Tories cut environment panel

MIKE DE SOUZA
Postmedia News

The proposed elimination of a key federal business and environmental panel that delivered stern warnings about Canada’s climate change policies will leave a “policy vacuum” in the country’s economic development, according to a former CEO of the group.

But the government suggests it can now get this advice from the Internet and stakeholders.

The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, created under former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s government in 1988 in the lead-up to the 1992 Earth Summit, was one of the first forums to bring together business and environmental stakeholders to provide non-partisan research and advice on federal policies.

But members of the government, including Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Environment Minister Peter Kent, applauded, grinned and chuckled in the House of Commons Friday as NDP MP Dennis Bevington slammed Thursday’s federal budget for pulling the plug on the panel that employs about 30 people.

“The reality is that the round table was created one-quarter of a century ago,” Kent said in the Commons. “It was created before the Internet, when there were few such sources of domestic, independent research and analysis on sustainable development. That is simply no longer the case. There are now any number of organizations and university-based services that provide those services.”

The government has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for Environment Canada, along with grants for scientific research in universities.

It also used Thursday’s budget to launch an $8 million campaign at Revenue Canada to investigate and crack down on environmental groups and other charities that do research and analysis on conservation issues and sustainable development.

“This can set us back years and years,” Bevington said outside the House of Commons, adding that the government is also allowing a major Arctic research station to shut down. “It’s the buffoon attitude.”

Alex Wood, a former CEO of the round table from 2006 to 2008, noted that the panel, enshrined through legislation that was adopted in 1993, has helped develop evidence-based policy options that guided government decisions.

Wood said that statistics measuring environmental indicators on issues such as water quality or greenhouse gas emissions were inspired by the panel’s research. He said it helped the cities and provinces develop strategies to clean up abandoned industrial sites.