Trudeau minister tells Canadians to reduce air pollution after traveling nearly 30,000 kilometres by private plane in 2020

McKenna, who once served as Canada's Environment Minister, confirmed once again that "climate change is real," saying that Canadians needed to do their part in reducing air pollution.

"Consider that the transportation sector represents a quarter of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions," said McKenna.

McKenna's comments came after the announcement of subsidies for the light rail system in Edmonton.

"Climate policy is actually tricky because it's not just transit, it's across all sectors, but it's also being really diligent at looking at what are your emissions so you can actually tackle them," said McKenna.

"Some of the leadership has been about just measuring emissions and then being very practical in figuring out what are the different ways you can reduce emissions while also doing good things."

"I want to take a second to talk about climate change," McKenna continued. "If you look at what’s happening across the country, you have fires that are burning, literally incinerating towns in a matter of hours. When you consider that in British Columbia seniors are dying because of the extreme heat."

"If you look at Europe, Europe has floods that they've never seen before, the equivalent of three months of rain over three days. Climate change is real."

"There is nothing more important... We will get out of the Covid-19 pandemic, thank God, but then we will have the climate crisis, and we need to move forward together."

Blacklock's reports that McKenna spent over $22,000 on airfare, with 28,869 kilometres travelled.

McKenna has been called out on climate hypocrisy in the past.

According to Blacklock's, Minister McKenna used a "car and chauffeur" to get to a meeting to promote public transit.

McKenna would travel 200 kilometres by chauffeur to a photo op in Alfred, Ontario, as well as a low carbon dairy farm in St. Eugene, Ontario.