The summer of 2017 was an extraordinarily deadly one for North Atlantic right whales, a species already hovering on the brink of extinction.

Investigations are ongoing into the cause of death of 15 right whales off the Atlantic Coast of Canada and the U.S., although it’s not too soon to point the finger at human activity, Megan Leslie, vice president of oceans for WWF-Canada, told DeSmog Canada.

“I’ve been frustrated by reports that we don’t know what’s killing these whales,” Leslie said.

“We do. We know it’s human activity. There haven’t been necropsies on all of the whales, but the ones where there have been it’s clearly been blunt force trauma from ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.”

As widely reported, a bizarre spat of ten whales were found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in June and July. Since then another five whales have been found floating dead or washed ashore in Canada and the U.S.

There are an estimated 500 right whales, which can grow to be 50 feet long, left in the entire world.

That means the deaths represent three per cent of the global population killed in only one summer.

It’s completely unprecedented.

‘Immediate Measures’ Needed to Save Species

“It is hard to overstate how serious this problem is,” Leslie, who was the former federal NDP environment critic and MP for Halifax, said.

“People have been looking at how to rebuild this population and now with these deaths I’m quite worried that it’s no longer a discussion about how to rebuild the population, but even how to just save it.”

The federal government has introduced some new rules in response, including closing a snow crab fishery, continuing surveillance flights and implementing a temporary mandatory slow-down in the area by about one-third of average speeds.

On Aug. 30, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Dominic LeBlanc announced the government is developing a new set of rules for commercial fishing gear and practices to help prevent deadly entanglements.

But conservationists fear it might not be enough.

ICYMI: Industry Sways Feds to Allow Offshore Drilling in Laurentian Channel Marine Protected Area

“These immediate measures are desperately needed,” said Alexandra Barron, an ocean conservation manager for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“However, our position is we need to start managing these waters much more proactively and considering the needs of endangered whales.”

North Atlantic right whale entangled in fishing ropes. Photo: NOAA News Archive 123110 via Flickr

Over 70 Per Cent of Right Whales Bear Scars from Fishing Entanglements

Right whales have been killed before in Canadian waters, but the average number of deaths was only 3.8 per year prior to 2017.

That means there’s been a potential tripling of whale casualties in a single year, a huge blow for a population that only recently rebounded from a dangerous low of under 300 whales in the 1990s.

A spokesperson for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) wrote in an e-mail that it takes scientists between six and eight weeks to receive complete results on cause of death for the whales following the necropsies and samples.

Leslie said one of the whales had been caught in fishing gear for two weeks before it died.

More than 70 per cent of North Atlantic right whales actually bear scars from such encounters.

However, due to the tragic death of a member of the Campobello Whale Rescue Team in July 2017 during a disentanglement, the DFO has temporarily suspended all disentanglement operations.

The WWF notes that between 1970 and 2006, humans were responsible of 48 per cent of the deaths of right whales, mostly due to ship strikes or entanglements.

Many Critical Habitats Still Unexplored

However, it’s less known why the whales have moved from the Bay of Fundy or off the coast of Nova Scotia to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where there’s considerably higher shipping traffic and more fishing gear.

There are some hypotheses around impacts of climate change and water temperatures, with the whales potentially following food sources. However, Barron said that right whales have been in the area and used the Gulf of St. Lawrence prior to this season. It’s difficult to draw any real conclusions without comprehensive coast-wide surveying, she said, in order to find out exactly where the whales might go.

Currently, Canada only has two designated areas of critical right whale habitat: the Grand Manan Basin and Roseway Basin. Barron said that by contrast, the U.S. has effectively designated their entire shelf waters throughout Maine and other northern states as critical habitat.

“We’re likely to see shifts in their movements in future years,” she said. “And we need to start mapping these areas of use and planning for that in the future.”

Between August 23 and 30, an expedition led by Oceana Canada used advanced exploration technology to survey much of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Robert Rangeley, director of science at Oceana Canada and key planner of the expedition, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that much of the region is still fairly uncharted, pointing to the American Bank (located just off the Gaspé Peninsula in the Quebec portion of the Gulf of St. Lawrence).

