Pick a debate, any debate, and Thomas Mulcair will find a way to bring up the "fact" that he reduced GHG emissions every year that he was the environment minister in Quebec, and that he was responsible for putting a clean environment as a right into Quebec's charter.
Of course, he will also say that he did not promote the sale of bulk water, despite video evidence. That video got the most re-tweets during last night's French language leaders debate.
However, that lie is pretty tame, compared to his other whoppers. Let's compare:
Did GHG Emissions really go Down Under His Stewardship? In the 2012-13 Quebec government budget report, there is a section Quebec and Climate Change: A Greener Environment. As part of this they produce a graph.
Thomas Mulcair was Quebec Environment minister from 2003 to early 2006, but never drafted a Green Plan until 2004, and never actually acted on anything, favourable to the environment. So his policies (?) had no impact on reducing GHG, but in fact, one in particular, caused a spike.
This was the result of the TransCanada Energy’s combined cycle gas turbine in Becancour, a project he approved in 2004. The generating station was Quebec’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in 2007. (Wikipedia)
When Mulcair put his stamp of approval on the project, he had to break the rules established by his own government, since it would not meet the necessary requirements.
According to Mr. Paul-Yannick Laquerre, deputy chief of staff to Environment Minister Thomas Mulcair, the regulations would not apply to the project of Bécancour. Me Laquerre argued that the Régie de l'énergie approved the draft Bécancour on August 23, several months before the adoption of the Regulation ...
It was eventually scrapped and Hydro Quebec was forced to pay the company 250 million dollars just to get rid of it.
So in fact, Thomas Mulcair did not reduce GHG, but increased it.
The Promotion of Sustainable Development
When Yves Séguin resigned as minister of finance in 2005, Thomas Mulcair had hoped to take his place. However, Jean Charest chose someone else. Mulcair went into one of his famous sulks (see political cartoon above), but did a sulk cause Charest to expand Mulcair's ministry to include sustainable development and parks, which put him in charge of construction projects? Not a promotion, but certainly more power.
This meant that in spite of the announcement that he would finally present a long awaited "Green Plan", environmentalists were sceptical, and they were right to be, since they soon learned that it was not so much a plan for the environment, as a way of getting around environmental concerns, to aid the construction industry.
In 2012, the Research Quebec Group of Ecologists (RQGE), published a 250 page report for their thirtieth anniversary, in which they detailed their experiences with Thomas Mulcair, during some of their darkest days.
These are some of the things they revealed about his tenure in the Charest government.
1. In 2004, Mulcair announced massive cuts to environmental programs and to groups receiving funding for reseach and public awareness. (p. 220)
2. After meeting with minister Mulcair, whose attitude was less than cordial, environmentalist knew that they would have a different relationship with this government. One that would be more combative in nature. (p146) When the Ministry of Environment became the Ministry of Sustainable Development, and Parks; they noted that "sustainable development" was a new code phrase for skirting environmental protection. RQGE sent out a newsletter warning that with the drastic funding cuts and new policies that put industry first, their very existence was in jeopardy. (p152)
3. RQGE harshly criticized the "contempt Mulcair displayed" to environmental groups. "In a statement published in winter 2005, and with the support of Advisory Committee of independent community action which at that moment was " about 4000 action groups in the Community in Quebec, and called for "the immediate restoration of financing programs that would enable groups to fulfill their mission of defending the rights of the environment." (p159)
4. ... "environmentalists and community networks denounce the forced closure of several citizens groups fighting the environment, consequence of the abolition by the Minister Mulcair of all their funding programs". This was done so that he could replace their work with "partner companies" [public private partnerships] " They now knew why Mulcair appointed William Cosgrove, (p157) "Chairman of the World Council water and a champion of private and PPP and asked how Mulcair could "claim to focus his choices and actions towards a sustainable development when appointing a fervent defender of private interests at the head of a provincial organization." (p166)
5. They also speak of Mulcair's arrogance: "... he stubbornly refused to meet anyone" and , "The attitude of the Minister Mulcair is unacceptable, even contemptuous, against groups whose survival is threatened by abolishing funding programs " According to the Director of RQGE Ronald O'Narey, "The minister openly displays his prejudice favourable to the groups that are working directly and measurably in the field and appears biased against groups who issue opinions and comments on everything that contradict his". (p160)
6. They determined that Mulcair's Green Plan was "a facade that hid the true intentions of the government" where economic interests would outweigh environmental concerns. (p. 220)
7. When groups began to openly criticize Mulcair they were "... threatened with a SLAPP, and since many were now "completely penniless, since the cuts of Mulcair", they would not be able to defend themselves.
Mulcair did not disappoint the construction industry though:
Finally the new Ministry of Sustainable Development under Thomas Mulcair, is off to a terrible start. I received an email from the transportation department last week, Informing me that a projected bridge linking Laval and Montreal at 25 Highway, was part of the government's Plan for sustainable development. This bridge, will sacrifice 2,000 acres of farm land to urban sprawl in Laval, allow 150,000 more cars to enter Montreal each day and funnel off government funds that are desperately needed for public transport. Sustainable development is anything but objective... (Charest's sinking ship: After only two years in power, the Liberals are going down, Arthur Sandborn, The Montreal Gazette, April 13, 2005)
The bridge that Mulcair approved was dubbed "Mulcair's Bridge" and Highway 25, was a PPP project. This money was supposed to be earmarked for a commuter service.
Does this sound like a record to be proud of? We hear Mulcair mention "sustainable development" many times, but let's not be fooled. Just as "choice" means private, in conservative speak, this means locking arms with the construction industry, and destroying all environmental protections that get in their way.
Oh, and That Human Rights Thingy
Another claim made by Mulcair is that he entrenched the right to a clean environment into Quebec's charter of rights and freedoms, but it was a sham. It reads "Every person has a right to live in a healthful environment in which biodiversity is preserved, to the extent and according to the standards provided by law." It doesn't say that laws must protect the right to live in a healthful environment, only that governments must enact their own environmental laws. They could have none at all and still respect the charter.
