NEWS RELEASE

Ref: 830-609/12

Joint Meeting of Energy and Environment Ministers
Toronto, Ontario - April 24, 1998

NOTICE TO THE MEDIA

JOINT MEETING OF FEDERAL, PROVINCIAL AND TERRITORIAL
MINISTERS OF ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT

TORONTO -- The federal, provincial and territorial ministers of energy and environment met today to approve a process to examine the impact, the cost and the benefits of implementing the Kyoto Protocol and the various options for implementing the Protocol that are open to Canada. They agreed that climate change is an important global problem and that Canada must do its part to address it. They decided today to move forward on the following key issues:

• the process for developing a national implementation strategy on climate change
• establishing credit for early action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
• strengthening voluntary action

     Canada, along with 160 other countries, agreed in Kyoto to a Protocol that called for further reductions in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 15 years. Canada's reduction target is 6 percent below 1990 levels by the period spanning 2008 to 2012.

     Following the meetings in Kyoto, Canada's first ministers asked that their ministers of energy and environment take the necessary steps to examine the consequences of the Kyoto Protocol and provide for the full participation of the provincial, territorial and federal governments.

     A summary of today's decisions is attached.

For further information, please contact:

Mark Colpitts Minister's Office Environment Canada (819) 997-1441 Jim Kiss Minister's Office Alberta Energy (403) 427-3740

John Embury Minister's Office Natural Resources Canada (613) 996-2007 Joseph Handley Deputy Minister NWT Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development (867) 920-8691

Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat (CICS)

webmaster@scics.x400.gc.ca