BJ BODNAR
Opinions Writer

It seems Canadians will have to add another item to the list of traditions we associate with the Christmas holidays. In addition to eggnog, gingerbread houses, caroling, ridiculous looking sweaters, and unspoken tension with in-laws, we can now come to expect the pre-Christmas tradition of having our government play an embarrassingly obstructive role at the United Nations World Climate Change Conference (COP).

During the last four COP Conferences, which are held in mid-December of every year, Canada has not only failed to take a leadership role in fighting global climate change, but we have received international criticism as one of the most obstructive and negative participants. In spite of the activists, the protests, the international pressures and the inherent moral imperative that exists to address the issue, the Canadian approach to dealing with climate change has been steadfastly unambitious.

For those of you who haven’t been following climate policy over the last few years, it may be helpful to have a brief timeline of some of the major stances and decisions the Canadian government has recently taken.

In 2002, Canada ratified the Kyoto protocol, agreeing to a series of emissions reductions targets. Over the next four years, we proceeded to miss every target prescribed by a wide margin and emissions continued to rise.

In 2006, the newly elected Conservative government announced that they would be abandoning the Kyoto targets. Instead, they claimed they would create a “Made in Canada” strategy to deal with climate change. Over the next three years, this “Made in Canada” approach proved by almost all measures to be a miserable failure, and emissions once again rose significantly year after year.

Last year, the Conservative government announced that their new strategy was to adopt a “harmonized policy with the United States” — which I found to be a comedically ironic shift from the “Made in Canada” approach that had been widely marketed in previous years.

In 2010, the United States made the decision to legally regulate industrial emissions. One would think therefore, that if we were adopting a “harmonized” approach to climate policy, we would follow suit and do the same. No such luck.

Prior to this year’s COP conference held in Cancun, Mexico, Canada announced that we would not be adopting similar measures to those taken by the United States to regulate industrial emissions. One can only infer that this means we have abandoned the harmonized approach as well. And so, we are left with what, exactly?

As it stands, the situation is fairly simple. We aren’t a member of any internationally binding emissions reductions strategy. We no longer have a domestic “Made in Canada” strategy. And apparently, we aren’t willing to “harmonize” with the United States either.

We have no effective domestic plan, we don’t endorse any existing international framework, and all the while our emissions continue to rise. This position makes Canada one of the most obstructive and regressive participants at the COP conferences, and has made us an outcast among developed nations when it comes to the issue of climate change. Understandably, it has also made us a consistent target for international NGOs attending COP.

The only saving grace is that considering our poor record on emissions reductions, Santa would be inclined to give us nothing but coal for Christmas — and given our current energy and climate framework, that might be just the thing we’re after.

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