T1B

Darrel Reidis the former president of right-wing fundamentalist group Focus on the Family Canada. Focus Canada is an offshoot of the American Focus group, run by Dr. James Dobson, one of the most powerful right-wing religious leaders in the U.S.

The phantorino wrote:it's certainly beginning to feel lke "1684",

Tue, October 10, 2006

Tory's full of hot air

By Greg Weston


Environment Minister Rona Ambrose put on an impressive show for the cameras during a Commons committee hearing last week as she savaged the environmental record of previous Liberal governments, and Canada's failed commitments under the international Kyoto accord on greenhouse gas emissions.

Unfortunately, the truth seems to get in the way of a good story.

Ambrose spent most of her two-hour testimony explaining her government's decision to kiss off the Kyoto agreement, in favour of a "made-in-Canada" clean-air program yet to be unveiled.

Under the international accord signed by Jean Chretien's gang, countries can achieve their Kyoto emission-reduction targets both by cutting their own pollution and by helping to fund foreign clean-air projects, a process known as purchasing international carbon credits.

Ambrose told the committee the Conservative government won't be spending a dime of Kyoto cash abroad, arguing that taxpayers' money should be used to clean up the Canadian environment, not fix other countries' pollution problems.

To illustrate her point, Ambrose pounded the previous Liberal governments for spending "hundreds of millions of dollars" on Kyoto carbon credits, investing the funds in what she portrayed as all manner of shady anti-pollution schemes in foreign countries rife with corruption.

"I have in front of me a list of at least $100 million of money that was used to purchase international credits," Ambrose told the committee. "I can go through the list."

So she did -- $2 million to the state power corporation of China; $2.5 million to Panama; $3 million to Bangladesh; $1.5 million to the government of India; $375,000 to Paraguay.

'Troubling ... priorities'

"I could go on and on," Ambrose said. "There's hundreds of millions of dollars ... for international credits. When we see this kind of list, it is troubling that the priorities of the Liberal party (were) to spend this money elsewhere.

"Some of these projects actually didn't even earn us Kyoto credits."

Actually, none of the projects earned any Kyoto credits because the entire list of dubious foreign money pits had next to nothing to do with the environmental accord.

After considerable digging and prodding, we discover that the environment minister was quoting from a roster of foreign aid projects approved by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and funded from a one-shot, $100-million kitty set up under the Liberals in 2000, and long since emptied.

While the money was supposed to be spent on projects to help developing countries clean up their act, none of it had any connection to Kyoto credits, contrary to what the minister would have us believe. It was foreign aid, plain and simple.

Our first hint that Ambrose might have been playing loose with the facts was the sound of environment department officials diving for cover when we asked for a copy of the project list from which she was quoting at the committee.

Bureaucrats referred our inquiry directly to the minister's office, which was in no rush to respond, either.

Ambrose's officials told us funding foreign environmental projects to acquire Kyoto credits "naturally" would be handled through CIDA as the government's international aid agency.

Nothing spent

But last year, Paul Martin's government set up something called the Canada Emission Reduction Incentives Agency in the environment department, specifically for that purpose.

The latest spending estimates show that while the agency was initially given a $24.7-million budget for foreign Kyoto-credit projects, the amount actually spent was exactly zero -- a slight variation from Ambrose's "hundreds of millions of dollars."

In her latest report, Parliament's independent environmental watchdog, Johanne Gelinas, stated flatly that the Conservative government "urgently needs a believable, clear and realistic plan to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

What the environment doesn't need is more hot air.

So she did -- $2 million to the state power corporation of China; $2.5 million to Panama; $3 million to Bangladesh; $1.5 million to the government of India; $375,000 to Paraguay.