CleanBC plan is a road map to new economy, climate leadership

VANCOUVER, COAST SALISH TERRITORIES - Lawyers at West Coast Environmental Law applaud the BC Government’s CleanBC plan as an important step towards reducing the province’s greenhouse gas pollution while moving to attract environmentally-minded businesses and investment. The Vancouver-based environmental law organization said that they were endorsing the plan because it commits to putting in place accountability and planning tools that will help ensure that the government completes and builds upon the plan.

“With some governments moving away from real climate action, we are excited to see our provincial government with a credible and ambitious map of how it is going to achieve its 2030 climate targets,” said Andrew Gage, Staff Lawyer. “There are still details to be filled in and hard questions to be answered, but we finally have a plan and a transparent process for making sure that the plan gets completed and implemented. Congratulations to the BC Government.”

CleanBC includes measures that will, if fully implemented, take the province 75% of the way to achieving its legislated 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target, and West Coast notes that the government has indicated that these measures will be fully funded in its 2019 Budget. The plan commits the Province to identify further measures within the next 18-24 months that will allow the province to achieve 100% of the goal and requires on-going evaluation of the government’s plans and progress against its 2030 and 2050 targets.

“We know that the Province needs to go further: the map set out in CleanBC is not complete, nor does it go far enough. Some recent decisions, for example on LNG, are difficult to square with this climate plan,” acknowledged Gage.

“But with the plan’s specific time-frames to develop further steps, commitment to funding and requirements for ongoing re-evaluation and improvement of the plan, we’re confident that it can – with further work – help us to start building a clean, green economy that we can all be proud of,” said Jessica Clogg, Executive Director & Senior Counsel.

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For more information, please contact:

Andrew Gage | Staff Lawyer, West Coast Environmental Law
250-412-9784, agage@wcel.org

Jessica Clogg | Executive Director & Senior Counsel, West Coast Environmental Law
604-601-2501, jclogg@wcel.org