“It’s got this official designation as an area of interest for a Marine Protected Area,” he said. “But it’s never been explored. None of these areas have been explored with cameras. We don’t really know what’s down there.”

Such a current lack of knowledge obviously impedes the ability for the federal government to craft appropriate regulations to ensure the survival of right whales and other marine mammals.

3% of World’s #Endangered #RightWhales Died This Summer, Mostly in Canada’s Unprotected Waters https://t.co/duH3p5vLHv #cdnpoli @DLeblancNB

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 1, 2017

Network of Marine Protected Areas Could Help Save Right Whales

And that’s where marine protected areas (MPAs) are supposed to come in.

As previously reported by DeSmog Canada, the federal government is aiming to protect 10 per cent of marine areas by 2020. However, proposed regulations for the Laurentian Channel MPA in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are under serious fire as they currently allow for potential offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling.

Conservationists suggest that a critical way to protect right whales is via the MPA network.

ICYMI: Canada Has Three Years to Increase Protected Areas by 60% And, Um, It’s Not Going to Be Easy

“These processes have been to this point very, very slow,” Barron said. “We need to start moving more quickly on these processes and identifying those potential areas where we may see whales: even if we’re not seeing them this year, that might be where they go next year, and we need to start making sure those sites are properly protected for the whales long into the future.”

Allowing oil and gas activities in the region would result in a series of catastrophic impacts, including increased marine traffic and chances of ship strikes, destruction of zooplankton and other food sources, contamination of food webs with toxic waste and a much higher chance of oil spills.

Unless the federal government protects such areas with strict regulations, there’s no real guarantee that this year’s death toll will be anomalous in the future.

“The deck is stacked against these whales,” Leslie concluded. “There’s so much coming at them, we’ve just got to figure out a way to help them survive.”

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The federal government’s anti-terrorism bill C-51 was the subject of heated parliamentary debate recently after revelations that the RCMP characterized pipeline opponents and First Nations as “violent anti-petroleum extremists” in a leaked internal intelligence report.

NDP environment critic Megan Leslie argued the leaked RCMP document, which labeled Canada’s environment movement as “a growing and violent threat to Canada’s security,” displays precisely how bill C-51 could be used to deploy anti-terrorism legislation against environmental activism deemed to be “unlawful.”

Because protests carried out without proper municipal permits can be deemed “unlawful” the proposed bill has serious implications for environmental and aboriginal groups, Leslie said.

“A lot hinges on that word ‘unlawful,’ ” she said during a recent question period in parliament.

“This is dangerous legislation, because if there is a wildcat strike or an occupy movement – an occupation of town property, such as the camps that we saw set up – that activity, under the eyes of CSIS or the current government, could potentially undermine the security of Canada without the right municipal permit, and it could all of a sudden be scooped up into this anti-terrorism legislation.”

“Every single word here matters,” Leslie said.

"Unlawful" Protest Potentially Deemed Terrorism in Bill C-51

In her argument, Leslie pointed to a recent analysis of the bill performed by Craig Forcese, national security expert and associate professor of law at the University of Ottawa.

In a recent piece Forcese agreed that even though the bill does not target democratic protest, there is room in the bill to pull participants of protest into the gambit of "security concerns."

“Under C-51,” he writes, ”the government will be able to share internally (and potentially externally) a lot more information about things that ‘undermine the security of Canada.’ That concept is defined extremely broadly – more broadly than any other national security concept in Canadian law. Yes, it can reach the subject matter of many democratic protest movements.”

Forcese also pointed to the fact that previous governments have avoided the dangers of limiting legitimate civil dissent to only "lawful" protest.

In fact, he writes, the very concerns raised in parliament now were on the table back in 2001 when the government first introduced a definition of “terrorist activity” in the original Antiterrorism Act.

The Act excluded “lawful” protest from the definition of terrorism but the term was eventually removed because of the undemocratic danger it posed to strikes and unpermitted protests.

“Given the experience in 2001 and the legal views expressed by the government of the day, we have to conclude that if the government continues to include the qualifier ‘lawful’ in its exceptions, it does so with its eyes wide open,” he writes.

