TORONTO

Prime Minister Stephen Harper needs to rethink his direction on climate change, California Gov. Jerry Brown says.

Brown was asked about Harper’s policy on the oilsands and climate change during a media conference Wednesday with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard.

All three leaders have agreed to co-operate on a cap-and-trade system, and were in Toronto for a Climate Summit of the Americas meeting.

“He (Harper) ought to be re-examining what he’s doing,” Brown said, although he provided no specifics. “Canada has a long way to go, as has the United States, as has everybody, so it’s not about pointing fingers, because we have to point to ourselves.

“We’ve got a lot to do, but some people aren’t even on board to know that so I would say get on board.”

Asked what his message would be to national leaders, Brown said: “Get with it.”

The Climate Summit of the Americas was held ahead of the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties in Paris scheduled for later this year.

The event should encourage a “national commitment” on climate change, Wynne said.

“We need the federal government to hear this message,” she said.

Canada’s position as an oil-producing nation shouldn’t preclude it from taking steps to curb climate change, Couillard said.

“We at the provincial level and territorial level are basically filling the void if I can say so and showing to the rest of the world that we are active,” he said.

All three leaders promise to devote the proceeds from a cap-and-trade system, which puts a price on carbon, to good use.

When asked about the impact on individual consumers who might have to pay more for a whole range of goods and services, Brown didn’t seem terribly concerned.

“You pay more if you go to a football game, you pay more for a lot of things ... more is part of modernity,” the governor said.

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California Gov. Jerry Brown arrived in Toronto for the Climate Summit of the Americas and promptly took Prime Minister Stephen Harper to task for his environmental record.

But Brown, who served two terms as governor from 1975 to ’83 and was elected again in 2010 following Arnold Schwarzenegger, has often been the focus of criticism himself.

Must be something in the water.

In 1976, popular Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko awarded Brown the nickname ‘Governor Moonbeam’ because he attracted the younger, more radical electorates.

In 1979, as Brown was campaigning in New Hampshire for the Democratic presidential nomination, legendary Tonight Show host Johnny Carson quipped that farmers in the state were preparing for an early winter because they had “just seen their first flake.”

During another failed run for the presidency in 1992, Carson noted that Brown admitted to smoking pot in the ’60s “but didn’t exhale.”

"We need more welfare and fewer jobs." -- Brown on his radio show in 1995, arguing that automation had job creation obsolete, making an "income maintenance" program necessary.

Two years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Brown said about the news that automaker Toyota was leaving California for Texas: “We’ve got a few problems, we have lots of little burdens and regulations and taxes.”

Earlier this year when NASA predicted that the water in California’s reserves would only last year, the Journal reported Brown devised a bill that allotted $1.1 billion for “direct relief to workers and communities most impacted by these historic dry conditions.”

But the bill, eventually signed into law, included $660 million for flood control measures. And at Brown’s request, Democrats also added an amendment to collective-bargaining agreements increasing pay for prison social workers and psychologists.

--Compiled by Francesca Feldman