Black and blue all over

Ottawa’s struggle to produce a Green Plan

For a government pinned at the bottom of the polls and under fire, it was intended as a positive announcement that would launch a political comeback. Over the past several months, advisers to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney have insisted that a new federal initiative on the environment could help to reverse the party’s declining fortunes in the wake of such unpopular programs as the proposed Goods and Service Tax (GST). The comeback, they privately assured both critics and party activists, would be driven by social reforms that would put a kinder veneer over the prevalent image of Conservative toughness. And the first step on the road to recovery was a comprehensive program to arrest the declining state of the Canadian environment—a “Green Plan,” as Tory strategists named it, for an issue that polls consistently place as a top priority among Canadian voters.

The countdown to the launch of the Tory recovery initiative is now well under way, but plans are already threatening to go awry. Environment Minister Robert de Cotret has pledged to reveal the contents of his longawaited Green Plan by the end of this month. The document, a product of extensive public

consultation and fierce internal battles within the government itself, will provide a detailed description of the Tories’ environmental policy for the next five years—and of the amount of money the government is willing to spend to pay for it. But even before its official unveiling, environmentalists have attacked leaked details of the plan as diluted from a much stronger set of reforms that the federal cabinet rejected last winter. As well, the Tory plan will come at a time when deepening recession has dampened the enthusiasm of both industry and consumers for expensive environmental action.

But perhaps the most damaging blow to Conservative hopes for de Cotret’s Green Plan came last week. Already locked in an increasingly bitter confrontation with the provinces about Ottawa’s jurisdiction over the environment, de Cotret lost a critical battle when a Saskatchewan judge threw out a federal application for an injunction to halt work on the $ 145-million Rafferty-Alameda dam project.

Indeed, last week’s decision by the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench in Regina amounted to a startling slap in the face of de Cotret’s authority. Federal officials first sought the injunction last month, after the five mem-

bers of an environmental assessment panel operating under federal law quit their posts on Oct. 11. The panelists claimed that Saskatchewan had defied federal legislation by permitting construction work on the two irrigation and flood-control dams to resume before their environmental review was complete. Last week, however, Saskatchewan Chief Justice Donald MacPherson dismissed the federal application. Although MacPherson did not question Ottawa’s right to intervene in the dam’s construction, he described the federal environmental review process as “badly flawed.” For his part, de Cotret promptly declared his intent to appeal the ruling.

The court did not rule on another controversial element in the case that could have been even more damaging to de Cotret’s reputation. That question centred on whether de Cotret, as Saskatchewan Premier Grant Devine has alleged, secretly agreed last September at a private meeting in Ottawa to allow the Rafferty project to go ahead. De Cotret has denied Devine’s allegation about the discussion, held in the presence of several officials. MacPherson’s judgment sidestepped the question of whose account was truthful. Still, the Rafferty controversy, said David Runnalls, an environmental analyst at the Ottawa-based Institute for Research on Public Policy, “has affected de Cotret’s credibility with organized environmental groups very badly. The only thing that can rescue that is a strong, proactive Green Plan.”

That goal may now be difficult to achieve. De

Cotret himself has observed that “you cannot clean up the environment just with motherhood statements. You have got to back up your statements with money.” But he also told Maclean’s that “money is not easy to come by these days in government.” In fact, partly because of the chill in the economic climate, the minister acknowledged that he has had difficulty getting cabinet approval for the close to $2 billion that department officials estimate the Green Plan will cost during its five-year span.

The plan itself has been debated, drafted and revised for more than a year. In its original concept during the tenure of de Cotret’s predecessor, Lucien Bouchard, the plan was supposed to contain concrete measures to combat a host of environmental problems, from global warming and toxic wastes to poor water quality. In doing so, it proposed to extend the influence of the federal environment department into other areas of government.

But those audacious goals quickly ran into political difficulties. First, cabinet colleagues blocked Bouchard’s requests for early and generous funding. Then, Bouchard bolted cabinet over the Meech Lake accord. As his hastily named successor, de Cotret was obliged to split his time between the environment portfolio and his other job as Treasury Board president. Then, when de Cotret surrendered the Treasury Board portfolio in September, he became, in the words of one environment department official, “just another minister begging for money in tough times.”

As a result, concern for the likely cost of some of the plan’s most idealistic proposals has resulted in a substantially more modest menu of environmental measures. Said another senior environment official: “The optimism we felt at first was replaced by resignation as the

reality of economics set in. There are policies on the cutting-room floor.”

Many environmental activists share that pessimism. Although those who have seen an

outline of the plan note that it will address such issues as global warming, critics charge that it does not go far enough in addressing several other crucial issues. Among them: proposals to impose a tax on the use of carbon-based fossil fuels, which contributes to global climatic change. The failure to include such a tax in the

plan would seriously undermine Canada’s international campaign for stiffer controls on emissions that cause global warming.

Instead, the Green Plan is expected to focus on other areas, such as public education. But that push could bring Ottawa into conflict with the provinces, which control education. Several provinces—including Quebec and Alberta, as well as Saskatchewan—are already vigorously resisting Ottawa’s attempts to extend its environmental purview. Said one senior provincial environment official: “There is no easy way to split the jurisdiction over environmental issues, and the Green Plan will be a federalprovincial problem for the next several years.”

Against those lengthening political odds, de Cotret is expected to spend close to $12 million on a public relations blitz promoting the Green Plan’s merits. That approach will be based largely on party polls, which show that although the economy is now Canadians’ main concern, the environment remains a priority. But tough times—and voter cynicism—may yet frustrate the government’s hope of rebuilding its popularity on a foundation of environmental action. Roy Aitken, executive vicepresident of Toronto-based Inco Ltd. and a member of the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, for one, noted: “People still think there is a nice, easy answer to solve environmental problems at no cost. But we will all have to pay for it, and that is not a politically popular message.” It is a message that de Cotret and his fellow Tories will hear frequently as they face the complex and costly considerations of cleaning up the environment.

BRUCE WALLACE with E. KAYE FULTON and NANCY WOOD in Ottawa