On CBC, Parliamentary reporter Aaron Wherry was out last week with a look at the legally-binding carbon reduction targets the Liberal Party platform promised in last fall’s federal election. The promise came after what Wherry adds up as nine national climate targets over the last 32 years—none of which the country actually met. So legislating the commitment “surely couldn’t hurt,” he writes, “even if it’s still going to take more than a law to ensure Canada does its fair share to combat climate change.”

While both reports call for a national carbon budget, Wherry points to the environmental groups’ call for sub-national budgets as a key difference.

“In a perfectly rational world, that might be the smart way to structure climate policy in a federation—with each province accepting its fair share of the national goal,” he notes. But “the Trudeau government consistently has side-stepped questions about regional differences and responsibility by focusing on national policy, like the federal carbon price. It’s hard to imagine the Liberals wanting to engage now in long and painful negotiations to set provincial carbon budgets.”