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Both will be “integrated into the new structure,” says Yee’s email.

This reorganization will bring many of the department's brightest scientific minds under one division and eliminate some of the administrative overlap that can prevent them from doing their best work

“The primary drivers and intended outcomes of this reorganization include enhanced business integration, the achievement of efficiencies, and providing better support to achieve government priorities,” wrote Yee.

The changes are to be effective Oct. 15.

Yee said in an emailed statement Friday that the process is about increasing effectiveness.

“This reorganization will bring many of the department’s brightest scientific minds under one division and eliminate some of the administrative overlap that can prevent them from doing their best work.”

In an email, department spokeswoman Jess Sinclair said the climate change office has been incorporated into Alberta Environment’s general policy effort “in order to ensure that (department) policy is developed with an eye to the overall management of pollution in the province.”

But Phillips said the moves downgrade both climate and monitoring policy.

“We no longer have a government that is interested in putting forward credible climate change policy or credible monitoring and science in the oilsands,” she said. “I have serious questions about the resourcing of environmental monitoring in the oilsands.”

Phillips suggested the change is a prelude to cuts.

“It’s easier to hide the cuts if they’re absorbed within the department.”

Environmental groups called the changes part of a pattern in Jason Kenney’s United Conservative government to roll back climate and environmental policies.