Senior bureaucrat cast doubt about ozone monitoring cuts

View of the ozone layer shot in January 1996 by European Space Agency satellite. (FILE PHOTO)

MIKE DE SOUZA
Postmedia News

OTTAWA — A senior Environment Canada bureaucrat who publicly defended the federal government’s plans to slash funding and eliminate “redundancy” within the country’s ozone monitoring programs, privately approved a briefing note that concluded there was no duplication in its network, Postmedia News has learned.

The controversial plan to cut funding for atmospheric monitoring in Canada was revealed by the British scientific journal, Nature, in September as scientists were cataloguing a record-breaking hole above the Arctic in the ozone layer — a protective barrier that protects life on Earth from the sun’s harmful radiation.

The ozone layer, which wraps around the planet like a blanket, about 20 kilometres above the surface, filters out ultraviolet rays, believed to cause skin cancer and cataracts, in addition to disrupting the reproduction of some animals and destroying plant life.

Karen Dodds, an assistant deputy minister from Environment Canada’s science and technology branch, told Postmedia News at the time that there was no need for “the same level of redundancy that we have now” in monitoring of ozone, which is also a smog-causing pollutant in the air people breathe. But less than a week before making those comments, she approved a briefing note, dated Sept. 16, which told a different story about the two technologies used to measure ozone levels in the lower and upper atmospheres.

“These methods measure different characteristics of the atmosphere and thus complement, but do not duplicate each other,” said background advice included in the briefing material approved by Dodds and released through access to information legislation.

The briefing material was produced under the heading “Ozone monitoring cuts,” contrasting with Environment Minister Peter Kent’s explanation that the government is “optimizing and streamlining” the way it collects and records ozone data.

Thomas Duck, an atmospheric scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, suggested the note calls into question the Conservative government’s “media blitz” in defence of its plans to cut the monitoring programs.

“It’s shocking,” said Duck. “The briefing note says one thing and what (Dodds) told the public was quite another.”

According to computer models, it could take up to 40 years for the ozone layer to recover from depletion caused by substances released prior to an international agreement — signed in 1987 in Montreal — to phase them out of products such as spray cans and refrigerators. Scientists say there is uncertainty in the predictions partly because of the ongoing release of some ozone-depleting substances that can be tracked through the existing monitoring and measurements.

As countries gather Monday in Bali, Indonesia for a new round of negotiations on the existing treaty, the Montreal protocol, signed in 1989, Duck said the onus is on Kent to come clean on what he plans to do with the monitoring network and how those changes could affect human health.

The advice described one of the networks, which uses weather balloons, as “one of the largest and most important in the world,” that had produced a “precious” record of data unmatched by any other country.

It also noted that ozone can affect weather, while acting as a smog-causing air pollutant in the lower atmosphere that is hazardous to human health.

A massive Arctic ozone hole opened up over the Northern Hemisphere for the first time this year, an international research team reported Oct. 1.

The hole covered two million square kilometres and allowed high levels of harmful ultraviolet radiation to hit large swaths of northern Canada, Europe and Russia this past spring

“Smog is a mixture of ozone, particulate matter and other pollutants,” said the advice. “For these reasons, we also measure ozone in discrete locations as part of our broader air quality monitoring across Canada.”

The briefing note said the current plan was “to optimize and integrate” its existing networks “to deliver sound science within budget,” while meeting “minimum requirements” for ozone monitoring.

A senior Environment Canada scientist, David Tarasick, told Postmedia News in October that the ozone monitoring network already has limited resources, and could wind up doing less monitoring work if it saw its budget slashed.

“I don’t think we’re wasting a penny,” said Tarasick, who has received a letter from the government that his position could be eliminated. “Could we get by on less money? Well, we could do less with less money. We could do more with more money.”

with files from Nunatsiaq News