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ENVIRONMENTAL HARMONIZATION: NICE SLOGAN, BAD POLICY
"People and Nature Before Profits" column, by Bill Morris
(This article is from the June 16-30/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
THERE IS A national organization comprised of 14 people who meet periodically behind closed doors to decide the fate of environmental policy in Canada. Sound like a conspiracy plot? Welcome to the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME).
The CCME is meeting in Quebec City on June 5-6, but that is virtually all we know about the gathering. Repeated efforts to see an agenda or acquire background materials have been met with a bureaucratic stonewall. It seems that they "don't provide the general public" with these documents. When I asked what the ministers would be discussing, I was told, "Air quality, water, global warming - you know, those kinds of things." Not surprising for a meeting of ministers of the environment, I suppose.
The provincial and territorial Ministers of the Environment have been meeting with the federal minister at the CCME since the early '90s. The principal goal was to "harmonize" environmental regulations across the country. In January 1998, a Canada-wide Accord on Environmental Harmonization and related Sub-Agreements on Standards, Inspections and Environmental Assessment was signed. (Quebec did not sign the Accord.)
Harmonization has a nice ring to it. It evokes images of working together, collaboration and singing from the same songbook. But when you look closer you realize that it is a designed to address a non-existent problem - duplication and overlap of environmental regulation. The CCME has even had to admit that this is, at most, a minimal problem. You don't have to think too hard to realize that an excess of environmental protection is not the problem. The true purpose of the CCME is to shrink the federal government while handing over more power to the provinces.
Under the accord the enforcement of federal environmental laws is handed over to the provinces and territories, except for crown land and along international borders. It also is mandated to look at existing environmental legislation, with the goal to removing federal regulations if similar provincial rules already exist. For example, in June 1994, Alberta was exempted from four regulations of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act on these grounds.
Here is where we get into the conspiracy aspect. On paper it looks like a reduction in the size of government. In reality it creates a new level of government outside the democratic process. All decisions on environmental management will go through the CCME.
Answering directly to neither an electorate or legislature, the CCME lacks public accountability. Using a "consensus decision-making structure" means that the agenda will be controlled by the province, or territory, that complains most about a proposal. Ontario and Alberta have been gleefully gutting environmental regulation and enforcement; it is doubtful that they will argue at the CCME to raise the standards.
This does not bode well, either for those workers in environmental stewardship, or the general public. The downwards harmonization of regulations and enforcement will result in public sector job losses. Many provinces are actively considering ways to privatize their environmental protection measures.
For the general public, this presents a frightening proposition. As shown by the events in Walkerton, Ontario, lax standards of monitoring and enforcement eventually risk public health and safety.
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