Last week, Canada’s federal government released its long-awaited plan to tackle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change. Bill C-12, if passed, commits Canada to “binding” targets every five years as of 2030 with the goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

The bill is thin on details, due to its focus on establishing an independent, 15-member advisory board. This is both a strength, in that it will hopefully include climate scientists, indigenous people and other expert stakeholders, and a weakness, because it pushes the timeline for specific measures and action further into the future, with 2030 the first target date.

What is most concerning is that by dragging its feet on specific measures to curb GHG emissions, the Trudeau government is shoehorning Canadians into expensive, unproven and unreliable technologies.

As a researcher who studies the governance of climate-altering technologies (such as carbon capture and storage), I can assure you that we are already behind on tackling climate change and catching up is going to be expensive. The government’s strategy will likely rely upon technology that isn’t viable in the way it hopes.

Staying on target

Canada has repeatedly failed to meet any of the climate targets it has set in place since 1992. This has left us further behind our Paris climate agreement targets and scrambling to catch up to meet our global commitments.

Not only do we need to meet these climate targets this time around — our international trade partners such as the EU and even China may see us as laggards, further eroding our international credibility — we need to make up for lost time.

The focus of the federal government is on market-driven solutions, including technologies that remove carbon from the air or emissions and lock them away. But carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) are not silver bullets in the fight against climate change.