A new Occupy movement has just started up for COP17 in Durban. They are seeking to protest against the further entrenchment of the carbon market and trading as a solution to climate change. They have poignantly stated that " [the] very same people responsible for the global financial crisis are poised to seize control of our atmosphere, land, forests, mountains and waterways. They want to institute carbon markets that will make billions of dollars for the elite few, whilst stealing land and resources from the many. We need to organise to protect the planet and safeguard those who depend on and defend our ecosystems." Follow them or join their occupation of the COP by visiting http://occupycop17.com/
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UNFCCC Adaptation Photo Contest
The Adaptation Fund of the UNFCCC has placed a call out for photos on adaptation. Anyone can apply and the winners will be announced in Durban at COP17. York University will have a delegation at COP17, so please let us know if you have a photo you'd like to submit.
The Competition focuses on adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change, which is defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as the adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities (IPCC Third Assessment Report, Climate Change 2001)
The deadline for submission is November 22nd, 2011. Late entries will not be accepted. An entry is considered only if received by the photos must be submitted electronically to the Adaptation Fund Board Secretariat secretariat@adaptation-fund.org.
For more information on submitting your entry, please visit:
http://www.adaptation-fund.org/sites/default/files/AFcompetitionRules.pdf or contact our delegate Rachel Hirsch at rhirsch@yorku.ca.
What does Ontario’s new Cabinet mean for Environment and Energy issues?
This blog was originally published in Professor Mark Winfield's blog.
Re-elected Premier Dalton McGuinty’s new cabinet was sworn-in on October 20. At this stage it looks, on the whole, like good news for environmental issues. Veteran Jim Bradley, who as environment minister from 1985-1990 in the government of David Peterson transformed the ministry from a relatively minor player within the province government to a major centre of influence, returns to the environment portfolio. Bradley put a solid but unspectacular performance in the previous McGuinty government as Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing – it is unclear if he is intended to continue in that mode at the Ministry of the Environment or whether his appointment might signal a return to a more activist agenda.
The appointment of the extremely capable Kathleen Wynne as Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing would seem likely to cement the progressive directions on land-use planning in southern Ontario that were established during John Gerretsen’s tenure in the portfolio, including the Greenbelt and reforms to the Planning Act, under the first McGuinty government. The integration of the infrastructure and transportation portfolios under former Ottawa Mayor Bob Chiarrelli may strengthen the focus on public transit, and more broadly the integration of land-use planning and transportation, although that remains to be seen. The apparent return of responsibility for forest management to the Natural Resources portfolio, now under John Gravelle, from the economic development oriented Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, also looks like a positive development.
Chris Bentley, the Attorney General in the second McGuinty government has been assigned the energy portfolio. The statement on his appointment from the Premier’s office that he “will continue to drive Ontario’s transition towards clean, renewable energy while ensuring we stay on track to create 50,000 clean energy jobs” would seem to reinforce the message that the Green Energy Act’s Feed-in-Tariff system is secure, although a series of serious challenges lie ahead within the portfolio.
Finally, John Gerretsen has been appointed as Attorney-General. Gerretsen, who was the author of a number of progressive initiatives while minister of municipal affairs and housing and then environment, will be now be handling the question of whether the government will introduce anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) legislation. The likelihood of some sort of legislative initiative would now seem much greater.
Although the new appointments provide some short-term reasons for optimism, it is important to keep in mind that the province’s fiscal situation means that the possibility of a major retrenchment remains very real. The prospect of an extensive restructuring of the province’s approach to environment and natural resources matters, pending the report of the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, continues to loom large as well.
Another slap in the face for critics of Canadian mining companies? Barrick Gold settles SLAPP suit against Noir Canada
Barrick Gold’s lawsuit against the authors and publisher of the book Noir Canada: pillage, corruption et criminalité en Afrique, a French language exposé of the practices of Canadian mining companies in Africa, has been settled out of court.
(See Barrick Gold’s press release, a Le Devoir news story (in French), and a story in the Winnipeg Free Press)
The defamation lawsuit was a classic example of a “SLAPP” – a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, employed by powerful individuals and corporations to intimidate critics and stifle scrutiny of their actions, typically by claiming that the criticism amounts to libel or slander. Such lawsuits have been employed in efforts to silence indigenous people, environmentalists, labour groups, human rights activists and others who try to oppose logging, mining, resource extraction, pollution, dam-building, and other activities that they believe are harming or may harm health, safety, welfare, or ecological integrity in affected communities.