Forcese warns that where protests deemed ‘unlawful’ overlap with other security concerns, such as critical infrastructure including pipelines, “democratic protest movements with tactics that do no square in every way with even municipal law may properly be the subject of CSIS investigation and possibly even disruption.”

He adds, “my point is this: when we craft national security law, we craft it to deter bad judgment. We do not craft it to be so sweeping and ambiguous that it must depend for its proper exercise in a democracy on perfect government judgment. Very few governments are perfect. And even if you think this one is, what about the next one?"

Anti-Terrorism Bill Targets More Than Just Terrorists

An editorial in the Globe and Mail also pointed to the danger of bill C-51, arguing the legislation does “much more than fight terrorism.”

The bill targets “activity that undermines the sovereignty, security or territorial integrity of Canada,” that includes “terrorism,” “interference with critical infrastructure” and “interference with the capability of the Government in relation to…the economic or financial stability of Canada.”

The authors of the editorial argue the new legislation creates another “class of security-underminer” that has implications for “environmental activists denounced as radicals.”

“If Bill C-51 passes, CSIS will be able to disrupt anything its political masters believe might be a threat,” they write.

Criminalizing Indigenous Dissent

NDP MP Niki Ashton said the bill is a clear attempt to “criminalize dissent.”

“As we know, indigenous peoples – First Nations, Métis, Inuit, or indigenous peoples in general – have often been at the forefront in fighting for what is important to them and, in many ways, what is important to all of us,” she said during question period.

“These activists, these leaders, these members of their communities are not terrorists and do not pose a danger to the lives of anyone.”

The problem with the legislation is clear, Ashton said, “it lumps legitimate dissent together with terrorism. Indigenous peoples have a right to seek environmental and social justice through protest, communication and activism. This bill would call that criminal. It would call that work terrorism.”

Ashton quoted Pam Palmater, a Mi’kmaq lawyer and activist with the Idle No More movement.

Palmater said Canadians and First Nations “as treaty and territorial allies” face a “threat to our collective future” with the breakdown in democracy and radical changes to Canada’s legislative landscape that have eliminated many of the nation’s environmental laws.

“Hundreds of thousands of people across Canada rose up against Bill C-45 – the large, unconstitutional omnibus bill pushed through Parliament without debate which threatened our lakes and rivers,” Palmater said.

“This time, the threat is personal – any one of us could go to jail for thinking or voicing our opinions. All of the rights, freedoms and liberties upon which Canadian democracy rests will be suspended with Bill C-51. This bill creates what has been described as Harper’s ‘Secret Police force’ with terrifying expanded powers.”

Ashton said she is “uncomfortable in principle and in practice with any one government body having this kind of unchecked control.” Ashton said under Bill C-51 CSIS will have the power to “surveil and target anyone they want.”

“Indigenous and environmental activists are afraid about what that could mean when they organize to protest a pipelines, when they communicate among themselves to reclaim territory that is theirs, and when they speak out in defence against the government in any way, which is their right to do.”

Indigenous rights and climate activist Clayton Thomas-Muller said the bill “is an abuse of democracy.”

“Our movements are about justice. To criminalize Indigenous dissent, then, is to repress Indigenous rights in Canada, and our responsibilities to protect the land.”

“We are transparent, open, base-driven movements that take a non-violent, peaceful direct action approach…The state is criminalizing Indigenous peoples who are acting within their right to exercise jurisdiction over their lands.”

“It is clearly about providing a right-of-way for the mining and energy sector,” he said.

Image Credit: Mark Klotz via Flickr

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Editor’s Note: This article is more than 9 years old. To get latest updates and news on the federal carbon tax, or carbon pricing, visit this page.

Last night Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his house band, the Van Cats, took to the stage at a Conservative Christmas Party in Ottawa. Seated at the keyboard, the Prime Minister warbled through a performance of the Guns n’Roses classic ‘Sweet Child of Mine.’

Less than 24 hour earlier that the Prime Minister was singing a different tune.

