Kyoto, climate change, and the environment have captured the interest of the business panel with even greater intensity than taxation and government corruption normally do. We received more pages of volunteered verbatim comments from panelists than on any other issue in more than five years of weekly panel surveys.

We also received expression of concern that many moew questions would be necessary to fully capture the nuanced character of respondent perspectives. As one CEO put it, “Even a dozen questions probably wouldn’t do. Maybe no survey could properly set out my strong, mixed feelings on this hot topic. I’d probably have to write you a letter.”

Summarizing the panel’s views is difficult because they are divided and sometimes polarized on the substance of the issues and because, as one CEO put it, “there are still a lot of things I need to learn about the issue.” On the substance of climate change, the panel appears to see Kyoto as a bad treaty on a good issue. With some major, articulate exceptions, panelists tend to see the reduction of fossil fuel use as desirable while tending to see the Kyoto agreement itself as an ill-conceived document.

To add further complexity, panelists see reduced fossil fuel use as desirable but likely less urgent that the reduction of individual pollutants.

Panelists come closest to a consensus in their low esteem for Rona Ambrose as Minister of the Environment in the Harper government and for Stephane Dion as Minister responsible for the same portfolio in the Paul Martin government. Both earn failing grades. The low failing grade for Ambrose is among the lowest performance scores earned by the Harper government. Only about a fifth of panelists give a score of 60% or higher to either minister.

For panelists, the low perceived performance of either environment minister is not a partisan matter. Panelists are perturbed by what they perceive as poor explanations and poor justifications for the environmental initiatives embraced by either minister.

These are the principal findings from the weekly business web-survey conducted by COMPAS for the Financial Post under sponsorship of BDO Dunwoody LLP.

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