Toronto Star: December 21, 2006
It’s no secret that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his environment minister Rona Ambrose are not fond of international environmental agreements, including the Kyoto Protocol. Yet, when it comes to the environment, it appears that the federal government does like to keep some very important secrets.
In June, NAFTA’s environmental watchdog, the Commission for Environmental Co-operation (CEC), completed two major investigations into allegations that Ottawa was failing to enforce key environmental laws.
The first case involved evidence of a widespread failure to enforce the Migratory Birds Convention Act – itself the result of an international treaty – against logging companies, thereby allowing the destruction in Ontario of 45,000 migratory bird nests annually.
The second case implicated pulp and paper mills in massive discharges of toxic effluent into Canadian lakes and rivers contrary to the Fisheries Act.
The decision on whether to release CEC investigations is made by the environment ministers of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with Ambrose as the lead minister for investigations that target Canada. The findings of previous investigations have never been kept secret from the public – until now.
The formation of the CEC was a side agreement to NAFTA, leading to the creation of the environmental watchdog along with a complaint procedure whereby citizens could bring evidence of non-enforcement by their governments to the CEC’s attention.
The CEC’s professional secretariat, based in Montreal, is staffed with legal and environmental experts.
Since its formation, the secretariat has investigated numerous cases of non-enforcement, but not only against Mexico; Canada has also been a target. The results of these investigations have brought to public attention deficiencies in enforcement and thereby led to increased diligence by federal authorities in protecting natural resources such as our rivers and streams.
Once the CEC secretariat completes an investigation, the findings are given in advance to the environment ministers of the NAFTA parties.
The ministers have several months to review and comment on the findings. The secretariat then incorporates these comments, finalizes the investigation and returns it to the environment ministers. The ministers are left to make one simple decision: release or not release the investigation’s findings.
The weakness in the otherwise transparent and publicly accountable workings of the CEC is that the very environment ministers whose departments are often being implicated in failures to enforce also decide whether to release the findings.
In practice, the integrity of the CEC has remained intact on this issue because the ministers have always released completed investigations. The public has a right to know, as the old saying goes.
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Enter the Harper government and Environment Minister Ambrose.
The two latest investigations against Canada have now remained hidden from the public for a record 160-plus days.
The results, if they confirm the allegations, could be seen by Ambrose as an opportunity to improve the enforcement of Canadian laws and preserve certain economic benefits. Migratory birds, for instance, not only provide large economic benefits to Canada from wildlife viewing activities, but they also consume huge quantities of insects that can otherwise damage forestry stocks.
Certainly, the Harper government’s commitment to accountability should have inspired Ambrose to release the completed CEC investigations long ago. The findings may even give her clout in getting appropriate funding for historically underfunded agencies within her department.
Unfortunately, she may be more focused on the potential embarrassment.
The evidence in the migratory birds case included an email exchange between senior government officials about the lack of enforcement against logging companies and the government’s assurance to the industry that this approach was not about to change.
The completed CEC investigations are not the only examples of Ottawa’s failure to protect Canadians from environmental harms that the NAFTA side agreement was designed to address.
In 2005 the CEC secretariat received a detailed citizens’ petition alleging that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was failing to enforce its own laws against American coal-fired power plants for mercury emissions.
Such an allegation is significant for Canadians given much of our mercury pollution originates from the U.S., with American coal-fired power plants among the dirtiest of transboundary sources. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that compromises the brain development of children.
In December 2005, the CEC secretariat, after reviewing both the submission and the EPA’s response, called on the environment ministers to approve a full investigation.
Canadians might have expected that the seriousness of the issue would motivate Ambrose to push for the investigation to proceed quickly. Instead the secretariat’s recommendation has sat idle for a full year.
