Twenty activists from the environmental group Greenpeace were arrested on Monday for climbing the Canadian Parliament in protest against Ottawa's "inaction" on greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction.
"20 people are currently in the custody of the Ottawa Police Service and they could face charges of mischief," said spokesman Jean-Paul Vincelette.
"The firefighters went to get them" with their ladders on the facade of Parliament, explained Caroline Poulin, spokesperson for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who made the arrests.
An investigation is underway to determine how Greenpeace activists were able to so easily foil security around the usually tight Canadian Parliament.
"Climate inaction costs lives," read a large banner that activists had hung from the roof of the Parliament in Ottawa on the occasion of the opening of the Copenhagen climate summit.
"The longer our government waits, the more it blocks progress, the more people will die or be displaced by the climate crisis," said Mike Hudema, head of the climate-energy campaign at Greenpeace, as he said hung from a cable on a facade of the Victorian building.
"Hundreds of thousands of people die each year and millions more must migrate because Canada and some other industrialized countries remain passive in the face of climate change," Greenpeace added in a statement.
Canada is in the crosshairs of environmentalists for the timidity of its plan to combat GHGs. Ottawa has turned its back on the Kyoto Protocol, which it had nevertheless signed and ratified, under which it had to reduce its GHG emissions by 6% by 2012 compared to 1990.
Ottawa ultimately intends to reduce its GHG emissions by 20% by 2020 compared to 2006 levels, a decrease of 3% compared to 1990, the reference year chosen in the Kyoto protocol
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