OTTAWA—Environment Canada appears to have quietly ended key discussions that were intended to tackle carbon pollution from the oil and gas industry.

A committee made up of representatives from Environment Canada, the Alberta government and oil and gas companies was created in the fall of 2011 to develop options to reduce industrial greenhouse gases from the oilsands sector, the country’s fastest growing source of carbon emissions.

But the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), which was part of the committee, says it stopped getting invitations to meetings in 2013.

“We have no knowledge of the group having met since March 2013,” said Alex Ferguson, the vice-president of policy and performance at the association, which represents Canadian oil and gas companies, in an email to the Star.

“The federal government led the working group, and it is the responsibility of governments to make carbon policy. As such, CAPP defers questions about the working group to the federal government for response.”

The group previously met “approximately every four weeks” according to internal Environment Canada briefing notes from 2012, released through access to information legislation. But recent federal briefing notes, obtained by Greenpeace Canada and prepared for a March 2014 meeting between top officials of Environment Canada and CAPP, showed the group hadn’t met since March 2013.

Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq’s office and her department didn’t immediately respond to questions asking what happened to the committee and what they were doing to reduce emissions from oil and gas companies.

The Alberta government declined to answer questions about the federal committee, also referring questions to Environment Canada.

Successive federal governments and their environment ministers have repeatedly pledged and delayed new climate change rules for the oil and gas industry for more than a decade.

Last December, Harper said it could take up to two more years before introducing new oil and gas regulations, further delaying pledges made by his own government at international climate change negotiations to introduce a plan in 2013.

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The Harper government has estimated it won’t achieve the prime minister’s international climate change commitment to reduce emissions by 2020, mainly because of rising pollution from the oil and gas sector.

While most Canadian industries have reduced their carbon footprints, the oilsands sector has moved in the opposite direction increasing its emissions by 307 per cent between 1990 and 2012, Environment Canada estimated in a report submitted to the United Nations earlier this year.

The federal department is estimating a further increase of annual oilsands emissions by 61 per cent by 2020.

Scientists and governments from around the world endorsed a 2014 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that estimated several months ago that the planet needed to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by up to 72 per cent by 2050 to prevent planetary warming of more than two degrees Celsius — considered to be a dangerous tipping point for the Earth’s ecosystems.

A spokesman for the Alberta environment and sustainable resources department said that all large emitters in the province are subject to a 12 per cent reduction target, per unit of production. The provincial government is expected to update its climate change strategy later this year, said spokesman Jason Maloney.

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