Essential information on Arctic climate change, ozone depletion and pollution reaching the Arctic from B.C.’s recent forest fires will be lost unless the federal government comes through with funding to save Canada’s unique high Arctic research station.

After years of funding cuts to scientific and climate change programs under the Conservatives, the Liberal government’s emphasis on making science-based decisions in response to climate change was a welcome relief to researchers, but some are now shocked that crucial projects are about to be lost because the 2017 budget did not renew the five-year Climate Change and Atmospheric Research (CCAR) funding which expires this year.

Unless the Trudeau government comes up with approximately $7-million a year, six projects, including the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) on Ellesmere Island, will close down next year. A seventh — Canadian Sea Ice and Snow Evolution Network — will shut down the following year.

The projects, in addition to providing vital information about climate and atmosphere, serve as training grounds for up-and-coming researchers at Canadian universities.

If funding is not renewed it will mean gaps in data that has been painstakingly collected over the last 12 years and will also mean an exodus of young scientists, predicted James Drummond, PEARL principal investigator.

“I can’t imagine how many researchers will be looking for positions in other countries. This would dislocate research programs and mean we can’t progress with the knowledge we have been working on. The time sequence of measurements will be lost,” Drummond said.

In addition to PEARL, other threatened projects are the Network on Climate and Aerosols, Canadian Arctic GEOTRACES Program, Ventilation, Interactions and Transports Across the Labrador Sea (VITALS), Canadian Network for Regional Climate and Weather Processes and the Changing Cold Regions Network.

PEARL has operated in Nunavut, about 1,100 kilometres from the North Pole, since 2005 and research has focused on ozone gaps and pollution and, most importantly, climate in the high Arctic, where changes are taking place at a much faster rate than in the south.

Lab team members out for a hike near the PEARL research centre in Nunavut. Photo: Dan Weaver via CREATE ArcticScience

“We are one of very few stations in the high Arctic. We are right at the top of Canada. Some maps cut off before they get to us,” Drummond said.

“We are also one of the very few stations operating 365 days a year… I think the government needs to get a grip on this and realize how important it is,” he said.

Without funding, mothballing plans will get underway early next year and the operation is already being affected as it is not known whether new equipment should be purchased and shipped up to the station, Drummond said.

It is not the first time PEARL has faced such a crisis. Mothballing plans were underway in 2012 when the Harper government cut the previous program, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Services. However, at the last minute, after an outcry by scientists and the public, the CCAR program was announced.

Stable funding is needed in order to do good research, said Drummond, adding that he is an optimist and believes that the Trudeau government will come through with the cash once the importance of the programs is understood.

The budget set aside $73.5-million over five years to set up a Canadian centre for climate services, but that funding does not appear to support networks funded by CCAR.

In an emailed statement, in answer to questions from DeSmog Canada, Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan said the Liberal government is doing more to combat climate change than any other government in history.

“While the CCAR program has reached the end of its funding cycle, officials are working with researchers to find other avenues of support, including through the approximately $50-million in climate change research that the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council funds annually,” she wrote.

“As a researcher who led an expedition to the Arctic, I know we need a thoughtful, comprehensive approach to Arctic research — one that includes indigenous voices and the role of traditional knowledge. I am working to deliver on this ambitious vision,” Duncan said.

But time is running out, according to Duncan and she is pleased that PEARL is now getting a boost from the group Evidence for Democracy, which has launched a petition asking Duncan to reinstate stable funding.

Key Arctic Research Station Set to Close As Liberal Governments Cuts Funding https://t.co/p11hO6jVJ9 #PEARL @E4Dca @CREATEArcticSci #cdnsci

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 20, 2017

“With the impacts of our changing climate already being felt in Canada and around the world, investing in climate science is a necessary part of ensuring that our decisions and actions around climate change mitigation and adaptation are based on up-to-date science and evidence,” says the preamble to the petition.

Katie Gibbs, Evidence for Democracy executive director, said the group was surprised at the funding cuts.

“(The projects) seem to fit very well with the government’s stated priorities acting on climate change according to science. That’s exactly what this research does,” she said.

The funding appears to have fallen through the cracks and government initially seemed to be taken by surprise. However, months after it was brought to their attention, no solution has been presented, so it is necessary to let Canadians know what is being lost, Gibbs said.

The petition was launched Friday and already has over 1,500 signatures, including many scientists, she said.

“I have been in touch with a number of the principal investigators of the networks that are going to have their funding cut and they are very alarmed… We are losing a whole funding stream dedicated to climate research and it doesn’t seem there is any other funding to replace that,” she said.

In the grand scheme of federal government finances, $7-million annually is a relatively small amount to spend on unique and important research, Gibbs said.

“Over 300 students have been trained at these research networks over the past five years of this grant, so it’s not only paying for the current professors, it is also necessary for training the next generation of climate scientists,” she said.

