Speech

From the Prime Minister's Web Site (http://www.pm.gc.ca/)

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Notes for an Address by The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada To the APEC Business Summit

September 7, 2007
Sydney, Australia

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Prime Minister Howard,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you for your warm welcome, and for the invitation to address the APEC Australia 2007 Business Summit.

Australia was a catalyst for the creation of APEC and host of the first Summit in 1989. She has a well-earned reputation as a free and fair trader, a country that truly walks the talk.

And, Prime Minister, I'm sure I speak for all the international visitors in the audience in thanking and applauding our host!

Canada is a free-trading nation too, and we welcome the opportunity to meet with APEC economic and business leaders to discuss the key issues facing our region.

We unreservedly endorse this year's theme – "Strengthening our community, building a sustainable future."

As APEC grows … as world trade grows … as more and more countries develop their industrial infrastructure and become more competitive in world markets,

It not only strengthens the community of nations … the diverse and strategically critical nations … that make up APEC.

It also strengthens communities within our nations.

It stimulates investment, creates jobs, fuels entrepreneurship, and lifts millions of people up from poverty.

It expands the middle class, that rich demographic landscape of families, homeowners, consumers, investors, taxpayers and community builders.

The middle class is the key to a strong, stable economy and social unity.

And it only flourishes in countries that embrace open markets and free trade.

But as we all increasingly understand, economic growth and prosperity have to be balanced with careful environmental stewardship.

When I say that we must balance environmental protection and economic prosperity, I do so quite deliberately.

The word "balance" does not mean that we fail to take the environment seriously.

On the contrary, unless we face the need to strike that balance, the environment will never be given the priority that it should.

Take one of the most important international public policy challenges of our time: the growing menace of climate change.

The weight of scientific evidence holds that our atmosphere is getting hotter,

that human activity is a significant contributor,

and that there will be serious consequences for all life on earth.

The physical evidence is already there for all to see.

For example, this year there is more ice-free, open water in the Northwest Passage, our Arctic waterway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, than has ever been recorded before.

And after a series of mild winters, our forests in British Columbia are being ravaged by a beetle that the cold used to contain to more southerly regions.

We must heed these warning signs.

Why haven't we?

For at least a decade most governments, including Canada's government, paid what can charitably be called lip service to the issue of climate change.

Because they were unwilling to tell the public that reducing carbon emissions must entail real economic costs in the short term, governments responded to the problem with little more than political rhetoric.

We need to take action.

We owe it future generations.

Just as we owe them a strong and secure economic future.

We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with strategies that are comprehensive, practical and realistic.

Let me tell you what Canada is now doing to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions;

how our business community will do its part;

and how elements of our approach could be built into a new – truly global and therefore truly effective – international framework on climate change.

For the record, it is our contention that any long-term global agreement on climate change must:

Be effective by having clear goals and including all major emitters.

It must be fair and economically realistic, not unduly burdening the growth of any single country.

It must be flexible, so all countries can choose tools and policies that suit their unique circumstances.

And it must support the development and deployment of new and better technologies.

Canada's own domestic approach is based upon these very principles.

First, we believe we must have a clear goal and be determined to achieve it.

So, for the first time ever, Canada is now setting mandatory emission reduction targets for industries that produce greenhouse gases and air pollution.

Companies will be required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 18 percent per unit of production over the next three years.

Each year after that, industry will have to achieve a further two percent improvement in emission intensity.

Thanks to these and other measures, Canada's greenhouse gas emissions from all sources will begin to decline in absolute terms as early as 2010.

Our plan will reduce Canada's total emissions, relative to 2006 levels, 20 percent by 2020 and 60-70 percent by 2050, but note that basing early targets on emission intensity will allow us to square effective environmental action with the reality that Canada has a growing population and growing economic output.

Obviously, to make this plan operational and economically successful, we need industry onside.

We recognize it will take time for Canadian companies to adjust to the new regulations. And so we're making compliance mechanisms as flexible as possible.

We're leaving it up to business to decide how to reduce their emissions.

They know best how to run their operations.

They can buy emission credits from other Canadian firms that have beaten their targets.

Emissions trading is an important element of our government's market-driven approach.

It creates strong incentives for firms to go beyond their targets.

Businesses can buy offset credits from outside the regulated sectors.

So various Canadian organizations – including municipalities, for example – will have opportunities to participate in our carbon trading market.

We will recognize the purchase of certain types of credits certified under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism.

This allows firms some participation in international markets, while assuring such credit trading is robust, fair and efficient.

