The federal government announced last year that the northern Ontario facility, which has been home to groundbreaking work on acid rain and the environmental effects of lake pollutants, was supposedly no longer consistent with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ increasingly practical priorities. To save $2 million a year in operating costs, the government declared, it would spend some $50 million to close it. Bizarre.
Then, in April, to the great relief of ecologists and other scientists worldwide, the Ontario government, along with a Manitoba-based think-tank, stepped in to buy the ELA a one-year reprieve. “You can’t just close a facility like that down to save a little money, and lose that wealth of information,” said the province’s new Research and Innovation Minister Reza Moridi, offering a much-needed balm to defenders of science, reason and good government. “Why couldn’t the federal government find $2 million in its $300-billion budget to keep it alive when science is key to our future?” Our thoughts exactly.
But was that just talk? It now seems that negotiations between Ottawa, Ontario and the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development have broken down because the Wynne government won’t specify exactly how much money it’s willing to put up. That means the IISD can’t produce a business plan, including how it intends to raise whatever funds won’t be covered by the province’s commitment. In the meantime, the feds can’t transfer ownership. And if the details are not worked out by Sept. 1, the facility will be shuttered. For how long, no one knows.
“This is worrisome,” said Diane Orihel, a PhD student at the University of Alberta who has been lobbying to keep the facility open. “The fate of ELA very much hinges upon the support of Ontario.”
The solidity of that support is hard to gauge. When asked by the Globe and Mail when the government would be ready to commit to a number, a spokeswoman for Ontario’s natural resources ministry said this meaningless thing: “We acknowledge there are a number of topics related to the Experimental Lakes Area that Ontario continues to work on with Canada and the IISD.” Huh?
Will someone please save the ELA already? For 40 years, this unique, relatively inexpensive facility has produced science that has shaped policy around the world. It has done nothing to deserve this terrible year.
It’s too bad the burden of paying the ELA’s operating costs has been effectively downloaded to Premier Kathleen Wynne. But she said she would do the right thing. Now she should step up and do it.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Editorial
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