Doomed advisory panel calls for water charter

Photograph by: Cate Gillon , Getty Images

"Environment Minister Peter Kent will be left with fewer resources to address the challenges following a federal budget that slashed millions of dollars of funding in his department's budget for research and monitoring and well as for partnerships to engage stakeholders to adopt greener practices.

The round table, established by the Mulroney government in the 1980s, was among the victims of the cuts, learning in the budget that it would lose all of its funding and be shut down within the coming months." - Mike De Souza

Doomed advisory panel calls for water charter

By Mike De Souza,

Postmedia News

Calgary Herald

April 19, 2012

OTTAWA — An independent research and advisory panel that learned it would be killed in last month's federal budget is recommending dramatic actions from governments to protect Canada's water, including a new charter, better research and pricing of the resource.

The recommendations, made in one of the final reports produced by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, come as Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has introduced plans to weaken federal oversight of industrial development, while musing about softening existing tools such as the Fisheries Act.

The panel issued the report, entitled Moving to Action, following the discussions of industry and academic stakeholders at a conference in January.

"There was clear consensus among the experts and participants at the Forum that now is the time to begin acting on many of our recommendations for better water governance, exploring the use of water pricing and investing in water-use forecasting and data," said a joint statement from the advisory's president, David McLaughlin, and its vice-chairman, Robert W. Slater.

"Participants felt so strongly about the importance of these issues, they developed a new recommendation to create a charter affirming the legitimacy of collaborative water governance processes."

The participants, who reviewed research by the panel, came from a variety of different organizations across the country, including oilsands companies, the forestry industry and the financial sector. The report also noted the importance of data collection as an important economic opportunity for the future to identify needs as well as the quality and status of the resource.

"In the current fiscal situation, it will be impossible for any one government or organization to move all these recommendations forward, but through new collaborations and partnerships, we can make real progress on sustaining Canada's most valuable resource — our water," said the report.

Environment Minister Peter Kent will be left with fewer resources to address the challenges following a federal budget that slashed millions of dollars of funding in his department's budget for research and monitoring and well as for partnerships to engage stakeholders to adopt greener practices.

The round table, established by the Mulroney government in the 1980s, was among the victims of the cuts, learning in the budget that it would lose all of its funding and be shut down within the coming months.

Tony Maas, the freshwater program director at WWF-Canada, a conservation group, said most of the participants recognized that the provinces and territories were leading the country in tackling the challenges through recent initiatives such as a council created by the Council of the Federation.

"Any national initiative to protect water resources seems to be more likely to come from the provinces and municipalities . . . then the federal government," said Maas.

Maas also praised the panel for bringing sectors together to engage in dialogue while bringing environmental and economic issues together, instead of pitting one against the other.

In a statement, Kent's spokesman, Adam Sweet, said the government welcomed the round table's report, adding that "most of the recommendations" were directed toward provinces and territories "with whom we work effectively on a range of water-related issues."

mdesouza@postmedia.com