Is Mulcair a pathological liar? Perhaps. But fortunately, there is a cure for that. Let him retire on October 20. This country cannot afford another anti-environment prime minister.
In it he questions Mulcair's logic and math, when discussing agriculture and supply management.
Incoherence is the expected thing from Mulcair. His arithmetic seems a bit off. Supply management nationally provided 16.9 per cent of farm-gate cash revenue in 2014 and 17.0 per cent the prior year, so Mulcair must have been referring only to Quebec. In that case gross revenue from milk, egg and poultry sales in Quebec was 2.55 per cent of Canadian farm cash income. Employment allegedly created by the system can be almost any number depending on how creatively it is defined.
Conflicting views and just making stuff up when he can't answer a question, is actually a trademark of Mulcair's, and was long before he hijacked the NDP.
Environmentalist and water expert, Mario Desrosiers, said in 2005, after yet another deceit of Mulcair's when he tried to deny that he had fired the Environmental watchdog:
How can we give credibility to the words of a minister when his statements are different from one newspaper to another or from a television program to another or simply false.(1)
Mulcair dismissed that and the hundreds of other concerns, by claiming that they "stem from emotional reactions"
Since the media is content to go along with his view of his record as environment minister in Quebec, I'm running a series of articles, that reveal what actually occurred. There was no principle, no commitment and certainly no logic.
Instead, what we see is a systematic attempt to privatize and deregulate, and just like Stephen Harper, much was done under the cloak of secrecy. He, along with other members of the Quebec Liberal government, were actually sued, and part of the Plaintiffs' case dealt with the difficulty to access information. (2)
The defence presented, was that they might expose things that shouldn't be exposed. Not unlike the Harper government calling everything a "cabinet secret". In one incident, Mulcair held off a group seeking an audience for a full year.
Mulcair's Pig in a Poke
When in the Quebec government, Thomas Mulcair would often mention the fact that he helped to draft the terms of NAFTA. In his promotion of bulk water sales, he suggested that "the environmental laws protecting water are considered barriers to trade." (3)
Also a barrier to trade was a moratorium on hog farming, imposed by the Parti Quebecois, to keep the mega barn, multinational corporations, from over farming and contaminating the water supply.
When the pubic first became aware of Mulcair's intent to lift the moratorium, there was a great deal of opposition. In 2003, he promised that a full environmental assessment would be done. It was, concluding that the ban should not be repealed. Mulcair lifted it anyway, favouring corporate interests over public safety.
"By authorizing new hog barns, the government is giving municipal officials and citizens a fait accompli.It is preparing for the worst crises than previous ones, since people feel cheated.The BAPE gave them hope and yet nothing changes, "says Gilles Tardif of the Citizen Coalition. "The Environment Minister Thomas Mulcair, seems to have turned into the minister of pig development," adds Tim Yeatman ... citizens have just elected candidates who campaigned against hog farms projects.
The groups are outraged that the government ignored the recommendations of the BAPE in regard to the protection of the environment and risks to the health of people drinking from artesian wells."Despite clear evidence to the effect that the spreading of pig manure, slurry is not adequately controlled to prevent the pollution of watercourses, the Liberal government seems to be unconscious," says Martine Ouellet Vice President of the Coalition Eau Secours. (4)
The major issue in Quebec is the ever-expanding hog industry, and its impact upon the environment and rural communities. In the fall of 2003 The Quebec government released its report on a public consultation process which recommended fundamental changes to hog production in order to make it sustainable in Quebec. A moratorium on hog production expansion followed, installed until new regulations and policies could be implemented, but was lifted prematurely in December 2004. Since then, grassroots community groups have been calling on the province to heed the Canadian Medical Association’s resolution to ban the expansion of the hog industry until the inherent risks of industrial hog farming are understood and the appropriate solutions.
So while Thomas Mulcair is travelling the country, attacking Stephen Harper for not protecting our waterways, he himself clearly has no concern. He will do just what Harper does. Deregulate his way to more corporate profits.
In fact, one man actually had to go on a public hunger strike, lasting 18 days, just to get Mulcair to address a water pollution concern in his community.(5)
To honour NAFTA, he dishonoured the people he was supposed to protect, by not ensuring that they would enjoy a safe environment and clean drinking water.
The NDP are calling for change, but with Mulcair as prime minister, I'm afraid it would just be more of the same.
Sources:
1. Mulcair is Irresponsible and Insults People, By Mario Desrosiers, Chairman of the Citizens Committee Presquîle - Lanaudière (CCPL), October 11, 2005
2. CANADA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC, DISTRICT MONTREAL, Citizens Committee of the peninsula-Lanaudière c. Quebec (Attorney General), 2006 QCCS 4861, SUPERIOR COURT; No: 500-17-023251-047, August 24, 2006
3. Mulcair is Pleased to Have a New Debate, The Press, Charles Cote and Mario Clouthier, June 16, 2004
I watched the Macleans leadership debates again on Youtube, and noticed a few things that I hadn't picked up on when watching it live. For one thing, Thomas Mulcair was the only one of the four to have to use a script, when delivering his closing remarks. We saw one awkward moment when he had to turn the page and forgot where he was. He did get some very good points across during the debate, and was even able to trick Harper into admitting that we were in a recession. But overall, his performance was weak, especially since everyone thought that this would be his moment to shine. Whenever Stephen Harper was going to tell a lie, he started with "let me be clear". For Mulcair, he did something weird with his eyes. I'm not going to suggest that Mulcair is a bigger liar than Harper, but since being named NDP leader, he has certainly been playing fast and loose with the facts.
While on the campaign trail, he is constantly mentioning his environmental record, when he was in Quebec, and brought it up again during the debates. He isn't lying about two things: He was the Quebec environment minister from 2003 until early 2006, when he was removed from the post; and he did entrench the right to a clean environment, into the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms (more on that later). Anything beyond that is revisionist history. I am actually going to post Mulcair's environmental record in four parts, because there are two many important points to make, so that Canadians learn the facts about his tenure. What they will show is a neoliberal, intent on privatization, who actually did more harm than good, in the quest to reduce GHG emissions.
