Ottawa

From north of the border, more of the standard emissions

Canada’s government has been “working toward” emissions standards like the ones Barack Obama allowed California to impose “for the past year,” Jim Prentice just said on the brooooadcast. I’m looking into that. Fun fact: Canada’s government has been in power for three years; President Obama for six days.

UPDATE: Well, here’s something, I guess.

UPDATER: Ah. Baird was “working on an aggressive, dominant North American standard” with George W. Bush, who was blocking California from implementing its own standard, a little more than a year ago. And his successor, Prentice, was careful to say on Don Newman’s show just now that Canada still wants standards set “at the national level.” Obama just blew that whole stalling tactic up. Canada’s government will have to spend some part of the next year working toward a new talking point.

UPDATE-IS-THE-NEW-STALEDATE-DATE: More…of the same:

The federal government appears to have missed a key legislated benchmark to bring in new fuel-efficiency standards that will help Canada reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, which cause global warming.

Moreover, the failure of the federal government to meet the deadline could end up costing the beleaguered auto industry money and jobs…

Almost a year ago, Lawrence Cannon, then the federal transport minister, vowed to publish new fuel-efficiency standards by the end of 2008. Those standards, he said at the time, would take effect with the 2011 model year.

“We made a commitment to implement fuel-consumption regulations for the 2011 model year that are benchmarked against a stringent, dominant North American standard, and we are keeping our word,” Mr. Cannon said on Jan. 17, 2008…

By failing to publish the new figure by the end of 2008, the earliest the government could force car companies to meet new standards would be the 2012 model year, a year later than Mr. Cannon had promised…

Chris Day, press secretary to Transport Minister John Baird, said Canada believes it’s best there is one North American standard, and not one for each country or separate ones for provinces or states.

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