Receipt — The distance still to travel

A Receipt is a dated evidence summary for one product. It shows the question, the current answer, the sources, the method, the limits, and the next update.

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The question	Are Canada's emissions falling at the pace its climate commitments require?
Current reading	On the accounting basis Canada's target is actually measured against, emissions have fallen from 759 Mt in 2005 to 655 Mt in the latest reported year (2023) -- a decline of 104 Mt, or roughly 34% of the reduction the target's 40% floor requires and roughly 30% of what its 45% ceiling requires. Closing the rest would need a sustained pace of roughly 29 to 34 Mt a year through 2030, against a record that has averaged less than 6 Mt a year since 2005 -- a gap of roughly five to six times. On the newest reported inventory year on the gross, LULUCF-excluded basis (2024, 684.7 Mt against a 763.02 Mt base), the same arithmetic delivers a smaller share (roughly a quarter to 23%) and a wider gap (roughly nine to eleven times the historical pace), because this basis carries a different vintage and does not include the accounting layer the target itself is measured against. The government's own most complete current projection for 2030, counting every announced measure, puts emissions at 546 Mt -- still 91 to 129 Mt above the target band.
Evidence reviewed through	2026-07-21
Basis	The target-accounting basis Canada's 2030/2035 targets and 2026 interim objective are actually assessed against -- the National Inventory Report's four-sector total plus the LULUCF accounting contribution, on the CESI 2026 indicator vintage (NIR2025 historical basis) -- carries the delivered-share and pace verdicts. The gross National Inventory Report basis (NIR 2026 edition, excluding LULUCF) carries the newest reported inventory year on its own separate vintage. The two bases are never combined in one calculation; every scenario on this Brief draws its inputs from exactly one of them. Statistics Canada's physical flow account is named as a third, structurally different basis and is never an input to either.
Method	Pinned, cited evidence; every scenario uses a named, disclosed formula and is recomputed exactly with each rebuild of the record.
Confidence	The arithmetic is exact over pinned published figures, each re-derivable from archived source bytes recorded with content hashes; the open question is which official accounting basis a reader treats as decisive, and how much weight to give a government scenario that is a modelled pathway, not an outcome -- this receipt keeps all three (both bases, and the projection) visible rather than resolving them into one number.
Next trigger	The next annual greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions projections report together with the accounting-basis update, expected around December 2026 -- the principal settlement event for the target-accounting delivered-share and pace-ratio readings.
Next evidence	The next National Inventory Report edition (the gross-inventory basis's own next observed year, expected around April 2027); the next statutory progress report on the 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan; Canada's second Biennial Transparency Report, due by the end of 2026.
Expiry	Valid until the next projections/accounting-basis update or the next National Inventory Report publishes, whichever arrives first; a new dated Receipt is then produced against the new evidence, with its correction history intact.

Material definitions

The target's own published range (40-45% below 2005 by 2030) is preserved at both endpoints throughout; the lower bound is the Target object's own cited value, the upper bound is the range's other published endpoint -- no single-number midpoint is substituted for the range.
The LULUCF accounting contribution is a separately calculated component added to the four-sector National Inventory Report total to reach the target-accounting basis; it is not part of the gross-inventory basis at all.
With Measures and With Additional Measures figures are the issuer's own modelled scenario pathways under its stated assumptions, never a commitment, a plan, or a Countability forecast, and never rendered as an observed outcome.
Required pace is stated as the constant average annual change that would close the remaining distance by 2030 if delivered evenly; it is arithmetic, not an assertion that any actual pathway must be linear.

Decisive limitations

The LULUCF accounting contribution moved by roughly 48 Mt between 2022 and 2023 alone; a single year's movement on the target-accounting basis can be driven more by this one component than by any change in combustion emissions, industrial output, or land management.
The two bases carry different National Inventory Report vintages as well as different LULUCF treatment (NIR2025 versus NIR2026); their 2005 base values therefore differ, and this Brief never reconciles them into one number.
The 2026 interim objective's own observed settlement does not arrive until the National Inventory Report and target-accounting vintages covering calendar year 2026 are published, expected around 2028; until then only the government's own projections speak to it.
Statistics Canada's physical flow account reports a materially different 2023 total on a different accounting basis (the SEEA residence principle); it is never blended with either basis this Brief uses, and the difference is a named, published evidence gap in its own right.

Key sources and licences

Canada's Official Greenhouse Gas Inventory -- National Inventory Report 2026 edition (1990-2024), Economic Sector table, Canada and provinces/territories — Environment and Climate Change Canada Licence identified from the dataset catalogue
Greenhouse gas emissions projections — Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators (2026 vintage; Open Government Licence – Canada) — ECCC Licence text read in full
Canada's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Projections -- Current Projections, Tab 6 (Land use, land-use change, and forestry): national net flux and accounting-contribution values by LULUCF category and year, 2005-2035 — Environment and Climate Change Canada Licence identified from the dataset catalogue

This Receipt names the public sources and method needed to reproduce the figures it covers. Corrections are dated and explained, with the earlier published record retained.