The Harper government continues its desperate, last-ditch effort to ‘greenwash’ its environmental record in light of Washington’s tough words on climate change and the looming decision on Keystone XL. However, the promised oilsands monitoring program — the government’s flashy environmental showpiece — remains missing in action.

A year ago, Environment Minister Peter Kent, at a joint news conference with Alberta Environment Minister Diana McQueen, promised to publish data from the monitoring program before the end of 2012. “We will make the system highly transparent,” he said. “We will ensure that the scientific data that is collected from our monitoring and analysis is publicly available with common quality assurances and common practices in place.”

Despite yet another broken promise on the environment, the Harper Conservatives have been busy touting their so-called environmental record in the last few weeks. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird absurdly suggested that the American and Canadian governments are equally committed to the environment and both Kent and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver have had miraculous conversions, acknowledging the Conservatives “could be doing more” on the environment.

Canadians and the international community are not fooled. They understand this government has an appalling record on climate change and the environment. Federal Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan has warned that the government will not meet its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target of 17 per cent below 2005 levels, but will actually be seven per cent above. A new report suggests that GHG emissions have actually risen since 2010, and that the government will make only a 1.5 per cent dent in 2005 emissions by 2020 — nowhere near the promised 17 per cent.

Moreover, a report by the Global Legislators Organization on climate legislation makes clear how much Canada has slipped backwards on the file since its decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol and repeal the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act.

So why is the oilsands monitoring program not delivering — and will the Environment and Sustainable Development Committee vote in favor of my motion to hear about the program and get some real answers for taxpayers?

Although industry has agreed to pay up to $50 million a year for the monitoring, there is, so far, no governance structure to collect the money.

Mr. Kent, it’s been a year since you unveiled a three-year plan to monitor air, habitat and water, so how does the government plan to recoup the money that industry promised to pay, and where are the results? Can you name a date when the promised data will be released through a publicly accessible portal? What data will be released, and on what schedule? And what actions have been undertaken to ensure aboriginal input and the involvement of young scientists?

The oilsands data are important, as a newly released study indicates that chemicals from 50 years of oilsands production are showing up in increasing amounts in five lakes close to the mining and upgrading operations in Fort McMurray, as well as in Namur Lake, 90 kilometres northwest.

This past week, Alberta Premier Alison Redford said: “Alberta applauds and shares the president’s strong desire to address climate change … we are prepared to work with our federal government … to push the bar higher in addressing climate change”.

What will you do, Mr. Kent, to push the bar higher on climate change, and to ensure the promised delivery of a “world-leading oilsands monitoring program”, its funding, and its data for the world to see?

Kirsty Duncan is a Liberal member of parliament (Etobicoke North) and critic for the Environment. She has a Ph.D. in geography (University of Edinburgh, 1992) and has taught meteorology, climatology, and climate change at the University of Windsor, corporate social responsibility and medical geography at the University of Toronto and global environmental processes at Royal Roads University. She served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization that won the 2007 Nobel Prize with Al Gore and is the author of Hunting the 1918 Flu: One Scientist’s Search for a Killer Virus (University of Toronto Press, 2003), and Environment and Health: Protecting our Common Future (2008).

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