Environment Canada gave minister climate tips
OTTAWA – Environment Canada has offered concrete examples to help its minister make “useful” public comments about the reality of global warming in the country.
The department gave Peter Kent the advice in a 33-page slide show presentation that highlights facts and impacts linked to warming temperatures that range from billions of dollars in costs to Canadian taxpayers to the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.
“In external discussions and speeches regarding the government of Canada’s action on climate change, it may be useful to present concrete examples of climate-change impacts occurring in Canada,” former deputy minister Paul Boothe told Kent in a memorandum, dated March 5, 2012.
It summarized the presentation, which was released to Postmedia News through access to information legislation.
The slide show, complete with charts, photographs and statistics taken from scientific literature and government reports, including recent research by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, was packaged in a manner similar to the public global-warming presentations delivered by former U.S. vicepresident Al Gore.
“For impacts already occurring, there is a high likelihood that these trends will continue as the planet warms,” the presentation said. “Some changes have happened much faster than predicted (i.e. Arctic ice).”
Some key impacts highlighted in the slide show include: ❚ An average temperature increase of 1.6 degrees Celsius across Canada compared to a global increase of 0.7 degrees Celsius, and a 2.1-degree-Celsius increase in the Canadian north from 1948 to 2010; ❚ Combined spending of $1.2 billion by the governments of Canada, British Columbia and Alberta to respond to the mountain pine beetle epidemic that is resulting in the loss of 8,000 jobs and the closure of 16 lumber mills by 2018; ❚ Economic losses of $5.8 billion and 41,000 jobs lost because of droughts in Alberta and Saskatchewan in 2001 and 2002 that have affected the agriculture industry.