in transformative technologies and major new plant investments that came on stream in the 1990s when the manufacturing economy was booming.

Canada cannot meet its total Kyoto targets by reducing emissions. If Canada were locked into meeting our Kyoto targets or additional targets for 2020 and 2050 (and at 5 year intervals in between --which is what C-311 proposes), it would actually mean using the alternative to reducing emissions: buying credits abroad at a huge cost. The estimated cost of purchasing those credits would be $6 billion. In fact, the cost could be much higher.

Sending $6 billion abroad to buy foreign credits, as this Bill would require, will not reduce emissions in Canada. Only a concerted effort by all of society, plus new investments into technologies, will reduce emissions over time.

To this end, the Canadian Chemical Producers' Association is calling on the federal government to proceed in pace with the United States for managing greenhouse gases. We need to design our system to be comparable to the U.S. for competitiveness, to avoid U.S. border measures and to recognize the reality of Canada-U.S. integration. We also need to extend the accelerated capital cost allowance to five years and develop a technology fund. These recommendations would support the critical roles of technology development and new capital investment in driving both economic and environmental improvement. These policies would provide our industry with the necessary flexibility to deal with greenhouse gases, which are still a central part of many industrial chemical reactions but incent the development of new, greener alternatives to these processes.

The chemistry industry would strongly support the establishment of a technology fund which would provide both a compliance mechanism at an assured and reasonable cost that would be adjusted over time informed by carbon prices in the market. This would help fund "climate friendly" technology development and implementation in order to achieve significant reductions in GHG emissions.

To see the text of a presentation to the Standing Committee on the Environment, see here.

For more information, please contact Michael Bourque at 613-237-6215 ext. 225.

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