The survey for The Hill Times on Wednesday this week suggested that 50 per cent of Canadians disapprove of the decision, part of sweeping spending cuts to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and opposition MPs say the poll results suggest shutting down the centre has galvanized public opinion in conjunction with wider changes and limits to environmental protection contained in the government’s omnibus budget implementation legislation, Bill C-38.
Only 21 per cent of respondents in the nationwide survey approved of the government decision to close the centre, called the Experimental Lakes Area and situated near Lake of the Woods in northwestern Ontario. Another 29 per cent said they didn’t know what to think about it.
MPs say closure of the research station may have the same kind of attention-getting effect on public opinion toward the Conservatives as the $16 glass of orange juice International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda (Durham, Ont.) famously put on her government tab during a trip to Europe.
The move to close the research centre, which took scientists and environmentalists by surprise when it was disclosed after details of spending cuts emerged from within Fisheries and Oceans, drew letters from around the world as MPs on the Commons Fisheries Committee began investigating the effects on scientific and departmental programs the spending reductions would have.
“It’s really resonated, I think that’s what this poll shows. It’s really resonated with Canadians, that on this issue and so many issues, this government has acted first and consulted later, and what they’re doing is they’re getting us into a big mess,” NDP MP Robert Chisholm (Dartmouth-Cole Harbour, N.S.) told The Hill Times.
The centre, established in 1968, has conducted ground-breaking research into the effect of acid rain on freshwater lakes and ecosystems, the deleterious effect phosphates from human activity have on lake ecosystems, the effect of farmed fish on natural species and a range of other effects that human activity and industry have on freshwater lakes. Artifacts and other evidence show the area was first inhabited by humans between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago.
Scientists involved with the centre and their supporters have been attempting to generate public support for several weeks, with opposition MPs linking the closure to wider Conservative federal government environmental measures that have proved unpopular, including changes that will allow the government to speed up environmental approval of the Enbridge Inc. plan to build a massive pipeline through northern B.C. to carry highly toxic oil sands bitumen from northern Alberta to a super-tanker port to be built at Kitimat, B.C.
The Forum Research survey found opposition to closure of the northern Ontario freshwater research project strongest in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Ontario and Atlantic Canada.
Seventy per cent of the poll’s respondents in Manitoba and Saskatchewan disapproved of the closure, with a 57-per-cent disapproval rating in Ontario and 53 per cent of respondents in the Atlantic provinces against the measure. Approval was highest in Alberta, at 31 per cent. In B.C., 44 per cent opposed the decision and in Quebec 40 per cent were opposed.
Forum Research president Lorne Bozinoff said the survey, gathering opinion on a topic and location that most Canadians likely had not heard of prior to the recent controversy, is further evidence that the Conservative government is not in synch with Canadian opinion on the environment, and likely won’t be able to recover from any damage from its environmental policies before the next election.
“This government is out of step with the public on the environmental file,” Mr. Bozinoff said. “Everything from the pipeline on, everything they’ve been doing.”
“I don’t think they’re going to be able to own the environmental position in the next election, they’ll have too much baggage after all that’s gone on,” Mr. Bozinoff said. “I don’t think it’s the type of thing that you can, in the last year of your mandate, say ‘oh yeah, we’re environmentalists, look at what we did in the last six months.”
The survey of 1,165 voting-age Canadians has a margin of error 2.87 per cent, with the error margin higher among the samples broken out by province.
Mr. Chisholm said the termination of research at the Experimental Lakes Area by next March is directly related to provisions in the omnibus budget bill that limit environmental assessment protection, in the face of major projects such as oil pipelines, to commercial and recreational fisheries or fisheries harvested by first nation communities. Existing guarantees of environmental assessments for other species, wetlands and rivers and streams that don’t included the designated species, are being eliminated.
The changes are being met with angry opposition in British Columbia coastal areas, as well as regions that could be affected by the Enbridge pipeline.
“The government will designate what lake or what stream will be subject to an environmental assessment if there is a development, in other words, a pipeline,” said Mr. Chisholm. “They could say ‘that particular lake or stream does not fit the criteria.’ It’s quite remarkable.”
NDP MP Glenn Thibeault (Sudbury, Ont.) said the money the government will save by shutting down the Ontario lake research centre is a drop in the bucket compared to federal tax breaks and indirect subsidies for oil companies, particularly in the oil sands.
“Two million dollars a year, when you think about the subsidies that we’re giving the oil companies for example, which is in the billions, I’m sure we could find ways to come up with $2 million to keep our fresh water fresh,” Mr. Thibeault said.
When the government confirmed closure of the Experimental Lakes Area research station, which covers 58 lakes, it argued the research is “better suited to universities.”
“The department will no longer conduct research that requires whole lake or whole ecosystem manipulation [and] as such the research program at the Experimental Lakes Area will be ceased and the facility will be closed,” Fisheries Department spokeswoman Melanie Carkner told CBC News at the time.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz
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