Image: Researchers at PEARL. Photo: Dan Weaver via CREATE ArcticScience

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This is a guest post by Ecojustice National Program Director Barry Robinson and staff lawyers Charles Hatt and Karen Campbell. It originally appeared on the Ecojustice website.

The Harper government’s 2012 environmental law rollbacks were a blunt-force trauma to the environmental assessment of pipelines. And last week, the new federal Liberal government prescribed band-aids for an ailing patient that needed more.

On January 27, the federal government announced interim measures for the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project Review process and the upcoming TransCanada Energy East Pipeline Project Review process. These measures are a welcome first step, but unfortunately still fall short of what is required to restore public faith in National Energy Board (NEB) reviews and environmental assessments in Canada.

The interim measures are part of the Liberal government’s mandate to “regain public trust” and deal with the broken process left behind by the Harper government’s repeal and replacement of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and amendments to the National Energy Board Act. These efforts to fast track approvals for proposed pipeline projects backfired and have brought public confidence in project reviews to an all-time low. Public trust in these reviews is so diminished that communities from coast to coast — Burnaby, Kenora, Montreal and Saint John, to name a few — have organized against proposed projects and regulators. This is unprecedented.

The federal government has indicated that it intends to overhaul the legislation that governs both the NEB and federal environmental assessment processes. The interim measures introduced last week — some immediate short-term measures for the Trans Mountain and Energy East processes and a set of five principles for other environmental assessments — will take effect before those promised legislative reforms are made.

Too little, too late for Trans Mountain, missed opportunity on Energy East

The interim measures include: additional consultation with First Nations outside of the NEB process, additional consultation with affected communities, and an assessment of the greenhouse gases from the oil projects supplying the pipelines. To achieve this, the government extended the review processes for the Trans Mountain pipeline by four months and for the Energy East pipeline by nine months. But even with these extended timelines, it is hard to imagine how these interim measures will do anything more than simply gloss over the systemic procedural flaws that undermine the NEB’s legitimacy as a regulator.

In the case of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain project, these measures come as too little, too late. Last week, our colleague Dyna Tuytel stood before the National Energy Board and laid out how Kinder Morgan’s application, riddled with flaws and weak evidence, make it clear that the Board has no choice but to recommend against the project. The new measures will not remedy the fact that Kinder Morgan’s application does not address sinking dilbit, threats to the survival of Southern Resident Killer Whales, or the ecological and health risks of a massive marine oil spill. Given these flaws, the NEB cannot reasonably or lawfully recommend that Cabinet approve this project.

The process is somewhat less clear for Energy East. The federal government will expand its consultation with First Nations and will assess the additional upstream greenhouse gas emissions caused by the project. It is directing the NEB to expand its public and community engagement activities and will appoint up to three new members to the Board to help. It remains to be seen if the NEB will react to the government’s direction and use the additional time wisely and correct the flaws that occurred in the Trans Mountain process. For instance, the additional time could be considered by the NEB as an invitation to require cross-examination.

What the federal government didn’t do — but could have done — was stop and reform the entire Energy East review before it begins. TransCanada submitted its revised application in December and the NEB has not yet determined if the application is complete. Intervenors in the process have not been selected and the NEB has not issued a hearing order setting out the review process. The government’s new measures leave it to the NEB to decide whether the Energy East review becomes a rerun of the Trans Mountain process. Here, the government missed a golden opportunity to put the entire process on hold until legislative amendments could effectively repair the damage done by the Harper government’s rollbacks.

For other projects already under review or new projects that enter the environmental assessment process before legislative reforms are made, the government announced five principles that will apply:

• Projects which have already started in the environmental assessment process will continue in that process;
• Decisions will be based on science, traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples and other relevant evidence;
• The views of the public and affected communities will be sought and considered;
• Indigenous peoples will be meaningfully consulted; and
• Direct and upstream greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) will be assessed.

These are a welcome start, but they do not address key underlying problems. For example, the restrictive timelines set by the Harper government’s 2012 reforms remain in place. This means intervenors will still be rushed to retain experts, gather evidence, and present it to the regulator. For major projects, there may be inadequate time for oral cross-examination of expert witnesses.

Prescribed climate test misses half the picture

The interim measures falter further when it comes to capturing climate impacts related to major projects. While upstream greenhouse gas emissions will be assessed and reported (also note: It’s not clear how this information would be applied in a regulatory context), this climate test does not consider downstream greenhouse gas emissions.

In the case of a pipeline, this means carbon pollution associated with producing oil for transport will be assessed (upstream impacts), but carbon pollution emitted once that oil is burned (downstream impacts) will not. Furthermore, this test will not determine whether a project’s total climate impact is consistent with the carbon reduction targets set in Paris.

