Tories plan more cuts to green programs

So the Harperites are determined that they dare not listen to the people. Canadians have said in an earlier poll that the environment is on the top of their minds. See Canoe's Poll: Environment will be key election issue, and CBC's Environment a priority for more Canadians, poll suggests.

On the other hand, the Tories are planning to pump another round of billions of dollars -- $4.5 billion as learnt by CTV -- into the military.

Ottawa planning more cuts to climate-change programs

OTTAWA — The Conservative government is planning a second wave of cuts to climate-change programs and is asking public servants to help manage the “fallout” by explaining why their positions should disappear.

Government officials who manage the programs in various government departments were told this week that climate-change programs extended by one year in April will not be renewed.

The officials are being asked to compile information as to who would most likely be affected and what their public reaction would be.

The project is being described internally as “government-wide” and The Globe and Mail was able to confirm that at least two departments, Natural Resources Canada and Agriculture Canada, were submitting reports this week.

Environmentalist John Bennett of the Climate Action Network, who has met in the past with those in charge of Agriculture Canada's climate programs, said it is inappropriate to involve them in such a communications plan.

“They were all very committed to the programs they were working on,” he said. “So for them to be asked to explain why they should be cut, really it's right out of [George Orwell's] 1984. It's telling bureaucrats to come up with lies to justify government policy.”

Five climate-change programs at Agriculture Canada will be shut down. They include:

A $5-million Model Farms program to develop estimates of how much carbon can be removed from the atmosphere through new farming practices;

A $21-million project called the Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Program for Canadian Agriculture, meant to involve farmers in the government's campaign to reduce greenhouse gases;

A $4-million Shelterbelts Enhancement Program that aims to reduce greenhouse gases by encouraging farmers to line their fields with trees to reduce wind and help control snow piles;

A program dealing with manure management and a fifth program dealing with the role of farmers and “future fuels.”

The plan is being led by Anita Biguzs, the director of operations in the Privy Council Office, which is the central public-service branch that supports cabinet and the Prime Minister's Office.

It is not clear how many other programs are being wound down as part of the government-wide plan. The government estimates that about 10 per cent of Canada's greenhouse gases come from the agricultural sector.

Last April, the government confirmed it was cancelling at least 15 climate-change programs, arguing they were ineffective. The two most high-profile programs were the One-Tonne Challenge that encouraged individual Canadians to conserve energy and the EnerGuide program for houses that provided incentives for Canadians to retrofit their houses.

In May, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the first parts of the Conservative government's environment plan, including $370-million in tax credits for public-transit users. The government is also working on a plan so that 5e per cent of fuel sold in Canada is from renewable sources like ethanol.

Internal e-mails at Natural Resources, which were recently released through an access to information request by the Liberal Party, reveal frustration and confusion among public servants working on climate change.

The series of e-mails confirmed government officials were first asked to remove references to Kyoto from the government's climate-change site in May and then to shut down the site, climatechange.gc.ca, entirely in June.

When the Liberals asked in June why the word Kyoto was being censored from government websites, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose dismissed the question as “ridiculous.”

In one of the e-mails, an employee named Caitlin Horrall writes to her colleague Cathy McRae. The two women had received a departmental merit award for their work on the One-Tonne Challenge.

“Apparently Francine is meeting with the Minister's Office tomorrow to talk about taking down the Climate Change site entirely,” Ms. Horrall wrote on June 29, before closing with: “Sigh.”

Future spending estimates tabled by each department on Sept. 26 show the extent to which the government is scaling back environmental funding.

Agriculture Canada's spending on the environment will drop from $331-million in the current fiscal year to just $158.5-million in 2008-09.

Meanwhile at Natural Resources Canada, which housed most of the government's climate-change programs, the documents show a wide range of programs that will receive reduced funding or be cut off entirely.

Overall, Natural Resources Canada estimates its total budget will drop from $1.47-billion this year to $1.04-billion two years from now and that the number of full-time employees in the department will drop from 4,456 to 4,154.

Tags: environment, climate change, tories, conservatives, stephen harper, cuts