The government of Canada has announced the end of the ecoENERGY home retrofit program, effective immediately, citing fiscal constraints. The popular program (which was previously matched by the Ontario government) helped homeowners cover part of the cost of energy efficiency retrofits such as a more efficient furnace or improved insulation.

As part of my statutory role in reviewing conservation initiatives in Ontario, I have previously reviewed the results of the home retrofit program. In its first three years, the program raised awareness of conservation among homeowners, with more than 150 000 Ontario households undertaking at least one energy efficiency action through the program and reducing their energy bills. Most retrofits led to a reduced use of natural gas for space heating, therefore the program also had an impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, I did note that the bulk of Ontario’s buildings had yet to be retrofitted (the program had reached only 4% of Ontario’s housing stock), and that the Ontario government’s lack of analysis as to the benefits of the program made it vulnerable to cancellation.

While disappointing, the federal government’s action is not surprising given the hints of restraint from Ottawa and Queen’s Park: a daily shock doctrine to prime taxpayers for release of the governments’ spring budgets. The Ontario government had already withdrawn its contribution to the home retrofit program, as well as cancelling energy conservation programs in other sectors. In this time of fiscal deficits, there will be pressure for further cuts, despite the very small percentage of public spending devoted to the environment (for example, the combined budgets of the Ministries of the Environment and Natural Resources accounted for less than 1% of Ontario’s budget in 2010/11). The former Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure also accounted for less than 1% of the Budget (and a fair portion of this was money spent on infrastructure as opposed to energy programs).

I expect more environmental programs to come under threat in the near future, regardless of the long-term consequences. As I have said previously, at some stage we will reach a tipping point. Beyond this threshold, we will lose meaningful policy and program capacity in these ministries for the sake of spending reductions that can really have no substantive impact on the deficit.

• Download the ECO’s 2010/11 Annual Report Engaging Solutions (.pdf).
• Download the Supplement to the Annual Report (.pdf)
• Click to download the Commissioner’s Remarks to the Legislature (.pdf)

(Toronto, November 29, 2011) Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner is worried that Ontario has lost momentum when it comes to the province’s pressing environmental issues.

In his 2010/2011 Annual Report “Engaging Solutions” released today, Gord Miller says there’s no shortage of talk about the problems such as climate change, waste diversion, and the loss of biodiversity. “But when it comes to doing something” says Miller, “there doesn’t seem to be a lot actually happening.

The Environmental Commissioner cited a number of examples of this lack of inertia in his annual report:

• On waste, the Ministry of the Environment has written four different reports and discussion papers outlining options for increasing waste diversion in the province. But this has resulted in little action on what Miller says should be one of the government’s top environmental priorities.

• On species-at-risk, the Ministry of Natural Resources is not doing enough to protect and recover species at risk. Much of what the ministry is doing has become an empty bureaucratic exercise that does little on-the-ground to tangibly benefit endangered species.

• On funding, the Government of Ontario has passed notable legislation such as the Lake Simcoe Protection Act, 2008, the Endangered Species Act, 2007 and the Green Energy Act, 2009, but has not given the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of the Environment the additional resources they need to oversee and monitor new legislation while also covering their previous core responsibilities.

• On the Great Lakes, lengthy negotiations between Ontario and the federal government threaten to paralyze progress towards further clean-up, and Ontario is allowing its existing policy tools to idle. Meantime, the Obama administration has promised $2.2 billion over 5 years.

Miller says this lack of action is not accidental: it’s actually the goal of critics of environmental protection. “We respond to people who say they don’t believe there’s a problem”, says the Environmental Commissioner, “by going back to the research findings to debate and explain it all over again. And then, when it looks like progress is being made, others say the proposed solutions won’t work, or are too costly. And so we go back to the beginning again.”

“We have to find a way to get to a point of action on these issues” says the Environmental Commissioner. “We don’t see ourselves as having a culture of inaction and procrastination. Yet that would be a fair criticism from any impartial observer.”

The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario is appointed by the Legislative Assembly to be the province’s independent environmental watchdog, reporting publicly on the government’s environmental decision making.

