OTTAWA - The Harper government is dismissing suggestions that it tried to play down the release of a major report warning about serious health effects from climate change.

Health Minister Tony Clement's communications director conceded Friday that the release could have gone "way differently and way better." But Rita Smith denied any attempt to bury the 500-page report by releasing it late Thursday with no fanfare.

The Conservative government's hand was forced when parts of the report were leaked to the media last week, Smith said.

"This is not my preferred way to roll out anything," she said.

"But when things start leaking and then the stories say that we are hiding something - which we're not only not hiding, but we're scrambling to get out there - it's a bit unfair, it's a bit crazy. . . .

"Frankly, as rollouts go, I so would have like to see this go way differently and way better."

Clement's office emailed the report in pieces to journalists late Thursday afternoon and the health minister later held a brief scrum with reporters at the Conservative caucus retreat in Levis, Que.

Smith said the government planned a major release for the third week of August but claimed those plans were quashed when journalists started poking around.

The report, titled "Human Health in a Changing Climate: A Canadian Assessment of Vulnerabilities and Adaptive Capacity," was supposed to be released this spring.

When spring came and went, some of the report's authors worried it would be buried in a quiet corner of Health Canada's website.

A similar fate befell another major climate-change study released earlier this year by Natural Resources Canada.

After years of research, input from more than 140 experts and $50,000 paid to a public-relations firm to plan its release, Natural Resources posted the study online after 5 p.m. on a Friday with no flourish.

Pollution Probe's Quentin Chiotti contributed to both the Health Canada and Natural Resources reports. He says the science shows Ottawa needs to do more to help Canadians adapt to climate change.

"If this government doesn't have a clear adaptation strategy and is treating these assessments the way that they are, what does that say about this government's understanding of adaptation? I don't know."