Earlier in the day, the Harper railed against the concept of carbon taxes and regulation of the fossil fuel industry during Question Period in the House of Commons. In response to questions from NDP environment critic Megan Leslie about the Conservative’s 2007 pledge to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, he replied:

“Under the current circumstances of the oil and gas sector, it would be crazy — it would be crazy economic policy to do unilateral penalties on that sector; we’re clearly not going to do that. …In fact, Mr. Speaker, nobody in the world is regulating their oil and gas sector. I would be delighted if they did. Canada would be there with them.”

All of the above are indeed words, but when used by the Prime Minister in this combination they give a result that’s completely and egregiously incorrect.

In reality, more than half of the world’s population lives in places where CO2 consumption/production is regulated in some form — including a large portion of Canada. Here’s a rundown:

Countries with National Carbon Taxes or Emission Trading Schemes:

· Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Ireland established national carbon taxes in 1990, 1991, 1991, 2002 and 2010, respectively.

· The Netherlands has taxed carbon since 1990. In 2007 it enacted a further tax on carbon-based packaging.

· Costa Rica’s carbon tax funds forest protections for indigenous communities. It began in 1997.

· Since 2001, Great Britain has charged a ‘climate change levy’ on industry, commerce and public sectors.

· The New Zealand Government set up an emissions trading scheme in 2008.

· India has charged a nationwide carbon tax on coal since 2010.

· Switzerland has both a carbon incentive tax and an emissions trading system.

· Since 2010, all new vehicle sales in South Africa have been subject to a carbon tax.

· In 2012 Mexico implemented a carbon tax on fossil fuel imports and sales.

· Japan’s carbon tax has been in effect since October 2012.

· In 2012, Australia instituted a groundbreaking, innovative carbon tax. However, it was repealed two years later by the newly-elected Conservative government, headed up by Stephen Harper’s protege, Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

· France began taxing carbon emissions from gas, heavy fuel oil and coal on April 1, 2014.

Regional Carbon Taxes or Emission Trading Schemes:

· China: Starting in 2013, the Chinese Government enacted emission trading schemes in the Guangdong province and cities of Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, the Hubei province and the city of Chongqing. After 2015, the government will work towards a nation-wide tax (potentially as part of its new partnership with the United States).

· United States: Starting in 2009, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont have traded emissions through a Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. California’s emissions trading scheme was instituted in 2013. Also in 2013, President Obama issued an executive order to strengthen the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate US power plants.

· Canada: Canada does not have a federal carbon tax, but Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia do. The latter’s carbon tax has been recognized as one of the most effective in the world.

Other countries or regions with pending carbon taxes or emission trading schemes under consideration or in the process of implementation:

· In 2018, Chile’s newly enacted climate pollution tax will take effect, levying a charge of $5/tonne of CO2 on 55 per cent of the nation’s emissions.

· Starting in 2015, The Republic of Korea will start an emissions trading scheme covering facilities producing more than 25,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – approximately 450 of the country’s largest emitters. A planned ‘smog tax’ on vehicle emissions has been pushed back to 2020.

· Starting in 2016, all new homes built in the United Kingdom are required to have zero emissions for heating, hot water, cooling and lighting.

· South Africa expects to begin its national carbon tax in 2016.

· Kazakhstan, Thailand, Taiwan, Brazil, the Ukraine and Turkey all have plans on carbon taxes or emission trading in various stages of consideration.

With a majority of nations at the UN Climate Talks in Lima agreeing to put wholesale elimination of fossil fuel energy by 2050 on the negotiating table, and crude oil prices dropping below $62 USD per barrel for the first time in five years, smart countries aren’t singing the praises of fossil fuels any longer.

They’re stepping up with regulations like their futures depend on it.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Canada will almost certainly not meet its international greenhouse gas emission reduction target by 2020 and doesn’t even have a plan showing how the nation might achieve its climate change goals, according to a blistering new report released Tuesday.

Julie Gelfand, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, said a climate change audit found current federal measures will have little effect on emissions by 2020, the year Canada committed under the Copenhagen Accord to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions 17 per cent below 2005 levels.

Gelfand said in her report that the government has introduced regulations in the transportation and electricity generation sectors.

