Prime Minister Stephen Harper has never pretended climate change is a priority for his government. Nonetheless, Ottawa has budgeted $9.2 billion — $267 for every Canadian — for greenhouse gas reduction.

What are taxpayers getting for their money? Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan told parliamentarians last week he has no idea. After poring over reams of financial documents and climate change data, he could find no link between spending and progress.

He can’t even figure out the time period covered by the allocation or tell how much money has been spent.

Vaughan examined 35 federal climate change programs, run by seven government departments. Some had performance measures, some didn’t. No one was responsible for this “disjointed, confused and non-transparent” patchwork. No one was tracking the results of the tax credits, industrial subsidies, demonstration projects and clean technology incentives that Ottawa had announced.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” he noted tersely in his biennial report.

Without such a yardstick, all he could say was: “It’s a lot of money and to date it’s been pretty mediocre results.”

The environment commissioner affirmed what everybody knows. There is no chance Canada will live up to its commitments in the 1998 Kyoto Accord. Greenhouse gas emissions are 31 per cent above target. The Harper government effectively jettisoned that agreement last year.

But it signed a new one. The Copenhagen Accord calls for a 17 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. That goal, too, is in jeopardy, Vaughan warned, without better management. He pointed to several worrisome signs.

The Conservatives have lowered Canada’s target to cut fossil fuel emissions by 90 per cent. In their 2007 climate change plan, they pledged a 282 million tonne reduction. In their latest version, it was just 28 million tonnes.

They have pinned Canada’s climate change strategy to that of the U.S. It has fallen victim to a deadlocked Congress.

And they’ve only just begun to set up a monitoring system to track the environmental impact of the Athabasca River basin in Alberta, the largest and fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. While Vaughan gives Environment Minister Peter Kent credit for taking this step, he cautions it is too early to tell whether it will provide policy-makers with the indicators they need to make informed decisions.

Judging from the responses of Harper’s two key ministers on energy and the environment, very little is likely to change in Ottawa.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Kent insisted that Canada is making “great strides” in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver added: “We will continue to do what we have to do to meet our Kyoto obligations.”

They’re certainly throwing money at the problem. What it is accomplishing is a mystery.

Read more about: