Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault and his climate change ambassador have traveled tens of thousands of kilometers in business class in recent years, even though occupying this more spacious seat is up to three times more polluting than class. economic.
As the COP28 on climate opens today in Dubai, our Bureau of Investigation analyzed the travel of Minister Guilbeault and his team since the return of post-pandemic travel.
From July 2021 to July 2023, Ambassador Catherine Stewart took at least 10 overseas trips priced at business class*. In these two years alone, she traveled some 175,000 km in business class, according to our analysis. That’s more than four times around the Earth.
The one who until August 2022 was assistant deputy minister of the Environment is also the second federal civil servant to have spent the most in 2022 and 2023 on trips, these totaling $189,000.
Catherine Stewart has been Canada’s Ambassador for Climate Change since August 2022.
Account X by Catherine Stewart
A comfortable trip to Japan
Minister Guilbeault has also succumbed to the temptation of the business class. Since being appointed Minister of the Environment in October 2021, the former environmental activist has made at least four business class trips, covering around 60,000 km.
This was particularly the case when he visited Sapporo, Japan, last April, as part of the G7. His round-trip ticket cost $15,840.
The environmental bill is also very steep: more than eight tonnes of CO2which corresponds to the gasoline consumption of a Toyota RAV4 for two years.
This polluting way of traveling is, however, the polar opposite of the image that Steven Guilbeault has conveyed since he became known as an environmental activist at Greenpeace.
During an interview with Channel One in 2018, he said he went to his wedding by public transport and that he did not own a car. Ten years earlier, he told the magazine News never having taken a plane for a family vacation due to its polluting nature.
The minister’s office would not indicate whether his trip this week to the United Arab Emirates – the oil kingdom currently hosting the 28e UN conference on climate change – was carried out in business class.
- Listen to the interview with Patrick Bonin, director of the Climate-Energy campaign at Greenpeace via QUB radio :
Authorized to do so
Minister Guilbeault refused our request for an interview. His press secretary indicated by email that the minister and his team travel economy class in Canada and the United States, but that “business class may however be authorized” in certain contexts, such as long trips.
“Carbon offset credits will be or are already purchased for all air travel” of the minister and his team, added Kaitlin Power, without however specifying whether the carbon footprint of business class was taken into account.
– With Charles Mathieu
Minister and ambassador must set an example, experts say
Experts in ethics and governance deplore the contradiction between the minister’s actions and his speech.
“It’s as if there were two classes of citizens. The one who must make all the efforts, and the other upper class who allows themselves to be above ethical and moral issues,” commented governance expert Saidatou Dicko.
According to her, the minister and other Canadian environmental representatives must “embody” their function and have a “duty to set an example.”
UQAM professor Saidatou Dicko
Courtesy UQAM
“We cannot say: do what I say and not what I do,” added the professor from the University of Quebec in Montreal.
This is all the more true for Mr. Guilbeault, who has “built his image as an unconditional defender of the climate cause,” she underlines.
Lesson to the population
Words that resonate with the expert in ethics and governance, Ivan Tchotourian.
“The image that the political class sends is just as important as the work they accomplish. The image of traveling in business class and then teaching the population a lesson can create a certain distrust towards the political class,” noted the professor from Laval University.
He invites Mr. Guilbeault to be “even more careful”, as he has “built his career and his image” around the climate emergency.
For political scientist specializing in climate debates Ryan Katz-Rosene, the choice made by Minister Guilbeault and his team is more “irony than hypocrisy”.
“If there are people for whom it is legitimate to take the plane, it is our decision-makers who use their travel to conclude agreements which will ultimately make it possible to reduce greenhouse gases,” clarifies the assistant professor at the University of Ottawa, according to whom using business class is a “personal choice”.