It seems climate change is changing the climate of Canadian politics.

Canada's provinces are mobilizing to take aggressive and progressive action on climate change, leaving the federal government in their wake.

Ontario recently became the latest province to join the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), a climate-change plan that would see a cap-and-trade system aimed at large industries to reduce emissions among participating regions. Ontario joins British Columbia, Manitoba, and Quebec as the four provinces - representing 75% of Canada’s population - committed to a cap and trade arrangement under the WCI. The California-led initiative also includes six other U.S. states.

The WCI approach is a major advance over the federal government's ineffective intensity-based reductions plan. Furthermore, most provinces have much more ambitious targets for cutting greenhouse gases than the federal government's proposed reduction of 20 per cent below 2006 levels by 2020.

The WCI has created a serious and credible alternative to current federal policies both in Ottawa and in Washington. Federal governments on both sides of the border will now have to either shape up or get out of the way.