“Canada has custody over one of the largest environments in the world. It’s resource rich, and that gives us a special responsibility—one which this government is not exercising,” Maurice Strong told The Hill Times last week. “It’s very discouraging, and we’re going to pay a very heavy price for the policies of this government.”
Mr. Strong has represented Canada internationally in a variety of capacities over the past 50 years, beginning with his tenure as deputy minister for External Aid—now CIDA—in the early 1960s and served as Petro-Canada’s first chair after it was established in 1975. He is credited with convening one of the largest summits of world leaders in history, as secretary general of the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
Policy makers from throughout the international community will reconvene to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit and hold talks on developing the green economy next month in Rio. Mr. Strong, who is an honorary professor at Beijing’s Peking University and today advises the Chinese government on sustainable development, was in Ottawa last week to speak at a Rio +20 planning event organized by economic think-tank Sustainable Prosperity.
Mr. Strong, who turned 83 last week, did not mince words in criticizing what is increasingly seen as anti-environmental policies by the federal government.
“It has been the most anti-environmental government that we’ve ever had, and one of the most anti-environmental governments in the world,” Mr. Strong lamented.
The Conservatives have been criticized throughout their six years in government for offloading environmental responsibilities to the provinces and obstructing international efforts to address climate change, but with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s (Whitby-Oshawa, Ont.) 2012-2013 budget—the Tories’ first budget drafted as a majority government—experts on sustainable development say that the government has confirmed its intentions to fast-track industrial development at the expense of the environment.
Bill C-38, the 2012-2013 Budget Implementation Act, will overhaul how environmental assessments of major industrial projects are conducted. It replaces the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act with new legislation giving the federal environment minister the discretion to decide whether or not a project is federally assessed. Assessments are to be completed within 24 months, which includes public consultation, panel review and the minister’s final decision.
Bill C-38 also empowers Cabinet to override the National Energy Board’s authority to approve pipeline projects, and gives Cabinet the power to create pipeline regulations on the advice of the ministers of Transport and Natural Resources.
Since forming majority government last May, the Tories have been outspoken in their support of major pipelines such as the Keystone XL project, which would deliver Alberta bitumen to refineries on the Gulf Coast, and the Northern Gateway project, which would deliver Alberta bitumen to oil tankers off of B.C.’s Pacific Coast. Both projects have been stalled by public opposition and current regulatory requirements in Canada and the U.S.
The Fisheries Act will also be amended to limit its protection to fish that support “commercial, recreational and aboriginal fisheries.” Cabinet will also have the power to exempt fisheries from protections contained in the act.
Federal Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan, who is charged with auditing sustainable development initiatives under the office of the auditor general, told the audience at the Rio +20 event that his office was still in the process of comprehending the budget’s changes to environmental regulation and assessment.
“I think those changes are absolutely significant and probably among the biggest changes the federal regime on environmental assessments, as well as on fish and habitat policy, have seen in 30 or 40 years,” Mr. Vaughan acknowledged. “In a nutshell, I think myself and my colleagues are still digesting what the changes are.”
David Runnalls, who currently serves as Sustainable Prosperity’s acting executive director and is a distinguished fellow with the Canadian Institute for Governance Innovation, told The Hill Times that while the federal environmental assessment process is in need of reform, he is doubtful that the reforms in the budget are in the interests of the environment.
“One of the problems with what they want to do with the environmental assessment process, is that they don’t have any credibility as to why they’re doing it,” Mr. Runnalls observed.
He pointed to the concurrent crackdown on environmental groups by the government as evidence that the budget’s environmental measures are ideologically driven.
Frustration with the pipeline delays led Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.) to group environmentalists with “radicals” seeking to undermine the Canadian economy. More recently, Environment Minister Peter Kent (Thornhill, Ont.) has accused unspecified environmental charities of laundering foreign funds and using the proceeds to interfere with industrial projects that are in Canada’s national interest.
The budget bill puts theory into practice by amending the Income Tax Act to empower the minister of National Revenue to revoke an organization’s charitable status if it exceeds limits on political activities or fails to adequately disclose donor information.
