The White House and the leaders of Canada and Mexico released a joint statement on climate change yesterday, as Canadian green groups continued to attack the climate policy of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

In a trip to Washington, D.C., Harper joined President Obama and President Felipe Calderón in pledging support for ongoing international climate negotiations and backing a $15 million recent joint effort among six nations to reduce black carbon.

"We continue to advance the transition to a clean energy economy and cooperate to reduce global rates of deforestation and land degradation," the leaders said.

In a later appearance at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Harper reiterated that Canada is dedicated to sending its oil sands products to Asia, while he also urged the United States to import more hydropower from Canada. The greenhouse gas emissions of production in Canada's oil sands are higher than those from traditional oil drilling, a factor that spurred protests at the White House last year.

In January, Obama denied a cross-border permit for TransCanada's Keystone XL, a pipeline that would have carried oil sands crude from Alberta to Texas. "The very fact that a 'no' could even be said underscores to our country that we must diversify," Harper said.

"We have taken a significant price hit," he said about the industry.

He said Obama has told him "repeatedly" that an ultimate decision about Keystone XL -- which will be considered again when TransCanada applies for a new permit -- would be made on its merits, not politics. At the same time, an ultimate approval of Keystone XL would not alter the country's plans to push for pipelines to Asia, Harper said.

Cutting budgets related to climate change

Canada is weighing whether to build two oil sands pipelines that would stretch from Alberta to the country's west coast, including the $5.5 billion Enbridge Northern Gateway project, which currently is undergoing hearings.

When asked about the greenhouse gas emissions of the oil sands, Harper said "the environmental impacts should not be exaggerated," considering that the United States also imports fuel from other heavy-oil countries, such as Venezuela. He said that cuts announced last week to the Canadian budget -- including the environmental budget -- were modest in comparison to those in other countries.

But environmentalists in Canada slammed the cuts yesterday for targeting programs about climate change. The budget nixed funding for the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, an agency that has released reports urging the country to move more quickly on reducing greenhouse gas emissions (ClimateWire, Jan. 26, 2011).

The budget proposal outlined cuts to Environment Canada -- a government agency -- of roughly 8 percent.

It also called for speeding up the permitting process for oil sands projects. The budget said, for example, that joint panel hearings like those under way for Northern Gateway should be no longer than 24 months. It remains to be seen how that new timeline will apply retroactively to Northern Gateway, but "there is no question" that it will make it more difficult for individuals to challenge industry as official intervenors before the government, said Simon Dyer, an analyst at the Pembina Institute, a Canadian think tank.

The new timelines, along with a 40 percent budget cut to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, which analyzes the impact of the oil sands, is significant because Alberta has approved projects before they were fully understood, said Dyer. As one example, he said the Jackpine Oil Sands Mine Expansion, a project of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, may be 12 percent larger in size than what the provincial government agreed to.

"With these federal budget cuts, we're going to see weaker and weaker oversight of the oil sands," Dyer said. "We're going to see sloppy documents."