Click here to download the full report (.pdf).

Accompanying media releases:

MOE and MNR Can’t Handle Core Responsibilities

Ontario Government Failing Endangered Species

Government Failing to Reduce Ontario’s Waste

• Download the full report (.pdf).
• Download the Supplement to the Annual Report (.pdf)
• Click to download the Commissioner’s Remarks to the Legislature (.pdf)

Memories from the destructive blow of Hurricane Hazel on Southern Ontario on October 15, 1954, still linger. Torrential rain devastated many communities. Bridges, roads and railway lines were washed out. Homes were flooded or collapsed from the force of raging water overflowing from swollen creeks and rivers. The biggest tragedy, however, was the loss of human life. More than 80 Ontarians lost their lives in this catastrophic event.

Hurricanes and severe storms are often described as rare and extreme events; somehow this suggests they are out of our hands and that it is okay to merely hope they won’t happen. Unfortunately, they do happen. I grew up in Timmins, and played in Town Creek. I recall the Timmins Storm of 1961 that ripped roads apart and drowned a family in their home. The Peterborough storm of 2004 overwhelmed the city’s storm sewer system and left most of the city under a meter of murky water. We are wiser to accept that these extreme weather events will happen and must be planned for.

Planning for severe storms will become even more important in the future under a changing climate, as the severity and frequency of such events are expected to increase. In my 2009/2010 Annual Report, I called on the Ministry of Environment (MOE) for swift, coordinated and decisive action on “Planning for Stormy Weather.”

MOE has recognized the need for a policy framework to support resilient municipal stormwater management systems. The ministry has also identified the need for updating existing stormwater management guidelines and for a concerted planning effort by a number of provincial ministries, municipalities and conservation authorities.

For this important planning work, we will be relying on the ongoing good work of conservation authorities. Conservation authorities manage flood control and prevention infrastructure and work closely with provincial, federal and municipal levels of government to prepare for and respond to extreme weather events. They deliver programs that prevent some $100 million in flood damages every year. To continue their important work on mitigating flooding risks, CAs will need adequate funding. For over a decade, provincial funding for these programs has remained steady at about $7.6 million per year, eight times less than the early 1990s. It is estimated that an additional $14 million per year is needed from the province.

More storms are coming our way; will we be prepared? Will we have the resilience to weather them?

Sometimes friends ask me for summer book suggestions.  If you’re up for some big picture thinking, I can recommend The Upside of Down by Thomas Homer-Dixon. I admit, with “Catastrophe” in the sub-title, it’s not exactly escapist froth for the beach.  But having read it a few years ago, I find my thoughts coming back to some of the core ideas.  Among other things, Homer-Dixon offers a great introduction to the concept of resilience, and what it takes for ecosystems and societies to maintain resilience.

As complexity increases in systems, resilience tends to decline. Predictability also is lost as complexity rises and feedback loops emerge. This was a theme I also focused on in my 2008/2009 Annual Report, “The one thing you can expect from complex systems is the unexpected.”  Once you’re attuned to the resilience concept, you begin to see the implications everywhere, from the cyclical burning and regrowth of fire-adapted northern forests to periodic financial bubbles and collapses, to this past spring’s social upheavals and democratic renewals in a string of Arab nations.

Building Resilience where I observed that I returned to the resilience theme this past spring in my annual Greenhouse Gas Report Meeting Responsibilities – Creating Opportunities, noting the risk of a climatic tipping point in the nearterm.Even in southern Ontario we are seeing cities like Peterborough battered by repeated extreme storms, supposedly rare, one-in-100-year events, as I described in my 2009/2010 Annual Report.

We face a great challenge: to de-carbonize our global economy in the next 40 years in order to avoid this tipping point. This is a challenge that will require humanity’s full scope of creativity and exuberant experimentation.  It will also require resilience at every level of social organization.

Summer can be a good time for quiet reflection – preferably by a cool lake, a hammock slung under some big old trees.  That may be the very best place for us to re-imagine ourselves in a resilient future.

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