There is no time to get this climate test wrong. To that end, here are three refinements we propose:

• It must consider downstream and upstream GHGs. To look at upstream impacts is to only consider part of the equation. At least half of project emissions will come from the downstream side of things. This cannot be overlooked.
• It must do more than simply assess and make public the GHGs. There must be a meaningful commitment to reduce, mitigate, adapt — or otherwise cut emissions if Canada is to take its commitment to keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees seriously.
• These GHG emissions must be considered within the broader Canadian energy context. This means that instead of looking at project emissions in isolation, ideally, we should consider them in concert with Canada’s overall emissions. This would be fairer to Canadians and industry, and it could enable a meaningful dialogue about how reductions can most effectively and quickly occur. While this conversation rightfully lies outside project review processes, it is one that needs to happen.

Looking ahead

While they could be improved, these interim measures still count as steps in the right direction. We urge the government to honour its commitment to consult with Canadians and move quickly to heal the trauma of the Harper government’s environmental law rollbacks.

Ecojustice will continue to contribute to that discussion to ensure that Canada’s environmental assessment processes are inclusive of all Canadians, make robust use of the available scientific and Indigenous knowledge, have adequate time for thorough review and cross-examination, and align with Canada’s carbon reduction targets.

Image: Prime Minister's Photo Gallery  

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Over the last decade Canada has fallen from its position as a leader in ocean protection and become a laggard that has failed to keep up with international commitments, say some of Canada’s top marine scientists.

Lack of support for conservation has changed Canada from a country with innovative conservation policies to one where marine species on the brink of extinction are not afforded protection until too late because of delays and inappropriate legislation, said scholars and scientists who gathered in Victoria recently for the Royal Society of Canada annual general meeting.

But, with a new government, there is refreshed hope in the scientific community and a chance to reverse direction.

Some of the country’s top academic minds looked at challenges facing Canada’s three oceans and possible ways to mitigate warming oceans, acidification, disappearing species, microplastics and watered down environmental protection legislation.

“What can we do?” asked Isabelle Cote, marine ecology professor at Simon Fraser University.

Part of the answer came on October 19 — election day — she said.

“We know that red tides are usually very bad in the marine environment, but this one was very good.”

It was a theme echoed by several speakers who are encouraged by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mandate letter to Hunter Tootoo, his new Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard.

The mandate includes increasing marine and coastal protected areas to five per cent by 2017 and 10 per cent by 2020, acting on recommendations of the Cohen Commission on restoring sockeye salmon stocks in the Fraser River, reviewing the previous government’s changes to the Fisheries and Navigable Waters Protection Acts and using scientific evidence, the precautionary principle and taking into account climate change when making decisions affecting fish stocks and ecosystem management.

“Our new government has set out a refreshing new ocean agenda, including areas many of us have been fighting for over the last decade,” said Julia Baum, assistant professor in the University of Victoria’s biology department.

One of the disturbing trends over the Harper years has been what is seen as political tampering in appointments to boards that make vital decisions on endangered species, such as Committee of the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), a group of experts that assesses which species are in need of protection, Baum said.

Marine species are almost always denied protection, often because of conflicts with commercial fishing, said several speakers.

“We sit and let the species wait and do nothing. We know this is a really dangerous strategy,” Baum said.

“Almost 60 per cent of marine fish that have been assessed by COSEWIC as being at risk are sitting with no decision for many years. Those that are at greatest risk wait longest and are typically denied listing,” she said.

Recovery strategies, under the Species At Risk Act, are often three years late and action plans are almost never completed, she added.

Jeffrey Hutchings of Dalhousie University, who chaired the Royal Society’s pivotal expert panel 2012 report “Sustaining Canadian Marine Biodiversity,” believes the change in government will mean a greater willingness to discuss the report’s recommendations.

Those include making ocean stewardship and biodiversity conservation a top government priority, resolving conflicts of interest in legislation, more research into sustaining marine biodiversity and reducing the discretionary power of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans in fisheries management decisions.

As Trudeau decides on his priorities, Hutchings would like him to consider splitting the ministry into two parts — the department of fisheries and the department of oceans — to resolve the conflict where the ministry is seen as acting as an agent for fisheries, not for conservation.

If it was split, the fisheries department, under the Fisheries Act, could take care of the economic development side, such as fishing and aquaculture — preferably with much-needed national aquaculture legislation — and the department of oceans, under the Oceans Act, could look after conservation, protection and habitat protection, Hutchings suggested in an interview.

Government should also look at the huge discretionary powers of the Fisheries and Oceans Minister, which add to conservation uncertainties, Hutchings said.

In Canada when it is scientifically determined that a fish population is being overfished, there is no requirement for the minister to take action.

“What has inevitably happened is the minister continues (to allow) fishing on the stock and it declines further and further,” Hutchings said.

In contrast, in the U.S. when it is scientifically determined a stock is in trouble, the department must take specific actions to rebuild the stock, usually by dramatically cutting catches, he said.

David VanderZwaag, Ocean Law and Governance Canada Research Chair at Dalhousie University, believes modernizing the Fisheries Act should be high on the agenda.

“It’s a no brainer,” he said.

