Missing from Canada’s Political Debate: Natural Security
25-year review of Canada’s eco-stewardship reveals neglect across party stripes.
Canada’s prime minister is pre-campaigning with a strong-on-security message. His government is taking measures designed, among other goals, to protect energy infrastructure from what the RCMP has called “violent environmental extremists.”
As I write, enormous forest fires burning out of control across northern Alberta have done what no activist has accomplished: forced the suspension of oilsands operations.
These events capture a dimension missing from Canada’s security debate: our natural security.
Our natural security is physical. It provides the stable, productive environment that has allowed Canada to prosper. In the form of fields and lakes and forests, and in global exchanges of water and energy, natural security underwrites our economy, our health and our ability to maintain the institutions that serve and protect us.
Every one of Canada’s governments since 1989, including the present one, has expressed strong environmental principles and enacted impressive legislation to protect vulnerable species, defend Canadians against pollution and prevent development from devastating critical ecosystems.
Despite those laws, audits and independent assessments persistently warn us that our natural security is degraded, failing and increasingly undefended. And that should concern Canadians of all political stripes.
The wide gap between our aspirations and actions confronted me again and again as I sought an answer to an apparently straightforward question: “How well has Canada cared for our environment — really?”
The year-long search was commissioned by Tyee Solutions Society, an independent journalism production centre started by the founders of this publication and donor-supported. It collated events, laws, international developments and a wide range of public audits and independent assessments over a period in which five prime ministers from three parties occupied 24 Sussex Drive. All of that information is now available and searchable online.
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