He cut payments going to climate change groups, from 2.2 million to 750,000 and even stepped in, to stop a grant going to one group, simply because they had a few separatists on their team. More than once, environmentalists demanded his resignation, and again and again he embarrassed his own government with his pseudo-science.
He was a lawyer and politician. He was not an environmentalist.
Make no mistake about the importance of what happened in Toronto last weekend: Tens of thousands of New Democrats rebelled against the party establishment – a cabal of union leaders, academics, journalists and party apparatchiks – to elect an outsider.
They did it, in the words of one NDP supporter who was at the convention, because they no longer wanted to be led by “a comfy sweater.”
They no longer wanted to be the party of ideals. They just wanted to win. But how will they square that with the "union leaders, academics, journalists and party apparatchiks", who built the NDP?
Will simply winning be enough, if it means tying Mulcair's right-wing, neoliberal platform, to the party of greats like Tommy Douglas and David Lewis? Will winning be enough if the New Democratic Party simply disappears, as the party with a social conscience?
Maybe it wasn't just the fact that they saw Mulcair as a scrapper, but they may have also wanted to tap into his vast corporate connections. They could live with tax cuts for the wealthy and child care benefits going to millionaires, if they just had a shot.
I think that they will live to regret this decision, because the person they saw as a clear path to victory, may instead, run the party off the road.
I came across the Conservative Party of Canada's 2006 election platform: Standing Up For Canada. Stephen Harper is the first and only leader of this Party that was formed in 2003.
In the introduction, he outlines the CPC's priorities with a list of promises. Let's see how many he kept and how many had a positive impact on our lives.
1. Clean Up Government
Cleaning up government has become the rallying cry of many politicians and political parties, but few, if any, actually clean up anything. We all know that power can corrupt and the temptation of riches or personal "influence" can be seductive.
The list of Conservative scandals is long but what's interesting, is that even while they were flogging this platform, they were engaged in activity that would result in one of their most serious scandals, before their first term was up. The In and Out.
In the last days of the campaign, when an advertising blitz usually occurs, the CPC war room realized that they had already spent the allowable limit. So they came up with a scheme that would allow them to lay out more.
They tapped into candidates who had not reached their own spending caps, transferred large sums of money to their bank accounts, and then immediately took it out to use on national ad buys.
The media focused on the CPC going over their cap, but what they should have focused on, was who paid for it. We did. Individual candidates could claim the amount as their own expense, meaning that they would get 75% of it back, in the form of a rebate from Elections Canada.
$777,000 of the scheme was paid for by the Canadian public.
One Quebec candidate only raised about $1,500.00 and spent a bit less than that, yet received a rebate of almost $15,000.00
The Conservatives dragged this through court, adding to our financial burden, and eventually plead guilty; settling for a much smaller penalty than the actual proceeds from the scam.
In other words, they got away with it.
2. Implement Fixed Election Dates
In 2008, Stephen Harper broke his own fixed election date, dropping the writ a year early to shut down committees, investigating the "In and Out". The Opposition parties thought they had more time for candidate selection, while the CPC had already secretly put all of their candidates in place.
There is some talk that they may do this again, calling for an election perhaps in the Spring.
3. Cut the GST
They did keep their promise on this one, but unfortunately, it was the wrong promise to keep, and most economists agree. We have lost an enormous amount of revenue that could have been put toward healthcare, which is now on life support; infrastructure, etc.
4. Help Parents With Childcare
This one was added to their platform because we were finally going to get a National daycare plan and the Conservatives knew that it was something that most Canadians wanted. Instead they implemented the $100.00 per month Universal Tax Credit which only covers children under six and is taxable.
They created not one single daycare spot, despite also promising 100,000.
5. Cut Patient Wait Time For Medical Procedure
Another empty promise. According to The Canadian Wait Time Alliance's 2014 report card:
For the past two years the Wait Time Alliance (WTA) has reported a worrisome trend of little to no progress in reducing wait times for a range of necessary medical procedures in Canada.
They note that some provinces are making progress, with Ontario leading in the initiative, but clearly the Harper government has not kept its promise.
6. Crack Down on Crime
This promise was for their base, who see a bogeyman around every corner. However, Canada's crime rate was already at the lowest it's ever been and this government's new crime bills will cost Canadians billions of dollars.
7. Strengthen National Unity
The government's latest decision to go ahead with the Northern Gateway Pipeline, will create additional civil unrest, that has come to define our country in the past eight years. The unnecessary attack against a legal Coalition, arbitrary proroguing of Parliament when debates threaten the government and the enormous human rights violations during the G20 in Toronto, will be part of Stephen Harper's legacy.
8. Advance Our Interests on the World Stage
Canada's international reputation has taken a nose dive since Harper came to power in 2006.
Standing up for Canada? Really? I think I'd prefer it if they just sat down
Now that Stephen Harper has his majority, he has been pushing through the Reform Party agenda at lightening speed.
If you want to know what that agenda looks like, read anything written on the Reformers from 1987-1999. Stephen Harper drafted their policy, 2/3 of it cribbed from the National Citizens Coalition handbook.
If you don't want to read the books, watch the Tea Party debates. Mass deregulation, attacks on the poor, attacks on women's rights and gay rights, religious fundamentalism, law and order for corporate America, everyone packing heat in the name of vigilante justice .... it's all there and then some.
What Harper may not have anticipated, however, was Canadians fighting back.
We are not taking the demolishing of gun control lightly, especially given the mean spirit in which it is being forced on us. The Reformers are not only going against the wishes of the police, and the Canadian public who fought so hard to keep it, but they are also stifling debate in future governments, by destroying all records.