“I call it a ghost ship. You see the mast in the fog, but everything is underneath. It’s all at the minister’s discretion.”

The department has attempted to paper over the legislative vacuum with multiple policies, but clarity is needed, he said.

In a similar vein, the Environmental Assessment Act is a roulette system, VanderZwaag said.

“You throw the dice to see what may be covered.”

National aquaculture legislation must be developed and the new government should look at laws and policies around future ocean renewable energy projects, such as wave power, VanderZwaag said.

“The federal government is not really prepared to deal with offshore renewable energy,” he said.

Photo: Dan Cox via Flickr

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Canada’s new Minister of Innovation, Science and Development, Navdeep Bains, told reporters on Parliament Hill on Thursday that the federal government is restoring the mandatory long-form census just in time for its next rollout in 2016.

Canada conducts a census every five years by sending an eight-question form to Canadian households. However, one-fifth of those households traditionally received a mandatory 61-question census that provides the government with much more insight into the lives of Canadians.

In 2010, the Harper government cancelled the mandatory long-form census, replacing it with a short voluntary survey developed by Statistics Canada. Researchers said the data provided through the voluntary survey lacked detail, leaving major gaps in knowledge about areas with poor survey response rates.

Munir Sheikh, the former head of Statistics Canada, resigned in protest.

Bains said the decision to reinstate the long-form census falls into the government’s commitment to rebuild scientific knowledge in Canada.

“Our plan for an open and fair government starts with the reinstatement of the mandatory long form census,” Bains tweeted.

Our plan for an open and fair government starts with the reinstatement of the mandatory long form census. pic.twitter.com/quyL3TQrav

— Navdeep Bains (@NavdeepSBains) November 5, 2015

Our government is committed to creating and implementing sound, evidence-based policies built on quality data.

— Navdeep Bains (@NavdeepSBains) November 5, 2015

“Our government is committed to creating and implementing sound, evidence-based policies built on quality data.”

“Success!” science-advocacy group Evidence for Democracy posted to its Facebook page. “The new Liberal government has announced that the mandatory long for census will be reinstated immediately…This would not have happened without your calls for smart government decision-making.”

Wendy Palen, associate professor of ecology at Simon Fraser University and board member with Evidence for Democracy, said the long-form census is key to evidence-based decision-making in Canada.

And while the idea of evidence-based decision-making “is a little wonky and process-oriented,” it’s actually a “really important and fundamental cornerstone of effective democracy,” Palen said.

Practicing evidence-based decision-making means that “we invest in things like our pubic science capacity to study things that are of national importance…so we can craft policies around that evidence we’ve collected,” Palen said.

She added the long-form census is a “really important piece for evaluating the consequences of [our] decisions” and gives us deeper insights into “our environment, our economy and our internal demographics.”

Palen said the best available science was excluded from the decision-making process in Canada under the Harper government, which spent $22 million taxpayer dollars switching the long-form census to a voluntary survey.

At the time, the government justified its decision by arguing they were protecting Canadians’ privacy, although the statistical information gathered in the census is purged of personal details so cannot be traced to any individual.

The limited data made available from the 2011 census left all levels of government, researchers, universities, civil society organizations, commerce groups and city planners unable to determine basic facts about the populations they served.

Faith-based organizations said the shoddy information made it difficult to track the effect of policy on religious and cultural minorities. Business groups including the Conference Board of Canada and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce urged the Harper government to reverse its decision.

The Canadian Medical Association said the lack of data would limit the effective use of health information and delivery of programs.

Advocacy organizations said it was impossible to tell with any accuracy how poverty rates were affecting marginalized, low-income families.

City planners in Hamilton, Ont., were left wondering about the sudden decline of the city’s Chinese population while Toronto struggled to understand if high-need communities would benefit from more subsidized child care or free skills training programs.

Palen said organizations like Evidence for Democracy play a crucial role in providing a network of scientific experts to help improve the use of evidence in support of the democratic process in Canada. She added her organization will also track how well the Liberal government is keeping its science-related campaign promises.

“I think it’s important to hold our government accountable,” she said, adding, “but now is not the time for that.”

“Right now our role I think is in cheering the government on, saying, you made these great promises in the campaign and you elevated the issues around science during the campaign because they are important to Canadians.”

“I think our role right now is to offer our expertise, offer our help on making good on some of those promises.”

Image: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister Navdeep Bains via Flickr

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In Ottawa there has always been a level of disconnect between the issues that really matter to Canadians and the issues that seem important to Canadian politicians working on Parliament Hill.  

In the United States this phenomenon is called "beltway politics" where the issues being debated by politicians within the boundaries of Highway 495, which forms a beltway around Washington, D.C., have relatively little importance to anybody outside the beltway.

Spend too long in the beltway and strange things can happen. For instance, a president can speak passionately on the issue of climate change, but hem and haw over whether to approve an oil pipeline that will lock in massive amounts of new greenhouse gas emissions. 

