Just how badly the provincial government is misreading the public mood — and its own mandate — can be seen in its attitude toward the environment. We are approaching a perfect storm of bad news on the environment that is shameful to all of us, yet Premier Ed Stelmach and his cabinet seem hell-bent to ignore it.
In recent recall, Alberta’s environmental record has been tarred by no less than Greenpeace (that’s to be expected), but also by National Geographic and the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club. These are heavy hitters on the world scene, and all of them paint the province as being far too willing to sell our natural inheritance.
If Stelmach doesn’t believe that these reports seriously damage the reputation of all Albertans, he doesn’t travel or read enough. Yet instead of responding with plans for better behaviour, he makes things worse.
What’s he waiting for? A higher authority? Condemnation from the United Nations, perhaps? Wait a minute, that’s happened, too.
In a statement that beggars belief, Stelmach last week maintained he had never seen the photos of ducks in their death struggle on the tailing ponds at Syncrude.
For crying out loud, people in China are seeing those pictures.
And last week, the government bent over to accept the arguments of an industry lobby group and is expected to delay regulations requiring mining operations to clean up their messes.
Right now, incredibly, Alberta has no wetlands protection policy.
Oilsands mining is expensive. We know that. Most likely it will indeed cost billions of dollars to restore the wetlands torn up to uncover the tarsands.
But oilsands mining is also hugely profitable. It is not too much to ask of the companies draining Alberta’s northern marshes that they pay to put them back in some semblance of a natural state. In fact, that is both the word and intent of their charters.
The size and scope of the projects are also huge; that is why they have drawn the attention of National Geographic and Audubon.
The total package due to be mined up north is an area the size of the state of Florida. It is humanity’s largest industrial hole in the ground. On a clear day, people can see it from the International Space Station. Of what use is all the work of groups like Ducks Unlimited, compared to the destruction that is coming?
It is an ugly picture and the whole world is looking at it.
It is an embarrassment to every Albertan that our government appears to have no belief that a wetlands that large should be properly reclaimed — at the expense of the companies that are doing the damage.
In is inconceivable that our political leadership has refused to look at wildlife dying in toxic ponds neither they nor their friends in industry can rally the technology to repair — as their own charter demands they should.
Thank goodness the province rejected last week a suggestion that, with a population of less than 700 grizzly bears, it might just be time to start selling hunting permits to foreign trophy shooters again.
What’s not incredible, all things considered, is the possibility that someone in high office might actually think that hunting a threatened species is a good idea.
When the population falls below 1,000 individuals, the law should officially designate them as threatened, and the government is bound to protect habitat and populations.
A year and a half after an advanced DNA-based study into bear populations, pegging the breeding group at less than 400 animals, government has yet to make that lawful designation.
At a point in time, when Canadians have just given themselves permission to be publicly proud to be Canadians, do we also need now to be ashamed to be Albertans?
Greg Neiman is an Advocate editor.