Day's online musings deleted

Canada.com Mike De Souza, CanWest News Service
OTTAWA - Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day was ordered to remove an embarrassing comical commentary that ridiculed the science behind global warming from his personal website to avoid embarrassing his government about its real views on climate change, critics said Wednesday. ''Apparently, the ministry of truth is still alive and well in Canada,'' said John Bennett, executive director of Climate Action Network, a coalition of environmental groups. ''Clearly, this government is perfectly willing to try to erase its past in order to fool us in the future.'' Day stirred up controversy last week because of an article posted Dec. 1 on his website, www.stockwellday.com, in which he ridiculed former U.S. vice-president Al Gore's current crusade against global warming. In the article, reprinted in newspapers in his Okanagan-Coquihalla, B.C. riding, Day joked he was ''begging for Big Al's Glacial Melt,'' because of recent snow storms and cold weather in Western Canada. But the offending article, along with all other commentary posted by Day since he became a cabinet minister were removed from the site by the end of the week. Officials at Day's office had no explanation. ''Were they (articles) there before?'' wrote Melisa Leclerc, Day's director of communications, in an e-mail. ''I hadn't noticed.'' The controversy coincides with new signals from Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the government plans to boost its environmental policies and overall plan to fight climate change and air pollution. Harper has spent the past few days insisting in a series of interviews he believes it's time to act to stop global warming because of mounting evidence that the climate is changing. ''This is damage control,'' said Ottawa-area Liberal MP David McGuinty, who compared Day's comments to the fictional, stone-age Flintstone family last week. ''I think what's really happening, is that Canada's new government is in new trouble, and the new trouble is that they're on the wrong side of the climate-change debate and the need for climate-change action.'' Although Harper has dodged questions about whether he would replace Environment Minister Rona Ambrose in his cabinet in an effort to regain public support, he agreed with recent suggestions from former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney the government has work to do on its plan to fix the dismal record that was left by the previous Liberal regime. Mulroney warned the Liberals could claim the environment as a central issue to sway key middle-class voters in the next election, if the Conservatives fail to make substantial changes to their current plan.