Nobody knows more about this inside political game than the lobbyists. Lobbyists are the people paid by corporations, and to a much lesser extent non-profit organizations, to ensure government policies and decisions by politicians are of the most benefit to those paying them. Lobbyists (at least the good ones) know that their most powerful strategy is to control the flow of information politicians receive on important issues. 

If you control the information, you control the questions that are raised and debated and ultimately you have good odds of controlling the final outcome.[view:in_this_series=block_1]

So for instance, if a story comes out in the popular press questioning the safety of new oil pipelines, lobbyists for the oil companies will work their tails off to ensure that political representatives and government staff are provided the "real facts" on pipeline safety in the country. Outside of reactive type work like this, it is the job of the lobbyist to meet as often as possible with politicians and government staff to provide an ongoing stream of new and "helpful" information.  

This constant barrage of information over time can actually create what myself and many others call the "lobby bubble" — a soundproof barrier of information created around politicians and government staff that is almost impenetrable to outside influence. 

Canada's new Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau has just come off the election trail where he has spent hundreds of hours talking to Canadians about what is important to them. Trudeau has also made many promises that reflect the needs and wants of the electorate. Trudeau right now is more in touch with Canadians than he will likely ever be in his term as prime minister, because the moment he steps into the PMO the lobby bubble will begin to form. 

The flow of information to Trudeau is about to shift from things he heard in the streets of Halifax, Vancouver and Montreal, to things he heard at a meeting he just had with representatives from the oil industry, health industry, insurance industry, agricultural industry and so on.

If you think I am over dramatizing the situation, think for a second about the logistics alone. How often does the average Canadian get to fly to Ottawa and sit down face-to-face with the prime minister to discuss their concerns about a new pipeline planned to run through their backyard? 

Now how often do you think the lobbyist with the office down the street from Parliament Hill, whose well-compensated full-time job is to lobby Members of Parliament, will get to meet with Trudeau and his staff over the coming years?

Heck, I would be happy to bet that most Ottawa lobbyists will have more drinks with Liberal government staffers in the next year than the number of everyday Canadians who will get to sit down face-to-face with the prime minister to voice their concerns over the next four-year term. That's a bet I would happily lose if this didn't turn out to be the case. 

Take for instance TransCanada Pipelines, the main proponent behind the Keystone XL and the Energy East pipelines. According to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying, TransCanada has 18 company officials currently registered in the lobbyist database. And then there is the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, an association supported by oil companies like TransCanada to also lobby the government. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers currently has a whopping 32 registered lobbyists.

This is just a small sample of the corporate lobbyists that work everyday on Parliament Hill to help fill the lobby bubble with new information. You can go here and take a look at the lobbyist registry yourself to get a better idea of just how large the lobby sector is in Ottawa.

As the old saying goes: "If you don't like what your government is doing you have the opportunity to vote them out every four years."

And that is of course a very true statement, but for the other 1,459 days between elections, if the lobbyists and the companies they represent don't like what their government is doing, they can just meet face-to-face with whoever is in charge.

That's a pretty raw deal for voters and it does not have to be this way.

Next up in this series, I will discuss ways Trudeau can avoid the lobby bubble, or even pop it if he felt so obliged.  

Image: Justin Trudeau via Flickr

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This article originally appeared on Alternatives Journal.

“What is it about activists that they can’t even be optimistic for one day after a whole decade?” 

The disgust and disappointment on my 16 year olds face is somewhat heartbreaking as he pours cereal the morning after the Canadian election and surfs the comments on my Facebook page. I can only shake my head sadly and agree with him. 

Wouldn’t it be great to be fueled by hope instead of fear as the late Jack Layton urged us in his letter to the nation? For just a minute could we not take a deep breath and focus on all the things that we know will now change?

My sons have never known a Canada that was not under Stephen Harper's thumb. For the last decade they have listened to their parents shock and outrage over the weakening of our environmental laws, the lack of transparency, the erosion of democracy, the muzzling of scientists, the attack on environmental groups, the disregard for Canada’s constitution.

Along the way we tried to keep hope alive. We painted a picture for them of a Canada that valued evidence based policy. A Canada that led on the world stage to create critical international agreements like the Montreal Protocol. We talked about how lucky we are to live in a democracy and how important it was for us to participate, to organize and to vote. 

Together we watched the election results come in from coast to coast and I watched the hope and optimism on my sons face as he listened to Justin Trudeau’s acceptance speech. “Sunny ways!” We all yelled, half-hysterical and grinning ear to ear. “To the end of the Harper Era!” We cheered as we raised a glass in jubilant toast. 

Our exuberance made the next mornings conversation all that more painful. “Is he really no different?” “Why can’t people ever be hopeful?”

Why not indeed. 

Optimism is a particularly hard place for the activist community. It is by nature a community that draws from the margins: those that question the status quo are often the same people that the status quo doesn’t benefit. There are also those that are simply hard wired to question authority and then there are those who have immersed themselves in climate science and for whom incremental progress or half measures are simply seen as disastrous and even immoral.