She noted, however, that regulations in the oil and gas sector — where emissions are growing the fastest — are still not in place eight years after the government first indicated it would regulate this area.

“There is strong evidence that Canada will not meet its international 2020 greenhouse-gas-emission reduction target,” she said. “The federal government does not have an overall plan that maps out how Canada will achieve this target. Canadians have not been given the details about which regulations will be developed, when, nor what greenhouse gas reductions will be expected.”

"Canadians are being grossly misled if they think that this government has even the remotest intention of ever trying to achieve any greenhouse gas targets, let alone join the realm of civilized nations," Liberal environment critic John McKay said in response to the audit.

As DeSmog Canada has previously reported, Canada’s total lack of national climate legislation became international news after a major report highlighted its absence.

Gelfand added the federal government has also not provided the necessary coordination so that all levels of government, working together, can achieve the national target in six years’ time.

The report plays into the growing impression that Canada, often seen as a pariah internationally for its lack of climate change leadership, is too-heavily invested in the fossil fuel industry, especially in Alberta.

The Harper Government, which currently came under fire after Prime Minister Stephen Harper declined to attend the UN Climate Summit in New York City, recently released a public document to highlight Canada’s climate achievements. Critics called the document “Orwellian” for suggesting Canada had made climate progress.

Another audit found that joint Canada-Alberta monitoring projects looking at air, water and biodiversity need to be better integrated to understand the long-term environmental effects of oilsands development, including cumulative impacts.

“Among other questions, the government does not know what Environment Canada’s role will be in oil sands monitoring beyond March 2015,” Gelfand said.

“It has not made clear the rationale for what projects will be subject to environmental assessments, and I am concerned that some significant projects may not be assessed.”

Gelfand’s comments are in line with concerns raised by First Nations in the oilsands’ region, many of which are currently embroiled in legal battles against government and industry for permitting new projects without addressing cumulative impacts that negatively affect treaty rights.

A third audit of the Canadian Arctic revealed that many higher-risk areas are inadequately surveyed and charted with some maps and charts over 40 years old.

“I am concerned that there seems to be no overall vision of what the federal government intends to provide in this vast new frontier, in terms of modern charts, aids to navigation and icebreaker services, given the anticipated increase in vessel traffic.”

Gelfand added this year’s audits show that, despite some initiatives and progress in certain areas, there remain many unanswered questions.

“In many key areas that we looked at, it is not clear how the government intends to address the significant environmental challenges that future growth and development will likely bring about.”

In conclusion, she said Canadians expect the government to prepare for the future and that the difficulty of addressing climate change will only increase as the nation delays.

The environmental footprint of oilsands development is steadily increasing, Gelfand concluded, adding that increased Arctic shipping routes due to melting sea ice will create higher environmental risks.

NDP environment critic Megan Leslie said the results of the audit are “disappointing,” especially given the resource push in the north.

"We have delicate ecosystems in the Arctic. Further to that, there is a really small window right now of when we could actually do that cleanup. We've seen a lot of discussion about drilling in the Arctic and that's one of the major concerns is that if something were to happen, the ice comes pretty quickly,” she said.

“Is there enough time to even clean up the damage that could be done?"

Gelfand also noted an absence of preparatory knowledge. “In each case it is likely that a lack of action today will translate into higher costs tomorrow,” she stated.

Image Credit: Prime Minister Photo Gallery.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This article originally appeared on mikedesouza.com.

You may have seen this report in the Toronto Star about a mysterious end to a secretive group [an oil and gas pollution committee] that was created to draft new rules to reduce carbon pollution from oil and gas companies.

Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq was asked about the long-delayed rules for oil companies on Tuesday in the House of Commons by NDP environment critic Megan Leslie.

Aglukkaq responded by changing the topic.

“We have taken action on some of the largest sources of emissions in this country, the transportation and the electricity-generation sector,” said Aglukkaq in the Commons. “I’m also looking forward to taking part in the UN climate summit in New York next week to speak to Canada’s record in taking action on climate change.”

Leslie recommended that the federal government should “quit stalling” in addressing climate change.

