Last Tuesday, the Government of Ontario presented its proposed budget.  The Minister of Finance, the Honourable Dwight Duncan, tabled for first reading in the legislature Bill 55 – Strong Action for Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2012.  This budget bill is effectively the mother-of-all pieces of omnibus legislation.

Bill 55 amends 69 different statutes in its schedules.  For example, many environmentally significant laws that are administered by the Ministry of Natural Resources are proposed to be amended.  These laws include the Endangered Species Act, the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act, the Public Lands Act, the Crown Forest Sustainability Act, and the Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act.  Laws such as these are prescribed under the Environmental Bill of Rights, 1993 (EBR).

Normally, when the government proposes to amend legislation that is prescribed under the EBR, it would post a proposal notice on the Environmental Registry and solicit public comments for a minimum of 30 days.  The government then considers the public comments and makes a decision.  These steps help make for a transparent and accountable process.

However, budgets bills are specifically exempt from the posting and public consultation requirements of the EBR.  Moreover, the Ministry of Finance is not prescribed under the EBR either.  As a result, the public does not have the same opportunities to contribute to decision making when a number of environmentally significant laws are changed in a budget bill.

I wrote about a very similar situation in my last Annual Report regard the use of omnibus legislation: “At best, using omnibus legislation to amend environmental laws complicates the EBR process. At worst, it can obstruct the public’s right to participate in environmental decision making.”

People are talking about “huge, ravenous invaders”, and “potential catastrophe”… is it a Godzilla Movie?  No, it’s the Asian Carp, and this fish truly does present a grave threat to the Great Lakes.  Our Great Lakes are already being pummeled by a barrage of pressures, as I have sketched out in my newest Annual Report. The lakes have goopy algal mats fouling many shorelines; their waters are polluted by combined sewer overflows in urban areas and by agricultural runoff in rural areas.  Soon they may have Asian carp too, gobbling up the food of native species, dramatically altering Great Lakes ecosystems and wreaking havoc with both commercial and recreational fisheries.

To control one means of entry for this invasive species, I have suggested that the Ministry of Natural Resources consider tightening its rules on fish importation, and prohibit outright the possession of Asian carp, dead or alive. The seizure of six tonnes of live Asian Carp by Canadian border officials just this past month is sobering.  But another key risk is that this species will swim into the Great Lakes through the link of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.  Now a new study by the Great Lakes Commission and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative argues for protecting the Great Lakes from this avenue of invasion, and proposes a plan for separating the waterways.  It would be very expensive, yes; but consider the alternatives.

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)