Canada is an important producer of natural gas, petroleum, coal and electricity, and is a major supplier of oil, gas and electricity to the United States and coal to Asia, Europe and Latin America. However it is both an importer and exporter of coal, petroleum and petroleum products because its major coal and oil fields are far detached from its industrial centers and many of its oil refineries cannot touch the types of oil produced in Canada. Electric power generation in Canada draws on hydroelectric, nuclear, coal and natural gas, with a small but growing contribution from wind power.
The Canadian energy policy reflects the constitutional division of the powers between the federal government and the provincial governments. The constitution of Canada places the natural resources under the jurisdiction of the provinces. The provincial governments have the major part of oil, the coal and natural gas reservations, and more production of electricity orders it. This means that the national government must coordinate its energy policies with those of the provincial governments, and the intergovernmental conflicts emerge sometimes. The problem is particularly acute since, whereas the consuming provinces of energy have the major part of the population and can elect the federal governments which present policies supporting of the consumers of energy, the energy producing of the provinces have the constitutional power to demolish such policies by simply exporting their energy resources directly towards the United States free from all the taxes and to export orders.
Section 92 of the Constitution Act 1867 assigned with the provincial governments the exclusive authority to make laws compared to the not-renewable resources and the electric power, whereas section 125 prevented the federal government from imposing all the provincial grounds of government or the property (although the three provinces of meadow were exempted of these provisions like state of their entry in the confederation until Transfer laws of natural resources of 1930). In addition, section 132 gave to the federal government the authority to make treaties with foreign governments. This has important implications for treaties implying the energy production, like the protocol of Kyoto that the Canadian government signed in 2002. Before signing it, the federal government did not consult the provincial governments, which have the constitutional jurisdiction more, and have in much case, the majority of the largest gas transmitters of hot greenhouse in the country. Since they were not implied in the negotiations, the provinces mainly were unaware of the exit. The result is that, while the federal government committed Canada to reducing greenhouse gases by 6% from 1990 levels, by 2004 they had risen by 27%.