NDP, and now Tories, weak on climate-change: Manitoba auditor general

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This article was published 25/10/2017 (2962 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s auditor general is critical of successive provincial governments’ responses to dealing with climate change.

In a report Wednesday, Norm Ricard said there continue to be “gaps” in the province’s “planning, monitoring and reporting processes” for climate-change initiatives.

He said the province was aware by the fall of 2009 that a greenhouse gas reduction target set the year before would not be met, but it did not update the plan until December 2015.

Further, the AG found the 2015 emissions reduction plan “was not supported by comprehensive analyses of the benefits, risks and costs of different approaches and policy tools” and lacked implementation details and cost estimates.

“A plan should clearly indicate how overall emission targets will be met — that is, how each significant initiative will contribute to the targeted reduction,” Ricard said. “The 2015 plan did not do this.”

The NDP, under Gary Doer, set a target in 2008 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to six per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. The target was not met and “little change” has occurred in Manitoba greenhouse gas emissions over the past decade, Ricard said in his 30-page report.

“As of July 2017, Manitoba had no updated emissions reduction target or concrete plan for reducing emissions. It also had made little progress in assessing the risks posed by climate-change impacts and developing a provincial adaptation strategy for mitigating those risks.”

The auditor general said that while the Sustainable Development Department reported on the climate-change results achieved by the end of 2010 and 2012, it doesn’t report or disclose the cost of the government’s climate-change initiatives.

Ricard recommended that the department publicly report on Manitoba’s progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions each year.

Premier Brian Pallister has promised to unveil his government’s carbon pricing and climate-change proposals Friday.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca