A shaky cornerstone

It's not at all surprising that the Sask Party's announcement on greenhouse gas emissions consisted of nothing more than the usual filler designed to give the illusion of action while putting off any substantive decisions. But remarkably, this one managed to be even more obviously meaningless than most:

The “cornerstone” of the government’s climate change plan is an “equivalency agreement” with the federal government that will allow the province to keep money collected from the fund in Saskatchewan even if a likely national or international cap-and-trade system is created.

There is no equivalent agreement yet in place, but on Monday, Heppner announced she had signed a deal with Conservative Environment Minister Jim Prentice to negotiate an agreement.

However, such an agreement will not be signed until this coming winter.

Heppner said she hoped to have a deal in place before a potential federal election. If there is a change in government before an agreement is reached, she expressed hope that a future government would also sign on to an equivalency agreement.

Now, it's bad enough that the "cornerstone" of the Sask Party's excuse for a plan involves an agreement to maybe get around to reaching a deal with the federal government later - particularly when Heppner can offer nothing more than hope that anybody other than the Sask Party's federal puppetmasters would even consider coming to the table.

But it's even more bizarre to consider an equivalency agreement to be the cornerstone of an emission reduction plan when it has nothing at all to do with reducing those emissions. In fact, the only apparent effect of an agreement would be to try to guarantee that Saskatchewan doesn't find itself obligated to do more to reduce emissions if a more ambitious plan gets put in place on a national or international level.

Not that it should come as any surprise that the Sask Party's idea of "real action" is a non-binding agreement to work out a way to do as little as possible. But if they really can't even be bothered to pretend their plan is based on something that would actually serve to reduce emissions rather than providing an excuse not to, then it looks all the less likely that their current promise to reduce emissions will prove any more plausible than their last one.