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WEEK 1: WE DON’T NEED NO REGULATION
When David Boyd opened his mouth, he was trying to help every Canadian breathe. Air pollution causes thousands of premature deaths every year in Canada, the federal government’s estimates ranging anywhere from 5,900 to 16,000. Exposure to airborne poisons has likely contributed to the 25 percent climb in childhood cancer rates and the fourfold increase of Canadians with asthma in the last 25 years; and in Ontario alone, air-quality-related health care expenses and sick days cost the province more than $9 billion annually. Obviously, Canada has a problem of dirty air, and the appeal the University of Victoria professor sent to the auditor general in January 2006 made this clear.
But the major question at the end of Boyd’s report was even more concise: Does the federal government recognize that Canadians have a right to clean air and a healthy environment? Four months later, the ministers of the environment and health, among others, replied. It took 700-odd words to explain what could have been said in just a breath: we have no federal legislation explicitly protecting their right to clean air.
“Access to a clean environment is a fundamental human right,” says Boyd, author of the Suzuki Foundation’s report on air quality. “For our government to refuse to answer the question with a straight answer is both wrong and gutless.”
Canada consistently ranks near the bottom of all the industrialized nations for per capita sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike the 70 nations that recognize the right to a healthy environment in their constitutions, Canada has no regulations on air quality—we have guidelines. But even those lag behind the standards of many other industrialized nations. Canada’s acceptable air-quality levels of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide are unnervingly higher than the legally binding regulations of both Australia and the European Union. (In the case of sulphur dioxide, Canada’s recommended maximum is 115 parts per billion compared to Australia’s 80 and the E.U.’s 48 ppd caps.) And unlike either, we have no air-quality guideline for lead, which has been repeatedly connected to adverse health effects, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and impaired kidney function.
In 1998, every province but Quebec signed the Canada-wide Accord on Environmental Harmonization. A key element of the accord was the sub-agreement on Canada-wide standards (CWS) on ozone and particulate matter, which are the major components in smog. But the word “standards” is a misnomer. Canada’s standards provide a voluntary framework for the provinces, with no consequences if the intended level isn’t met. Even the United States is doing better. Canada has lower recommended levels of ozone and sulphur oxides than the U.S., but unlike ours, its standards are legally binding.
In the CWS progress report released last January, the government revealed just how weak its standards are. While tremendous efforts have been made to reduce emissions from the transportation sector, a traditionally bad offender, thanks to Canada’s urban sprawl, any achievements will be offset by the accelerated growth of oil sands development in the Prairies. Yet the air pollution associated with the oil boom isn’t a surprise: In 2003, Alberta led the country in released air toxins with more than a billion kilograms, a product of both the oil sands and Canada’s largest culprit, energy plants. But if Canada had legally enforceable standards comparable to those of the U.S, Australia and the E.U., the government could force the oil sands projects to reduce through emission caps, effectively destroying any chances of an offset.
Canada’s National Ambient Air Quality Objectives (NAAQOs), which were released as goals for outdoor air quality are also not binding, and just as weak.
With few major Canadian municipalities actually meeting the current CWS standards (only four out of Ontario’s 15 air quality reporting sites), something needs to change. The obvious place to start is with legally binding regulations. In the past 20 years, Canada has reduced the air pollutants that cause acid rain and restricted the use of lead in gasoline. But these successes were primarily the result of strong regulation, not voluntary programs. Such is the case across the western world, says Kathryn Harrison, a University of British Columbia professor studying Canadian environmental policies. “Voluntary approaches aren’t going to be enough anymore,” says Harrison. “People and firms need very hard incentives to change their ways.”
But even with heavy endorsements by economists and environmentalists alike, regulations and a national polluter tax will have to break the two barriers that Boyd says have prevented Canada from changing its lax measures against air pollution: the myth that Canada is an environmental leader, with pristine air and water, and industry’s lobbying power.
While the Conservatives’ recent effort to address environmental issues—the so-called Clean Air Act—may be toothless, the proposed legislation to curb emissions by 2050 is the first federal attempt to regulate air pollution. “When a politician declares an air quality goal, that’s the easy part. What’s tough is implementing the emission standards in order to meet that goal,” says Harrison. And while the proposed legislation is a dubious baby step, it’s in the right direction, at least.
However, there is still some doubt over the credence politicians are giving the Clean Air Act. The federal government already has the needed legislative authority with the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to enact the reduction of smog-producing pollutants and particulate matter. As Boyd says bluntly, “We really need to implement and enforce CEPA’s provisions.”
But the changes wouldn’t end there—nor should they. An international comparison of nations’ outdoor air quality standards for criteria air pollutants—ozone, particulate matter, sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and lead—shows that Canada doesn’t have the highest level of health protection in any of the categories. Boyd says that the government should equal or better the air quality and emissions standards of other nations. But until it does, Canada’s lagging, and it’s at the expense of its citizens. By not having strict air quality standards and emission regulations, the government has forfeited Canadians’ ability to live in a healthy environment. “It’s time Canadians are guaranteed the right to clean air,” says Boyd.