Canada is blessed with an abundance of lakes and rivers and has a global responsibility to manage them well. But if we really want to protect freshwater supplies and the ecosystems they support, we must understand how human activity and natural disturbances affect them.
The world-renowned Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in southern Ontario has served as an outdoor laboratory for this purpose since 1968. By manipulating and studying conditions in 58 small lakes and their watersheds, scientists there have made many discoveries about the effects of human and natural activity on freshwater ecosystems and fish. Over the past 45 years, they’ve taught us about the impacts of acid rain, mercury pollution, nanoparticles, nitrogen overload, climate change, fish farming and many other issues.
That’s about to end. The federal government announced it will close the unique facility in 2013. It’s an odd decision, especially considering that it costs just $2 million a year to operate — one-tenth the cost of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s security detail and about the same amount the government spent during the 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto to build a tourism pavilion with a fake lake. To make matters worse, it will cost taxpayers $50 million to shut the ELA down!
In an open letter to government, senior scientists point out that “research conducted at the ELA has been instrumental in the development of environmental policy and legislation both nationally and internationally.” They also note that “ELA scientists have been recipients of numerous prestigious national and international awards, and the scientific output from ELA has been impressive — more than 1,000 scientific articles, graduate theses and books.”
The timing is also odd. The ELA is being shut down as the government eviscerates laws and regulations designed to protect freshwater and marine habitat and resources with its omnibus budget bill. Included in the bill are changes or cuts to the Fisheries Act, Navigable Waters Protection Act, Species at Risk Act and Canadian Environmental Protection Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.
One can’t help but notice that many recent cuts and changes are aimed at programs, laws or entities that might slow the push for rapid tar sands expansion and pipelines to the west and south, along with the massive sell-off of our resources and resource industry to Chinese state-owned companies, among others.
The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, for example, warned that failing to address climate change would have both economic and environmental consequences. The government also axed that arm’s-length agency, under the guise of saving $5.5 million a year.
Development is important, but when it’s focused on a single polluting industry, at the expense of other economic priorities and the environment, it doesn’t make sense. When industry and government go to such extreme lengths to promote a short-sighted and narrow interest, it’s an affront to the democratic traditions that Canadians of all political stripes have built over the years.
David Suzuki is the host of the CBC’s The Nature of Things and author of more than 30 books on ecology.
