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OTTAWA - Canada's fight against global warming has been a losing battle with an unknown price-tag that could leave taxpayers on the hook for up to $1 billion in subsidies for polluting companies, according to the federal commissioner of the environment.
But commissioner Johanne Gelinas issues a call for the Stephen Harper government not to abandon progress made, instead stating that "a massive scale-up of efforts is needed" to at least slow the country's growing production of greenhouse gases.
In a report tabled in the House of Commons Thursday, Gelinas spells out a litany of issues with the former Liberal governments, three major plans to reduce the country's emissions of chemicals blamed for global warming.
To date more than $6 billion has been promised for climate change programs. Despite a claim last year that the government had spent $1.6 billion to that point on a variety of initiatives, it could not account for $250 million of that spending.
"Despite billions of dollars in announced funding, there is no government-wide consolidated monitoring and reporting of climate change expenditures," her report states.
She points out that not only has the government made no progress toward meeting its commitment to lower greenhouse gas emissions below levels recorded in 1990, they had risen 27% by 2004.
"Per capita, Canadians are among the highest emitters in the world," the report states.