Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed Friday to ignore measures that would harm the economy after the Senate passed a private member's bill to force his government to meet its Kyoto Protocol duty.
"Obviously this government isn't going to implement any measures that would do severe damage to Canadian jobs or to the Canadian economy," Harper told reporters at the close of the spring parliamentary session.
"We will continue implementing our (own) national system of regulations."
The act, passed by the Liberal-dominated Senate 53-20, requires Canada to "meet its global climate change obligations under the Kyoto Protocol."
But Harper's Conservative government has repeatedly said the greenhouse gas emissions cuts required under the international pact are unattainable.
A previous Liberal administration had agreed under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce CO2 emissions to 6.0 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, but a 2006 government environmental audit found emissions had instead increased by 35 percent.
In April, the government unveiled a plan to cut Canada's CO2 emissions linked to global warming by 20 percent by 2020, based on 2006 levels, and by up to 70 percent by 2050.
The outcome of the Senate vote is both controversial and problematic for Harper's minority government because it could find itself unwittingly breaking the law, said Liberal senators.
Harper countered: "The (Speaker of the) House ruled that this is not a money bill. Frankly, there are pretty strict constitutional limitations in what someone can achieve with a bill that is not a money bill. The bill cannot impose billions of dollars of costs upon the government or the Canadian economy."
