Canada gets 'D' grade on environment policy
Poor 'report card' showing blamed on peer pressure from energy-hungry United States, Sierra Club says
Copyright 2001
The Ottawa Citizen
June 20, 2001
By Kate Jaimet
If preserving the environment were a school subject, Canada would get a D average, according to the yearly Rio report card issued by the Sierra Club of Canada yesterday.
But Sierra Club president Elizabeth May blamed Canada's delinquency partly on peer pressure from the bigger, badder United States and its president George W. Bush.
"The Bush-Cheney energy plan is not only a disaster on the climate change front, it is a disaster on the biodiversity front," Ms. May said.
She said the U.S. demand for energy will increase greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, and lead to drilling in sensitive wildlife habitat. "Clearly, their greed (for energy) has no limits," Ms. May said.
And as Canada rushes to provide more energy to meet U.S demand, the environment will suffer here, she warned.
She also criticized large-scale hydroelectric projects planned in Quebec and Manitoba. Although hydroelectric power is often seen as a clean form of energy, she said such projects destroy wildlife habitat through flooding and river degradation.
The Sierra Club's report card, based loosely on the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, grades the federal and provincial governments for their actions on matters such as protecting biodiversity, reducing greenhouse gases, and providing financial aid to developing nations.
This year, in its Rio plus 9 report, the Sierra Club slapped the Canadian government with Fs for failing to protect fisheries resources and failing to strengthen lax and outdated pesticide rules.
The government scored only slightly better in its efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and protect endangered species, achieving D grades in both.
Even the government's success in ratifying a treaty to ban persistent organic pollutants only gained it a C grade under the heading of "incorporating environmental concerns into government decision making."
Among the provinces, Ontario and Alberta scored Fs for failing to protect wilderness and exploiting dirty energy sources like coal and tar sands.