Article content continued

Well, some of those Conservative environment ministers did not take opposition MPs along to these international climate change conference but one did: The late Jim Prentice.

Duncan remembers asking Prentice to include opposition critics along with representatives of indigenous organizations and civil society as part of his official delegation.

“He did so and booked flights and hotel for me for all COP and pre COP and [Canadian Council for Ministers of the Environment] meetings I attended with him . As members of delegations we were provided advance briefings on key issues at the meetings. I was also welcomed into daily briefings at the COPs. I travelled on same flights with him. I was not required to sign any undertakings.”

Elizabeth May, the Green Party leader and MP, has been to oodles of international climate change conference as an MP, as a representative of an NGO and, way back in the late 80s, as a ministerial staffer.

She’s just finished an extended cross-country tour with the Commons Electoral Reform committee and, because of that, will have to miss next week’s COP22.

But she says it was routine prior to the Harper government taking office for governments to do what Prentice did: Invite opposition critics and others and make all the travel arrangements.

In the meantime, so far as the current squabble involving McKenna and her critics goes, May said that MPs had to work with the same $4,500 expense cap at last year’s COP21 summit in Paris. (May, Fast and Thomas Mulcair were among the MPs that joined the Canadian delegation at that summit)