The environment is now back in the news, and climate change once again a key issue. The Harperites don't believe in the science of climate change, so instead have spent the last five years and millions of our dollars, launching a denial campaign. I heard a Tea Party politician recently suggest that we shouldn't worry about it because God promised Noah that there would be no more floods.
I feel better already.
Wheat farmers in the West have launched a campaign to raise awareness to the devastation that the abolishment of the Canadian Wheat Board will have on their farms.
In Brandon Manitoba, they dumped a pile of grain in front of Conservative MP Merv Tweed's constituency office. In Saskatchewan they straddled a railway crossing, symbolic of Harper telling farmers to get on his multinational corporation train.
After suggesting that "Bilingualism" was "the god that failed", Canadians instead have recently told our little dictator, that bilingualism is vital to Canada's future. "47.5 per cent feel that bilingualism is “important” and 22.3 per cent feel it is “somewhat important”. A total of 8.1 per cent think it is “somewhat unimportant” and 19.2 per cent think it is “unimportant”." Pushing English speaking only appointments is not a smart move.
Canadians rejected the Reformers at the ballot box, and the Conservative Party of Canada is still the same old Reform Party. They are now in a position where they no longer have to pretend to be anything other than Reform, so look for a continued assault on Canadian values.
Jim Flaherty and Mike Duffy have been in Kingston Ontario recently, leading ghost walks, a popular attraction. Both brought up Sir John A. MacDonald, as if they had something to do with their party.
Sir John A. would have hated these guys, because they are the antithesis of everything he stood for. A strong central government and independence from the United States. Kingstonians are smart enough to know that. We have a Liberal MP, Ted Hsu; a Liberal MPP, John Gerretson; and our progressive and foreword thinking mayor, Mark Gerretson, is the MPP's son.
Nanos did a poll recap for October and under leadership scores, Harper is down 17 points, Bob Rae up 10.8. Nycole Turmel is down slightly (by 3 points) and Elizabeth May up almost 9.
Harper might want to rethink his agenda. Not that he will. The arguments of American conservatism are iron clad. He couldn't change course now even if he wanted to.
But it was during an election campaign and nothing he ever says during an election campaign is true. (or any other time for that matter)
However, in September of 2008 while floating around in his bubble, hot on the campaign trail, he lambasted the Liberals for not wanting to raise penalties to polluters.
Harper attacked the opposition, saying that under the previous Liberal government, penalties on industrial polluters were commonly as low as $4,000 and none ever exceeded $50,000. "This was, quite simply, a national disgrace," Harper said. Harper said the Conservative plan creates "sensible, realistic" measures that would hold polluters responsible for damaging the environment.
But wait, here's the clincher:
"For the first time in more than a decade, this country actually has an environmental policy," he said.
Stop laughing. It was probably hot inside that bubble. Mr. "Colossal Fossil" may have been suffering from heat stroke.
But now that the Oil Sands emissions are set to triple, will he fine them heavily? Will he give them a stern talking to? Will Jim Prentice shave his head and grow breasts?
But how do you get a failing grade on a class you never participated in?
More than three out of four leading Canadian bureaucrats, scientists and industry leaders believe the Harper government is missing the boat on "greening" the economy and adopting the wrong policies to address climate change, according to a new international study.
The survey of 5,109 senior stakeholders from government, industry and academia was conducted by McAllister Opinion Research and is one of the largest studies of its kind to assess the opinions of leading government and professional experts.
Out of 4,282 Canadian experts who participated in the survey, which also included U.S. and European experts, 77 per cent rated Canada's efforts at addressing climate change as poor or very poor, while 75 per cent had the same opinion about the country's performance in developing a green economy. The survey results also contrast with recent federal government policies to cancel measures supporting energy efficiency and renewable energy in favour of promoting new technologies that bury greenhouse gas emissions underground.
Clearly not having embarrassed us enough by winning the Colossal Fossil award at Copenhagen, our new and improved "go green" dictator is pulling out all the stops to make Canada look like complete idiots for the G8 and G20.
The international media is having a ball lampooning us and I'm sure many in the foreign press are looking forward to visiting "fake lake" just so they can share our incompetence with their readers.
And leaders of other countries will be able to use this as a benchmark for decades. "We may waste taxpayer's money, but remember Canada in 2010?" They'll be able to get away with anything.
Conservative ministers argue the government would be remiss if it didn’t try to sell Muskoka as a tourist destination to the 3,000-odd international journalists trapped covering the summits from Toronto. True, but do the math — for the cost of the fake lake, the government could have given every foreign journalist a free weekend in the real Muskoka. But that’s not the end of fiscal follies summit-style. Down the hall from Loonie Lake in the Toronto media centre, taxpayers are being hit up yet again, this time for something called “The Living Wall.” Summit organizers are contracting a massive wall of pre-cultivated plants that come with their own irrigation system.
This, we are told in government documents, will be the G20 summit’s “signature environmental project.” ... (Speaking of legacy, Toronto taxpayers will have to take care of this vertical flowerbed for the next century). How much The Living Wall will end up costing Canadian taxpayers is anyone’s guess. With two weeks to go before the structure has to be in full bloom, the summit management office sent us a note saying it still had no cost estimates for the project. Likely translation: The bill for this thing is too outrageous for publication.
I hope this fake lake has a fake bridge so that we can all jump off it.
... taxpayers are shelling out $207,000 for 15 of what have to be the world’s most expensive solar lights to illuminate the pathways at Deerhurst Resort, where the eight leaders are staying for one night. While it is hard to believe this five-star resort had no path lights of its own, the federal contract assures us “this signature environmental project will contribute to the overall greening of the G8 summit.” And when the leaders have left the next day, the contractors have to dismantle the six-metre lights, and reinstall them somewhere in the nearby town of Huntsville. Your tax dollars at work over and over.
From Colossal Fossil to Colossal Idiot. I'm so proud.
Though Stephen Harper could make an Olympic event out of avoiding the Canadian media, he will now and then talk to the foreign press, if he thinks we'll never find out.
During his recent visit to Korea, Bloomberg Press reported that he stated he would use his position with the G20 to convince nations to put the economy above the environment.