In the case of this election and the thorough trouncing of the New Democratic Party there are also those in the activist community who were deeply invested in seeing an NDP or at least a Liberal minority that would give more space for an NDP agenda and with it the potential to strengthen the Liberals position on climate change. 

Let’s be clear — the Liberal Party Platform on climate change currently lacks strong emissions reductions targets at a critical moment in history when it is clear that the United Nations Climate Change Conference discussions are undergoing a dramatic cultural shift. For the first time in over a decade we are seeing a race to the top on climate policy. Countries are committing to aggressive targets and, like China with the announcement of their cap and trade system, they are putting in place real policies to meet those targets.

Canada will have to scramble to catch up after a decade of federal action and there is a considerable amount of fear and cynicism in the activist and scientific community about how our new Liberal government will rise to that challenge. Prime Minster-designate Justin Trudeau’s support for the Keystone pipeline and the cosy relationship between the Liberal campaign chair and Transcanada has not helped create optimism on the climate file. 

Of course, there is also the experience of our colleagues south of the border who remind us that without strong public campaigns the Obama administration would never have considered pulling permits for Arctic drilling and certainly would have approved the Keystone pipeline by now. The pull of the oil and gas industry is strong and while we now have the technology to build a cleaner, safer energy system, it is not easy for any elected leader to forego significant short term financial benefits from fossil fuel exploration let alone tell their constituents that the price of electricity and gas needs to go up.

The Liberal campaign slogan during this Federal election was ‘hope and hard work.’  In the coming months we will need a lot of both. Not just from our new government but also from ourselves. 

Let’s allow ourselves to hope. For our children and our health and the health of our communities. Over the past week I have forced myself not to fall into the pit of cynicism and to take a moment everyday to think of one thing that I care about that will change under this new government. It has had the effect of weights being lifted off my shoulders leaving me feel more spacious, more creative and free. 

A decade of attacks on our democracy, on those who can afford it the least and on our environment has left considerable baggage and scars. It will take a while to unpack it all and to trust my own government again. For my children I will try. If we allow ourselves to hope, Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau is making it easy for us. 

We aren’t getting platitudes and framing devoid of real promises and content. Within minutes we were getting renewed commitments to a new voting system, an inquiry into the missing and murdered Aboriginal women and an invitation to Green Party leader Elizabeth May and every Premier to attend the Paris Climate Summit as part of a team. We even got a day after press conference where our Prime Minister-designate…answered questions. 

The coming months will not be easy as we begin to establish a new relationship with our government and the international community but I am hopeful that we now have a government that will govern for all of Canadians best interests and not simply for one sector. I am hopeful that we now have a government that will choose science over politics, clean, safe energy systems over business as usual and perhaps even a government that will choose people over polluters. 

Tzeporah Berman BA MES LLD (honoris causa) is an environmental activist, an Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies at York University, author of This Crazy Time: Living Our Environmental Challenge, published by Knopf Canada and the mother of two boys. 

Image: Flickr

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Perhaps the most appealing environmental policy change proposed by the federal Liberals — besides acknowledging climate change is a real and destructive force, of course — is its commitment to invest in green infrastructure and public transit.

During the election, the Liberal government promised to put $125 billion on the table for infrastructure investments in the next decade — representing a doubling of the $65 billion pledged by the previous government. Of that, some $20 billion has been earmarked for public transit funding, with another $20 billion promised for other green infrastructure projects.

Light-rail transit, wastewater facilities, electric vehicle charging stations, wildfire protection, renewable energy projects, climate impact analysis — you name it, and it was probably on the list of ideas forwarded by the party during the marathon 78-day election that eventually crowned party leader Justin Trudeau as the next prime minister of Canada.

But now comes the very tricky part: translating very lofty rhetoric about greening the country into reality.

We asked experts across Canada to break down where the funds are needed and how Trudeau and his cabinet can get the best bang for their buck in terms of mitigating climate change.

1) Build Smarter Cities

Public transit is a fascinating subject but often gets left out of grand-scale sustainable city planning.

Anthony Perl, professor of urban studies and political science at Simon Fraser University, says while the Liberal platform features an admirable commitment to transit funding (as mentioned, $20 billion over 10 years) it fails to discuss issues such as land-use, sustainability planning and the construction of mixed-use communities that promote walking, biking and transit use.

“This could be either a real catalyst for building those more sustainable communities or it could be disconnected and actually work against that by putting the transit in and having to retrofit it later,” Perl says.

Perl points to Toronto’s Line 4 Sheppard subway route as an example of what happens if a city doesn’t retrofit land-use as well as they could have, resulting in underwhelming ridership. He suggests such problems could be averted by requiring municipalities to “get their act together in advance” and plan to house more people along transit corridors in “complete communities where they can walk to the rapid transit and not need cars.” Land-use planning is ultimately a municipal issue, but such funding conditions could provide the right incentives for change.

