Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ideology compared to previous decades due to the merger of the Progressive
Conservative party and the further right-wing Canadian Alliance Party in
2003. In fact, Stephen Harper was leader of the Canadian Alliance party
prior to the merger.
Generally speaking, the Conservative Party supports decentralization of
government power and privatization of public services. his is evident in
national energy planning. Since 2006, the government has demonstrated
a propensity to leave energy strategy to the provinces. As outlined earlier,
wind power development success in Canada has been largely driven by pol-
icy established at the provincial level. he tendency to support privatization
is exempliied by the 2012 sale of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's reac-
tor division to a private Québec-based irm.
he Conservative Party is not supportive of the Kyoto Protocol. One of
its election platforms in 2006 was that the Canadian Liberal Party erred in
committing Canada to an inefective treaty that has negative economic ram-
iications for Canada. At the conclusion of the Durban climate change talks
in 2011, the Harper administration announced that it intended to repudiate
the Kyoto Protocol. In justifying the decision, Environment Minister Peter
Kent, explained that this “legacy of an incompetent Liberal government”
would wind up costing Canadian taxpayers C$13.6 billion.
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Since then, the
Canadian government has embraced a policy of linking Canada's climate
change mitigation targets to those of the United States.
8.6.3 Fiscal Health
Although Canada has one of the lowest debt to GDP ratios within the OECD,
management of the public debt has become a political issue in the past few
years, particularly in the lead up to the 2011 national election. Between 1996
and 2008, net public debt decreased from C$562 billion (63.8% of GDP) to
C$457 billion (28.5% of GDP). Since 2008, net public debt has increased
each year. As of February 2013, net public debt stood at C$605 billion.
One of the campaign promises made by Harper's Conservative Party
in the lead up to the 2011 national election was to balance the budget by
2013-2014. For the iscal period 2011-2012, iscal debt amounted to C$31
billion. In 2012-2013, the expected deicit is C$21.1 billion. In other words,
in the absence of windfall tax revenues, the government will have to make
some strong cuts in its spending in order to live up to its campaign promise.
On March 29, 2012, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tabled a iscal plan in a
House of Commons speech that promised a reduction of the federal deicit