Of course, he has no intention of putting our own economic recovery ahead of his own self interests, but that's a story for another time (stay tuned. I'm working on an update with videos, songs and dancing girls. OK, no dancing girls, but there will be singing and video)
Tomorrow is the notional deadline for countries to fill in the blanks on the Copenhagen agreement on climate change by stating their targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
To be clear, each country can establish its own mitigation targets, and does not have to say how they will be achieved. Canada is expected to maintain its previously announced target of a 20-per-cent reduction below 2006 levels by 2020. There's no requirement to announce a longer-term target of, say, a 70-per-cent reduction by 2050 ....
2. And then former Reformer, columnist, and now stand up comic; Monte Solberg, is suggesting that Harper is now a conservationist. Hee, hee. He'll kill them with that act.
It is a little known fact that the Harper government has already made a great start on protecting some of our best habitat. Their $225-million Natural Conservation Areas Program has worked through the Nature Conservancy of Canada and dozens of conservation groups to preserve millions of acres of wilderness.
Every province and territory has seen important habitat receive protection, including the Great Bear Rainforest and the Nahanni National Park Reserve. In particular, vast swaths of the north have been set aside by the government to protect animals like the bowhead whale.
3. But the most disturbing story of all, comes from the CBC:
CBC News has learned that 16 Canadian lakes are slated to be officially but quietly "reclassified" as toxic dump sites for mines. The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland.
Environmentalists say the process amounts to a "hidden subsidy" to mining companies, allowing them to get around laws against the destruction of fish habitat ....
It has become very alarming the way that the Harper government has silenced it's critics.
From early on it was pretty clear that Baird as environmental minister would follow the same path as Rhona Ambrose. They weren't interested in the facts. You do as you're told and shut your mouth.
This also fits in with their twisted mentality that if you're educated and an expert in your field, you will be marginalized as a 'university type' or 'elitist' of the 'chattering classes'.
Is this how you advance a nation and plan for the jobs of tomorrow, by silencing our experts? It would appear that Harper and his henchmen do. Things have gotten worse, and Jim Prentice proved to be no better than Baird and Ambrose.
Welcome to Pravda Ca-Na-Da!
'Muzzle' Placed On Federal Scientists Environment Canada has "muzzled" its scientists, ordering them to refer all media queries to Ottawa where communications officers will help them respond with "approved lines." By The Vancouver Sun February 1, 2008
Environment Canada has "muzzled" its scientists, ordering them to refer all media queries to Ottawa where communications officers will help them respond with "approved lines."The new policy, which went into force in recent weeks and sent a chill through the department research divisions, is designed to control the department's media message and ensure there are no "surprises" for Environment Minister John Baird and senior management when they open the newspaper or turn on the television, according to documents obtained by Canwest News Service.
"Just as we have 'one department, one website' we should have 'one department, one voice'," says a PowerPoint presentation from Environment Canada's executive management committee that's been sent to department staff. It laments that there has been "limited coordination of messages across the country" and how "interviews sometimes result in surprises to minister and senior management." ...
And then when 'Jimmy do nothing' tried to selvage his reputation with photo-ops of his smugness next to his U.S. counterparts, they said no way. I can't imagine any delegates from any other country wanting to have their picture taken with Canada.
COPENHAGEN -- The federal government was stung on Monday by a sophisticated hoax that made it appear the Canadian delegation had publicly committed to bold emission reduction targets and tens of billions in new aid to help African nations.
An American social advocacy group told media organizations they were responsible for the fake news releases that set Canadians at the Copenhagen climate conference abuzz late on Monday.
Activists calling themselves the Yes Men said they sent out an initial phoney news release, which laid out the supposed new Canadian targets and action plan.
That email was followed by others, one of which appeared to be a government indictment of the first hoax -- which stated Canada's standing with the international business community had been damaged, and the Canadian government would "seek the full measure of legal recourse against these criminals under Danish and international law."
Another hoax news release had the Ugandan delegation at the international climate change talks reacting with elation to Canada's news.
The news releases were posted on a fake Environment Canada website, and the first appeared on real-looking, but bogus, Wall Street Journal and United Nations Conference of the Party sites.
Falsely quoting federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice, the first hoax release said the Canadian government is setting binding emissions reductions targets of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and at least 80% by 2050. The release said that is "in line with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and approaching the levels demanded by the African Group."
The release also committed Canada to eventually spending up to 5% of its Gross Domestic Product to help developing countries adapt to climate change and develop alternative energy sources.
The bogus news release said Canada would send Africa $13-billion in 2010, the first year of the commitment period.
In reality, Canada is still committed to reducing greenhouse gases by 20% below 2006 levels by 2020. And Ottawa has not yet made any firm funding commitment to developing countries.
Every day of the conference, which runs Dec. 7-18, Ottawa has been lambasted for not setting more ambitious targets and failing to meet Kyoto Protocol obligations.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Mr. Prentice dismissed the hoax.
"My focus is the negotiations," the minister said. "Certainly there are many things going on the periphery of those negotiations, and you know, some of them are undesirable. And there are other things that will continue to happen that will be undesirable, including press releases that are a hoax."
The hoax also led to a heated dispute between government spokesman Dimitri Soudas and Equiterre founder Steven Guilbeault, a climate change activist who Mr. Soudas accused of being the source of the hoax.
Mr. Guilbeault maintains he had nothing to do with it.
"I have nothing to hide," he said, adding he has been up front with his view that Canada has weak climate change policies. He has demanded an apology from the government.
Soudas responded to the hoax in an e-mail, saying "more time should be dedicated to playing a constructive role instead of childish pranks."
Gerald Butts, president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund Canada, said the hoax is not a tactic he would endorse, but it's one that made him laugh.
"It's going to be pretty effective in pointing out what a gap there is between what the government is putting on the table and what people want," Mr. Butts said.