The Québec Superior Court had ruled that the lawsuit was an abuse of process designed to intimidate Barrick Gold’s critics, and that Barrick should pay the defendants’ legal fees. Despite this important victory, and facing the prospect of a lengthy knock-down, drag-out legal battle, the defendant authors and publisher decided to settle the case out of court. As part of the settlement (according to the Barrick press release), they agreed to cease publication and reprinting of the book, and to make a “significant payment” to Barrick.
Barrick explicitly agrees, in its press release, that the authors and the publisher, Écosociété, wrote and published Noir Canada in good faith, in the belief that it was legitimate. It also acknowledges that
“Noir Canada was written to provoke a public debate about controversies surrounding the presence of Canadian interests in Africa and to call for the creation of a public inquiry about this Canadian presence in Africa. [The authors] still maintain this position and continue to inquire about the role of private corporations active as commercial partners with African political representatives engaged in armed conflicts.”
But how much room does this settlement leave for such investigation into and public debate about the connection between Canadian companies and environmental damage, armed conflict, and human rights violations around the world? A group of Québec intellectuals thinks that it will have a chilling effect, and I believe their concerns are well founded. Their commentary was published in Le Devoir yesterday, in French. An English translation was posted today on the blog Free Speech at Risk. It is important reading.
Here is a bit of what they said:
“Still the reader may wonder why the authors have nevertheless "accepted" another SLAPP from Barrick Gold. Why did they "choose" to comply with these conditions? Those who ask these questions have no idea of the kind of psychological pressures that can take place in thèse circumstances. The consequences of this lawsuit are enormous for the authors. Lives have been turned upside down forever. One must be aware of the fact that the out of court deliberative process does not in general take the form of a conversation over a cup of tea. In the case of a continuing SLAPP, a poisonous atmosphere often prevails, even if one is looking for an out of court settlement. The lawyers try to demoralize the opposition. Thus, the authors and the publisher did not choose anything. They were desperately trying to extricate themselves from a legal unbearable straitjacket.
“Despite the ferocity with which Barrick's lawyers have practiced censorship, it is remarkable to note at the end of this process the strength of character of the authors and the publisher. They strongly reaffirmed the rationale for the publication of their book.
“Moreover, the admissions required by Barrick in fact reveal a certain weakness on the part of the company itself. It can only win its case by exerting an enormous pressure on its opponents. But in so doing, it shows that the lawsuit was from the very beginning not a procedure meant to refute but rather to silence the authors and their legitimate questions.”
This episode underlines the need for anti-SLAPP legislation in Canada. In the United States, around half of the states have anti-SLAPP laws protecting the right to public participation, allowing courts to dismiss abusive lawsuits, award legal fees to SLAPP defendants, and allow them to launch “SLAPPBack” lawsuits against those who launch SLAPPs. British Columbia had such a law briefly in 2001, enacted by the departing New Democrats and repealed quickly by the incoming Liberal government. Québec introduced draft anti-SLAPP legislation in 2008, which was enacted in 2009—too late to stop Barrick from bringing its lawsuit. Ontario is mulling the prospect (see a thoughtful paper on this by Osgoode Hall Law School student Christine Kellowan, posted days before the Noir Canada settlement in an effort to renew the debate that had appeared to die down in the last year).
Food Blog no. 9 – Thinking about how fossil fuels subsidize food production
Could you imagine having to grow your own food?
Industrial agriculture has, in the recent past, brought us wine and milk lakes and butter mountains. This industrial approach to agriculture is the main reason why the per capita food production continued to increase during the 1990s and early 2000s. Though there is concern that this upwards trend may now be declining.
The downside of industrial agriculture seems to be most often expressed in arguments for organic foods. What is very rarely mentioned, however, is that our ability to engage in industrial agriculture is primarily due to fossil fuels.The energy value of the apple that we buy in the store is about 60 kcals. The total energetic cost of producing that apple, is far higher. Energy was burned in the form of gasoline that drove the tractor, and in the production of the fertilizers. While financial subsidies to Europe, via taxpayers' money, are often a hot topic of debate, in general as a society dependent on fossil fuels, we are generally not considering the energetic subsidy from fossil fuels of food production.
