On May 5, 2010 federal Parliament narrowly passed the
opposition-driven Climate Change Accountability Act. The event
garnered little press attention – and for good reason. First,
the Act, a private member’s bill, passed by only 13 votes, with
23 MPs not voting – an abysmal show of democratic apathy and
disinterest. Second, the Act is likely to be of little or no
consequence to government action on climate change. Although a
range of NGOs supported Bill C-311, the problematic legal issues
with it were never fully addressed. After the Supreme Court of
Canada declined to grant leave in the case of Friends of the
Earth v. Canada, (2008 FC 1183, (T.D.) appeal dismissed 2009 FCA
297) in March 2010, the Climate Change Accountability Act should
have been re-drafted. In Friends of the Earth, the Federal Court
trial judge’s reasons prevailed, namely that using the word
“ensure”, particularly in s.5 of the Kyoto Protocol
Implementation Act (KIPA), did not create a legal duty to
implement the protocol. In the case of KPI