opinionsubmi

 

Time to turn Canada around

STATI

Matters

avid Suzuki,
David Suzuki
Foundation

 

For as long as I can remember, being
Canadian has always been an immense
source of personal pride. We live in one of
the greatest countries in the world-which
is all the more reason why I’m so dis-
turbed at where we are heading.

This week, my foundation released a
comprehensive report on Canada’s envi-
ronmental performance compared to
other industrialized countries. It shocked
me, although I suppose the writing has
been on the wall for some time. Still, it
was disturbing to see just how poorly
Canada’s environmental record stacks up
to other wealthy countries.

We rank 28 out of the 30 member
countries in the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) based on 29 key environmental
indicators-things like air and water pollu-
tion, heat-trapping greenhouse gas emis-
sions, pesticide use, and more. Our per-
formance is only marginally better than
the two countries at the very bottom, the
United States and Belgium.

It’s not as though we’re just bad in one
area. We're consistently awful in: energy
consumption—28th; greenhouse gas emis-
sions—26th; water consumption—29th;
sulfur oxides pollution—27th; number of
species at risk—26th; nuclear waste—30th;
and the list goes on. In fact, Canada did
not place first in any of the 29 indicators.
We are decent at a few things, like recy-
cling, but our list of failures is long and
depressing. What’s more, our performance
has not improved over the past decade.

This is not the Canada that I know and
love. Polls tell us over and over that
Canadians value our natural heritage and
want to protect it for our future. Yet here
we are, one of the worst environmental
offenders in the world, chipping away at
that heritage and threatening the health
and well-being of future generations. So
how can we fix this mess?

Well, we can’t really compare ourselves
to all the countries in the OECD. Some,
like Turkey, rank high on the environmen-
tal scale, but only because they are still
developing and don’t have a large industri-
al base. A more fitting comparison is to
look at countries that manage to protect
their environment and still have a strong
economy. These countries, such as
Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Austria,
and Sweden are clearly doing something
right. And they show that protecting the
environment and thriving economically
can go hand in hand.

Canada’s governments, at many levels,
have failed us. Not because there aren’t
well-meaning, passionate individuals work-
ing within the system to protect the envi-
ronment. There certainly are such individ-

uals, from city councilors all the way to
Environment Minister Stéphane Dion. No,
our governments are failing us because
there are no overarching common targets
and timelines to achieve our goals. And
without a road map, how will we ever
know where we’re going?

It has become clear to me that Canada
will continue to spin its wheels and we will
fall further and further behind other coun-
tries until we pass a National Sustainability
Act, one that sets out the targets and time-
lines for our country to achieve sustain-
ability. It isn’t good enough to just talk
platitudes about protecting the environ-
ment. And it isn’t good enough to lay
responsibility in the hands of the
Environment Ministry when so many of
the important decisions that affect nature
and our health are outside its jurisdiction.

I’m still proud of our big, beautiful
country. But we are using her resources at
an unsustainable rate. It’s already affecting
our quality of life and things will only get
worse until we take decisive action, as
other countries are already doing quite
successfully. If we want our country to
continue to be one of the greatest in the
world, we must change. We need a
National Sustainability Act and we need it
now.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
    

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