Mr. Harper, listen to the Commish

She's your commissioner, Mr. Harper, appointed under your watch. She is a former mining industry executive, the kind of credentials you respect. So when she speaks, pay attention. And she recently spoke loud and clear.

As federal Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Julie Gelfand heads her department's Fall 2014 report, which is not at all pleased with your government's greenhouse gas emissions record. No doubt, you have read the report and encountered the following scolding:

Overall, we found that federal departments have made unsatisfactory progress in each of the four areas examined. Despite some advances since our 2012 audit, timelines for putting measures in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have not been met and departments are not yet able to assess whether measures in place are reducing emissions as expected. We also found that Environment Canada lacks an approach for coordinating actions with the provinces and territories to achieve the national target, and an effective planning process for how the federal government will contribute to achieving the Copenhagen target. In 2012, we concluded that the federal regulatory approach was unlikely to lead to emission reductions sufficient to meet the 2020 Copenhagen target. Two years later, the evidence is stronger that the growth in emissions will not be reversed in time and that the target will be missed.

In short, you are failing to meet your own target for emissions reductions, your government doesn't know how to meet it, and your approach wouldn't have worked in the first place.

It's a sorry story, Mr. Harper, and it isn't coming from those radical, foreign-funded environmentalists. It's coming from your own government's Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. So listen up.