Speaking later in the day, Mr. Guilbeault said he is also offended because the Canadian government accused him of being unpatriotic, due to his criticism of its policies.
"It's scandalous," said Guilbeault. "It seems like we've lost freedom of speech in Canada."
With Harper promising one thing and doing the exact opposite, Canada continues to be an embarrassment; not only at Copenhagen, but around the world; as we are seen as the new Bush Administration.
Ottawa plays foul with number game Canada's emissions have been soaring and it's easier to cut from a high level than a low level Eric Reguly December 11, 2009
The Harper Conservatives like to think they have healthy, hands-off approach to business: Let the markets weed out the good from the bad. It's a nice philosophy.
It's also one that's conveniently ignored by the Tories when they see fit. Case in point: At the stroke of a pen in the lead-up to the Copenhagen summit on climate change, the government's fiddling with one number, and one number only, instantly created a new list of potential industrial winners and losers.
The number in question is 1990 - the base year for reporting carbon emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. The government changed to 2006, to serve as the new base year for any post-Kyoto treaty. When Canada drones on about its pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 - an impressive figure, it seems - it's talking about a 20-per-cent reduction from three years ago, not 19 years ago. Canada's emissions have been soaring and it's easier to cut from a high level than a low level.
Leaving aside the dubious morality of the date switch, the 2006 base year has thrust a wedge into industrial Canada. On one side are the industries whose emissions have been shooting up in recent years. No prize for guessing that this group would include the oil sands and the power generation companies. The 2006 base year is a godsend for them; if they had to cut 20 per cent from the 1990 level, they'd file for bankruptcy tomorrow.
On the other side are the chumps who made most of their efficiency gains before 2006. They know there is truth in the saying: No good deed goes unpunished.
This group would include the pulp and paper companies, the chemical companies, some refineries and a few manufacturers. At the time, they weren't concerned so much about preventing the planet from burning alive; they were responding to brutal domestic and international competition.
The pleasant byproduct of their efficiency and automation campaigns was lower energy use, which saved money and translated into lower emissions. The Forest Products Association of Canada claims its pulp and paper members have brought down emissions by 57 per cent since 1990, equivalent to 10 times Canada's (unmet) Kyoto targets.
Now look what's happened. Harper & Co. rolled into town and realized Canada couldn't possibly meet its Kyoto target - in fact, emissions climbed 26 per cent between 1990 and 2007. So they fixed the problem by scratching out 1990 and writing in 2006. In other words, the industries that already made the bulk of their efficiency gains will be asked to do it all over again, because Canada has now agreed to cut from a base year in which emissions were much higher.
This is why the oil sands players are laughing and the pulp and paper companies are not.
Another hurting party is the Ontario government, which years ago agreed to mothball its coal-fired electricity plants, one of the biggest sources of carbon dioxide in the land. Ontario should have waited. It now has to fight to get credit for carbon reductions that it had agreed to make a long time ago, before anyone had heard of Copenhagen.
Of course, using the new base year to divide the country into winners and losers is not this simple, because the industries that behaved well on the efficiency front will argue that they are being unfairly punished. They are right. They will say that the 20-per-cent emissions reduction target promised by the government should not be applied evenly across every industrial sector.
They will also argue that Canada is not an island and that any reductions should take international rivalry into account. The pulp and paper companies compete fiercely with Scandinavian, Brazilian and Chinese players. If the Brazilians cut, say, 5 per cent, and the Canadian are forced into a 10-per-cent reduction, the Canadians are effectively transferring wealth to the Brazilians.
They will face a formidable foe - the oil sands. The impression among the 192 countries at the Copenhagen summit is that the Canadian government will do anything to protect northern Alberta's filthy monster. If the feds' love for the industry goes undiminished, the industries that already made the bulk of their efficiency gains face a gruelling war. By definition, continued high oil sands' emissions have to be offset by lower emissions in the rest of industrial Canada.
In short, the feds have created a huge mess for themselves. While they have a new base year and a new emissions target, they have nothing resembling a plan to reach that target. There is no carbon cap-and-trade system in place, no market price for carbon, no real idea how technology will be used or financed to ensure efficiency gains. They don't know how to deal with the industries that were put at a disadvantage by shifting the base year.
The Canadian government has a shabby image in Copenhagen. It may soon have a shabby image among the Canadian firms that think free passes for some should not come with punishment for others.
While we are hoping that our government does the right thing in Copenhagen, it would appear that it may be the same old, same old. They seem intent on embarrassing us, and further destroying our country and our planet.
Simply put, they do not believe in the science of climate change, and as such have taken on board deniers and think tanks that are fossil fuel friendly.
A recent poll reveals that Canadians want this government to step up. They do want them to simply hook their wagon to the United States, but to come up with a viable plan to address this important issue. I'm not holding my breath because so far they are off to a bad start.
Canada has been awarded the first Fossil of the Day “award” at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. “Canada garnered today’s award for its unwavering commitment to stand firm in its inaction throughout these negotiations,” a media release states. The summit, COP15 for short, opened today (December 7) and is scheduled to run through to December 18.
We've also learned that the situation for those living downstream from the tar sands, is worse than suspected.
EDMONTON - Levels of toxic chemicals in the Athabasca watershed are up to 50 times higher downstream of oilsands development, a new University of Alberta study has found. The research, spearheaded by renowned aquatics ecologist David Schindler, also estimates that Suncor and Syncrude deposit the equivalent of an oil spill’s worth of bitumen into the surrounding environment each year.
And that this decade has been the warmest on record.
The head of the World Meteorological Organziation, a United Nations weather agency, said Tuesday that this decade will "very likely" turn out to be the warmest on record going back to 1850. Michel Jarraud, the WMO's secretary general, added that 2009 will likely be about the fifth-warmest year on record. The WMO released it findings on the second day of the Copenhagen climate conference. Delegates at the 192-nation conference, which opened Monday, are trying to reach a new agreement on controlling greenhouse gas emissions.
