Baird rejects Gore's criticism of Tory green plan

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, now one of the world's most famous climate-change activists, has called the federal government's new green plan "a fraud."

Gore criticized the plan while in Toronto on Saturday to attend the Green Living Show and screen his Oscar-winning documentary on the environment, An Inconvenient Truth.

Conservative Environment Minister John Baird promptly shot back, saying Gore didn't do nearly as much to fight climate change during eight years in office.

"The fact is our plan is vastly tougher than any measures introduced by the administration of which the former vice-president was a member," Baird said in news release.

Gore was vice-president from 1993 to 2001 when Bill Clinton was president.

Baird also said it was "regrettable" that Gore spoke without having been briefed on the Conservative plan.

The Conservatives have said their strategy, introduced earlier in the week, will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and improve air quality, but Gore said he has heard it all before, south of the border, and he doesn't like what he hears.

"I'm hearing a reduction in intensity is going to be presented to the Canadian people as a legitimate policy," he said at the consumer environmental show. "In my opinion, it is a complete and total fraud. It is designed to mislead the Canadian people."

A reduction in intensity means that big industrial emitters of greenhouse gases will have to reduce emissions for each unit of output, but total output could increase.

Former U.S. vice-president supports Suzuki

Gore said the rest of the world looks to Canada for moral leadership, and that's why news of the plan was so "shocking."

Gore also praised one of Canada's best-known environmentalists, David Suzuki, for confronting Baird on Friday, the first day of the three-day Green Living Show.

Suzuki told Baird his plan was a disappointment and doesn't go far enough.

The government is creating the illusion of attacking the problem by talking about reducing intensity, but "the reality is it's really a cover for allowing industry to increase its pollution," he said.

The Conservative plan calls for Canadian reductions of current greenhouse gas emissions by 150 million tonnes by 2020. Most industries will have to reduce greenhouse gases by 18 per cent by 2010.

Canada produced about 775 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2004, a government website says. The Kyoto target is 563 million tonnes.