While public officials and environmentalists met in Washington recently to discuss progress on cleaning up the Great Lakes, Canada is being criticized for being far behind the U.S. in doing its part. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports:
Transcript
While public officials and environmentalists met in Washington recently to discuss progress on
cleaning up the Great Lakes, Canada is being criticized for being far behind the U.S. in doing its
part. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports:
The criticism comes from an independent non-profit organization called the Canadian Institute for
Environmental Law and Policy.
Anne Mitchell is the institute’s director. She says one agreement signed in 1994 committed
Canada and Ontario to restore degraded or polluted areas in the province. Mitchell says
governments have only been able to restore three of the seventeen areas of concern. and she says
that’s a national embarrassment.
Mitchell says it’s not just at the federal level that cuts have affected Canada’s ability to live up to
its commitments. She says the previous government in Ontario went too far in cutting the
environment ministry.
‘Through the Conservative government in Ontario, we saw it was emaciated, the whole
department was gutted, both personal budgets policies.”
Mitchell is calling on all levels of government in Canada to work together to preserve the Great
Lakes, before it’s too late. She says the main issue is to restore funding to clean up the remaining
areas of concern in Ontario, resume monitoring and hire the people necessary to move the process
forward.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Karpenchuk