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Liberals push Tories to show climate-policy hand with climate-change motion

May 14, 2019 | 12:42 PM

OTTAWA — Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is pushing Parliament to declare that Canada is in a “climate change emergency.”

Her new motion, which is to be debated Thursday, asks MPs to recommit to meeting and later exceeding the greenhouse-gas-emissions targets made under the Paris climate-change accord.

It comes the same week the NDP have a separate motion to declare a climate emergency and bail on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

The Liberal motion will try to force the Conservatives to either vote in favour of meeting Canada’s emissions commitments under the Paris climate-change agreement or tip their hand on their climate-change plans by voting against them.

Canada’s emissions targets now are the same as the ones the former Conservative government brought forward in 2015, six months before the last election.

McKenna says Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and conservative premiers in Canada who are fighting the Liberals’ carbon tax don’t see climate change as an emergency.

The Canadian Press