Vote for Nature

Cast Your Vote for Nature on May 2, 2011!

Related Links 7 Questions for Candidates Elections Canada

Canadians expect their government to protect nature. We live in a time when the planet’s health is in peril, a time when strong leadership and decisive action are required to address the urgent threats of climate change, habitat loss, and species extinctions.

To effectively protect nature for future generations, the Government of Canada has to do four things:

1. Protect Wildlife
2. Preserve Natural Areas
3. Prevent Environmental Disasters
4. Lead Canadian Conservation
   
   

1. Protect Wildlife

The federal government is accountable to Canadians for protecting and recovering endangered species and other threatened wildlife through the federal Species at Risk Act. The federal government also has the legal responsibility to protect migratory birds in Canada. The Migratory Birds Convention Act is the law that implements our international agreement with the United States to conserve waterfowl and other migratory birds that fly across our borders.

The Burrowing Owl is listed as endangered under the Species at Risk Act.

Many of our bird populations are declining rapidly. Shorebird species and those that depend on Canada’s native grasslands are particularly vulnerable. Unfortunately Canada is not doing enough domestically and internationally to protect our loved and invaluable bird populations. We are not even fully enforcing our own laws to protect wildlife, according to several Canadian and international investigations. For example the Commission on Environmental Cooperation found that Canada was failing to enforce the Migratory Birds Convention Act by allowing logging operations that routinely destroy the nests of migratory birds. There is a similar lack of government regulation of a wide range of industrial activities that harm migratory birds.

Canada’s list of endangered, threatened and special concern species gets longer every year, never shorter. Species that get re-evaluated are typically doing worse rather than better. Time is ticking for these species, yet internal reviews by Environment Canada found a failure to meet the legal requirements and deadlines of the Species at Risk Act. A number of court rulings have also found the federal government not complying with this law, particularly with the requirement to identify critical habitat.

2. Preserve Natural Areas

The federal government is accountable to Canadians for permanently protecting natural areas, using a number of different legal tools known collectively as “protected areas”. Parks Canada establishes and manages a system of National Parks and National Marine Conservation Areas to permanently protect representative examples of each of Canada’s natural regions. Environment Canada manages National Wildlife Areas, Migratory Bird Sanctuaries, and Marine Wildlife Areas to protect important wildlife habitat across the country. The department of Fisheries and Oceans is responsible for Marine Protected Areas which protect significant marine ecosystems and important habitats for marine wildlife and species at risk. But there are problems.

Nature Canada helped establish Mealy Mountains National Park.

We are still losing too much of Canada’s unique wild lands, waters, and oceans to our growing human footprint on the environment. Our National Parks system only covers 33 of Canada’s 68 terrestrial and marine natural regions. The job is only half done and as time goes on it is getting harder to establish parks in the remaining regions. Parks Canada does not have the resources needed to act fast enough to establish new parks while the best opportunities still exist. For example the March 2011 federal budget only provided 2% of the funding needed to meet the federal government’s commitment to establish new National Parks, according to the Green Budget Coalition.

Of course it is not enough to create protected areas on paper. Laws have to be enforced on the ground, and on the water. Several reviews have concluded that Canada’s protected areas are losing species and suffering environmental damage because of insufficient protection in practice. In fact oil and gas drilling has even been allowed in some National Wildlife Areas and other protected areas. This is obviously wrong. We also need these agencies to work together, and we need these protected areas to be linked together across the landscape.

3. Prevent Environmental Disasters

We all know how horrible environmental disasters can be. Massive oil spills, mining waste accidents, ducks dying in oil sands tailings ponds, and the mounting impacts of climate change are just a few examples. These incidents can have enormous personal and economic consequences as well, closing fisheries, damaging human health, and sometimes costing lives.

This is why the federal government has legal powers to protect Canadians by preventing these kinds of environmental disasters before they ever happen. Environmental Assessments are supposed to study the potential environmental harm of proposed projects and find less risky alternatives. The Fisheries Act is supposed to prevent activities that harm freshwater and marine fish habitat. Canada should be doing its fair share to combat climate change by acting decisively at home, negotiating constructively on the international stage and helping the most vulnerable to adapt.

Instead the recommendations from too many Environmental Assessments have been ignored, and even the law itself has been weakened. Canadian lakes are handed over to private mining companies to use as dumps for mining waste. Instead of acting at home and abroad to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, our government continues to subsidize oil and gas companies, with pipeline megaprojects now looking for handouts too.

4. Lead Canadian Conservation

Volunteers from the Canadian IBA Caretaker Network monitor birds, assess habitat, and conduct conservation activities.

Conserving wildlife, wild spaces, and the environment is a big job. Fortunately there are many people helping. Aboriginal, provincial, and territorial governments, nonprofit organizations, local clubs, landowners, businesses, industries, and others are doing their part. For example, Nature Canada is part of the global BirdLife International network that implements the Important Bird Areas (IBA) program. There are over 600 IBAs in Canada in need of various kinds of stewardship. There are countless other programs that tackle individual conservation issues. What Canada needs is an ambitious national plan to support and coordinate these efforts. The federal government has its specific areas of responsibility but it also has another role as our national government. We turn to our federal government to lead and coordinate action across Canada to conserve and protect what we hold dear.

By working together we can be much more effective, here at home and beyond our borders. Consider for a moment that ninety percent of our birds migrate out of Canada every fall. We can’t conserve “our” birds unless we look beyond our borders to the places they go through and go to. These places are uniquely linked along “flyways”, the great migratory routes that birds follow up and down our continents. We need to collaborate with partners in the United States and throughout Latin America. We need a conservation plan for Canada that recognizes our international obligations.