2) Grant Cities More Financial Power

Municipalities are legendarily hamstrung when it comes to raising revenue.

“Municipalities are responsible for construction, operations and maintenance for 53 per cent of our nation’s public infrastructure, but collect just eight cents of every tax dollar paid in Canada,” the Canadian Union of Public Employees notes.

Cities can’t run deficits and are usually forced to rely on an unpopular combo of property tax and user fees.

Alan Broadbent, author of Urban Nation: Why We Need to Give Power Back to the Cities to Make Canada Strong and chairman of Maytree, a civic advocacy charity, says such a reality makes it very difficult for cities to construct forward-thinking infrastructure, especially since provincial and federal funding for infrastructure projects tends to arrive sporadically which forces cities to play catch-up.

“They really haven’t done anything that you call a structured, focused agenda with long-term funding or anything like that,” he says. “They certainly have not done anything in terms of transferring tax points or creating a greater ability for municipalities to be able to raise their own revenues.”

Project-specific funding has filled the gap. Perl says such a strategy can work for a time but a broader framework —a national urban transportation strategy, for instance — is required to make the most of the available money.

n the provincial domain, the new government could also encourage premiers to re-evaluate how municipalities can raise revenue (think a municipal sales tax, or more revenue sharing, or granting more authority to cities to decide what money is spent on).

3) Introduce a Home Adaptation Audit Program

As demonstrated in the summer of 2013 (most notably in Calgary and Toronto), heavy rainfall can result in rapid and destructive flooding. Basements often get hit the hardest. That’s why Blair Feltmate, chair of the Climate Change Adaptation Project at the University of Waterloo, recommends the launching of a “home adaptation audit program,” a tool that would help lower the probability of flooded basements when the big storms occur (and which will increase in frequency in coming years).

Feltmate notes that more than half of claims for property damage liability insurance in Canada come from water-related damage, mostly flooding. Feltmate previously wrote that this trend has resulted in the creation of “uninsurable areas” — that is, regions that insurance companies won’t touch because it’s too risky. " A shrinking insurance market will negatively impact the mortgage market, because to qualify for a mortgage, you need house insurance,” he wrote.

Pilots for such programs have been executed in Kitchener/Waterloo and Calgary: Halifax's Ecology Action Centre concluded the pilot was "a huge success" and for every dollar spent on an audit "the homeowner avoids an average of $7.50 in flood damage risk over 10 years." The federal government could easily create and fund a national program.

4) Conserve Urban Forests and Natural Areas

In mid-2014, TD Bank published a study that suggested Toronto’s urban forests (made up of 10 million trees) account for $7 billion worth of value — or $700 per tree. If such a figure seems high, consider the ecosystem services that trees provide: buffering rainfall and snow which reduces strain on soil and stormwater systems ($5.28/tree), removing air pollutants ($1.87/tree) and providing natural shading ($0.63/tree). TD calculated that such “assets” save the average Toronto family $125/year.

However, a whole host of issues plague urban trees: insect infestations, loss of topsoil, salt pollution. And, of course, urban sprawl.

Dupras says policymakers in Montreal's metropolitan area want to protect 17 per cent but there’s only 20 per cent left.

“There’s a lot of pressures from traditional developers for typical urban sprawl development,” he says. “We really need both ways, from top-down and bottom-up actions: voluntary actions and more restrictive development within a legal framework.”

Of course, issues pertaining to the regulation and protection of urban forests falls to municipalities and provinces. But Dupras argues the federal government “can really give a strong signal by reviewing the infrastructure program” and redirecting more money from the general infrastructure program (recall, $125 billion over 10 years) to the green infrastructure program ($20 billion in the same window). In the end, natural area conservation is just like anything else: it takes money.

5) Protect Wetlands from Further Destruction

Wetlands are the superstars of the natural world. In natural states, they can mitigate flooding, house greenhouse gases, filter sediment and toxins from stormwater and foster astounding levels of biodiversity.

Unfortunately, more than70 per cent of wetlands near major Canadian cities have been damaged or destroyed due to drainage for urban sprawl.

“The most pressing issue is the wetlands. Numbers are challenging because we don’t know on what historical basis to work, but for sure in the last decade we lost over 80 per cent of the wetlands,” said Jérôme Dupras, assistant professor in natural sciences at University of Québec, about Montreal's metropolitan area.

Back in 2005, Thomas Mulcair — then serving as Quebec’s environment minister — called for a moratorium on wetlands destruction. Dupras notes the proposal was shot down by then-prime minister Paul Martin for undetermined reasons.

A decade later, there’s a lot of catch-up to be done. Dupras says there’s an urgent need to review laws and regulations about protection and restoration.

A national campaign to maintain wetlands wouldn’t just save a few mallard ducks (although that’s indeed a very noble cause). Left intact, wetlands could serve as natural green infrastructure, protecting major cities situated in floodplains (as most Canadian cities are) from the worst water-related manifestations of climate change.

