Ontario breaks mercury pledge

[GLF]

The Ontario government has quietly reneged on a national commitment to reduce the level of mercury in air pollution, the Toronto Star has learned.

Sources say the Liberal government's recent decision to break a 2003 cornerstone campaign promise and keep open the province's pollution-spewing coal-fired generating plants well past 2009 is behind the policy U-turn.

Canada's federal, provincial and territorial environment ministers were poised last Friday to announce a reduction in the highly toxic mercury emissions by 50 per cent from 2003-04 levels by 2010.

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