The Ontario government is hiding studies that likely contradict its reasons for opposing the Kyoto Protocol on atmosphere protection, Liberal environment critic Jim Bradley says.

"This government wants to hide something," Mr. Bradley charged at a Queen's Park news conference yesterday. ". . . Either it could comply [with the protocol] and the information that it has verifies that and the government doesn't want to release it, or they never had any intention of complying and were simply looking for an excuse not to participate in a positive way," said Mr. Bradley, who has been among the government's most dogged critics in fighting for the protocol.

The Environment Ministry has refused to turn over studies on the costs of implementing the protocol and on a proposed plan to fight climate change by limiting greenhouse-gas emissions.

The 411 pages of documents that the ministry gave Mr. Bradley this month under orders from the freedom-of-information commissioner are filled with deletions and blacked-out passages.

Environment Minister Chris Stockwell said the freedom-of-information legislation limits what the ministry can reveal.

"We have no control over what's blacked out and what isn't. It's just the [Freedom of Information] folks that do the blacking out and we don't have any say one way or the other," he told reporters at Queen's Park.

Mr. Bradley called this excuse "a ridiculous statement."

"The government can release exactly what they want to release. If there is any problem it is with the minister and his ministry wanting to keep secret matters which should be clearly open to public view."

Premier Ernie Eves has sided with Alberta Premier Ralph Klein in attacking the federal government's plans to ratify the protocol before the end of the year.

Mr. Bradley said the documents likely contradict Mr. Eves's stand. "One possibility is that the impact is not going to be as dire as they have suggested in their discussions with the federal government and in their public pronouncements."

He noted the conflict involved the refusal to provide information. "When they've been to the federal-provincial conferences, they've said to the federal government, 'You won't give us this information.' And yet we have a government here who won't give . . . information that would be relevant [to the debate over Kyoto].' "

Among the data that have been excised from the documents turned over to Mr. Bradley are details of what an Ontario climate change plan could be as an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol.

Projections of the future growth of greenhouse-gas emissions also are blacked out.