Several days after Postmedia News reported he had made this argument in support of new environmental legislation, that was expected to be adopted on Friday, Fisheries and Oceans Minister Keith Ashfield has not offered to explain his own remarks.
“There are currently few tools to authorize pollution other than by detailed regulations,” Ashfield wrote in a June 14 letter to Todd Panas, president of the Union of Environment Workers. “For example, the amended Fisheries Act will provide flexibility and establish new tools to authorize deposits of deleterious substances.”
Ashfield recently signed a departmental report that warned the government’s “change agenda” for protecting Canada’s fisheries could be overturned in court, but that it could also boost morale within the department and its public image through a new communications strategy.
Internal department records, released through access to information legislation, have also warned that heavy workloads and high turnover within the department could jeopardize the federal government’s ability to protect Canadians from the dangerous impacts of industrial projects.
Up until this year’s federal budget and its supporting legislation, Canada’s Fisheries Act, considered to be the country’s strongest environmental law, prohibited the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat without a special authorization from the minister that would usually be accompanied by requirements to compensate for the damage caused.
Ashfield said in his letter to the union that the changes introduced this year were intended to support a shift from managing impacts on fish habitat toward managing threats to fisheries.
Critics, including former Conservative fisheries minister Thomas Siddon, have suggested the changes would weaken the law and compromise the minister’s constitutional responsibility to protect fisheries.
Budget cuts within the fisheries department are among millions of dollars in layoffs and reductions to federal scientific research and monitoring of Canada’s air, water, oceans and wildlife that were announced as part of the Harper government’s plan to balance the country’s books.
Ashfield’s letter suggested that the government could also outsource services to protect fisheries to third parties.
His office referred questions about the letter to his department.
It declined to say what criteria would be used to issue contracts or whether private firms would be eligible to receive them, but it has suggested that conservation groups could be qualified to do some of the work required.
The department referred other questions about his comments regarding the alleged need to “authorize” more water pollution to Environment Canada, which was not immediately able to provide a comment.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Mike De Souza
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