DENIAL: Climate Change Minister on defence over trespass scandal
Trudeau’s Climate Change Minister, Steven Guilbeault, is on the defensive, finally responding to Saskatchewan Minister Jeremy Cockrill’s warning that federal agents could be arrested for trespassing on private land to take samples.
“I believe that we, and Canadians, are best served when we engage on the facts—not heated and misinformed rhetoric,” writes Climate Change Minister Guilbeault in a signed letter to Cockrill.
“…. On August 11, Environment and Climate Change Canada water scientists were taking samples alongside a highway in Pense, Saskatchewan on behalf of Health Canada. A landowner approached the scientists to inform them that they were in fact on private land.”
As previously reported by The Counter Signal, not one but several landowners, according to Minister Cockrill, have contacted the Saskatchewan government to raise “serious concerns about Government of Canada employees, in clearly marked Government of Canada vehicles, trespassing on private lands.”
As per the farmers, they were told by federal climate change agents that they were testing water sources for pesticide/nitrate levels on farms in the Pense, Mossbank, and Pilot Butte areas of the province.
While Guilbeault does not deny that it was possible that Government of Canada employees might have trespassed on a farm in Pense, Guilbeault contradicts Cockrill’s report of the farmers’ account, outright denying that the agents weren’t there to test nitrate levels.
“You brought this matter to my attention in your very public and very frank letter of August 21,” writes Guilbeault. “I also took note of your comments openly speculating about the work of these scientists. Please allow me to be equally frank and public in my response: departmental officials are not testing water for nitrates or nutrients related to farm runoff, and their study is not related to the non-regulated, voluntary goals of the Government of Canada in an effort to reduce emissions from agricultural fertilizers.”
Guilbeault continues, calling reports from outlets like The Counter Signal on Trudeau’s prospective nitrogen reduction policy that will see nitrogen capped at 30% below 2020 levels by 2030 “misinformation.”
“The claims made in the media about this incident compound other recent misinformation regarding the voluntary nature of the fertilizer emission reduction goals, mischaracterizing work that is voluntary, unregulated and being done in partnership with Canadian farmers to reduce emissions, not fertilizer use,” Guilbeault writes.