Mr. Speaker, the government was required to submit two greenhouse gas emissions reports, one to the United Nations and one to Parliament. The government told the UN that its climate change policies were up to 10 times more effective than what it told Parliament. I. therefore. asked the minister to tell us which report was accurate and who ordered the changes.
The minister responded that the two reports were based on two different compilations of data. In reality, not so much two different data sets but rather data, and an omission of data, from the oil sands.
To be generous, the report to the UN offered data from different categories that incorporated oil sands data but there was no detailed breakdown as the minister answered.
The minister then went on to say that the government reported that in 2009 the oil sands contributed 6.5% of Canada's total emissions. This statistic, however, was actually only provided by Environment Canada after it was questioned about the missing information in the report to the UN.
The minister's own office later confirmed that his comments were not accurate. I, therefore, suggested last Wednesday that the minister should retract his comments in a point of order following question period, and said:
Knowing what he does now, will the minister now rise, admit his answer yesterday was wrong, correct the record, and [apologize]?
Last Thursday, I said:
Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday the Minister of the Environment told this House that the oil sands industry contributed 6.5% of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions in the government's report to the United Nations.
The minister's own office has confirmed that his comments were not true.
I then repeated the same question from Wednesday:
Will the minister, knowing what he does now, rise, admit his answer was wrong, correct the record, and fully apologize?
Instead of apologizing, the minister responded, “My colleague is still in the environmental weeds on this question”. I used to teach climate change, climatology and meteorology at the university, and consulted to Environment Canada. I was also a lead author for Canada on the intergovernmental panel on climate change.
The so-called weeds matter, data matters, facts matter, methodology matters and conclusions really matter, particularly when two reports which do the same thing reach very different results, results that vary by 10 times.
Scientists take a consistent approach. I still have the same questions. Why was oil sands data omitted from the UN report and who ordered the changes? Who ordered the scientists to use different approaches to get two very different answers, one that made the government look better than its actual performance and that could be presented to the world, and a second that fit the government's ideology and played well to its base in Canada?
The world knows about Canada's oil sands. The data should have been presented clearly in the report to the UN and the methodology should have been the same in the two reports.
If the government had a reason for leaving out the data, it should have been accountable and transparent and explained why in the report.