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Is Canada’s Minister of the Environment position cursed?
Posted by Montreal Environment in Biodiversity, Climate Change, Energy, Oil&Gas
Ever since the Tories have come to power in Canada, our country has lost its environmental lustre. It first started with Minister Ambrose who got lambasted first by the opposition for cutting Liberal climate change programs, then by environmentalists over the weak emission intensity targets under the Clean Air Act, and finally for retracting on Canada’s commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. Then came Minister Baird who never managed to properly sell the Clean Air Act and managed to embarrass Canada at the Bali conference in December 2007, where he accused environmentalists to be responsible for climate change, refused to take pictures and answer journalists’ questions, and walked out on his own speech at a dinner reception organized by the Canadian delegation to present the country’s climate change plan. He has been also accused of fastracking environmental approvals of nuclear stations by skipping the scoping phase of environmental impact assessment that establishes the guidelines of the assessment. He became the minister of Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in 2008.
Albertan Jim Prentice took the reigns from Mr. Baird this year. Previously he was Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and later Minister of Industry. A lawyer by profession, he comes with its own baggage of controversy. Most prominent is his introduction of Bill C61 that would have changed the Canadian intellectual property laws to make them more akin to the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States. He has been hostile to opponents from within the government and citizens alike, refusing to discuss the issue with CBC, dismissing questions and hanging up in the middle of interviews. He raised controversy over edits made to his Wikipedia entry from the Ministry of Industry IP address that deleted passages about the copyright Bill and sidestepped the issue of net neutrality in Canada refusing to answer questions on the government’s position over the internet throttling practices of national ISPs. And finally he refused to intervene in the decision made by Bell and Telus to charge 15 cents for incoming text messages.
His beginning as Minister of the Environment has been, so far calm. Nevertheless, some fear that as a former Industry Minister he will not opt for significant improvements. So far this concern seems to be well based as his comments made in a speech to the Bennet Jones Lake Louise World Cup Business Forum indicate that the environment is not his priority: “We will not – and let me be clear on this – aggravate an already weakening economy in the name of environmental progress. One must not – ABSOLUTELY CANNOT – come at the expense of the other[…] Here in Alberta, perhaps more than anywhere else in Canada, it is understood that when we speak of environmental policy, we also speak of energy policy. And when we speak of energy policy, we speak of economic policy.”
It is no surprise that the economy is a priority but so far it seems that economy does trump the environment for the Canadian government. Rumours that the environmental legislation will be downscaled surfaced earlier this year and this seems to be in line with Minister Prentice’s views that “any environmental regulations that we propose reflect an assessment of our economic circumstances, an understanding of our technological competitiveness and careful consultation.” His US connection and track of satisfying pressure from the south of the border became apparent in an interview with George Stroumboulopoulos on the CBC’s The Hour, where he never mentioned PM Stephen Harper while President Obama made his way into every answer Prentice gave. When asked about the impact of the tarsands on Canada’s environment and how the government would reconcile the two, Minister Prentice stated that “When you listen to president Obama speak, he really challenges the American public to focus on coal in their case and clean coal, and all the technological innovations that they are going to need for clean coal[…]. In the Canadian context, similarly we need to focus on, as an energy superpower, we need to focus on producing clean oil. We need to mount a technological challenge to make sure that we focus on things like carbon capture storage to clean up the production of oil in our country.” In anticipation of the arrival of President Obama, George Stroumboulopoulos asked “when Oabama comes to Canada how much is going to be about the environment and how much is going to be about ‘please buy our oil’?” to this Mr Prentice sustained “The two are the flip side of the same coin. When you are talking about the environment and climate change, the flip side of that is the energy we are consuming and producing, and how clean that supply is. Its essentially the same discussion. But as a common objective, and that objective is to make sure that in North America we have the cleanest air that you can possibly have, that we have the cleanest common watersheds, and that we become leaders in the world in terms of reducing our GHGs emissions. The president has said that is the focus and that’s a focus for us also.”
It is difficult to gauge the future of Canada’s environmental protection practices, especially its aspirations to become “leaders in the world in terms of reducing our GHGs emissions” when these emissions have increased by 25% from 1990 to 2000 and that Canada is the largest supplier of oil to the US exporting approximately 2 billion barrels a day. In his defence Minister Prentice has supported the increased introduction of renewables such as solar and wind and reiterated the commitment to decrease Canada’s carbon footprint. On the tarsands issue, he is nevertheless adamant and today he defended their continued expansion in anticipation of a National Geographic oilsands 20-page exposé forthcoming in their March issue. He dismissed the forthcoming as “just one article” and that the government ‘will continue to use them [oilsands]as a strategic, natural resource asset partially because of the broad economic impact they have across the country.’ Liberal leader Ignatieff seems to be cozying up to the Tories saying that “National Geographic is not going to teach me any lessons about the oilsands.” All in all, the Tories are keeping with their initial views since taking power that the answer to all environmental woes is technology, a view that has been supported by all environmental ministers so far.
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