The energetic cost to a Medieval peasant, working the land, of producing a kcal was explained to some of us in an excellent lecture in 2008, by Professor Verena Winiwarter. There was a very high human energy input, but the relative production efficiency was actually much better than it is today! If you saw any of the excellent TV series, the Victorian Farm, you may have been aghast to learn, as I did, that 100 years ago, a ploughman might walk, on average, 14 miles a day behind his horse and plough. And, that plough was a modernized steel version that was a direct product of the industrial revolution. No wonder he would sit down to a Ploughman's lunch.
Even WITH fossil fuels to run our tractors, bailers and harvesters, food production is HARD work. As a doctoral student in Oxford, I had to put in my time on the University Farm, with sheep dipping and bailing. Could you imagine what would happen without fossil fuel energy replacing human (peasant-style) labour? Recently in Colorado USA, John Harold, a local onion farmer decided to bring in less migrant labour for the harvest, and to offer the jobs to local unemployed people. But, they either did not apply, or if they did, could not hack the physical work involved... as reported in a recent New York Times article - "Hiring Locally for Farm Work Is No Cure-All" (Oct 5th 2011).
Dawn Bazely 
Paper (&) Tigers: The Trouble with Barbie’s New Commitment to “Sustainable Sourcing”
What should we make of Mattel's October 5, 2011 announcement of new "sustainable sourcing" principles for its paper toy packaging? The move came after a highly-publicized Greenpeace campaign featuring Ken and Barbie “breakup” videos on the internet and huge banners draped from Mattel's Los Angeles headquarters declaring, “Barbie: It’s Over. I don’t date girls that are into deforestation.”
Greenpeace banner on Mattel HQ, June 2011 (Greenpeace)
The principles commit Mattel to some significant concrete steps.
Under Mattel's new policy, 70% of its paper packaging will be harvested sustainably or recycled by the end of 2011, rising to 85% in 2015, with preference for paper certified under the Forest Stewardship Council program for sustainable forestry certification. The company has also directed all its suppliers to exit known controversial sources of paper fibre. It has committed to avoid such sources in the future by ensuring that fibre sources are known and traced throughout the supply chain, fibre is harvested in compliance with local laws, and is not harvested from old-growth forests, from forests recently converted to timber plantations, or in ways that violate internationally recognized indigenous rights.
Like most voluntary corporate codes of conduct, the principles are couched in qualifiers like “where possible” and “to the extent feasible”, and do not provide for independent third-party verification. But they are not mere window-dressing. They commit Mattel to some significant concrete steps, including to establish specific goals, report publicly on progress, and adopt procedures to ensure that its procurement practices actually reflect the principles. They also require Mattel to support “multi-stakeholder” efforts to protect global forest resources and give preference to fibre certified under schemes that “exhibit the highest standards and robust audit processes.”
While the principles do not spell out which programs this language is intended to mean, most people familiar with forestry certification would read it as referring implicitly to the FSC, with its innovative tri-cameral structure (environmental, social and economic chambers, each split further into global North and South sub-chambers), as opposed to its mainly industry-driven counterparts such as the big forestry companies’ favoured American Forest & Paper Association’s Sustainable Forestry Initiative, the Canadian Standards Association’s Sustainable Forest Management program, and the small woodlot owners’ favoured Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).
Sumatran tigers (WWF)
Greenpeace claims that the new policy will help the endangered Sumatran tiger by preventing Mattel from sourcing paper from companies like Jakarta-based Asia Pulp and Paper, which Greenpeace alleges is a major contributor to deforestation in the tiger’s rapidly shrinking Indonesian rain forest habitat—and which, incidentally, has been buying up Canadian forest industry operations at a rapid pace.
At one level, this is a victory for environmentally responsible business. Mattel is the largest toy maker in the world, the self-proclaimed “worldwide leader in play.” Its procurement practices have a significant impact on the behaviour of suppliers around the world and send a strong signal to other global toy brands like Disney and Hasbro. If Mattel goes “sustainable,” others will likely follow. Its new procurement practices will make business more difficult for some of its more ecologically destructive suppliers, and reward those that are less destructive. In the long run, if extended throughout the industry, they might help ease the seemingly relentless pressure on tropical rainforests and Sumatran tiger habitat.
Let’s face it: The Sumatran tiger will not be saved by buying Barbies packaged in sustainably harvested paper.
But will Mattel’s new principles reduce the number of Barbie, Hot Wheels and Fisher Price toys purchased by and for the children of the world? Far from it. You can bet Mattel hopes they have the opposite effect, boosting sales by easing the consciences of consumers who fancy themselves environmentally responsible.
