Ottawa

Quote; challenge

The Quote: From Stephen Harper’s scrum today in front of New York City Hall. Transcript provided by the Prime Minister’s Office.

STEPHEN HARPER: …And tonight, the Secretary General of the United Nations is hosting a dinner on climate change. As you know, our position is very clear. We want to see an effective, a new effective international accord, one that includes all the major emitters of greenhouse gases. And of course we’re working very closely with the Obama Administration on a truly continental approach.

And we think that’s going well but we’ll share those views and those perspectives (inaudible).

QUESTION: The critics are asking if Canada is on the sidelines in climate change.

STEPHEN HARPER: Well, you know, I think Canada’s come a long way from where we were. As you know, the previous government signed an international climate change agreement and then decided it wouldn’t implement it. So that’s the situation we have.

No, I think that Canada is working very closely with the United States, which makes sense because we’re an integrated, we don’t just share an environmental air space, but we’re in an integrated economy. So we think that effective climate change action has to be (inaudible) continentally and we’re working very closely with the Obama Administration on that. We’ve got very similar target, very similar approaches and obviously we’ll be working closely with them as opposed to before and after Copenhagen.

The Challenge:

Can anybody find any record of any official of the Obama administration, in Washington or any U.S. setting, mentioning the U.S. government’s close work with Canada on a continental plan for climate-change action?

Bonus points for any evidence that any American has mentioned this close work in any setting where there was not actually a visiting Canadian standing beside the speaker, smiling expectantly.

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