PROVINCES DECEIVED ABOUT KYOTO AGREEMENT

OTTAWA, Oct 1 (LSN) – Canadian conservative group Enter Stage Right reported yesterday on a report from the Toronto Star on Sept 11 which revealed that senior federal officials purposely concealed vital information from the provinces on the UN’s radical environmentalist Kyoto agreement so as not to discourage the provinces from ratifying the treaty. Through government documents garnered by use of the Freedom of Information Act, the Star learned that less than three weeks after the Kyoto agreement was signed by Canada, “Natural Resources Canada revised their projections on the extent of Canada’s future emissions.” According to the Star one memo indicates that “By 2010, Canada’s emissions could be nearly 40 per cent higher than the estimates officials used to reach the federal government’s Kyoto position.”  The new figures would seriously increase the already devastating economic effects of the Kyoto agreement.  The Star noted that under current projections the Kyoto agreement would already cost Canada “$25 billion to $35 each year if Kyoto targets are implemented, compared with just operating as normal.”  The documents obtained by the paper reveal that Neil McIlveen director of the energy forecasting division of Natural Resources Canada, wrote to Mike Cleland, the assistant deputy minister of natural resources instructing him not to revise the 1996 Energy Outlook to reflect the new and more damaging data. “It is not clear what are the political and policy benefits to be derived, as we begin the consultations on the implementation plan, from announcing that projected emissions may now be higher than previously expected,’’  wrote McIlveen. When confronted by the Star, McIlveen said the new info would hurt the ratification process. “Going out and saying `it’s a little bigger’ is maybe not going to help this process too much,”  he said.