Environment Canada Approved

If the 20th century taught us anything, it taught us that concentrating too much power in the hands of a few is a very dangerous thing. In fact, the recognition of the necessity of keeping competing interests apart goes back a lot further.

Democratic countries have long upheld the importance of the separation of church and state. There are too many examples of excesses that can result from state enforcement of religious belief. Look no further than Iran for a real-time reason why.

We don’t, however, question the marriage of state and ideology – more specifically, government and big business – despite the havoc this union has caused over the past century. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, no? Even in the face of the (most recent) global economic meltdown – clearly caused by the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism – government and industry continue to grow closer.

Unhealthy relationship

Towards the end of the industrial revolution in the late 19th century, governments (including the U.S.) started to realize that giving free-rein to industry led to abuses of human rights and tremendous environmental pollution, and its power had to be checked. Governments also quickly realized that to do this, it had to be separate enough from industry to regulate it. Some would call this thinking in seven generations; others would call it “common sense” or “good government”.

By the end of the 20th century, however, things had started to change. Ronald Regan’s fairy tale “trickle-down economics” were being credited with the defeat of communism. In the resulting euphoria, governments around the world forget why they had spent 90 years building regulatory frameworks to control the power of industry.

We started to hear about free-trade and how money was being saved by making industry “self regulating”. What we didn’t hear about was government allowing industry to breakdown the walls of separation. Overnight public health scientists, water and air monitors and food inspectors became ‘red tape’ and ‘job killers’. They were now the enemy.

Just over the past year we’ve seen one-story-after-another about government officials sitting down behind closed-doors with the oil industry to plan messaging and public relations campaigns (domestic and international). We’ve also seen how they trained diplomats to lobby the European Union to combat their legitimate concerns about Tar Sands development. Environment Minister Peter Kent sounds like an unabashed cheerleader for the oil industry, certainly not like a regulator.

Just last week, Canada’s Tar Sands companies created a new institution called the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Association (COSIA).

With all the grandeur of an international treaty, the CEOs one-by-one signed the ‘agreement’ and took a chair on the stage. It all reminded me of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin posing for photos.

Of course, the premise of their ‘agreement’ sounded great. These Tar Sands developers (we were told) would remain competitors but would cooperate in innovation when it comes to pollution, tailings ponds and greenhouse gas emissions. The petroligarchy would set aside ‘competition’ for the good of mankind. Hallelujah.

Innovative PR

The greatest threat to the environment is climate change and the cause is burning fossil fuels. Climate scientists agree we have to use less-and-less fossil fuels if we are going to avoid catastrophic climate change. The ‘innovate’ COSIA initiative will do nothing to reduce the use of fossil fuels. In fact, the objective is to make ever-increasing production more acceptable. The ceremony was just the latest in a long line of PR ruses to maintain business as usual; to make the unprecedented, unsustainable and unchecked growth of the Tar Sands the ‘new normal’.

A few years ago Greenpeace hung a banner in Calgary calling for the separation of “Oil and State”. Good idea! We’ve already seen how Peter Kent, Joe Oliver and other Harper Ministers have no moral or ethical issues about working intimately with big oil. So it came as no surprise that when the new COSIA Executive Director was announced, it was an Environment Canada employee. Not a former employee, a current employee who would remain employed there. Of course this wasn’t mentioned at the fossil fuel do-good’ers love-fest. But the organizers did feel it important to highlight his football achievements.

Apparently the new director will be tasked with ‘facilitating the pooling of research’ and the ‘development of technology’ to reclaim land, detoxify the tailings ponds and reduce operational greenhouse gas emissions. These are good and laudable things. But let’s not be distracted – it’s a political exercise designed to prevent public control over pollution.

Pollution rules should be based on the protection of public health and the environment. Then industry should be required to operate with those limits. COSIA is determining the pollution limits based on what the industry is prepared to pay and it wants Environment Canada’s stamp-of-approval.

And they just got it.

That’s what really worries me.

John Bennett, Executive Director
Sierra Club Canada
[email protected]
@John__Bennett