“After seven years of the government’s broken promises to introduce greenhouse gas rules for the oil and gas sector Canadians are still waiting,” Leslie said.

“Now we hear that Environment Canada has stopped talking to the industry and the Alberta government altogether. In fact, the (federal) government-led committee hasn’t met since March 2013. When will this government quit stalling and when will we see the regulations?”

David McLaughlin, a former senior Conservative government staffer who later led a federal advisory panel on the environment and economy, said any delays in action would increase economic risks.

“Delay in tackling Canada’s top emitting source is short-term economic gain for long-term economic risk,” said McLaughlin, an adviser on sustainability issues at the University of Waterloo’s environment faculty who also served as chief of staff to former prime minister Brian Mulroney. “Market access will be more, not less, assured when Canada comes to grips with a carbon management plan for this sector.”

The latest comments coincided with a new international report – released by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate – that concluded countries could expand their economies by reducing carbon pollution.

Environment Canada estimated earlier this year that greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands increased by 307 per cent between 1990 and 2012. The carbon emissions were projected to grow a further 61 per cent before the end of the decade.

Scientists estimate that humans must reduce global emissions by up to 72 per cent in order to meet an international target, under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, of preventing global warming of more than two degrees Celsius.

In a written statement, Environment Canada confirmed that the group working on oil and gas regulations had stopped meeting in March 2013.

“Since that time, Environment Canada has been engaging provinces, industry and others to discuss the potential for GHG emission reductions from the oil and gas sector,” wrote spokesman Danny Kingsberry in the statement. “As discussions evolved there was a need to explore the specific circumstances and variation within the sector and across the country, resulting in a move away from the working group structure and toward more targeted discussions. Our engagement is continuing on many fronts.”

He added that it would be “premature” to comment specifically about what the group was examining, since the regulations were still under development.

Former environment minister Peter Kent had said in February 2013 that the government was “very close” to finalizing the oil and gas carbon pollution rules.

Here are some questions and answers about the committee:

Who was on the committee? Representatives from three oil and gas companies –Cenovus, CNRL and Suncor as well as the industry lobby group – the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers were on the committee along with representatives from the Alberta government and Environment Canada, which was leading its work.

How do we know about the committee? The existence of the committee of industry and government representatives – created to write rules for industry – was a secret until it was uncovered through records released under access to information legislation.

When was it created? According to internal records, the committee was created in the fall of 2011 and met approximately once every four weeks, until March 2013.

What was it working on when it stopped meeting? According to internal federal and provincial records, the committee had studied a series of options for new regulations.

Responding to questions from the Toronto Star, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers vice president of policy and performance, Alex Ferguson, said it has “consistently” advocated for “balanced carbon policy” that consider the views of investors or would-be investors.

“We believe that government(s) need to move forward on this topic, and we have consistently advocated that they do so with careful and thorough consideration of all consequences – intended and unintended,” Ferguson told the Star.

Behind closed doors, internal records obtained by Greenpeace Canada through provincial freedom of information legislation revealed that industry lobbyists rejected proposals from the Alberta government to introduce tough rules, and instead suggested delaying action to allow for more “study, analysis and consultation.”

At that time, David Daly, the director of fiscal policy at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers argued that tougher rules wouldn’t likely stop critics from asking companies to do more to reduce their climate change footprint.

The environmental lobby group blames the industry lobbyists for derailing the talks.

“This is what happens when a government opens the doors wide to the oil industry and shuts out everyone else,” said Keith Stewart, a Toronto-based climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace Canada. “The upstream oil and gas industry is now the biggest carbon polluter in the country precisely because the Harper government gives in every time they cry poor. Meanwhile, the public foots the ever-rising bill for climate disasters while the oil companies post record profits.”

Stewart said that the toughest proposal on the table from Alberta would tackle part of the increase at a cost of less than $1.00 per barrel of oil, “which is a very small drop in a very large bucket,” he said.

Oil Regs Secret

Image Credit: Kris Krug

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This post originally appeared on MikeDeSouza.com and is republished here with permission.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is describing fresh allegations of muzzling as “absolutely ridiculous.”

Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, Canadian Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq rejected criticism from opposition New Democratic Party MP Megan Leslie who said the government “will stop at nothing to hide the consequences of climate change.”

Leslie raised the issue in the Canadian House of Commons following comments from Environment Canada explaining that its meteorologists were not supposed to talk about climate change in media interviews.

“Climate change is real,” said Leslie, the NDP’s environment critic and deputy leader. “While media cannot contact most government scientists, it does have 24-hour-a-day access to meteorologists. Yet draconian government rules and fear of losing their jobs puts a gag on these meteorologists. They are avoiding talking about the crucial and scientific connection between weather patterns and climate change.”

Some recently-released quotes from a union survey included comments from a meteorologist who expressed concerns about publicly speaking about climate change and described it as a “career-limiting move.”

Leslie asked when Harper would “acknowledge that climate change is real and stop muzzling scientists.” But in response, Aglukkaq sidestepped the question and instead attacked the opposition party.

“That is absolutely ridiculous,” Aglukkaq told the Commons. “Unlike the other side, I have chosen not to play politics with this when it comes to protecting the environment. I regularly meet with Canadians across the country to speak to them about the priorities of our government, which are important to them as well. On the other hand, the opposition will continue to play politics with this issue.”

In an interview, Ted Hsu, the science and technology critic for the opposition Liberal party, criticized the government for allegedly muzzling its scientists, but said he was comfortable with some restrictions on meteorologists.

“I would not mind if meteorologists were told not to talk about climate science as long as climate scientists were allowed to talk about climate science,” said Hsu. “Because of cases of well-known climate deniers who are meteorologists in the United States, I’m sympathetic to the idea that climate scientists are the ones who should be asked for a more authoritative answer about whether a particular extreme weather event is more or less likely to happen with or without global warming.”

Internally, Environment Canada has observed an 80 per cent drop in media coverage of climate change issues in the country after it adopted new restrictive communications policies in 2007 that required scientists to seek permission from management prior to giving interviews about their research.

Both the NDP and Liberals have proposed to end what they describe as muzzling of scientists.

“I think I feel comfortable saying that if we (Liberals) were in government now, I would allow scientists to speak freely about their research and just completely change the communications policy,” Hsu said.

Hsu recently received a government response to written questions he submitted in Parliament asking multiple departments for statistics on interviews with scientists and records about their communications policies. But he said he was surprised that none of these departments claimed to have any documents explaining instructions given by their ministers.

“It’s very frustrating,” Hsu said. “You can’t really say the government is transparent when you don’t know what instructions the ministers gave to their departments. So how do I know if the minister is giving good directions or bad directions or whether the department is doing a good job or bad job? … It seems wrong to me that I can’t know what the minister did or what instructions the minister gave.”

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Last year the Harper government’s decision to gut the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) led to the deft and unceremonious firing of more than 1,000 federal employees, many of them researchers, lab technicians and experts crucial to Canada’s understanding of marine science. Frontline stories of tearful staff meetings, where the devastating news was delivered en masse, convinced many Canadians we were in the midst of what is now popularly known as the ‘War on Science.’

That storyline continues today after a new Environment Canada report outlines the department’s plan to eliminate more than 1,000 jobs, a disproportionate amount of which will come from the climate change division.

The ‘plans and priorities’ report shows the department will reduce spending from more than $1 billion in 2014-2015 to $698.8 million in 2016-2017, reports the Toronto Star.

In addition program spending for Environment Canada’s climate change and clean air program will be reduced from $234.2 million in 2014-2015 to $54.8 million in 2016-2017.

Full-time equivalent jobs will drop from 6,400 this year to 5,348 in 2016-2017.

Canada has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020 under the Copenhagen Accord. Environment Canada’s most recent emissions report, released in October 2013, shows Canada’s current measures are inadequate for reaching our emissions reductions targets.

Emissions trends reported in Environment Canada's 2013 Emissions Report.

A new study released by Globe International that examined nearly 500 pieces of climate legislation in 66 countries found Canada had “no flagship legislation” for climate despite being in the top 20 worldwide emitters. The report also notes Canada’s decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Accord in 2011.

