Black Day for the Environment:
Harmonization Results in Ottawa's Erosion

When is harmonization not harmonization? When it is a fundamental divestment of powers, where there was supposed to have been a sharing of powers. That's what happened when the federal government signed the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment agreement with the provinces in St. John's, Nfld., on Thursday.

The federal government signed away the right to carry out most of its traditional environmental responsibilities. The only reason Quebec didn't sign the agreement is that it already has what the other provinces wanted: the federal government out of environmental protection in their provinces.

After decades of joint action with Quebec, the federal government will no longer be enforcing environmental law in this province, even though it took the weight of federal involvement to encourage two of the Quebec's largest polluters - Tioxide and Kronos - to clean up their pollution under the federal Fisheries Act and the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

Canada is left with little to do but to watch our borders and monitor transborder movements of contaminants. Ironically, it can sign International Environmental Agreements like those in Kyoto, but it can't implement them. Now, the total responsibility rests with the provinces.

The harmonization agreement essentially blocks the federal government from taking meaningful action early enough to protect the environment. Provinces that fail to act can force Environment Canada to jump through a number of hoops before it can deem the situation serious enough to warrant intervention under the terms of the agreement.

The federal government did not transfer federal dollars along with the new responsibilities to the provinces. It should have handed over at least half of the $221 million it trimmed from Environment Canada in preparation for divesting most of its functions to the provinces. It should have dropped at least $10 million into CCME operations, now that CCME is going to co-ordinate the cross-provincial functions that used to be federal.

Ironically, the provinces didn't demand federal money for CCME. Instead they launched an initiative that saw their contributions to CCME's annual budget cut 50 per cent from $3 million to $1.5 million. CCME is going to be hobbled in its efforts to carry the expected fourfold increase in workload to handle the new responsibilities generated by the harmonization agreement.

That brings us to another problem. The provinces appear to have fought for Environment Canada's powers only to bury them. There is no commitment to take Environment Canada's powers and enforce them. For example, the governments of Alberta and Ontario are on record on the need to get environmental regulations out of the way of doing business in Canada.

Quebec, which trimmed its environment budget 64.9 per cent and eliminated its legal-services division is more interested in stemming the flow of industry from its province than charging industry for gross pollution.

Harmonization is harmonization when the provinces gear up to assume and deliver on the new responsibilities. It is harmonization when they stabilize or increase their budgets to manage some of the $221-million download.

Harmonization is not harmonization when the provinces slash their environment budgets far beyond the cross-the-board cuts that were required to lower the deficit. Ontario cut its environment budget 43 per cent, from $290 million in 1994 to $165 million this year. Quebec cut its environment budget from $151 million to $53 million. Newfoundland cut its environment budget 60 per cent from $10.6 million to $3.6 million.

On top of that, Ontario and Quebec have put their municipalities on notice that the provinces are going to devolve much of the environmental responsibilities to the municipalities. The municipalities are in no position - financially or politically - to monitor and control major polluters in their region.

The primary reason given for harmonization is the excessive and unnecessary cost of duplicate efforts. However, when industry and governments tried to prove it with a series of five environmental cost studies, they couldn't. The economic modeling and surveys were either contradictory or so poorly designed as to be useless.

But the numbers were enough to convince a very convincible federal government to abrogate its responsibilities - ones that the courts told the federal government it had a right and responsibility to exercise.

The historic signing of the harmonization agreement in St. John's is a black day for Canada. It opens the trap door on environmental protection. The federal laws and enforcement built up over the past 30 years are being dropped into an abyss of uncertainty and inaction. Who is going to catch them and act in the public's interest?

by Gary Gallon, President Canadian Institute for Business and the Environment

top Gazette Story"
Top of this page