Let’s face it: The Sumatran tiger will not be saved by buying Barbies packaged in sustainably harvested paper. If Mattel and the other big toy brands stop sourcing paper products from tropical rainforests, less scrupulous players—companies not as susceptible to public shaming—will take up the slack. Tropical deforestation, like other ecological crises, will not be reversed unless we confront humanity’s insatiable and constantly growing appetite for material consumption, especially in the already affluent industrialized countries like Canada.
I have two school-age children. After reading the Mattel announcement, I thought I would count the toys in their rooms. I lost track around two hundred. Then I tried to imagine all the old toys we have discarded or given away, a pile that would dwarf those we currently have. A pile made largely of plastics that take millennia to break down in the environment. And how many of these toys do our children play with more than once, twice, a dozen times?
Instead of saying “I want a toy in sustainable packaging,” consider saying “I don’t need another toy just now.”
Don’t get me wrong. I love toys, and they can be crucial for children’s intellectual, emotional and other development. But how many does one child need? I’m not suggesting that all a child needs for a full play life is a stick and a mud puddle, although those ingredients can fill entire childhood afternoons. What I am suggesting is that the next time you think about buying yet another toy, instead of saying “I want a toy in sustainable packaging,” consider saying “I don’t need another toy just now.” If hundreds, then thousands, then millions of people choose not to buy that next toy, encouraging children instead to create and explore interior and exterior worlds of play with their own minds and bodies using the materials around them, not only will we help reduce the pressure on species and ecosystems, we will help raise generations of stewards eager to protect them.
I don’t mean to be unduly harsh on Greenpeace or Mattel. Initiatives like Mattel’s sustainable sourcing policy are victories of a sort. With Greenpeace turning forty this year, it is worth reflecting what kind of victories its often dramatic direct action campaigns achieve. Their greatest significance, as Greenpeace asserts in a fortieth birthday pamphlet that just arrived in the mail, is to create “the possibility of another future” by shining a spotlight on environmentally and socially unsustainable business practices. “Sustainable sourcing” is one small step toward such a future. Buying less, and creating more with our own imaginations and hands, would be a larger and more rewarding one.
Ontario Election Outcome: Is a Return to the Status Quo Ante the Best Thing for Ontario’s Environment?
This blog was originally published in Professor Mark Winfield's bog.
Ontario environmentalists have generally been breathing a sigh of relief over the re-election of the McGuinty government, with its implication of the continuation of the Feed-in Tariff system under the Green Energy Act, and more general avoidance of the major retreat by the province on environmental matters that would almost certainly have accompanied a PC victory. However, as I noted in my previous blog, even with the re-election of the Liberals, the possibility of some sort of retrenchment on the environment, particularly in light of the province’s fiscal situation cannot be ruled out. In fact, I am increasingly of the view that a major restructuring in the province’s approach to environment and natural resources management is likely, most probably through the 2012 budget. Such a development would not be unprecedented – recall the 1996 federal Liberal Program Review budget that followed the relatively progressive 1993 “Red Book” platform. Moreover, in terms of core environmental protection and natural resources management policy, such moves could be seen continuations of the status quo ante for the government.
We have already seen moves in this direction, particularly the 2009 transfer of responsibility for forest management from the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) to the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines (MNDM), clearly signalling a shift in emphasis from multi-functional forestry to economic development. In the case of the Ministry of the Environment, the government has claimed that the shift to a “permit-by-rule” or “registration” system, where project and facilities are ‘deemed’ to have approvals if they indicate compliance with standards established by the ministry, as opposed to detailed review by ministry staff, will permit the transfer of resources from environmental approvals to enforcement and other ministry functions. However, given the province’s fiscal situation, the more likely outcome is for those resources to disappear from the ministry’s operational budget and staff.
The Commission on the Reform of Public Services, chaired by former TD Bank Chief Economist Don Drummond, is scheduled to report in time to influence the 2012 budget. Expect the Commission’s report to contain a strong focus on new public management (NPM) approaches to the delivery of the province’s regulatory functions in relation to public goods. New public management models emphasize self-management and self-regulation by regulated industries. The model is epitomized by the Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA) and Electrical Safety Authority (ESA), created by the previous Progressive Conservative government. These not-for-profit corporations, whose boards of directors are dominated by representatives of the regulated sectors, took over the public safety regulatory functions of the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations and Ontario Hydro respectively. The same government’s moves in the direction of replacing compliance inspections by ministry staff with industry self-inspection and compliance reporting in relation to forestry, aggregates and other natural resources sectors reflected the similar principles.
