U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday urged Canada's new leaders to play a strong role to help conclude a historic agreement on climate change at the upcoming Paris conference. Canadian voters put Justin Trudeau's Liberals in office in elections Monday, ending nine years of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper, who withdrew Canada from the landmark Kyoto Protocol on fighting climate change in 2011 because it did not apply to the United States and China, the two biggest emitters. "Canada is a member of the Group of Seven (G-7), and as a result, it has a particular role to play in terms of providing leadership on climate-change issues," U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters. "The secretary-general hopes and expects that Canada will play that role, and play in particular a very useful and decisive role in the conference of parties in December." During the election campaign, Trudeau's Liberals refused to set targets to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but they pledged to re-establish Canada's good standing in the fight against climate change.