6) Update Floodplain Mapping

A highly related issue is that of outdated floodplain mapping. Canada is way behind the times on the subject.

Feltmate says the country doesn’t even have an adequate understanding of floodwater patterns for 2015, let alone 25 or 50 years from now (a problem given storms and flooding are anticipated to grow in magnitude in the span of that window).

As a result, many municipalities simply don’t know how increased precipitation or runoff will impact rivers or current systems. Feltmate gives the example of stormwater channelling into sewers, backing up and flooding part of a city due to inadequate infrastructure. Rigorous calculations are required to create present-day and future-focused maps, he says. Without such forward thinking, investments in green infrastructure the new government makes may end up dead-on-arrival.

“The federal government would work with the provincial governments to find out what their needs are in the area, producing flood-plain maps through either one of those two forces, and providing the funding to do so,” he advises.

7) Come Up With Way, Way, Way More Money

The figure of $125 billion over a decade seems sizable. But when one crudely breaks it down, it seems a lot less impressive: some $12.5 billion per year divided into 30 “large urban” centres (with most split between Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver) leaves a mere few hundred million per year for an average-sized municipality.

For reference, Vancouver’s recent transit overhaul (which was voted down in a regional plebiscite) was expected to cost a whopping $7.7 billion.

Perl says the Greater Toronto Area could absorb the entire $20 billion allocated for public transit and “still not be where they need to be.”

“It sounds like a lot but Canada’s an awfully big country and we’re now an urban country,” he says. “If we’re serious about moving beyond auto-dependence, that means there’s a lot of catching up to do.”

New revenue sources have been announced such as an increase of personal income tax on highest earners and the cancelling of income splitting. But real change may not truly arrive until a “city agenda” is prioritized.

Broadbent says the federal government hasn’t focused on municipal affairs in any significant way, really since the days of Pierre Trudeau. However, the department of urban affairs that he created was a “short-lived experiment much reviled by some of the provinces,” in the words of Dalhousie University professor Jennifer Smith in her book Federalism.

Despite such facts, Broadbent’s optimistic: “I think we have a group in Ottawa now that really kind of gets these issues in a way that previous governments didn’t,” he says. “I think we’re going to see something significant in a better, more thoughtful approach.”

Image: Canadian Urban Transit Association

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Nova Scotia is potentially on the hook for millions of dollars in decommissioning costs as ExxonMobil prematurely winds down production at a massive offshore gas project near Sable Island.

In 1997 the province’s Liberal government negotiated a deal with Exxon to get the Sable Offshore Energy Project, about 190 kilometres off the coast of Nova Scotia, up and running. As part of that arrangement, Nova Scotia promised to pay a portion of decommissioning costs at the end of the project’s life.

The costs, expected to be in the millions, will be deducted from the $1.7 billion in royalties collected by the province since operations began in 1999.

Nova Scotia Energy Minister Michel Samson said a portion of the royalties have been set aside to pay the province’s contracted share of the decommissioning, but added he “[didn’t] have the exact numbers.”

"Knowing this was a potential liability for the province, the moneys have been set aside,” Samson told a press conference last Thursday.

Mark Butler, policy director for the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax, attended the initial assessment hearings for the project in the late 1990s.

“Back when I went through the hearings, we were critical of the royalty arrangements, but the government was keen to get some activity off our coast. I think they thought the Sable project would be the start of many more projects, so they were willing to give the industry a pretty nice deal.”

Butler told DeSmog Canada the Ecology Action Centre fought against the agreement from the beginning, advising the Nova Scotia government to reject the deal. Nearly 20 years later, Butler said he and others are saying we told you so.

“It was a bad deal,” he said. “Royalties for offshore hydrocarbon projects should be separate from the development costs of the company.”

“I am totally perplexed as to why this should be a government responsibility,” he added. “It’s a private project.”

Exxon said the exact date of decommission — which will include capping underwater wells and dismantling five offshore platforms — won’t be known for another year. Exxon is interested in providing commercial access to the offshore infrastructure to another company, but so far has been unable to generate interest.

Gas production from the Sable project has been steadily declining for seven years.

Nova Scotia has only one other offshore petroleum project — operated by Encana — but renewed interest in oil production off Canada’s east coast in the last year could mean more to come.

Butler said Nova Scotia should avoid disadvantaging itself in future offshore deals.

“Oil companies go around the world and bargain for a living whereas with Nova Scotia it’s a once in a lifetime thing they do when they’re hungry for the business.” 

Given that other companies like Shell and BP are now seriously considering further offshore projects, Butler believes the Nova Scotia government should learn a valuable lesson from the experience with Exxon.

He added that, while the Ecology Action Centre is opposed to further petroleum production off the coast, if development does go ahead “the current royalty regime should not be replicated for this non-renewable resource.”

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