Despite considerable evidence of serious problems with these models in terms of their effectiveness in protecting the public and providing for accountability, transparency and access to information, particularly in light of events like the August 2008 Sunrise Propane explosion, the Liberals pointedly left the NPM structures established by the Harris PCs in place. They were, in fact, extending them to other sectors, like the regulation of nursing homes. A strong push further in this direction in relation to the province’s remaining regulatory functions, particularly at the Ministry of the Environment, as first proposed in the post-Walkerton Gibbons report (and rejected by the Walkerton Inquiry), is almost certain.
A major restructuring among environment and natural resource agencies is also possible. The MNR is perhaps the most vulnerable in the context. It is possible to envision the dissolution of the ministry, with its remaining resource management functions (e.g. mineral aggregates, petroleum, brine, fur and wildlife) being transferred to MNDMF and its conservation and planning functions being moved to what remains of the Ministry of the Environment or even the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
Given the centrality of urban areas and larger towns and cities to the Liberals’ survival as a government, municipalities are likely less vulnerable to a repeat of the “who does what” downloading exercise of the “Common Sense Revolution.” The 2004-06 land-use planning reforms (the Greenbelt, Places to Grow plan and Planning Act Revisions) can also be expected to survive, although it remains to be seen how active the province will be in backing up its policies as they are challenged before the OMB by some municipalities and developers.
While the NDP might be expected to oppose some of the potential backsliding, the government will likely be able to bring the PCs on-side both in terms of budgetary measures and any required implementing legislation. None of this can be seen as good news for the protection of public goods in Ontario. The role of self-regulatory models in the financial services sector in permitting the behaviour that led to the 2008 financial crisis is well recognized, even among some of their proponents. Those experiences should have lead to some serious reconsideration of the use of similar approaches in relation to the protection of other public goods, such as the environment, public health and public safety. But in Ontario there is no evidence of any change in course so far.
Should a company’s ability to influence enjoyment of human rights give rise to a responsibility to do so?
Three years ago I was involved as an observer in the drafting of the ISO 26000 guide on Social Responsibility. The guide was prepared by an international working group of 450 representatives of business, labour, government, NGOs and other interests from 99 countries and 42 international organizations. The early drafts of the guide contained language suggesting that an organization’s responsibility to do something about human rights varies with (among other things) its ability to influence the perpetrators of human rights violations. One passage, for example, stated that
"there will be situations where an organization’s ability to influence others will be accompanied by a responsibility to exercise that influence…. Generally, the responsibility for exercising influence increases with the ability to influence."
This struck me as intuitively right. Companies (and other organizations) often have special relationships either with third parties who are in a position to violate human rights (governments, suppliers, security contractors, etc.), or those whose rights are violated (employees, local community members, etc.). In such circumstances it seemed intuitive that, if companies had leverage over third parties through their webs of relationships, they ought to exercise such leverage to improve the human rights situation even if they, themselves, were not contributing directly to any human rights violations.
UN Special Representative John Ruggie
I was surprised, therefore, when the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative on business and human rights, Professor John Ruggie, objected strenuously to this aspect of the draft ISO 26000 guide. He argued that a company’s size, resources and power do not determine its human rights responsibilities, otherwise big corporations could be called upon to protect and promote human rights simply because they had the ability to do so despite having no connection to or involvement in the human rights abuses in question. This, he argued, would require assuming, in moral philosophy terms, that “can implies ought.” He also argued that this approach was conceptually vague, difficult to operationalize, and susceptible to strategic gaming by companies and governments alike.
In response to Professor Ruggie’s concerns, the leadership of the ISO 26000 working group rewrote the portions of the guide dealing with influence and leverage. Many references to responsibility arising from and increasing with the ability to influence other actors’ decisions and activities were removed. The changes were endorsed by the working group at its final meeting in Copenhagen in the Spring of 2010, and later that year the final version of ISO 26000 was published with the approved of a large majority of ISO member bodies.
