Another Shameful Episode For Canada On The Environmental Front

A Brief Comment by Doug Draper

Barely two weeks after Canada’s Environmental Commissioner Julie Gelfand gave Harper’s Conservative government poor marks for efforts to address current and emerging environmental threats, we see a perfect example of that off one of the country’s most pristine natural coastlines.

The Haida Gwaii region is one of Canada’s great natural gems

This October 17^th through 19^th, all Canadians who care about protecting what is left of our precious wildlife areas held our breath while a disabled Russian ship containing large quantities of heavy oil washed like a cork toward British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii coastline in stormy waters.

Despite knowing that ships carrying such potentially polluting cargo are already plying these waters and that such traffic will multiply if the Harper government gets its way if a so-called Northern Gateway pipeline is run from Alberta’s tar sands to the coast, it took more than half a day for the Canadian Coast Guard to get a tug boat to the crippled ship. Then we learn that the tug was ill-equipped to deal with the crisis with three tow snapping as it attempted to pull the ship away from the coast where a break-up of its hull could mean an environmental disaster. 

Shamefully for our country, it finally took a more capable U.S. Coast Guard tug boat to arrive on the scene and pull the ship away from any destruction it might do to this great natural area.

In her report this fall, Gelfand, in her watchdog role as an environmental commissioner, concludes, among other things, that “The Canadian Coast Guard is unable to properly meet growing demand for new and improved fixed navigational aids, such as beacons and shore lights.

Canada’s Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand recently gave the Harper government poor marks for environmental protection.

She also concludes that the federal government does not have much in the way of plans and strategies for reducing greenhouse gases and addressing climate change, and the negative report card goes on in a report you can click on at Read the Environment Commissioner’s full report .

Of course when I say a feeling of shame should come in to play here, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Harper Conservatives are incapable of feeling anything like that when it comes to its longstanding and continued lack of disregard for anything to do with environmental protection.

In Harper’s Canada, anyone who advocates for environmental protection is viewed as an obstacle to a relatively narrow and short-term model of economic growth which largely involves around mining the tar sands and shipping the stuff off to other countries for refining. And any damage that is done to the environment is looked upon more as more of a political bump in the road that can hopefully be smoothed over by partisan spin doctors. 

Fortunately, and thanks largely to help from our American neighbhours, what could have been damage of a magnitude that might ravage a gem of a coastal ecosystem in Canada for decades to come, was averted this time.

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