Hundreds of protesters gathered in cities across the country on Saturday to demand the Conservative government support the Kyoto Protocol and fight global warming.

In Ottawa, about 200 protesters rushed the Parliament buildings to demonstrate their anger over Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Clean Air Act, which they said sends the signal to the world that Canada has given up on its battle against greenhouse gases.

Dale Marshall of the Suzuki Foundation says Canada is the only Kyoto signatory that will not even try to meet its targets.
(CBC)

The recently introduced legislation plans to reduce airborne pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions, but critics said it ignores Kyoto and Canada's commitments to the world.

"Canada is totally isolated on this," Dale Marshall of the David Suzuki Foundation told the CBC on Saturday. "It's the only Kyoto party that has said it's not even going to try to meet its targets, so it's basically putting itself in the same camp as Australia and the U.S. in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol."

The protests, which were also held in Montreal and Toronto, come on the same day as Harper reportedly cancelled a planned meeting later this month in Finland with EU leaders, who were sure to criticize him for abandoning goals of the Kyoto accord.

"We committed to it, we signed on to it, and I'd like to think our word is good for something," Ontario New Democrat MP Paul Dewar said Saturday.

The international treaty requires Canada to reduce its Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions to six per cent below 1990 levels, but Canada is nowhere near meeting the target.

The prime minister doesn't deny the planet is getting warmer, but his party disagrees with environmentalists on how to fight the warming trend.

"We're not going to stop until Harper gets his head out of the tar sands and stops denying the reality of climate change," one protester told the crowd of about 200 demonstrators outside Toronto's city hall.

The debate over Kyoto is heating up this weekend in advance of an international Kyoto conference that begins Monday in Nairobi.