Mr. Speaker, on June 20 I asked the Minister of the Environment which minister gave the order to remove the word “Kyoto” from the Government of Canada's current Internet websites. First she answered, “no website has ever been turned off”. Then she said that the subject of my question, the suppression of references to the Kyoto protocol on government websites was not substantive enough to be discussed further. Perhaps not for her.
This really was not a surprise, because we already knew that the minister was not interested in hearing about Kyoto.
As I pointed out last week, in raising another matter on June 15, the minister misled the House and Canadians. Five days later on June 20 she did it again. She said that no website had been turned off, no links had been taken down and that the Environment Canada website was “very dynamic”. It was so dynamic that we found on Environment Canada's website a link to a Kyoto site that has not been updated in over a year.
Also, Natural Resources Canada, the minister's partner in suppression, has not only erased all references to Kyoto, but it has also entirely eliminated Natural Resources climate change sites. In other words, websites have been altered, turned off and links taken down.
It is proof that the government does not believe in Kyoto and does not believe in climate change. But that is not all. Ten days after I asked my question in the House, that is to say on June 30, 2006, the government, which is trying to convince the population that it takes the responsibility of climate change and the environment seriously, turned off the central climate change website of the Government of Canada, note turned off. Now when one tries to reach the www.climatechange.gc.ca, one can read, “The Government of Canada Climate Change site is currently unavailable” which is more proof that this minority government does not believe in the science of climate change.
Yes, the link to present to all Canadians the plan to honour our Kyoto commitment to reduce greenhouse gases has been completely erased.
Also, as recently as two weeks ago, we realized that the government had once again made some changes to the Environment Canada website. We actually noted the addition of a paragraph that deliberately let on that global warming was a controversial subject within the scientific community.
We could read the following there:
There is a great deal of uncertainty associated with climate predictions and, although temperature changes during this century are consistent with global warming predictions, they remain within the range of natural variability.
The government finally withdrew this paragraph following a public complaint by a representative of the scientific community.
The government is in denial about climate change. It does not like the science and now it wants to censor it. We have not forgotten that the current Prime Minister has, in the past, questioned the science of climate change and has called it a controversial hypothesis.
I ask the parliamentary secretary to set aside the answer that has been prepared for him and simply acknowledge that his minister misled the House when she said that no website has ever been turned off.