Canada Needs a Coordinated Strategy on Climate Change, CEO Council Urges Premiers

January 28, 2008

Canada’s provincial and territorial leaders should seize the opportunity of today’s Council of the Federation meeting in Vancouver to commit to a coordinated, nationwide strategy to address the risks of climate change, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) says.

At a time of growing economic uncertainty, “it is more important than ever that governments work together to develop clear goals and timelines, cost-effective programs and a single set of rules for industry and consumers,” CCCE Chief Executive and President Thomas d’Aquino said in a letter to the premiers in advance of today’s meeting.

At the last major meeting of the Council of the Federation, in Moncton, N.B., last August, the premiers promised closer cooperation on climate-change policy and announced that they had achieved a new “shared vision” on energy strategy.  One of the cornerstones of that strategy, the premiers said, was the development of a “pan-Canadian strategic approach” to promoting greater energy efficiency and conservation.

Yet rather than working together on a pan-Canadian plan to encourage energy efficiency and restrain the growth of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), the federal and provincial governments continue to pursue different objectives and often inconsistent policies, the CCCE says.

The CCCE is the senior voice of Canadian business, representing 150 chief executives and leading entrepreneurs from all major sectors and regions of the country.

“At both the federal and provincial levels, governments have brought forward innovative and creative proposals for driving progress in reducing GHG emissions,” the CCCE says in its letter to the premiers.  “At the same time, we are concerned that insufficient policy coordination and cohesiveness among governments could lead to the imposition of additional costs on businesses and consumers without corresponding environmental benefits.”

In October, the CCCE announced an unprecedented consensus among the CEOs of Canada’s leading energy-producing and energy-consuming companies on the need for action to address the risk of climate change.  In a Policy Declaration titled Clean Growth: Building a Canadian Environmental Superpower, the CCCE put forward five key points that it recommended as the basis of a Canada-wide plan of action to reduce GHG emissions and make the greatest possible contribution to a sustainable global economy.

“Achieving agreement on such complex issues is never easy, but Canada’s business leaders have risen to the challenge,” the CCCE letter says.  “To be effective, however, this impressive consensus in the business community needs to be matched by a corresponding consensus among government leaders across the country.”

In addition to climate change, one of the key issues on the agenda for today’s meeting of the premiers is internal trade — another area in which business leaders would like to see faster action and greater coordination.  “As we said in our recent submission to the federal Competition Policy Review Panel, the free flow of goods, services, people and investment within Canada is essential to the competitiveness of our economy,” Mr. d’Aquino said.  “Some progress has been achieved, but much more needs to be done. Canadians need an economic union that works.”

Founded in 1976, the CCCE is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization committed to making Canada “the best place in the world in which to live, to work, to invest and to grow.”

In addition to Mr. d’Aquino, the members of the CCCE’s Executive Committee are:  Chair, Gordon M. Nixon, President and Chief Executive Officer, Royal Bank of Canada; Honorary Chair Richard L. George, President and Chief Executive Officer of Suncor Energy Inc.; and Vice Chairs Dominic D’Alessandro, Paul Desmarais, Jr., Jacques Lamarre, Hartley T. Richardson and Annette Verschuren, the chief executives respectively of Manulife Financial, Power Corporation of Canada, SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., James Richardson & Sons, Limited and The Home Depot Canada.