One of the highlights of the day (and of the conference so far) came in today’s ECO. ECO is the daily newsletter written by non-governmental environmental groups at major international meetings.

Today’s ECO front page was about Shared Vision – or a lack of Shared Vision at the COP so far. It was hilarious to see people walk up to the Climate Action Network booth to pick up a copy of the ECO and pause, wondering if there was a printing problem or some photocopying error. With most of these people, you could see it finally click after a few moments, a knowing smile spreading across their face: the front page was only a headline: “Shared Vision”, and was left blank intentionally, to drive home the lack of progress on the idea of the shared vision to date.

In our national context, Canada has shown a stunning lack of vision. Canada’s domestic targets are extremely weak, and under the Government of Canada’s current Turning the Corner plan, there’s no way we could meet even those weak targets. We need to get serious if we expect to arrive at a new international agreement by COP15 in Copenhagen, in December 2009. Today, South Africa mentioned Canada by name as one of the countries that has continued to delay progress by failing to declare ambitious emissions reduction targets for 2020. It's time to stop delaying and start making a contribution.