EON

Ottawa (EON) – Leaked documents indicate Baird will opt for intensity-based targets that would reduce the rate at which companies and utilities pollute the atmosphere, rather than imposing firm targets for cuts.

Baird said last week that firm targets would lead to a 25 percent jump in the jobless rate and a recession.

“We will not spin the wheel so hard as to put the Canadian economy in the ditch to deliver an environmental plan asked for in some quarters,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Pressed as to why he planned to cut emissions from current levels rather than those in 1990, he replied: “We’re not going to make commitments and promises that we can’t deliver.”

Baird also said Canada would explore domestic trading in emissions, whereby firms producing less greenhouse gas emissions than targeted could sell part of their allowance to firms that pollute too much.

He said Canada would explore future linkages with emissions trading systems in the United States and Mexico, provided it was in Canada’s best interest.

Under the plan firms could meet their targets by:

* cutting emissions

* taking part in domestic emissions trading

* participating in the Kyoto protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism

* investing in a technology fund designed to “help industry develop the solutions to produce deep reductions in greenhouse gases over time.”