This was not the end of the story as far as I was concerned. I still found appealing the proposition that corporate leverage—a company’s ability to influence the actions of third parties through its relationships—gives rise to corporate responsibility in certain circumstances. I turned to the business ethics and moral philosophy literature for confirmation of my intuition. To my surprise, no one seemed to have tackled this question head on. Plenty of scholars had touched on aspects of the problem—the general relationship between power and moral responsibility, the concept of “silent complicity,” the idea of corporate “spheres of influence,” and so on—but no one had presented a systematic moral argument for the proposition that leverage, in certain circumstances, gives rise to responsibility.
Corporate "leverage" gives rise to responsibility where there is a morally significant connection between the company and a rights-holder or rights-violator, the company is able to make a difference, it can do so at modest cost, and the threat to human rights is substantial.
So I set out to supply the argument myself. Drawing on venerable moral debates about a bystander’s duty to come to the rescue of someone in distress and on excellent work by contemporary business ethicist Florian Wettstein about positive moral responsibilities to speak out against human rights abuses, I developed a theory of leverage-based corporate human rights responsibility. I argue that leverage gives rise to responsibility where four conditions are satisfied: (1) there is a morally significant connection between the company and a rights-holder or rights-violator, (2) the company is able to make a contribution to ameliorating the situation, (3) it can do so at modest cost, and (4) the threat to human rights is substantial.
While the proposition that leverage equals responsibility remains highly controversial in the global business community and was rejected by Professor Ruggie in his work as UN Special Representative, I believe it is both morally sound and consistent with leading global frameworks for corporate social responsibility, including the UN Global Compact, ISO 26000 and Professor Ruggie’s own Guiding Principles on business and human rights, endorsed this past summer by the UN Human Rights Council.
If you are interested in reading more about my argument, the paper is available from SSRN (click on "One Click Download") and is forthcoming soon in the Business Ethics Quarterly. I welcome your comments.
The Ontario Election, the Environment, and the Economy
This blog was originally published in Professor Mark Winfield's blog.
The run-up to the October 2011 Ontario election was defined by a strong and long-standing lead by Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives. Polls over the summer of 2011 consistently gave the Progressive Conservatives margins in excess of ten per cent over the Liberals, and there were projections of strong PC majority government. Right wing-populist Rob Ford’s victory in the November 2010 City of Toronto mayoralty race and the strong showing of the federal Conservatives in Ontario in the May 2011 federal election reinforced expectations of a Progressive Conservative win at the provincial level.
Election night on October 6th yielded a very different result. Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals were re-elected as a minority government, with 53 seats, just one seat short of a majority. The Liberals received 37.6 per cent of the popular vote, putting them two per cent ahead of the PCs, who obtained 35.4 per cent of the vote and gained 37 seats. Andrea Horwath’s NDP made a strong showing with nearly 23 per cent of the vote, giving 17 seats. Green Party support, on the other hand, collapsed badly, with the party receiving less than three per cent of the popular vote and at 127,000 votes, little more than a third of the total vote it received in 2007. The Liberals and the NDP dominated in urban areas and the north, while PC support was concentrated in rural southern and central Ontario. The election saw the lowest voter turnout in Ontario history, at 49.2 per cent.
The Liberals, who ran a solid, consistent and largely-error free campaign, benefitted from a series of PC misfortunes and mistakes. The inability of Toronto Mayor Ford to find the promised “gravy” of wasteful spending at city hall and consequent proposals for profound and deeply unpopular cuts to city services in midst of provincial election campaign, along with a hopelessly ill-considered proposal to abandon well-advanced plans for revitalization of the city’s waterfront, did serious damage to the provincial PC effort. The situation in Toronto came be to perceived as foretaste, particularly in the city itself, of what a Hudak government, running on a platform very similar to Ford’s approach to the November 2010 Toronto election, might look like at the provincial level. In the result, the PCs failed to win a single one of the City of Toronto’s 22 seats in the legislature on election night.
PC leader Tim Hudak’s attacks, principally in response to a Liberal proposal for a modest tax credit for workers new to Canada, on “foreign workers” further undermined his party’s fortunes. The leader’s statements invited suggestions of racial intolerance on the part of the PCs. The effect was to push new Canadian and moderate voters away from the Tories, particularly in the crucial 905 region surrounding the City of Toronto, with its large population of first generation immigrants to Canada, denying the PCs any gains in the region.
Other factors worked against Tories as well. The outcomes of the 2010 Toronto municipal and 2011 federal elections prompted concerns over the possibility of a Conservative “trifecta” in Ontario at federal, provincial and municipal levels. There was also disquiet, particularly in urban areas, over the enthusiastic embrace of themes of the US Republican “tea party” movement by rural branches of the Ontario PC Party.
