Policy analyst says Cdn. stance could stunt progress at upcoming summit

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OTTAWA - Stephen Harper will make the case to fellow G8 leaders next week that it's futile to reach a global agreement on climate change without including the world's biggest polluters.

The prime minister will argue that major emitters of greenhouse gases like the United States, China and India must be part of any climate-change pact, Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas said.

"At the end of the day, if we don't get an agreement where major emitters play a role in helping to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, we're simply not making any progress," Soudas said.

"In order to genuinely tackle climate change and to start seeing concrete results, we need to have major emitters on board. That includes countries like the United States, China and India."

Clare Demerse, a senior policy analyst at the Pembina Institute, said Canada's opposition to any climate-change deal that doesn't include the big emitters could stunt progress at the coming summit.

"There's a real risk that either they don't make progress from what they said last year, or they even slip back," she said.

The G8 includes Britain, Canada, the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.