The following was researched and written by Pav Penna

Demonstrably false Federal budget claims condoned by OIC and ECCC:

Re: OIC Exclusion complaint 5822-07732 – Finance ATIP File A-2022-00126:

The Department of Finance (“Finance”) denied my Access to Information and Privacy Act request to identify sources for false claims made in the Federal budget. Reason: “Cabinet confidentiality!” The Cabinet claims to have secret historical climate data too sensitive to be shared with the public!!! Really! The Office of the Information Commissioner condoned Finance’s evasion. The facts are simple:

Finance made demonstrably false claims in the Federal Budget, published April 7, 2022. Namely:

“Canada is already experiencing an increase in heat waves, wildfires and heavy storms.”

All three claims are false, but the sake of brevity let’s focus on the “heavy storms.”

While Finance denied my ATIP request for the sources for the false “increasing heavy storms” assertion, their response appropriately cited ECCC’s “Canada’s Changing Climate Report” as a credible reference.

But Section 4.3.2.1 of the report, titled “Observed changes,” clearly supports my complaint:

“There do not appear to be detectable trends in short-duration extreme precipitation in Canada for the country as a whole based on available station data. More stations have experienced an increase than a decrease in the highest amount of one-day rainfall each year, but the direction of trends is rather random over space. Some stations show significant trends, but the number of sites that had significant trends is not more than what one would expect from chance.”

Previous governments recognized reality: A June 13, 2019, letter signed by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna reads in part: “Extreme precipitation is also projected to increase in the future, although the observational record has not yet shown evidence of consistent changes in short-duration precipitation extremes across the country.” The source authority for this statement was Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Dr. Xuebin Zhang, our nation’s leading expert in the field.

Conclusions:

Finance’s increasing “heavy storms” claim is contradicted by unchallenged ECCC publications, ECCC’s top expert and Environment Minster McKenna. A CBC article made the same false claim. It was thoroughly rebutted in a detailed (and entertainingly brutal!) review by Ombudsman Gendron who criticized the reporter’s unprofessional bias, CBC’s refusal to address facts and lack of editorial oversight.

The suggestion that Cabinet has credible contradicting “confidential” evidence of historical frequency or severity of heavy storms too sensitive to be shared with the public is preposterous on its face. The failure by the activist ECCC to correct the false budget claims is clear evidence of their support for the Government’s deceptive exaggeration of measured climate change impacts.

Refusing to address these uncontested facts, the Information Commissioner supported Finance’s fabricated claim for a Cabinet confidences exclusion regarding my complaint. Canadians deserve better!

Pav Penna

February, 2024