Wear Green Canada!
Published 2012-06-28
On July 1, I will wear green to symbolize my concern over Canada's poor record of environmental stewardship. As an environmental scientist, I never imagined that I would look back on the Mulroney years as Canada's environmental zenith. However, with Tom McMillan and Jean Charest as environment ministers we saw negotiation of the Montreal Protocol to protect atmospheric ozone, introduction of the Green Plan for Canada, passage of the Environmental Assessment Act, addition of habitat protection provisions to the Fisheries Act and positive Canadian participation in United Nations initiatives on the environment. These all represented big steps forward in environmental stewardship in Canada and brought us international recognition. Since then, however, we have had the superficial indifference but covert subversiveness of the Chretien years and now the undisguised contempt of Stephen Harper's government for any form of environmental stewardship that is "inconvenient" to corporate interests. The changes to federal environment legislation included in omnibus Bill C 38 will put us back to the 1960s in terms of federal legislation and policy on the environment. The provinces will not fill this gap as they also have been busy dismantling or emasculating their own environmental legislation. Polling results consistently show that Canadians are concerned about environmental protection. But so far this concern has not translated into effective political action. I don't know why this is so. The cost of effective environmental stewardship is small yet the benefits in terms of pure water, clean air and safe food are very great. Wearing green is both a celebration of what we have and a warning about what we stand to lose.
-Dr. M.C. Healey
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