Minister's Speech

Remarks prepared for:

The Honourable John Gerretsen
Minister of the Environment

Meeting with the Ontario Bar Association (Environmental Law Section)
June 4, 2008

(Check against delivery)

Good morning, everyone. 

I’m glad to be here and have this opportunity to talk to you about some of our government’s environmental initiatives.

In fact, the environment is a key priority for many ministries — from Natural Resources … Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs …  Energy …Transportation … Economic Development and Trade. 

From the beginning of our mandate, our government has recognized we need an aggressive, wide-ranging environmental agenda that works across all government ministries.

Our efforts are re-drawing the road map for environmental leadership in Canada. 

I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about climate change and our plan to address it, as well as highlights of new legislation including our cosmetic pesticides ban and the upcoming Lake Simcoe Protection Act.

I also want to touch on issues related to Brownfields.

Climate Change and Ontario’s Go Green Plan

Clearly, our number one environmental priority today is climate change.  This issue is real … and it’s having a very significant impact.

It has the potential to ultimately affect our quality of life in cities and rural areas alike … damaging people’s health … affecting jobs and putting our economy at risk.

Clearly, planning and taking action to meet the many possible contingencies poses a significant challenge — not just for Ontario, but also for Canada and other jurisdictions around the world.

Climate change is driving the need for new ideas and innovation from every economic sector, across all levels of government.

Faced with the reality of climate change, governments have a clear choice — they can either lead, or lag behind.

Here in Ontario, we’ve chosen to lead.

Our Go Green Plan puts Ontario at the forefront of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and includes reduction targets that are tough but realistic.

Under these targets, Ontario will reduce its emissions to six per cent below 1990 levels by 2014 … to 15 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 …

These are aggressive targets but they are achievable and this week I am very encouraged that we will meet those targets.

This past weekend, our government took part in the first-ever joint Ontario-Quebec cabinet meeting in Quebec City.  You may have seen some coverage of it in the media.

Our meeting has certainly received attention and, I think, with good reason.

Premier McGuinty and Premier Charest are both passionately committed to taking action on climate change.  They recognize this is a critical issue.  People in both our provinces are demanding governments take the lead.  Our future health and prosperity depends on it.

It was an important and productive meeting and our two governments have agreed to work together on developing a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions in Ontario and Quebec. 

This will create new opportunities for both provinces to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help in the global fight against climate change.

The cap-and-trade system between Ontario and Quebec will be a flexible, market-based program with caps becoming more stringent over time.

It will help us make the transition to a low-carbon economy and encourage technological innovation, economic growth and job creation.

Ontario is also exploring opportunities to join other cap-and-trade programs. 

An example would be the Western Climate Initiative, which is developing regional strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions involving several US states and three Canadian provinces 

By working with the best trading systems in other jurisdictions, we can achieve real emission reductions at a lower cost … improve the pace of innovation … and provide Ontario companies with wider access to trading opportunities.

Clearly, every industrialized country in the world is looking for solutions.

And in many cases, we need to catch up to what other jurisdictions are doing worldwide.  We also need to be ready when the Americans act. 

There will be a new U.S. government elected in November.  No matter who becomes the new president, McCain or Obama, they are clearly headed in this direction.

We can’t afford to wait and see.  We need to be prepared.

Ontario’s business leaders have stated loudly and clearly — they need to see a plan with regulatory certainty to guide business planning.

They want a plan with targets and timelines.  And most importantly, they have told us those targets need to be supported with a credible greenhouse gas emissions baseline.

A lot of good work has already been done.

While other sectors across the country have let their emissions rise, Ontario’s industries have actually cut emissions by close to 10 per cent since 1990.

So, let’s be clear because there seems to be some lingering confusion about the need for the 1990 baseline.  The federal government is proposing a strategy that would start with a 2003 baseline, unlike the rest of the world who are working from 1990.

If this goes forward, all of the good work that’s been done here will count for nothing.

The other aspect of the federal plan that makes no sense to Ontario industry is intensity-based targets.  Let’s be clear here as well — intensity targets reward gross polluters at the expense of clean industries.

Yes, we have set some ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Ontario.  It’s going to take a lot of serious commitment and effort under the Go Green Plan to get us to our climate change goals — there is no one single concept that will get us there.

Instead, it is going to take the efforts of every sector, every business, every level of government and all of us as individuals, working with purpose to get us where we need to be.

To show how serious we are about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Premier McGuinty named Hugh MacLeod to head up a new Climate Change Secretariat. 

The secretariat will be coordinating our government’s climate change activities and making sure that we meet our targets.

The importance of our actions cannot be overstated.

What we do today will make a difference to people in Ontario for years to come.

So, how do we get where we want to be?

We’re backing up our climate change targets with unprecedented support for public transit … cleaner forms of energy … pollution reduction … and innovative technologies that will help us attract new investments and grow new jobs.

Although we’re making progress, we know that the GHGs already in the atmosphere are going to affect our climate.  This means we need to include strategies for adaptation in our plans to deal with climate change.

It is, of course, incumbent upon all of us to reduce the degree to which our grandchildren will have to adapt.