With all the nonsense about 'Climategate' my gal Elizabeth May read all 3000 stolen emails and broke them down. Conspiracy theorists will still spin this, but remember they are not climate scientists. I can't even tell you how much respect I have for this woman. Yet we're stuck with Jim Prentice.
Elizabeth May: A Response to Comments on East Anglia Emails December 7, 2009
Last week, in response to the hacked emails at East Anglia, Elizabeth May took the time to read every single email.
Providing context and analysis, her report goes a long way, giving us more than just the cherry picked nuggets that skeptics have taken out of context and doggedly been holding on to.
Here, she follows up with a response to the comments on her original posting...
DeSmogBlog comments require response:
I am a neophyte in the blogosphere. The first time something I have written for the Green Party site has been widely picked up was my article on the East Anglia scientists and the stolen emails. James Hoggan, Kevin Grandia, and Richard Littlemore do a powerful lot of good on “DeSmogBlog” and through James’ and Richard’s new book Climate Cover-Up.
Posting my CRU email blog on the DeSmogBlog site got it some attention, including in the New York Times. Reading some of the posted comments led me to want to rebut and share that rebuttal with Greens. You may need these points to do your own sand-bagging against the rising tide of skeptic/contrarian propaganda. Here is a sample of the nonsense with my response…
Ms May, with all due respect this is pure nonsence.(sic) If you read the entire set how come you missed the emails of threats to those at ClimateAudit? How come you missed the one where they cannot account for the current cooling? Or how about the MANY where they conspire to black ball journals that keep publishing skeptical papers, get certain editors removed, and changing the peer reviewed process?
Or how to change the data mixing unrelated data, that hides the decline the treering data showed after 1961? How come you did not comment on these? JR Wakefield
Thanks to JR Wakefield, (although the message “with all due respect” would ring more sincerely if your headline had not been, “Lizzy, you missed the juicy stuff.”)
My point is there is no “juicy stuff.” There are intemperate messages from people writing in private about the levels of frustration created by years of harassment. None of us like to be besieged. Few of us have had to endure the levels of targeted harassment of the scientists in the CRU group at East Anglia.
There is one message where a colleague expresses concern that the models do not seem to account for the where the heat forcing of the trapped solar energy is going.
The discussion is started when Dr. Stephen Schneider, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, expresses concern that the BBC is mis-leading the public on current science:
Any of you want to explain decadal natural variability and signal to noise and sampling errors to this new "IPCC Lead Author" from the BBC? As we enter an El Ninoyear and as soon, as the sunspots get over their temporary--presumed--vacation worth afew tenths of a Watt per meter squared reduced forcing, there will likely be anotherdramatic upward spike like 1992-2000. I heard someone--Mike Schlesinger maybe??--waswilling to bet a lot of money on it happening in next 5 years??
Meanwhile the past 10 years of global mean temperature trend stasis still saw what, 9 of the warmest inreconstructed 1000 year record and Greenland and the sea ice of the North in big retreat?? Some of you observational folks probably do need to straighten this out as my student suggests below.
Translation: BBC has seized on one year “cooling” and ignores the issue of time lags in the global climate system. As I tried to point out in the Munk Debates, climate modelling is not about a one year at a time climb in temperatures. It is significant at the level of decades.
You have to grasp time lags. The GHG we release today will have an impact on the climate for the next 100 years. The system is nearly infinitely large and complex, with land heating faster than oceans. As well, there can be confounding factors -- sunspots on 11 year cycles or El Nino (referred to in the East Anglia emails as “ENSO” El Nino Southern Oscillations) that heat things up, volcanoes (like Mount Pinatubo or sulphate and particulates from burning coal that ironically) can act to mask the warming trend. These impacts are temporary and the climate models seek to screen them and see what anthropogenic forcing is doing to the climate. All the models for decades have shown that it is impossible to produce the warming trends the planet has seen when you exclude anthropogenic forcing.
Dr. Kevin Trenberth from the Boulder, Colorado National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) replied to Schneider. He has been for some time interested in better methods to account for the physics of the issues: where does the heat go when trapped at the earth’s surface by warming gases.
His work is described on the NARC website as “being used to validate coupled atmosphere-ocean climate models and understanding heat flows that are so important in climate change. He has continued to improve estimates of the global hydrological cycle. A particular focus is on changes in precipitation type, frequency, intensity and amount, and thus on how droughts and floods, and climate extremes change.”
In other words, in the following email, he is promoting is own area of research, not attacking the fundamentals of climate science.
The oft-quoted email sentence from his message of October 13, 2009 said:
Dr. Michael Mann, Director of the Earth Sciences Centre at Pennsylvania State, replied the next day, Kevin, that's an interesting point. As the plot from Gavin I sent shows, we can easilyaccount for the observed surface cooling in terms of the natural variability seen inthe CMIP3 ensemble (i.e. the observed cold dip falls well within it). So in that sense,we can "explain" it. But this raises the interesting question, is there something goingon here w/ the energy & radiation budget which is inconsistent with the modes ofinternal variability that leads to similar temporary cooling periods within the models.
I'm not sure that this has been addressed--has it?Dr. Tom Wigley, a senior scientist in the Climate and Global Dynamics Division, also at NCAR, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) wrote:Dear all, At the risk of overload, here are some notes of mine on the recent lack of warming. I look at this in two ways. The first is to look at the difference between the observed and expected anthropogenic trend relative to the pdf for unforced variability. The second is to remove ENSO, volcanoes and TSI variations from the observed data.Both methods show that what we are seeing is not unusual. The second method leaves a significant warming over the past decade.These sums complement Kevin's energy work.Kevin says ... "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the momentand it is a travesty that we can't".
I do not agree with this. Tom.(Emphasis added)
Other scientists point out that we are still not clear on how many sulfates are being emitted, particularly in the rapidly industrializing developing world. It is clear that sulfates (particulates) provide a cooling effect, even while carbon dioxide levels keep growing. In another post, the scientists discuss why NASA results show higher global temperature than the Hadley results from the UK. One conclusion is that the Hadley data does not have as many Arctic data points. Warming in the Arctic is 2-3 times faster than the global average.
