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It’s hard to rattle veteran politician John Baird, but soon after becoming environment minister 10 months ago, he was flabbergasted.
“It just shocked me to find that, in 2007,” he says, “it was still legal to dump raw sewage into our oceans, rivers and lakes. I mean, that’s an environmental crime. We’ve got to act.
“Canadians are understandably very cynical when it comes to politicians making promises on the environment,” he concedes.
“We study things to death but never actually get things done,” he says. “I’m all for scientific research, but I’m also for action.”
This “I-didn’t-come-to-Ottawa-to-push-paper” environment minister and former Treasury Board president has turned his considerable determination to the Great Lakes.
“For the last 50 years, we’ve treated the Great Lakes—one of the most remarkable features that Canada is blessed with—as a dumping ground. I can bring a real personal commitment and the government has a real commitment to the Great Lakes.
“We don’t need any more studies. We don’t need tests. We need action, remediation.” Water quality and conservation are crucial, he says. “For Canadians, clean water is a huge priority.”
And it’s a political priority: “It’s a really big issue for our team because virtually every riding along Lake Ontario, Lake Huron and Georgian Bay has a strong voice in our caucus.”
Mr. Baird says the Conservative government will tackle upfront, eight “big hotspots.” The worst is Randle Reef in Hamilton Harbour, with parallel clean-up announcements on the seven others, which have not been named, to follow.
Canada produces one trillion litres of sewage every year from some 4,600 wastewater collection and treatment systems in towns and cities.
The National Sewage Report Card III on 22 cities by the Sierra Legal Defence Fund concludes: “Victoria, Saint John, Halifax, St. John’s and Dawson City continue to dump some or all of their sewage, raw and untreated, directly into Canada’s rivers, lakes and oceans—a total of 140 billion litres per year.
“Three other cities (Vancouver, Montreal and Charlottetown) discharge some or all of their sewage with only primary treatment (e.g. settling and skimming off of large debris). Together, these eight cities generate more than 3.0 billion litres of sewage effluent per day—nearly 40,000 litres every second. All of it is discharged with no or only minimal treatment.”
But it won’t be legal, Mr. Baird promises, for much longer.
“For the first time ever, we’re going to prohibit dumping (probably sometime next year after public consultations). But we’re not just coming forward with the regulation. We’re also coming forward with a huge multi-billion-dollar infrastructure grant to help municipalities tackle the necessary work.
“It’s going to take 10 or 20 years. In the first year, we’re going to come up with $8 billion available to municipalities and provinces—from Saint John, N.B., to Victoria.”
Speed is his creed. This environment minister says he can accomplish things fast because, unlike previous environment ministers, he is not battling his boss.
“The one big benefit I have as environment minister is that I have a prime minister who is backing me up and committed to action, not talk. He’s not a guy who wants to drag things out for a generation. We’ve got an extraordinary opportunity, even in a minority government, to make a difference. We’re moving pretty aggressively.”
Mr. Baird cites Canada’s handling of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as an example of “talk, talk, talk, study, study, study”—with no real effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney recognized the problem at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit back in 1992, but Canada, he says—never mentioning that the Liberal party governed for the ensuing 13 years—“did nothing after that.”
Mr. Baird affirms his belief that greenhouse gases add to global warming, that Kyoto was absolutely essential in directing attention worldwide to them. However, he wants a realistic solution.
“Our hope is that, in the next round, the 2012 round, we will find a better way to bring in countries like India, China and the U.S. We really need the big emitters on board—with oars in the water, rowing together.
”(Otherwise), if all the developed countries achieved a 100-per-cent reduction in GHG by 2050, we’d still have skyrocketing emissions up to that date—and long after. The developed countries just won’t get the job done by themselves.
“Canada is a rich country,” he says. “We should go farther faster than developing countries, but we need them on board paddling in the same direction.
“Canadian are critical. They’ve seen that GHG numbers have gone up and not down—32.9 per cent higher than they’re supposed to be versus the U.S. where they’re only 18 per cent higher.” He notes that Australia, which also didn’t sign Kyoto, is close to meeting its Kyoto targets.
Moving his sport metaphor from boating to running, he describes Kyoto as “10-year marathon. But when the starting pistol went off in September 1997, Canada began running in the opposite direction.”
The Conservative government has promised to introduce regulations that impose yearly mandatory targets on industry, forcing down emissions by 150 megatonnes by 2020. Within eight years, he says, Canada will cut air pollution by half.
Along with legal sticks under the Canadian Environment Protection Act, the government will use regulatory carrots. Polluters will be allowed to pay a certain amount of money per pollution ton into a technology fund devoted to pollution-reduction solutions. But the companies will be allowed smaller payments and less pollution each year.
Environment Canada will double its hiking boots on the ground—hiring 100 more enforcement officers and spending an additional $22 million over two years.
Not famous for his patience, John Baird cites the one million-hectare National Marine Conservation Area on Lake Superior’s North Shore—announced three weeks ago—as a prime example of government drift. All the necessary work was completed years ago.
“This (habitual delay) is a huge problem that has existed in this country for a generation,” says Mr. Baird. “The World Wildlife Fund has been pushing for this for a generation.”
Joe Comuzzi, the former Liberal MP for Thunder Bay-Superior North, had long been a proponent of this world’s largest freshwater reserve. Five months ago, he became a Tory and on the day the reserve was announced, he strolled between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mr. Baird along the shore.
“It is awesome,” says Mr. Baird, holds up a huge framed photograph of one waterfall. “It’s like a Canadian Grand Canyon as far as the eye can see.” It’s home to Dall sheep and woodland caribou. He flips the photo around; the other side is also awesome to an environment minister—the signatures of environmental NGO representatives.
He says “we’re going gangbusters” on regulating big polluters on GHG, smog and pollution and broadening into water pollution, including the $61.5-million, five-year fund that Fisheries and Oceans Minister Loyola Hearn has announced to protect Canadian oceans.
“We’re getting it done slowly but surely. Canadians will judge us on the actions we take and on the promises that we make.
“People say it’s not enough and it’s not fast enough.”
“But we’re off the bench and into the game. Finally.
“We’ve been on the bench in this country too long.”
Donna Jacobs is an Ottawa writer; her e-mail address is donnabjacobs@hotmail.com
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007