Gerry Protti, a former Encana executive and one of the founders of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, was hired by the department in December 2012 on a three-month “management consulting” contract for $21,000.
Emails obtained under access-to-information legislation show that Protti worked with senior DFO officials as they were negotiating with the organization trying to save the ELA.
In 2012, DFO contacted scientists at the northwestern Ontario facility near Kenora to let them know the government would no longer fund the ELA, which meant that long-term experiments related to environmental contamination of fresh water had to be stopped.
In a Dec. 24. 2012 email, DFO official Dave Gillis described Protti as a “consultant working for DFO on strategic issues related to the ELA file, including to assist” the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the organization hoping to re-open ELA with funding from the Ontario government.
World-renowned scientist and fresh-water expert David Schindler said in an interview Tuesday that it seems odd DFO would hire an oil man for the job.
“I think there’s a conflict in that if you want someone to evaluate what Experimental Lakes Area could do and what the implications of it being transferred to IISD would be, you’d think you’d look to a senior scientist, not someone who’s not a scientist at all and is connected to the oil and gas industry.”
Protti’s contract with DFO ended on March 31, 2013. On April 2, 2013, he was appointed as Alberta’s top energy regulator. He could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Melanie Carkner, a spokeswoman for DFO, said in an email Tuesday that Protti’s “background and professional experience with academia, NGOs, industry, industry associations and government departments were important tools for the government of Canada’s work to create a solid base for the potential new operator.”
At the time of the contract, Protti was registered as a lobbyist for the Energy Policy Institute of Canada, an industry association set up by Bruce Carson, a former senior PMO staffer who is now facing influence-peddling charges in an unrelated matter involving First Nations water-treatment systems.
According to the lobby registry, in August 2012, Protti met with Wayne Wouters, the clerk of the Privy Council, Canada’s top bureaucrat, and Claire Dansereau, then the deputy minister of fisheries.
Neither DFO nor the Privy Council would say whether they discussed ELA.
In 2008, Protti donated $975 to the Conservative riding association of Calgary Centre North, the riding then held by Jim Prentice, the environment minister.
In March 2013, Protti set up a meeting in Calgary between scientists working to save the facility and representatives of Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
The government appeared to hope Protti could help line up industry financing for the facility, although nothing ultimately came from that.
In July, the Ontario government announced it would provide funding of up to $2 million a year to keep ELA operating.
The province has proposed regulatory changes that would allow the agency to operate under provincial authority. For the deal with IISD to go through, the federal government would have to agree to continue to take responsibility for legal liabilities and make regulatory changes.
Scientists use the 58 lakes at ELA to study how freshwater ecosystems respond to pollution.
Scientist Carol Kelly, whose was working on an expensive, long-term international study on mercury pollution that was stopped after Ottawa pulled the plug, said Tuesday that it’s too bad scientists don’t have the kind of access Protti enjoys.
“I think the scientists who were working there should have had an appointment to discuss the future of ELA, and we did not,” she said. “We were really not considered in making decisions.”
Original Article
Source: canada.com/
Author: Stephen Maher
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