This is a guest post by Mitchell Beer, which originally appeared on GreenPAC.
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and provincial/territorial premiers meet in Vancouver on Thursday, they’ll be searching for agreement on the pan-Canadian climate framework that Trudeau promised to introduce within 90 days of the 2015 United Nations climate summit in Paris.
It’s a big enough, ambitious enough agenda. But the real question facing First Ministers, and the elephant in the room that will dominate their deliberations, is bigger still. It comes in two parts:
What kind of economy do we want for Canada in the 21st century? (Because it’s 2016!)
And however that’s answered, is the plan realistic against anything we know about the future shape of global energy use?