Megan Leslie, Halifax MP and environment critic for the NDP, says given the global challenges posed by climate change, Canada’s decision to cut related programs at Environment Canada doesn’t make sense.

“Knowing what the situation is with greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, one would think they got the numbers backwards. And that we would be ramping up rather than ramping down,” she told the Toronto Star. “That is a shocking decrease, it really is.”

Leslie noted these changes to Environment Canada are happening while the country still awaits promised emissions regulations for the oil and gas sector. The oilsands are Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the Pembina Institute, “if Alberta were a country, its per capita greenhouse gas emissions would be higher than any other country in the world.” They also report “7 per cent of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions came from oilsands plants and upgraders in 2010.”

Emissions from the extraction and upgrading of oilsands bitumen is estimated to be 3.2 to 4.5 times as intensive on a per barrel basis than conventional crude produced elsewhere in Canada or the U.S.

“This is a sector with the fastest growing emissions and we’re still waiting,” Leslie said.

Image Credit: Kris Krug

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Instead of consulting with the Canadian public before cutting millions in green spending at Environment Canada, the Harper government consulted with communications strategists who helped gauge potential public reactions to the budget cuts.

Mike De Souza writes for Postmedia News, that according to "internal briefing documents" released through access to information legislation, the "Harper government included communications strategists in closed-door discussions that led to an estimated $60 million in cuts at Environment Canada in the 2012 federal budget."

"Strategists from the communication branch were involved in Environment Canada's deliberations on its contribution to the deficit action reduction plan from the beginning," said the records, which were labelled "secret advice to the minister." The briefing documents, containing up to 500 pages, were prepared for Environment Canada Deputy Minister Bob Hamilton, after he replaced Paul Boothe in summer 2012.

Hamilton was also warned in a communications strategy that "Media and public alike have been highly critical of the government of Canada, expressing concern over its cuts to science-based activities." The strategy listed "Reassuring Canadians that their health and safety have not been put at risk as a result of recent cuts" and convincing them that the "government of Canada takes the environment portfolio seriously" as among their "communications challenges."  

The released documents explain that bringing the communications branch in on the closed-door discussions preceding the budget cuts "allowed an analysis of communication issues, stakeholder reactions and public perception to be weighed during the consideration of each and every proposal." It also kept communications staff primed and "ready to hit the ground running once the decisions were announced."

In a follow-up piece, De Souza reports Environment Canada spokesman Mark Johnson as confirming that the communications specialists' analysis "consisted of identifying stakeholders who may have an interest in any particular proposal, studying the positions they have taken on related issues, and extrapolating from that, what their reactions might be to the proposal at hand."

Johnson added that the "confidential nature" of the deliberations prevented "actual formal consultation on any particular proposal with stakeholders."

NDP environment critic Megan Leslie told De Souza she was disappointed to see the Harper government's "backwards" method of reaching decisions, saying she feels "their guiding principle in making these decisions is: 'Let's see what we can get away with.'"  

Gary Corbett, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, also found the approach "a bit backwards," saying it's "wrong for communications people to be involved in deciding what decisions to make. Communications people are there to communicate the decisions after they're made. It seems the government is just being political rather than (doing) what's in the best interests of Canadians."

Leslie advised the Harper government to "hire and consult scientists on how to manage the department, not communications experts to give us spin about these ideological cuts."

Environment Canada said that "senior science managers, knowledgeable in the relevant areas, were involved as appropriate in order to provide context."

De Souza observes that the documents didn't elaborate on "what sort of consultations might have taken place with Environment Minister Peter Kent or deliberations with government scientists, who worked in the field, on spending reductions in areas such as federal response capacity to environmental disasters or quality control in enforcing industrial air pollution regulations."

Kent's office responded by saying that they "led in arriving at the final decisions regarding the measures across the department and were therefore, obviously regularly informed and briefed accordingly."

De Souza notes that the records "estimated that Environment Canada's 2015-16 budget would be $949 million, down from a peak of $1.3 billion in 2007-08."

Image Credit: The Prime Minister's Office / Flickr

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