GOLDSTEIN – The climate math used by the Environment Minister is not correct

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On Tuesday, Steven Guilbeault, Federal Environment Minister, presented a $9.1 billion climate change plan that he claims will help Canada meet its 2030 greenhouse gas emission reduction target. This despite the fact that it shows that the Trudeau Liberals have failed to meet their 2020 target.

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Canada’s 2020 emissions in the first year of the pandemic are not yet officially announced. However, a table from the 2030 plan shows that Canada’s 2020 emission were 674 Million tonnes.

Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, set 2020’s targets for Canada. It was previously Stephen Harpers goal to reduce Canada’s emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2025.

Trudeau and Catherine McKenna (his former environment minister) repeatedly assured Canadians that the Liberals were on track for achieving this goal over the years.

Canada’s 2005 emissions were 739 million tonnes. This means that Trudeaus 2020 goal was 613 millions tonnes.

According to Trudeau’s own numbers released Tuesday, the Trudeau government has missed its 2020 target by 61,000,000 tonnes equivalent to Canadas total electricity sector emissions for all of 2019.

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This is the ninth consecutive failure by a Liberal or Conservative government to reduce emissions in the last 34 years. It all started with the Brian Mulroney government back in 1988, and continued through the Jean Chretien and Paul Martin governments, Harper, Trudeau, and Harper governments.

Canadian governments have never even come close to meeting the emissions reduction targets they set.

Guilbeaults plan states that Canada’s current measures will reduce its emissions by 36.4% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. This means that Canada is on track to meet Trudeaus 2030 goal of reducing emissions to 40% below 2005 levels by 2030.

However, based on the performance and achievements of Canadian governments dating back to 1988, believing that any government, Liberal, Conservative or otherwise, will ever achieve the climate target it has set for itself is equivalent to believing that Lucy isn’t going to get the football from under Charlie Brown.

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Because past performance is the best indicator of future performance, Canadian governments have a perfect record of failing nine different emission reduction targets dating back to 1988.

Additionally, it is becoming harder and more difficult to follow the logic behind these projections.

According to the Trudeau government’s latest plan, Canada’s 2020 emissions will be the same as in 2020.

This is absurd because, while Canada’s 2021 emissions won’t be reported until 2023 for Canada, 2020 emissions were significantly lower due to the global recession that was caused by the pandemic in the first year.

The world’s emissions rose dramatically after the pandemic in 2021. There’s no reason for Canada to be any different.

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The government continues to modify emission levels retroactively.

It raised Canada’s emissions in 2021 from 730 million tonnes in 2020 to 739 million tonnes. This was in contrast to the 730 million tonnes it reported for 2020. Retroactively, the government’s performance on reducing emissions was improved by 9 million tonnes.

The federal Environment Ministry’s latest report now includes projected future emissions cuts from land use, forestry practices, which it didn’t do in the past and which arent part its climate modeling. This report comes from a different ministry’s natural resources.