Climate Change in Canada - Climate Change By Province

Climate Change By Province

While the federal government was slow to develop a monitoring and credible reduction regime, several provincial governments have established substantial programs to reduce emissions on their respective territories. British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec have joined the Western Climate Initiative, a group of 7 states of the Western United States whose aim is to establish a common framework to establish a carbon credit market. These provinces have also made commitments regarding the reduction and announced concrete steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Reduction programs in other provinces, especially in Alberta, are much less developed, according to the environmental think tank, the Pembina Institute, who stresses that "Alberta's targets are dangerously weak and out of step with the large majority of jurisdictions in the industrialized world."

Canada's two largest provinces, Ontario and Quebec, are wary of federal policies shifting the burden of greenhouse reductions on them in order to give Alberta and Saskatchewan more room to further develop their tar sands reserves, therefore chilling relations between the 13 provinces and territories.