A new United Nations report says the Trudeau government is so far behind meeting the greenhouse gas reduction targets it agreed to in the Paris climate accord, it will likely have to buy billions of dollars worth of carbon offsets to meet its international commitments.

The problem, as even the report concedes, is that global carbon offset markets are riddled with fraud, meaning that buying them may not actually lower emissions.

The UN’s Emissions Gap Report 2017, identifies Canada as one of several countries, “likely to require further action and/or to have to purchase offsets in order to meet their pledges according to government and independent estimates.”

It says Canada is poised to miss both its 2020 and 2030 Paris targets, agreed to by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2015, “by a wide margin.”

“Canada … aims to reduce emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020,” the UN report states. “However, according to official projections, Canada’s emissions are expected to reach 731 megatonnes per year (a megatonne, or MT, equals one million tonnes) in 2020, well above the pledged level of 620 Mt per year. Independent analysis also suggests that Canada is set to miss its 2020 pledge by a wide margin.”

As for fulfilling Trudeau’s pledge to reduce emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030, the UN report states, “Government projections indicate that emissions are expected to reach 742 Mt per year in 2030, in contrast to the targeted level of 523 Mt per year … Independent studies also agree that Canada will miss its … target under current policies by a large margin …”

The report notes Canada has “explicitly not excluded the possibility” of buying carbon offsets to meet its commitments.

Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna said in December, 2016 that some of Canada’s emission cuts will be achieved through trading in carbon offsets, including with California.

The problem, as the UN report notes, is that, “if offsets are traded internationally, and are stemming from actions that are not really additional, or if offsets are counted twice (towards the pledges of both buying and selling parties) the global impact of the pledges will be weakened.”

In assessing Ontario’s plan to begin carbon trading with California next year, provincial Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk also warned offsets may be double counted by Ontario and California, because no protocol exists for how the buying and selling of offsets will be reported.

The cost to taxpayers if Trudeau buys carbon offsets to meet his Paris commitments isn’t yet known.

But when the Harper government pulled Canada out of the Kyoto accord — the forerunner to the Paris agreement — in 2011, then environment minister Peter Kent said it would have cost Canadians $14 billion to meet the Kyoto commitment agreed to by former PM Jean Chretien.

Anyone who can add knows there’s no way Trudeau can meet his Paris targets solely by cutting emissions and without buying carbon offsets.

Cutting Canada’s emissions by 219 Mt a year by 2030, as the UN says is required, would mean the equivalent of shutting down Canada’s entire transportation sector (173 Mt per year) plus the waste disposal sector (48 Mt per year) in just over 13 years.

Meeting Canada’s 2020 UN target to reduce emissions by 111 Mt a year would mean the equivalent of shutting down Canada’s entire electricity sector (79 Mt per year) plus 44% of the agricultural sector (73 Mt per year) in just over three years.