By the next day, October 14, Trenberth writes that he is not challenging anyone, just making a point about the fact his area of research needs more attention.
In an open letter defending the East Anglia scientists (December 3, 2009), he wrote:
I am proud of what Phil and I did for Chapter 3 in AR4, and it is disappointing that the IPCC has not been more forthright in standing up for its procedures.
Dr. Trenberth’s private email is being distorted and touted globally as some sort of “smoking gun”, or to hear the industry-funded Pat Michaels “a mushroom cloud.”
There is no “smoking gun” here. It reads, as do all the email threads on closer examination, as scientists exchanging candid, off-hand, messages. They know each other well and often speak in short-hand. Clearly Dr. Trenberth is NOT arguing that the models have been cooked up to avoid a climate cooling trend. Nor is he denying that there is an urgent need to reduce GHG. He wants to see a clearer understanding of the energy dynamics on the planet.
Sadly, I see it has taken three pages of text to counter the one sentence “How come you missed the one where they cannot account for the current cooling?”
For JR’s other points, forgive me for just replying without copying and pasting in all the emails. There was no effort to “blackball journals.” There WAS a sad realization that one journal, in particular, had ceased to exercise the appropriate level of scientific rigour. It was publishing papers that could not have passed peer review anywhere else. The CRU emails did no object to the publication of the paper because the scientists disliked the authors or their conclusions, but because obvious and large mistakes had been made. “Shoddy work” was an apt description.
The journal, Energy and Environment, was discussed on a number of emails, especially after it published a terrible paper by Baliunas and Soon. The group of scientists, whose emails make up most of what was stolen, decided to put a serious peer-reviewed effort into debunking that article. The Energy and Environment Journal is not a top journal. It is not included in Journal Citation Reports which covers the top 6,000 journals. The name of the editor rang a bell.
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, who is mentioned by the scientists concerned about the sloppiness of the work, was the source of a key footnote in Lomborg’s Skeptical Environmentalist. Lomborg claimed that negotiations to arrest climate change were driven “not, as you may have thought, [by] the prospect of possibleglobal warming” but by windmill manufacturers, climate researchers and other “institutionalized interests.” His source? Solely her name. No published article. Nothing. Just Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen.
The data problems plague people in many areas of science. Techy issues with computers and managing different platforms etc could drive a sane man mad. If this were a serious problem at East Anglia, clearly other scientists would not have the same results using their own systems and intellectual property to put the raw data into computer friendly formats.
The key point here is that the raw data (at least 95% of it) is available in the public domain, and has been for years. Independent scientists all around the world, sliced and diced in a wide variety of ways, keep pointing out that the planet has never had as much carbon dioxide in one million years, nor has it been this warm in the last 1,000 years.
Turning to another critic of my post:
In this instance it appears that this case will certainly be changing from Hackergate back to Climategate. As it turns out, the source of the information in the e-mails and the data files at CRU is an employee at CRU Hadley. This individual is now in contact with Steve McIntyre over at ClimateAudit. The mole has even shared a highly sensitive data file that McIntyre requested under British FOIA laws but was denied. The data file contains all of the station data from around the world (unaltered) that McIntyre tried to get for quite some time.
To show how quickly this issue is disintegrating in the UK, the Met (the UK’s equivalent to the U.S. National Weather Service) is opening up all of their data and investigating the last 160 years of world temps de novo. This will take until sometime in 2012. That’s quite a while. In the mean time I am watching the sea ice data in the Arctic blow right past the last few years.
The sea ice returneth despite what you may have seen or heard on TV or radio. DJ
“The ice returneth?” That’s quite the claim. Quiksat imagery has shown a continuing of the dramatic trend towards thinning ice. Much of the multi year ice is now gone in the Arctic. Areal extent was a little larger than 2007 in both 2008 and 2009.
But, volume was way down and both 2008 and 2009. There was some hope, blown up by the ironically named “Friends of Science,” that a small recovery in annual ice would support some polar bears, but Dr. David Barber of University of Manitoba, made a voyage to check and found the whole area was like “swiss cheese,” or “rotten.”
The millions of square kilometres of disappearing Arctic ice are visible through satellite data.
Visible in photographs from outer space. So would you have us believe that those wily scientists at East Anglia has intercepted satellite images and doctored with the photos? Or maybe there are no satellites! Maybe they just use a sound studio outside Norwich and have a planet earth look-alike that they can film as though they were in space!
As for the idea that an “insider” stole the emails, I suppose anything is possible. But the credibility of this claim is more than a bit undermined by alleging the “mole” to be “an employee at CRU Hadley.” Fascinating that. CRU is the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia located in Norwich. No connection whatsoever to the Hadley Centre of the British Government in Exeter. (Established by the wild-eyed radical, Margaret Thatcher.)
None of this means that we should be dismayed there is an investigation underway. Failing to hold a full investigation will only allow the climate denier crowd and the Fossil Fuel Lobby to attack the science and use a few intemperate, overly human outbursts by good and honest men, to hurt the legitimacy of their work. But we should be prepared.
There will be more emails stolen. More scientists attacked. We cannot afford to sit back and wait for the investigation of the CRU emails to be completed. Nor should we think for one moment that a full investigation of the CRU that exonerates the scientists will end the matter. The climate denial-contrarian effort is well-funded and fuelled with rampant paranoia, fears of global government (how do we get them interested in the WTO instead?), conspiracy theories and a deeply held commitment to NOT accept the clear science.
There is no way to reach those people, but there are some legitimately confused members of the public. They want someone to be clear about what it going on. That is our job as Greens.
Defend scientists who have done nothing wrong. Work for an effective treaty at Copenhagen. Ensure that we avoid runaway global warming by demanding cuts sufficient to, at least, stop the rise in global GHG by 2015-2016.
We have a lot of work to do. Sadly, now, some of our time must be spent in rear-guard actions to protect the truth.
