The Centre for Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research has assisted in such projects as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Its director, Ken Lee, recently received a letter telling him his job would be affected as part of cost-cutting at the DFO, according to a CBC report.
“Employees at Fisheries and Oceans Canada whose work may be implicated by changes at DFO were informed by managers that their positions may be affected,” department spokeswoman Melanie Carkner said in an email Tuesday to The Chronicle Herald.
“This does not necessarily mean that they will lose their job. They may be asked to relocate or be redeployed within the department or government.”
The research centre was established in 2002 to co-ordinate DFO research into the environmental and oceanographic impacts of offshore petroleum exploration, production and transportation, the department says on its website.
While the centre won’t close, “the department is phasing out the portion that focuses on biological effects of oil and gas,” Carkner said in the email.
Exactly what that phase-out involves wasn’t explained.
About 400 positions will be eliminated, Carkner said, noting that the department has 11,000 workers.
Lee and other researchers at the centre could not be reached Tuesday.
Besides its high-profile work, the centre’s research into more mundane but important issues is invaluable, according to Thomas Duck, a professor of atmospheric science at Dalhousie University.
For example, the centre is doing baseline studies of hydrocarbon levels in the Hecate Strait in northern B.C. The strait will be used by tankers that will be carrying oil as part of the Northern Gateway pipeline project.
“Not all oil spills are all of the huge Exxon Valdez variety,” Duck said Tuesday. “There are lots of ways we can spill oil and these guys were doing some really important work. How can we possibly be getting rid of that? It doesn’t make any sense.”
The cuts in fisheries and environmental monitoring and research have come as part of the federal budget tabled in March. According to the Public Service Alliance of Canada, more than $13 million has been cut from Environment Canada’s budget.
The federal funding cuts haven’t just hurt public research, Duck said.
“They’re pulling out of any environmental research at all. They’re not just eliminating government research work, they have also taken away critical funding opportunities that the universities depend upon as well.
“We’re dying here at the universities, we are absolutely getting clobbered when it comes to environmental research.”
NDP environment critic Megan Leslie accused the Conservatives of using belt-tightening as an excuse for an ideological attack on scientific oversight.
“It’s so incredibly transparent,” the Halifax MP said from Ottawa on Tuesday.
“So we have a centre for oil and gas research and now they’re just not going to be doing oil and gas research. C’mon.”
Even industry officials have told MPs the funding cutbacks are hindering environmental assessments, Leslie said.
“There is no science. We are cutting Environment Canada, we are eliminating science jobs at Parks Canada. The scientific community is not an activist community but they are pushing back because they know how important it is for us to have the scientific evidence.”
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: JOHN McPHEE
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