Conservatives Re-Announce Liberal Renewable Energy Programs

Compiled by Tina Chiang

	Stéphane Dion .

Ottawa - The Conservative government's plan to provide incentives for renewable power production is a repackaging of the Liberal Wind and Renewable Power Production Incentives, Liberal Natural Resources Critic Mark Holland and Liberal Environment Critic David McGuinty said today.

"The Conservative plan isn't 'made in Canada' it's delayed in Canada," said Mr. Holland. "After suspending these programs for a year, Prime Minister Harper's government has reinstated the incentives for power production put forward by the Liberal government, but lowered the targets by more than 25 percent, at a time when targets for renewable energy should be one the rise."

When the Conservative government took office, the Wind Power Production Incentive (WPPI) and Renewable Power Production Incentive (RPPI) programs were fully operational and providing direct support to green power producers. Six weeks after taking office, all spending and activity in these programs was frozen.

"This is a government that didn't even use the word environment in its last fiscal update. Now the Conservatives have been forced to get these Liberal programs up and running again because they finally realize that they are on the wrong side of both Kyoto and the fight against global warming," said Mr. McGuinty.

"Canadians won't be fooled by this new-found Conservative enthusiasm for renewable power. They will see that all the Conservatives have done was put the renewable power industries in limbo for a year, while they gauged the polls to see if re-packaging these programs would bring them some credibility on environmental issues."

The Conservative'EcoEnergy Renewable Power Initiative' provides $300 million in incentives to be applied over the next four years, with a target of 4,000 MW of renewable power. The Liberal WPPI and RPPI programs provided $297 million over the first 5 years to produce 5,500 MW of renewable energy. Eventually the now re-introduced Liberal WPPI and RPPI programs were to be funded up to $1.8 billion over 15 years.

A new Liberal Government under Stéphane Dion would be committed to increasing energy production in Canada to 12,000 MW from green power sources, which include wind, small hydro, biomass, geothermal, tidal and solar power.

"The Conservatives are restoring the Liberal climate change programs they cut one at a time. Earlier this week, they restored Liberal R & D funding for green technology. Today it's renewable energy. We also hear the Conservative Party re-packaging of the EnerGuide program is also in the works," said Mr. McGuinty.

"If the Conservative government was serious about making a real impact on Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, they would stop making one-off announcements, and restore immediately all the programs they cut to give Canada back the fully-integrated approach to Climate Change that was developed under the Liberal government. We've already lost a year of progress that could have been made under a cap-and-trade system, supported by a wide range of programs."

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