montreal

Environment Canada is embroiled in a dispute that has seen critics accusing it of trying to interfere with the independence of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), a body set up by Canada, the United States and Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The commission had circulated a draft document listing prominent Canadian companies among North America's worst polluters. But François Lavalle, head of the pollutant release inventory of Canada's federal environment department, wrote to the CEC saying that Canada planned to take steps to ensure that the report was not released “unless Canadian concerns are addressed”.

Lavalle warned that Christine Stewart, the environment minister, might refuse to endorse the report unless polluters were allowed first to review its findings. The dispute is said to be linked to the resignation last month of the CEC's executive director, Victor Lichtinger, a Mexican diplomat. He had just signed a three-year contract, but left after firing the commission's senior US official, Greg Block.

Block was alleged to have leaked privileged information involving Canada to his country. The CEC said Lichtinger left voluntarily, but some critics claim that he was forced out because he had become too sympathetic to environmentalists' concerns.

“The Canadian government seems more interested in defending the image of polluters than in telling Canadians what they have a right to know, ” says Matthew Bramley of Greenpeace in Montreal. And Stewart Elgie, a lawyer who chairs a national committee of environmentalists and industry groups, warns of a “real risk” that the CEC could lose its political independence.

The government denies any political motivation, arguing that its main complaint was about the accuracy of the report and saying that the commission has agreed voluntarily to make amendments. In his letter to the CEC, Lavalle claimed the report was misleading, unscientific and riddled with errors. But it was later learned that industry had provided erroneous figures to Environment Canada, which the agency simply passed on to the commission.

The contentious report, Taking Stock, is the second CEC document that has raised hackles. Last year the CEC identified Ontario, Canada's richest province, as the third-worst polluting jurisdiction in North America, behind Texas and Tennessee. Ontario's environment minister, Norman Sterling, rejected the commission's conclusions. He said Ontario ranks poorly because it is a large province with a large industrial base, and because its industries are more honest than those elsewhere in reporting discharges.

But an assessment by his own ministry, obtained by the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy under a Freedom of Information Act request, failed to uncover any errors in the report that would suggest Ontario was treated unfairly.