Watchdog blasts Ontario record on environment
Copyright 2000 Southam Inc; The Gazette (Montreal)
November 2, 2000
By APRIL LINDGREN
Ontario's environmental watchdog delivered a wide-ranging indictment of the province's environmental record yesterday in a report that criticizes everything from lapsed efforts to clean up the Great Lakes to inadequate monitoring of forestry-company logging activities.
"Ontario's people take it for granted that ... they can escape the cities ... and buy some corn on the cob and perhaps walk in the forest ecosystem," environmental commissioner Gord Miller said as he released his annual report. "(But) we're losing that rural ecosystem."
Ontario is frantically trying to clean up its environmental image after the Walkerton, Ont., tainted-water tragedy. Seven people died and more than 2,000 became ill in May after E. coli from manure-tainted farm runoff contaminated municipal drinking water.
Miller said that problem still has to addressed, but did not stop with water. His 160-page report painted a devastating picture of an ecosystem poorly protected from the ravages of urban sprawl, genetically modified organisms and forestry operations.
Nonetheless, Premier Mike Harris told reporters earlier in the day that he is "very proud of the fact that we consider the environment a top priority."
Environment Minister Dan Newman, flanked by photos of pristine Ontario lakes, welcomed the report and said the Tories will take Miller's concerns seriously. Opposition politicians, however, were disbelieving.
"This is the fifth year running that the environmental commissioner in our province laments the fact that your government has yet to produce a comprehensive groundwater strategy," Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty told the legislature.
Miller's criticisms include:
The sale of environmentally sensitive, government-owned lands without a proper environmental assessment and public consultation. Miller said more than $200 million in public lands were sold last year, but not a single environmental assessment was done.
Doubts about the environment ministry's ability to monitor forest companies' compliance with rules, given its reduced staffing.
Insufficient attention to the potential ecological impacts of the genetically modified organisms being introduced in agriculture.
* Failure to clean up the Great Lakes. The report notes a key federal-provincial agreement has lapsed and, in any case, "failed to meet many of its own key cleanup goals and objectives."
... Many of the most important tasks to restore the Great Lakes are uncompleted and inadequately funded."
Inadequate, outmoded laws to protect species that are in danger of disappearing. What's more, Miller said, a request from his office for a review of the laws was rejected.
Insufficient consultation over government policies that will allow mining in thousands of hectares of newly protected wilderness areas as well as sport hunting in all new parks and conservation reserves and in some existing wilderness parks.
Lack of coordination and consulting between ministries where decisions are made that can have an environmental impact. Protecting rural wells from water polluted by farm manure, for instance, would require a coordinated effort on the part of the ministries of municipal affairs, agriculture and environment, Miller pointed out.
Inadequate monitoring of how the urban sprawl that is eating up farmland, forests and wetlands affects the overall environment.