Canada faces Kyoto probe over lack of greenhouse-gas reporting

The UN Climate Change Secretariat says Canada was notified May 5 it would be investigated for allegedly violating a Kyoto reporting requirement. Canada and other Kyoto signatories are obliged to keep a national registry of greenhouse gases. The registry tracks holdings of greenhouse gas credits and shows compliance with the emissions targets.

Canada was warned last month it risked scrutiny for missing a Jan. 1, 2007, reporting deadline by more than two months.

"The enforcement branch decided, after a preliminary examination, to proceed with a question of implementation with respect to Canada," a UN statement says.

In the House of Commons on Wednesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the government is still working on the registry.

"The government of Canada is in the process of establishing that (registry), has been in that process for some time," he said.

The Kyoto compliance committee, an independent body of legal experts, will meet in late May or mid-June to consider Canada's case.

The committee could decide to drop the case or to release a preliminary finding. If it finds Canada did not comply with its Kyoto reporting requirements, it could:

-publicly declare Canada in non-compliance;

-force Canada to submit an action plan within three months for getting back into compliance; or

-suspend Canada's right to trade in the Kyoto carbon market.

There are no financial penalties for failing to comply with Kyoto rules. And since Canada doesn't participate in any of Kyoto's emissions credits or carbon-trading programs, such a ruling would be symbolic.

Canada would become the second Kyoto signatory after Greece to be found in breach of the protocol's rules.

Environment Minister John Baird said the government awarded a contract in February to set up the registry to Perrin Quarles Associates of Charlottesville, Va.

"The bottom line is we need a registry," he said.

"I think the one thing we can all agree on, all 188 countries, is that we need to have consistent reporting from every country - developed, developing or those in transition and this is important.

"It should have been done years ago but we're getting it done."

At least one environmental group says the UN probe shows the Conservative government doesn't take its international commitments seriously.

"What's really the point here is that this government doesn't think it's important to play by the international rules," said John Bennett, executive director of Climate for Change.

A spokesman from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change referred questions to the chair of the compliance committee, who did not immediately reply to e-mailed questions.

Canada is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 37 developed countries to cut emissions by an average of five per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

The Conservatives say the Kyoto targets are unattainable and have committed to cut emissions by 20 per cent below 2006 levels by 2020.

Canada's greenhouse-gas emissions were 25 per cent above the 1990 level in 2005 and the federal government says it doesn't plan to make up the Kyoto shortfall by trading with other countries.