The Canadian Climate Change Action That All of Us (Including You) Need to Do

On 9 November 2024, Environment and Climate Change Canada released the Draft Oil and Gas Sector Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cap Regulations (the “Draft Regs”).  Along with the legal text for the Draft Regs, a “Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement (“RIAS”) was also published.  Their release started an online public consultation  that runs until January 8, 2025 11:59 pm EST.

You can submit your comments before that time at this government website:  https://gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2024/2024-11-09/html/reg1-eng.html

The government has information on submitting comments, including a short, helpful video at this online commenting feature.

Each and every one of us in Canada who is concerned about climate change should tell the federal government what we think of these Draft Regs. 

It’s crucial that we do so, because the big Oil & Gas producers, and politicians like Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, and Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, and are mounting strong and extremely vocal campaigns try to eliminate these regs, and, if they can’t eliminate them, then to delay them and water them down.

Too often, climate activists hear that a policy has been introduced, assume they have achieved a victory, and move on without looking at the details.  However, the industry and their lobbyists stick around until the bitter end, and often succeed in making the policies more lenient and therefore less effective, as well as slowing down their final implementation.^[12]

It’s vital that the federal government hear from citizens who support the Draft Regs, and unique individual submissions to the consultation are the most effective way to communicate that support.  Our unique individual submissions will be seen directly by the bureaucrats responsible for creating the regulation and, through them, by the cabinet ministers responsible for passing the final regs.

We don’t want to tell you exactly what to say.  We think there is much more impact when citizens learn as much, or as little, about specific climate policies, and send their own unique submissions to the key decision-makers in their own words.