http://www.alternativesjournal.ca/p...-exclusive-extended-interview-david-schindler
Stephen Bocking: Would you say that this is the most critical period in environmental protection, at least going back to the 1960s?
David Schindler: Yes, I would say so. In the last few years, the Canadian government has reversed many of the advances made in the last several decades, including weakening of the Fisheries Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Process. Meanwhile, I’ve seen the US moving in the other direction. Back in the 60s, they didn’t even have an environmental protection agency. Since then, the EPA was founded and has turned out to be a pretty solid organization. They also have a species at risk act which is a very good, clear and unchallengeable law – one that can’t be beaten right from the start, as compared to the weak one that we have, which is fraught with ministerial discretion and, for anything but federal lands, completely lacks habitat protection. Most species at risk are listed because of damage to their habitats. On top of that, at a time when our current government has been suppressing communication of its scientists with the media and Canadian public, the US has lifted muzzling of its federal scientists. It’s bizarre.
Stephen Bocking: Right. My sense is that the Obama administration has done a fair amount of damage repair after the Bush administration, so they’re moving in one direction and Canada’s moving in the opposite direction.
STEPHEN BOCKING: I think that’s fair to say. I think part of the reason is that Obama has some very good scientific advisors. His own personal science advisor, John Holdren, is well known as being a stellar environmental scientist; physics nobelist Steven Chu is the Secretary of Energy; Jane Lubchenco at NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] is a very well known ecologist. On this side of the border, there seems to be a move to discount environmental science of any sort as some sort of radical environmentalism.
Stephen Bocking: Yes, if you think about things like the proposed changes to the census, there seems to be a general desire to remove empirical information from the policy process. Would you say that’s true?
STEPHEN BOCKING: I would say it is, and it’s not only at present that we’re going to suffer, but in the future. The lack of current information is going to hinder our ability to see what species are in decline in the future, and how species are affected by climate change. It’s going to leave a huge hole in our long-term databases, and it’s going to leave even the well-intentioned future policy-makers without critical data that are necessary to make informed decisions.
Stephen Bocking: You’ve also been vocal about the role of environmental regulation in Alberta. Are there any general comments you’d like to add about the role of the provinces in environmental monitoring and regulation?
STEPHEN BOCKING: We’ve had successive cuts to departments of environment at both the federal and provincial levels going back 30 years. How is it that we have industrial development, which here in Alberta is increasing at an average rate of seven-and-a-half per cent per year, compounded, and yet all of our environment departments get successive cuts, year after year? I don’t think in anyone’s mind that equation allows us to be able to assess – let alone protect – the environment.
I also look at Alberta Environment and there’s scarcely a PhD on their staff. Their Athabasca River program was $300,000 two years ago – at least that’s what I’m told by the fellow who headed it, who’s now gone – and, meanwhile, the province just out of the blue put up $25-million to propagandize the oil sands. Those numbers are so out of balance that I don’t think there’s any hope of reasonable environmental protection at present at all.
Stephen Bocking: What would you say about Environment Canada’s capacity to fill the role that some provinces aren’t, given how its scientific capacities have been reduced in recent years?
STEPHEN BOCKING: More than a decade ago, I was a member of Environment Canada’s science advisory panel for three years. It was a good panel, and during 1999-2000, the group of us reviewed the capacity of the department. We found that it had already dropped by half in 10 years. The then-Deputy Minister got very excited about that, and directed his senior scientists to prepare a submission to the Treasury Board in 2001 to reinvigorate the department. We all know what happened to all of the federal money in 2001 – I think of it every time I go through an airport screening. If the Taliban has won a major victory, it’s at the expense of the Canadian environment.
There’s been no effort under either party that’s been in power since then to resurrect the Department of Environment in any way, so it was already a department becoming very weak when Harper became Prime Minister. There are still some good scientists there today, but most of them are going to be retiring in a few years, and I doubt they’ll be replaced. If I’ve read the language correctly from the announcements made this year, it’s not going to be a department that does science at all. It’ll probably just hand out glossy pamphlets that will promote the environmental agenda of whoever happens to be Prime Minister or Minister of Environment at the time. George Orwell would be pleased that his predictions of how government can obfuscate information were so accurate, though it took a bit longer than 1984...
