Environment Commissioner Puts Neck on Line

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, Canada's Environment Commissioner just put out a scathing report and he ain't happy with all this talkin' the talk without much walkin' the walk. He says we know dang well what we oughta do and we've agreed to do it. The only thing is, we haven't followed up on what we've set out to do. And nobody seems to care.

Lip service being paid to environment: report

GLORIA GALLOWAY

Globe and Mail Update

March 6, 2008 at 2:18 PM EST

OTTAWA — Successive Canadian governments have paid lip service to keeping international environment agreements and greening their own operations but little progress is actually being made, Canada's Environment Commissioner said in a scathing report released Thursday.

The 2008 Status Report of Commissioner Ron Thompson revisits 14 key environmental concerns that were the subjects of previous studies and finds that corrective action has been unsatisfactory in nine of those areas.

“The government did not follow through on its own commitments to strengthen the protection of the environment,” said Mr. Thompson.

“I believe that the federal government should lead by example, both in terms of how environmental issues are managed and in terms of greening its own operations.” But he said, his findings “paint a disappointing picture.”

A major concern highlighted by Mr. Thompson is the lack of commitment to protect Canada's most threatened ecosystems and species at risk.

For instance, after agreeing more than 20 years ago that 17 environmentally degraded areas around the Great Lakes had to be cleaned, only two locations have been removed from that list – and it is unclear who is responsible for carrying out the remedial action on the remainder, who will pay for it, and what time frames are anticipated.

But it is the inability of federal departments to follow through on the government's own directives that are perhaps most indicative of the inattentive attitude on the part of government that the Commissioner repeatedly alludes to in his report.

While the federal cabinet decreed 17 years ago that all new policies and programs must be assessed to determine their impact on the environment, the Commissioner found that only three of 12 departments were fully complying.
(Globe)

Pretty bad, sez I. Sounds like there oughta be some serious action from the PM. This here Ron Thompson got the commissioner job after the HarpoonTossers fired Johanne Gelinas. Gelinas got fired right after she tabled a scathing report. I reckon Harper's got hisself another Environment Commissioner to fire. I ain't sure they'll be able to label Thompson as a Liberal appointee shit disturber.

They need to keep firin' these commissioners until they get one that understands that politics takes precedence over science and expediency takes precedence over diligence. Firin' successive commissioners has the added bonus of stalling any real action. It's a positive feedback loop.

JB