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Canada and the environment: A fresh start for a fresh decade

by Preston Manning*

The Globe and Mail January 25, 2010

With the dawning of a new decade, a fresh start for Canada onenvironmental issues is an urgent necessity, especially at the national level.

Canadians (particularly the younger generation) strongly believe inenvironmental protection and conservation. But they have becomedisillusioned by inaction and the ineffectiveness of so much of the politicaldebate on the subject the failure of the ill-conceived Kyoto Protocol, the

bungled presentation of carbon pricing by the Liberals under Stephane Dion,the reluctance of Canadian conservatives to become environmentalchampions, the acrimonious debate between global warming alarmists andsceptics, and the indeterminate outcome of the recent Copenhagen talks.

Grounds for more productive dialogue and action on the environment do existamong those Canadians who share the following convictions: (1) That it is agood idea to reduce the negative environmental consequences associated withthe production and burning of hydrocarbons, regardless of whether youconsider global warming to be one of or the most serious of those

consequences; and (2) That the choices required to address our environmentalchallenges are not polarizing and divisive either/or choices eitherregulatory action by government ormarket based initiatives by business butunifying and consensus-building both/and choices.

As a starting point for fresh-start dialogue and action, lets focus on theprincipal horses (to use a western analogy) that need to be harnessed to theenvironmental protection/conservation wagon:

(1) Full Cost Accounting. If it matters, measure it. Lets adoptexpanded accounting practices which explicitly recognize theenvironmental and social impacts of economic activities, identify thecosts of avoiding or mitigating them, and gradually incorporatethose costs into the prices of goods and services. Lets give as muchattention to keeping the National Ecological Accounts and reducing

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the Gross National Waste as we do to the National EconomicAccounts and increasing the Gross National Product. And to beequitable, and avoid creating another national unity crisis, full costaccounting needs to be applied to allenergy sources, economic

enterprises, and regions not just to petroleum and companies basedin western Canada.

(2) Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI). STI has enormouscontributions to make toward the achievement of bothenvironmental and economic sustainability. But maximizing thosecontributions requires Canada to squarely address two chronic

problems: (1) Our historic difficulty in managing and financing themovement of STI from the laboratory to the market place. (2) Theneed to anticipate and mitigate the negative impacts which may

accompany scientific innovations, such as those now associated withthe internal combustion engine or the production of ethanol from

biomass. Lets create a private-sector-based think tank/do tankdedicated to devising business strategies and public policies toaddress the first of these problems. And lets consistently performso-called Economic Environmental Ethical Legal and Social(EEELS) impact assessments on innovative applications of old andnew technologies (such as those associated with carbon capture andstorage) to address the second.

(3) Market mechanisms. Markets are devices for harnessingresources (physical, human, and financial) to meet demands using

pricing signals and monetary incentives. Historically, markets havebeen the most effective instruments known to man to meet ourdemands for goods and services. But with effort, innovation, andcare, markets can also be harnessed to meet our current demands forclean water, clean air, reclaimed soil, and overall reductions in theGross National Waste. So lets get serious about attaching prices to

the goods and services delivered by ecosystems such aswatersheds, incorporating the cost of mitigating negativeenvironmental impacts into the prices of conventional goods andservices, and offering investors fair and reasonable returns on capitalsuccessfully invested in environmental protection and conservation.

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(4) Government Policy and Regulation. Of course there is a majorrole for government policy and regulation with respect toenvironmental protection and conservation, but lets sharpen ourdefinition and exercise of that role. For starters, lets see

governments which constitute some of the largest resource ownersand consumers of goods and services in the country lead more byexample. With respect to regulation, lets have governments focuson macro regulation creating frameworks and incentives forindividuals and companies to practice responsible environmentalstewardship rather than attempting to micro-manage individual orcorporate behaviour. And since ecosystems like watersheds and airsheds dont respect federal/provincial/municipal boundaries, letssee more delegation of environmental protection by all levels ofgovernment to one-window ecosystem-based regulatory authorities.

(5) Demand-Side Transformation. Much of the past emphasis onenvironmental protection has been on the supply side attemptingto find more environmentally responsible ways to supply ourdemands for energy, food, shelter, and other goods and services. Butlets also find ways and means of making absolute reductions inthose demands themselves. Full-cost accounting and pricing willhave this effect. But lets also focus more of our educational andteaching resources through the home, schools, and faith-based

institutions on teaching the importance and the means of reducingour demands on finite resources and ecosystems.

(6) New Eco-Partnerships. Some of the solutions to our environmentalchallenges will require the forging of new eco-partnerships. Public-

private utility partnerships, for example, can be used to finance andmanage the conservation of watersheds. (One has been proposed forthe management of the Athabasca watershed in Alberta.) Thetransportation and intermittency problems faced by producers of

wind and solar energy can be solved in part by partnering with non-renewable energy producers and shippers. And with respect toachieving sustainable continental energy security, lets begin toseriously consider partnering with the United States in the creationof a North America Sustainability Agency (NASA II) to harness

public and private resources in both countries to the objective ofcleaning up oil sand production in much the same way that the

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National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA I) harnessedpublic and private resources to put a man on the moon.

(7) Political Leadership at the National Level. Past initiatives by the

federal Conservative have included substantial investments inenvironmental standards enforcement, the $2 Billion ecoENERGY(clean energy) initiative, and establishment of the mandatory GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions reduction target of 20% by 2020. Alsoto its credit, the Harper government has notmade hypocriticalinternational commitments on GHG reductions as did the Liberals atKyoto norhas it bungled the presentation of a major environmentalinitiative (carbon taxes) as did the Liberal opposition underStephane Dion. At the national level, it is therefore the Conservativegovernment that is in the best position to provide fresh startleadership on the environmental front. Such leadership mightespecially include more vigorously establishing the connection

between conservatism and conservation (the words come fromthe same root); applying the core concepts of fiscal conservatism living within our means and balancing budgets to living withour means ecologically and balancing the ecological budget; re-assessing the conservative application of science to environmentalissues, including global warming, to ensure that it is principled and

balanced; and most importantly, making the harnessing of market

mechanisms to the task of environmental protection andconservation the signature contribution of conservatives toenvironmental and economic sustainability.

*Preston Manning is President and CEO of the Manning Centre for BuildingDemocracy (www.manningcentre.ca).

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