Environment Canada staff advised incoming cabinet minister Peter Kent that Canadians believe Ottawa is too soft on businesses and individuals that harm the world around them.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper named Kent as his environment minister in January.
Kent was then given a series of briefing documents from Environment Canada, so he could get up to speed on his new department.
Those documents included a "public environment analysis," which CTV recently obtained through the Access to Information Act.
The analysis paints a picture of a Canadian public that cares deeply about the environment and wants Ottawa to hold environmental offenders accountable for their actions.
"Canadians generally feel that their governments do not go far enough in enforcing environmental laws and they tend to support sharply limiting industrial greenhouse gas emissions," the analysis says.
While there is support for using incentives to encourage pro-environmental practices, Canadians "express more support for the application of strict standards, controls, and penalties" when it comes to the transgressions of the corporate world.
The Environment Canada analysis also gave Kent the department's impressions of what environmental issues resonate most with Canadians.
Climate change is "possibly the paramount environmental priority for Canadians," though the issue is currently attracting less attention than in the recent past.
"There is some evidence that Canadians are less concerned about climate change that they were a year ago, possibly due to more immediate concerns brought to the fore by the global recession," the January analysis says.
"That being said, scepticism about climate change seems to be more characteristic of Americans than Canadians."
The analysis says Canadians rank freshwater as the country's "most important natural resource," which is also viewed as being desirable to other countries.
When it comes to conservation and wildlife, Canadians hold concerns about the deterioration of the natural environment and the animals that live within it.
"Among wild animals, mammals like caribou, seals and polar bears tend to garner the greatest concern," the analysis says.
Environment Canada says Canadians are sensitive to the possible environmental impact of oil and gas development.
The department believes that public concerns have amplified by media campaigns that have cast oil and gas development in an unflattering light.
"A 2009 National Geographic article on the oil sands and the 2010 ‘Rethink Alberta' ad campaign contributed to this unease," the analysis says.
The National Geographic article from the March 2009 issue is archived on its website under a headline that includes the phrase "Scraping Bottom."
The ‘Rethink Alberta' campaign was launched by the U.S.-based Rainforest Action Network last summer. It urged a tourism boycott of Alberta and splashed pictures of the oilsands across billboards in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