Last but certainly not least, firms can instead contribute to a climate change technology fund.

If the government simply walked in, set limits, collected fines, the only impact would be to make industry smaller and reduce economic growth.

Which would be a recipe for failure.

Payments into the fund will instead support the development of technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

While reducing carbon emissions imposes costs in the short term, the potential to develop new, low-carbon technologies offers significant opportunities over time.

We want to ensure our approach stimulates the pursuit of these commercial opportunities.

Enlisting the entrepreneurial energy and creativity of the private sector in the fight against climate change is key to achieving our targets by stimulating, rather than damaging the Canadian economy.

That's why industry compliance mechanisms are flexible, allowing for carbon markets and trading and encouraging the development of new clean energy technologies.

Indeed, keeping our economy strong and growing is essential to the success of our mission.

We need to generate capital for investment in new green technologies.

That's why all our government's actions are guided by a balanced approach to environmental protection and economic growth.

Canada is currently experiencing the second longest period of economic expansion in its history.

Our unemployment rate is at its lowest level in three decades.

And we're the only member of the G-7 with ongoing budget surpluses and a falling debt burden.

In other words, Canada is ready and able to take on the challenge of global warming.

We are obliged to do so because even though we produce only two percent of global greenhouse gasses, we are a disproportionately large producer of energy and other natural resources.

Energy is one of the key drivers of the Canadian economy, and it increasingly defines our place in the world.

We're already the number one supplier of oil, natural gas, hydro-electricity and uranium to the United States.

And we're one of the world's leading producers of several strategically important metals and minerals.

Because we're a politically stable country with a transparent regulatory system and a commitment to open markets, we are recognized as a major contributor to global energy security.

Canada is an emerging energy superpower.

But our real challenge and our real responsibility is to become a clean energy superpower.

When my government took office a little over 18 months ago, we inherited a patchwork of programs that just weren't doing the job.

So we developed a targeted, results-oriented approach based on three priorities.

The first was to increase investment in energy science and technology.

The second was to inject more clean, renewable energy into our economy.

And the third was to increase energy efficiency because the largest untapped source of energy in Canada – even larger than the oil sands – is the energy we waste.

That's why we're making major new investments in clean energy research and development.

Take "clean coal," for example.

We're a major producer – our Japanese friends here are one of our biggest customers – and our researchers are finding ways to remove as much as 90 percent of the smokestack pollutants from coal-fired electricity generation.

Carbon capture and storage is another exciting new technology.

Experimental programs are already underway in Canada. We take greenhouse gases destined for the atmosphere and pump them deep underground.

We're also supporting the development of renewable energy sources.

Our goal is to harness the elements – sun, wind, tides – to put 4,000 megawatts of clean renewable energy on our power grid over the next four years.

That's enough to power more than a million homes. In terms of emissions, it's the equivalent of taking a million cars off the road.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me conclude by noting that one of the top priorities of our new government has been to restore Canada's stature and influence on the world stage.

We're playing a major role in the United Nations mission in Afghanistan.

We're reaching out to other middle powers that share our values and interests and inviting them to join us in making the world a better, safer place.

And we're talking plainly and openly in international fora such as this about the things that matter to us:

sovereignty over our Arctic,

our deeply held conviction that freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law are the core values of all civilized societies;

and, of course, our commitment to an open, growing, and fair global economy.

But we want to add one more critical ambition to this list.

We want to be a world leader in the fight against global warming and the development of clean energy.

We want to lead, not by lecturing, but by example,

we want to share our knowledge and experience,

And we want to work with the entire international community in the quest for clean energy.

Together, we can achieve this goal.

Already we're making progress.

Our Australian hosts have pioneered the mass conversion to low-energy incandescent lighting, and they have taught us much about using forests as carbon sinks.

Japan was a key player in proposing the new, realistic benchmark of a 50 percent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which we endorse.

And the United States has committed to bringing all the world's major economies to the table as we develop a new, universal, climate change protocol for the post-2012 era.

Canada will do everything in its power to help develop a new, all-inclusive, international framework that recognizes national and regional economic imperatives,

a framework that strikes a balance between measurable environmental progress and continuing economic growth and prosperity.

When we launch into Summit deliberations tomorrow,

I hope we will help lay the groundwork for the post-2012 international protocol,

To launch a new regime that will accommodate all countries,

And to achieve a new consensus that will lead to real, effective action against global warming.

We have an unprecedented opportunity to lead the way to a better, cleaner, healthier world.

Let's seize it.

Thank you.

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The Prime Minister's Office - Communications
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