Canada’s environment minister is threatening action if Ontario doesn’t meet the air pollution standards set out in a treaty signed by Canada and the U.S., but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports – environmentalists remain skeptical that change will occur:
Transcript
Canada’s environment minister is threatening action if Ontario doesn’t meet the air pollution standards set out in a treaty signed by Canada and the U.S. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, environmentalists remain skeptical that change will occur:
Canadian environment minister David Anderson says he may take action if Ontario fails to meet the targets it agreed to under the 2000 Canada-U.S. treaty to cut ozone. The treaty requires Ontario’s power plants to cut emissions of nitrogen dioxide in half by 2007. Jerry Dimarco, a lawyer with the Sierra Legal Defense Fund, agrees that Ontario is falling short of that goal. But he says there’ve been other warnings, and little has been done.
“We’ve seen a federal environment minister who’s said the right things, in terms of telling Ontario
that they should reduce emissions. What we need is a federal environment minister who tells Ontario they must reduce emissions.”
The Canadian government currently lacks the ability to enforce clean air standards. A 1999 law grants federal officials the power to create new regulations. But they have yet to do so.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.