Oil lobby has pipeline to federal scientists
While Environment Canada scientists must request permission before speaking to reporters, newly released emails show that the main oil and gas industry lobby group has direct access to the department’s technical expertise.
Some of the emails were exchanged between a senior Environment Canada engineer and registered lobbyists from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, who requested “help” after controversy surrounding an international inventory report on Canadian greenhouse gas emissions in May from the department that excluded data showing a substantial rise in oilsands pollution.
The association did not attempt to lobby the government regarding laws or policies in the emails.burberry outlet cheap Instead, it requested Environment Canada help clarify confusion in a Postmedia report regarding the oilsands industry record on reducing emissions per barrel.
“I think the bottom line is clear,” wrote the association’s spokesman Travis Davies in a June 1 email to Environment Canada’s media relations department, forwarding information that the industry group had received from the department’s engineer. “I appreciate the help on this, an important issue for industry, and for Environment Canada.”
The inventory must be submitted annually by Canada, under an international climate change treaty, and should have been made public before the May 2 federal election, but was submitted late by the government.
After its release, Environment Canada declined to grant interviews about the analysis, and suggested that there was “erroneous reporting” about its decision to exclude oilsands data from the inventory.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government introduced new rules to control interviews with journalists by Environment Canada scientists in 2007 that resulted in an 80 per cent drop in media coverage of climate change science, according to an internal analysis that was released in 2010.
But the emails, released to Postmedia News through access to information legislation, reveal that the department shared some answers with the industry group one day before it sent the information to the media. The emails also reveal that the department had, in fact, excluded oilsands data from the inventory.
“Unfortunately, the section with the oil and gas industry analysis did not make it into the inventory,” wrote Chia Ha, a senior program engineer, in a May 25 email to CAPP research manager Stephen Rodrigues. “Emissions for the oilsands industry in 2009 is 45.2 Mt [megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions].”
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