To ensure that we have the innovative thinking and practical advice to meet this challenge, Ontario recently created an Expert Panel on Climate Change Adaptation. 

We’ve got some very high-calibre people on board including Nobel Prize winner Dr. Ian Burton. 

Here in Ontario, we are looking to build a more extensive knowledge base of the kind of climate change impacts we can expect in our province.  We intend to incorporate this knowledge in the development of our policies … across all government ministries, and in all economic sectors.

Legislative and Regulatory change

I said earlier that we’re re-drawing the road map on environmental leadership.

One way we’re doing that is through new legislation and regulations that protect our green space and limit urban sprawl.

Measures like the Greenbelt Plan, the Places to Grow Act and the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe Area reflect a new and much better approach to development — one that is not only more sensitive to the needs of communities and the environment, but that is also sustainable over the longer term.

We know people’s health is intrinsically linked to the health of our environment. 

As a result, we are taking a much closer look at what kinds of substances are already out there and what we can do about it.  We are developing a Toxics Reduction Strategy for Ontario that includes new legislation to reduce pollution, inform the public and protect Ontarians from toxic chemicals in the air, water, land and consumer products.

We recently introduced legislation that, if passed, would implement a province-wide ban on the use and sale of pesticides for cosmetic uses. This proposed bill is moving forward and will likely be going to committee this month.

We’re also working with Cancer Care Ontario and the Ontario Medical Association, to identify, target and reduce the number of cancer-causing agents released into our environment.
And we’ve appointed an expert medical and scientific panel to advise the government on the toxics that should receive immediate attention.

Great Lakes/Lake Simcoe

We’ve also been working hard to protect the Great Lakes ecosystem and our other vital freshwater resources.

One of the most recent examples of this work involves Lake Simcoe, where we’re developing a new strategy that pulls together environmental protection and planning for future growth and prosperity.  I can tell you that our proposed Lake Simcoe Act will soon be introduced in the house, quite possibly in the next few weeks.

Premier McGuinty made a commitment to protect Lake Simcoe and its watershed and we are taking steps necessary to meet that commitment.
Lake Simcoe has been under threat for some time. 

Water quality and the ecological health of the lake have been affected …

Human activities have had an impact on the watershed … the landscape has been changed … vegetation, wildlife and natural systems have been altered.

Our goal is to protect the lake and its watershed, but we also want to set a new benchmark for sustainable growth that we can use in other parts of the province.

We started by putting new interim limit on phosphorus discharges from sewage plants. We appointed both a Lake Simcoe Science Advisory Committee and a Stakeholder Advisory Committee to provide best advice on how to protect Lake Simcoe …

And we consulted extensively with Ontarians through the Lake Simcoe Discussion paper and through workshops and public information forums in Barrie and Newmarket.

Clearly, establishing tough environmental standards to protect our air, land and water is necessary if we are to enjoy our high standard of living here in this great province. 

Unfortunately, as you know, standards weren’t quite so rigorous in the past.

That means we’re continuing to clean up waste material from Brownfield sites around the province.

Neglected or abandoned industrial sites can be found everywhere in Ontario — rural or urban, big and small municipalities.  They’re an eyesore in many communities and they also pose potential health and safety risks to the people living there.

Of course, redeveloping Brownfields sites can often be a complex undertaking.

But it’s also essential work in building cleaner, healthier communities, reducing urban sprawl and protecting our land and our water.

I know many of you are interested in Brownfield reforms.  My ministry staff has consulted extensively with our stakeholders throughout the development of updated standards, including the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

This is a comprehensive reform package addressing the financial and liability barriers to brownfields redevelopment and at the same time, ensuring rigorous protection for our environment.

We want Brownfields redevelopment to work and to work well for everyone — for the municipalities, for the developers of the sites and for the people in the community.

New updated standards provide greater assurance to those who are cleaning up and redeveloping contaminated sites, as well as to people in the surrounding community.

Conclusions…

There’s never been a time when so much attention has been focused on the environment.  People understand now, better than ever, how we are right now living at a critical watershed moment.

Today, we recognize our connectivity to each other and to our natural world.  We understand how our actions will have far-reaching consequences that will affect future generations and the health of our entire planet.

Our generation has a responsibility to make the right choices so our children and grandchildren will be able to thrive in a cleaner, healthier, more sustainable province.
It’s clear that climate change and other major environmental issues present huge challenges for governments — in Canada and around the world. 

At the same time, these issues also provide us with new opportunities to tackle many of our ongoing environmental concerns—and to do so in ways that will ultimately make our world a better place to live.

Climate change and concern for the environment are driving us to take action … to innovate … to adopt cleaner, greener technologies … and to build a lower-carbon future.

We have an opportunity to work with like-minded partners, with other levels of government, with people in the environmental community, with business, industry and community grassroots organizations.

Together, we can step up to this challenge and make a real, lasting difference.

And when our grandchildren look back on this point in our history, I imagine they’ll tell us it was about time.

Thank you.  And now I’d be pleased to answer questions.

-30-

Back to Speeches