Gélinas' environmental evangelism

Auditor General right to remove Environment Commissioner

Gélinas' environmental evangelism conflicted with her role as auditor

By Tom Harris, & Dr. Tim Ball Natural Resources Stewardship Project

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Auditor General Sheila Fraser was right to dismiss her environment auditor, Johanne Gélinas.  In fact, she really had no choice.  While Gélinas received praise for her work from most politicians, including Environment Minister John Baird, she clearly stepped well beyond her role as auditor and assumed the mantle of activist, an approach that undermined the credibility of the Auditor General's office.

Canada's Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development, is, according to the Auditor General Act, assigned to audit "how well the federal government is meeting its environmental and sustainable development commitments." The Commissioner is also to "provide parliamentarians with objective, independent analysis and recommendations on the federal government's efforts to protect the environment and foster sustainable development."

Nowhere in the Act is it specified that the Commissioner is assigned to promote fundamental policy.  But that is precisely what Gélinas eventually did and it was apparently her undoing.

Appointed to the position in 2000, her first yearly reports were reasonably straightforward audits.  But, as time went by, Gélinas' tone became more strident, at times sounding more like an employee of the David Suzuki Foundation than of the federal government.  "Today, Canada stands at a crossroads. The federal government must act quickly and with determination. It must stop playing in the margins and get to the heart of the problem", she told reporters in the press conference in which her latest report was issued. "Changing the way Canadians produce, distribute, and consume energy is therefore critical."

Throwing caution to the wind, she excitedly continued, "Canadians have to be ready to face the spread of pests and diseases, more frequent droughts in the Prairies, and longer and more frequent heat waves and smog alerts... The government has announced that Canada cannot meet its Kyoto targets and considers these targets unrealistic. If that is the case, new targets should be established."

Gélinas' written report had a similar strident tone: "The Earth is warming, triggering dramatic changes in climate and weather systems around the world. Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" released by human activities are generally to blame. ...Experts say we need to act quickly and effectively."

Ron Thompson, the interim environment commissioner, and whoever fills the position on a permanent basis, need to compare Gélinas' approach with that of the previous commissioner, Brian Emmett.  Emmett was by no means a purist from an auditing perspective and made it clear that he personally felt reducing greenhouse gas emissions was important.  However, in contrast to Gélinas' almost childlike faith in the certainty of the science that backs Kyoto and other schemes to 'stop climate change', Emmett included a separate section in his 1998 report entitled "Many areas of uncertainty remain in the science".  Therein he wrote, "... the IPCC [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] recognizes that gaps still remain in the current level of understanding about the science of climate change. The current models contain weaknesses that add further uncertainty to their projections. Among the weaknesses are imperfect knowledge of probable future rates of human-made greenhouse gas emissions and how they will affect the global climate, and incomplete understanding of the complex climate process. The uncertainties include the response of clouds, water vapour, ice and ocean circulation to increased greenhouse gas emissions. There is also scientific debate about the extent, magnitude, timing, pace and regional distribution of climate change."

All this is still true today. Consistent with his more restrained approach, Emmett explained that he "held a climate change symposium to assist the Office in gaining a basic understanding of the issues related to the subject of climate change." He wrote that his audit team "interviewed over 70 stakeholders across Canada, representing a broad range of interests and many differing viewpoints".

We saw little of this from Gélinas' and consequently she made serious basic science mistakes in her reports such as omitting water vapour in the list of "the three "natural" greenhouse gases". In reality, water vapour is by far the most significant - Emmett knew this and listed it first in his reports.

Gélinas must have known she was on thin ice with her new approach, even telling reporters when her last report was released, "our audits look at the process by which the government carries out its policies, not the policies themselves."

But her actions totally contradicted this in a way that her peers in the Auditor General's office wouldn't dare.  Imagine if Assistant Auditor General for the Canada Revenue Agency, spoke out in favour of tax hikes, or the Foreign Affairs auditor said that we must cut off diplomatic relations with another country. Their audit reports would never get out the door and they wouldn't keep their jobs long if they persisted. It is good to see that, in the final analysis, Fraser recognized that Canada's environment auditor cannot be held to a different standard.

Canada has more than its share of climate activists, most of them untrained in even the basics of the science.  The next environment commissioner must drop the activist role totally and focus instead on the sort of unbiased, non-politicized auditing for which the Auditor General's office is otherwise renowned.  Canadians desperately need auditors we can trust to be objective on today's highly polarized environment file.