“Minister Oliver will say that they’re going to streamline the [assessment] process, but it’s still going to be designed to protect the environment,” Mr. Runnalls said. “If you say that, and the week after you call most environmental groups enemies of the country and accuse them of being funded by rich dilettante Americans, you don’t build a lot of credibility that the environment is what you’re worried about.”
He added: “I don’t think most Canadians feel that way, and I worry about the reputation that Canada is beginning to acquire. I think that can hurt us in the marketplace.”
The 2012 budget will also eliminate the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. Established in 1988, the Round Table served as an in-house think-tank on sustainable development for Parliament. With an annual budget of only $5.2-million, the NRTEE produced non-partisan analysis of the economic impacts of prospective environmental policies, including carbon pricing and climate change adaptation. It will close its doors next spring.
NRTEE President David McLaughlin, who also addressed last week’s Rio +20 conference in Ottawa, emphasized the importance of data in informing public policy.
“Every government needs data and information to make these decisions, and increasingly environmental issues, sustainability issues, are demanding more data, more research, more information,” Mr. McLaughlin told The Hill Times following his address. “It’s not just some abstract concept. These are hard economic choices to develop or not develop.”
The government has been accused of “muzzling scientists” throughout its six years in office. Scientists at Environment Canada, previously accessible to media, must now receive approval from a rigorous vetting by communications staff on both the bureaucratic and political side of government.
Ottawa Citizen environmental reporter Tom Spears recently illustrated the system by asking the National Research Council for details on a joint study on snowfall that it was conducting with NASA. Through an Access to Information request Mr. Spears found that his question required the attention of 11 communications staffers focused on analysing the journalist’s motives and developing an acceptable response. The response that he received after his deadline failed to address his initial query.
At the International Polar Conference in Montreal last month Environment Canada scientists were reportedly shadowed by government communications staff. Scientists responded to media requests with business cards.
Last fall the government announced that it would end $547,000 in federal funding for the Canadian Environmental Network, an organization that served as a point of contact between some 640 local environmental groups across Canada and federal agencies like Environment Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans since 1977.
Rick Smith, executive director of eco-charity Environmental Defence, said that the Tories did have environmental victories to tout in their minority government years. He credited the federal government with doubling the amount of national parkland and protected marine areas in their first five years in office—an initiative that he described as “unprecedented.”
However, Mr. Smith was discouraged by the announcement that Parks Canada would be cutting nearly 1700 jobs under the latest budget. He said that the cuts would mean less scientific expertise to monitor at risk and invasive species, and could signal a “less ambitious agenda for parks creation in the coming years.”
Environment Canada faces $53.8-million in cuts over the next three years, and Parks Canada will have its budget reduced by $29.2-million.
Mr. Smith also credited the government with being open to working with environmental groups to regulate toxic chemicals such as Bisphenol A and lead.
“The government has actually taken a very proactive position getting those toxic chemicals out of consumer products,” Mr. Smith noted. “The question is, with the dramatic cutbacks at Parks Canada in the last few days, and the dramatic cutbacks to the civil service, generally, whether that signals a change of approach with parks creation and other policies.”
In addition to expanding protected parkland and introducing new restrictions on toxic substances, the federal government has invested $10-billion in clean-tech at both the domestic and industrial level through programs administered by Natural Resource Canada and Sustainable Development Technology Canada since 2007. However, the government’s ecoENERGY programs, which were a primary source of funding for green innovation and eco-friendly home retrofitting, have all sunset.
The government has also harmonized its emission standards with the U.S. for passenger vehicles, as well as light and heavy duty trucks. The new regulations will improve fuel efficiency in future models by up to 25 per cent.
The measures are part of what Mr. Kent has described as a “sector-by-sector” approach to climate change. Under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord Canada is committed reducing its carbon emissions to 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020.
Canada was committed to reducing its emissions to six per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol, but Mr. Kent announced that the federal government was pulling out of the agreement following last December’s UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, to avoid paying $14-billion in fines under the agreement.
The Budget Implementation Bill repeals 2007’s Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, which legally obligated the Canadian government to meet its commitments under the international agreement.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: CHRIS PLECASH
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