Random Access

How is this for scary stuff?
“The once-renowned Ontario Ministries of Environment and
Natural Resources have been allowed to atrophy and deteriorate such that:
• we no longer know or are capable of knowing the state or the health of Ontario’s natural environment
• we are not in a position to anticipate and prevent imminent environmental
impairment.
• we are not keeping pace in developing laws and procedures sufficient to protect
our natural heritage from degradation.
• where we have such laws we are not inspecting and confirming that they are
complied with – in fact, in some cases we know and acknowledge that there is
substantial non-compliance.”
Those are the words of Ontario Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller who warned, in releasing a special report in Sudbury yesterday, that the core functions of the two key ministries that deal with the environment are being “starved” of funding.
While politicians gab and gab about what standards should be set for air and water emissions, those debates turn out to be a lot of acid gas where the rubber hits the road.
In a classic example that Miller cited yesterday, wildlife conservation officers who are supposed to be monitoring struggling species in northern Ontario can’t always go out into the field because their transportation budgets have been slashed so deeply. Volunteer groups are holding bake sales to help raise their gas money. Egads!
If you don’t think this, affects Mississauga, you’re wrong. The long-awaited Clarkson Air Shed Study took a lot longer to produce than expected, in part because it was being done by overworked staff. Talk to Dave Taylor at Riverwood about his book on black bears and hear him extol the virtues of ministry staff, who spend their own time on weekends, crawling into bear caves to tag animals. Witness the problems finding a ministry biologist to band peregrine falcon chicks in our two thriving urban nests here.
Budget restraint is one thing. Budget suffocation is another. In 2006, the MOE’s budget was actually lower than it was in 1992-93.
While the health budget continues to explode, the budget for two ministries, which could mitigate pollution problems through proper enforcement of emissions that trigger so much illness, languish at a combined one per cent of the total provincial budget.
How are we going to make the world green if we aren’t even willing to pay for the basic tools to monitor what’s going on in our own backyard?
• • •
Tim Peterson isn’t the only former Liberal who wanted to join the Mississauga South Progressive Conservative Association. When the candidate race between real Tories was first heating up, former Mississauga-Erindale MP and now Ward 6 Councillor Carolyn Parrish applied to join, so she could vote for Brad Butt at the nomination meeting.
Parrish said she thought it was finally Butt’s time to get himself elected after numerous tries.
The Association politely wrote back to Parrish and explained that, in light of her public threat to have City politicians run in provincial ridings to put the pooling issue on the public radar, maybe her joining the Tories wasn’t such a great idea after all. They probably had visions of Bush-stompings, or variations on the theme, dancing in their heads.
Parrish is not exactly fazed by the rejection. “I’ve been kicked out of better places,” she joked in reference to former Prime Minister’s Martin’s action to boot her from the federal Liberal caucus at the end of her 13-year career in Ottawa.
Interestingly enough, she may now end up supporting a Liberal in Mississauga South, since her friend Charles Sousa suddenly has a chance to run in the riding because of Peterson’s defection to the Tories.