goldstein: the laughable claims of justin trudeau’s climate warriors
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canada's prime minister justin trudeau participates in a cabinet swearing-in ceremony at rideau hall on december 20, 2024 in ottawa, canada.
dave chan
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afp via getty images
old myths die hard in ottawa and one of the hardest to kill is that the government of justin trudeau was on track to meet canada’s climate change targets under his failed $200-billion-plus strategy, before prime minister mark carney blew them up.
the myth was on display at a social gathering last week of trudeau’s now-departed environment ministers/climate change warriors – steven guilbeault, catherine mckenna and jonathan wilkinson, along with the former pm himself – at the private rideau club near parliament hill, reported by cbc.
mckenna, in 2019, hilariously blamed human-induced climate change for flooding at the south end of toronto’s don valley parkway, that has been flooding since the glaciers retreated 12,000 years ago.
prime minister trudeau and minister catherine mckenna at cop21 on nov. 30, 2015.
environment and climate change canada
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flickr
wilkinson, now canada’s ambassador to the eu for which the gathering was held, wrongly predicted in 2021 that 2019 would be the last year of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, based on federal data always reported two years after the fact.
but the most laughable claim, reported by cbc as if was serious, was that in 2023, “under the trudeau plan for the first time ever, canada was on track to achieve at least one of its climate change targets.”
steven guilbeault.
john mahoney
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postmedia network
indeed, guilbeault in 2023 said the government was “projected to exceed canada’s interim objective of reducing emissions to 20% below 2005 levels by 2026” while remaining “firmly set on track to meet our ambitious but achievable 2030” target of 40% below, based on modelling that year from environment canada.
independent reports exposed the myth
while one climate activist group supported this finding at the time, a series of independent reports by federal environment commissioner jerry v. demarco, exposed such nonsense for the myth it was in a series of scathing reports.
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in 2023, he reported the government wasn’t on track to meet its 2030 target (and thus not its 2026 interim target), finding that, “the measures most critical for reducing emissions have not been identified or prioritized” and “did not include a target or expected emission reductions for 95% of its measures.”
environment canada, he said, “had still not taken sufficient steps to improve the transparency and reliability of its economic and emission modelling” which “included overly optimistic assumptions, limited analysis of uncertainties and lack of peer review.”
in a follow-up report in 2024 demarco repeated his warning that the government program was insufficient to meets its own targets noting:
“we found that measures were being implemented too slowly to meet their intended emissions reductions in a timely manner” and “estimates of expected emissions reductions from their measures were often overly optimistic.”
“of the 20 measures (out of 149) we audited that were being developed or implemented by the federal government, only nine were on track, nine were facing challenges and two had significant barriers, such as facing delays in meeting milestones.”
demarco reported, “the recent decreases to projected 2030 emissions were not due to climate actions taken by governments, but were instead because of revisions to the data or methods used in modelling. the issue of the lack of transparency in the modelling continues to be an ongoing concern, which can undermine the trust and credibility in the reported progress.”
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of 32 new measures added to the 149 previously announced by the trudeau government, demarco noted, “only seven …were new while three enhanced existing measures and 22 were existing measures that were already reported.”
regarding hydrogen, demarco said, “reduction estimates were overestimated” the “model applied to determine the potential of hydrogen was inadequate” and ‘assumptions were overly confident, and quality control on modelling was limited.”
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during a media conference discussing his findings, demarco said that “overly optimistic assumptions and the potential for double counting (of emission reductions) plus the lack of timeliness and implementation all … coalesce to essentially putting in jeopardy canada’s ability to meet its target.”
all of this was long before carney became prime minister.
based on the latest government data, canada would have to shut down the equivalent of its entire buildings sector this year, to meet the 2026 target.
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