How Alberta Can Make Canada Great Again
"In a bold step the federal government is considering melding its legal environmental responsibilities with those of the province."
Lorne Fitch, P. Biol.
Gosh, don’t we have to get Canada working again? Our prime minister, various premiers, and the business community are on top of this. Return this country to those halcyon days of the skies dark with dust and smoke and emissions, when the water sparkled with the tinctures of rosy effluents, and the landscape, so long bare and useless was made useful with wonderful coal mines, smelters, gas plants, logging clear-cuts, and all the other symbols of solvency.
Sure, sure, there were some losses and issues— pollution, biodiversity declines, human health effects, social inequities, and inadequate regulatory oversight —but through evidence-based work and consensus we developed environmental legislation and policies. There were processes, guidelines, standards, and environmental impact assessments to guide development. But really, hasn’t it gone too far? Caring for the environment is so yesterday.
Those environmental guardrails have become anchors, so says the corporate world, keeping us from attaining our rightful (economic) place in the world. They say we just can’t afford to lay back, lounging in clean water, breathable air, fertile soil, robust landscapes, and the full range of biodiversity while the rest of the world passes us by (and they fail to make money).
No, it’s necessary to claw away at our natural attributes, to set standards for air and water quality that are technologically and economically attainable. Using science to set standards significantly fetters economic development. We need standards that are the answers to meeting our fiscal needs and expectations, not ones that are constraints.
Sure, more airborne particulate materials, like polycyclic aromatic compounds will ratchet up human cancer rates and selenium levels will render our rivers and lakes sterile, but think of the corporate dividends. Methane escaping from thousands of abandoned, unreclaimed wells will heat the world up and allow agriculture to expand into the far north, once scientists figure out how to create soil on the bedrock of the Canadian Shield. That’s the proper place for science, helping us expand our economic horizons, not lecturing us on ephemeral and esoteric ecological limits to growth. Oh, and let’s not be so prescriptive about reclamation—as long as it’s mostly green that should be good (and cheap) enough.
In a bold step the federal government is considering melding its legal environmental responsibilities with those of the province. This would certainly speed up development since Alberta has minimal environmental standards, captured agencies, an antipathy to public hearings, and active discouragement of public participation in decisions. Instead of ensuring the public good is championed, there is consistent leaning to the lobbying efforts of corporate wants. It is red-tape reduction, streamlining, “getting the job done” without impediments, “modernizing” regulations, and creating a “Yes” policy framework at its finest.
Most vexing to the growth-at-any-cost movement is that of species at risk, those critters teetering on the edge of extirpation, or worse because of growth-related issues. So the solution to native trout, caribou, bats, wolverines, grizzly bears, burrowing owls, sage-grouse, leopard frogs, lake sturgeon, whitebark pine, western silvery minnows, and a legion of others is a modest proposal. Let’s prevent them from being a burden on industry, corporations, and the government and make their habitats more financially beneficial. In crude terms we can call it “species be gone.” Adapt or die. It’s simply the way of standard economic theory.
This will be especially effective when coupled with the fairy dust of deregulation, the panacea of joint environmental reviews, and the ever present charade of mitigation. Canada (and Alberta) can be great again, if we just forget about the natural attributes that made us great in the first place.
Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a former Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence, Travels Up the Creek, and Conservation Confidential.
Who needs food or water or air anyway? Not our new AI companions.