Ontario veering off track from its climate change targets, internal forecasts reveal
CBC
The Ford government is nowhere near on track to achieving its targets for cutting Ontario's greenhouse gas emissions, according to new internal forecasts that have never before been made public.
Premier Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives promised Ontario would match the national climate change targets for 2030 agreed to in the Paris Accord. That would require the province to reduce annual CO2 emissions by 17.6 megatonnes (MT).
The Ministry of the Environment's internal estimates, made in October, forecast that "committed policies" by the government will bring Ontario just 3.4 MT of emission reductions by 2030, achieving less than 20 per cent of the planned cuts.
The numbers appear in one of seven environmental reports released Monday by Ontario's auditor general, but have been largely overlooked.
Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk took on the duties of the Legislature's independent environmental watchdog in 2019 after the Ford government scrapped the office of the environmental commissioner.
The new figures in her report show that the Ford government is "nowhere close to meeting their own targets to fight climate change," said Keith Brooks, programs director for Environmental Defence, the Toronto based advocacy group.
The government's Made-in-Ontario Environment Plan, issued in 2018, laid out specific reductions from various sources of carbon emissions to achieve the targeted cuts by 2030. Some examples:
In her report, Lysyk reveals the Environment Ministry currently forecasts that none of those reductions will be achieved.
Since October 2020, the ministry has produced internal, monthly updates on Ontario's greenhouse gas emissions outlook. The government has not publicly released the updates but the auditor obtained and analyzed them for her report.
Those forecasts now exclude any new reductions from use of renewable natural gas, future innovation or electric vehicles, says the auditor's report.
CBC News asked Environment Minister David Piccini on Wednesday if he can look Ontarians in the eye and say that the government will hit its 2030 targets.
"I can look Ontarians in the eye and say Ontario is a leader in greenhouse gas emissions reduction in this federation," said Piccini. "We are the only province responsible for Canada's progress. That is Ontario, and that is thanks to action Premier Ford has taken."
Since the Ford government took office in 2018 and scrapped the province's cap-and-trade program, Ontario's emissions have gone up rather than down.
The latest national figures, which are published with a two-year lag time, show the province's emissions in 2019 were back up as high as they were in 2015. Until 2018, Ontario's emissions had been on a decade-long decline, almost entirely as a result of moves by previous Liberal governments to shut down coal-fired power plants.