The Forest Products Association of Canada is calling on the Federal Government to recognize three policy imperative…
The Forest Products Association of Canada is calling on the Federal Government to recognize three policy imperatives to keep jobs in Canada while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the association, since 1990, FPAC members have reduced their GHG emissions by 44%, seven times the Kyoto baseline targets, while increasing production by 20%, improving intensity per tonne of output by 54% and improving air quality by 60%.
Our members are committed to ensuring that their operations have the lightest possible impact on the planet, Avrim Lazar, president and CEO of FPAC said. Thats why we did not wait to be regulated but moved ahead on sustainability issues such as climate change and clean air because they made sense from both an environmental and a competitiveness perspective.
Today we are calling on Parliamentarians to recognize three policy imperatives, Lazar said. First, governments must continue to recognize reductions since the 1990 base year when setting targets so as not to penalize those industries that acted early to reduce their emissions. Failure to do so sends a message to good corporate citizens that environmental responsibility is not recognized and is indeed penalized by making it more advantageous to wait for regulation.
Second, the only way to meet the dual objective of reducing emissions while keeping jobs in Canada is to accelerate capital renewal to speed the re-tooling of industry. An excellent place to start would be with the tax system. Finally, a cap and trade system, combined with a broadly-based offsets system, will inevitably produce the least-cost environmental solutions for reducing emissions and stimulate the creativity of the marketplace rather than depend on cumbersome, prescriptive regulation.
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