NDP, for its part, moved in a decidedly populist/materialist direction, proposing the removal of the HST from electricity, natural gas and gasoline prices as the centrepiece of its campaign. The party’s platform contained a number of important environmental elements, including opposition to new nuclear construction or refurbishment projects, a renewed focus on energy efficiency, increased transit funding, anti-SLAPP legislation, addressing the impact of the government’s ‘open for business’ initiative on the Environmental Bill of Rights, continued participation in the Western Climate Initiative, and action on waste management. However, the HST proposal, commitments to terminate the FIT program under the Green Energy Act and turn renewable energy development over to a resurrected Ontario Hydro, and an enthusiastic embrace of resource development in the far north led to suggestions that the party was wavering in its traditional support for environmental issues. Given the apparent electoral success of the NDP’s “pocketbook populist” approach and its gains in northern Ontario, the future positioning of the party on environmental matters may become increasingly contentious.
The Greens’ poor showing reflected the party’s struggle for space throughout the campaign. New leader Mike Schreiner put in a respectable performance, and the Greens again presented perhaps the most interesting platform of all of the major parties, including proposals for a modest carbon tax and a detailed strategy for sustainable agriculture and food. Unfortunately for Greens, the party found itself a victim of the overall eclipsing of the environment by economic concerns, with little more than three per cent of voters identifying environmental and energy problems as leading issues in the campaign.
Moreover, the Greens were squeezed by the Liberals’ emphasis on their Green Energy Act, especially its role in job creation and the risks of a PC government repealing the legislation. At the same time, the Greens received little benefit from the NDP’s shakiness on environmental issues, and were unable to exploit the Liberals’ inconsistencies on the environmental front, such as their continuing commitment, notwithstanding the Green Energy Act, to an electricity system that is 50 per cent nuclear in a post-Fukishima world. The situation was in part a result of the Green Party undermining own its appeal among voters seriously engaged on environmental issues. Such voters might have been put off by the Liberals’ inconsistencies and NDP’s vacillation on the environment, but may have found the elements of the Greens’ platform intended to attract anti-wind, anti-greenbelt and anti-source water protection voters in rural Ontario equally unappealing.
The Greens’ failures were perhaps even more surprising given that the Liberals presented a platform that was remarkably thin on new commitments on the environment and energy fronts. A vague promise to expand the greenbelt, an option first presented in the party’s 2007 platform, was the only new element. The remainder of the platform focused on past achievements and the continuation of existing initiatives like the Green Energy Act, transit funding and mining development in the far north. There have been suggestions that local opposition to Green Energy Act-inspired wind energy projects cost the Liberals a number rural seats, including those of environment minister John Wilkinson and agriculture minister Leona Dombrowsky. There is little hard evidence to support that hypothesis, and it is also likely that the Liberals’ strong focus on the legislation strengthened their appeal among younger voters.
The government seems likely to treat its re-election as an endorsement of its current path on the energy file. However, the divergence between those plans and the facts of the likely continuing decline in electricity demand, the uncertain availability and costs of nuclear projects, and the growing investments in green energy may hit sooner rather than later. Nuclear projects, aspects of the Green Energy Act and energy conservation efforts all have the potential to be victims in the resulting fallout.
The province’s fiscal situation means that the possibility of a serious financial retrenchment cannot be ruled out, even if the government’s narrow electoral success leaves it tempted to continue with its facilitative and managerial orientation. In reality, neither approach is likely to provide an effective response to the serious environmental and economic stresses now facing Ontario. The decline of the US market for Ontario’s exports, the difficulties for export-oriented value-added economic activities posed by a rising Canadian dollar driven by resource exports from western Canada, the regional impacts of climate change, the rural/urban split evident in the outcome of the 2011 election and the need to recover Toronto’s role as the anchor of the Greater Golden Horseshoe and as an emerging global city all present tests that will require vision and leadership as well as managerial competence. It remains to be seen whether Premier McGuinty’s renewed government will be able to meet those challenges.
What would a minority government mean for energy and environmental policy in Ontario?
This blog was originally published in Professor Mark Winfield's blog.
Recent polls are pointing to a minority government coming out of the October 6th Ontario election. It may be useful to reflect on the potential implications of such an outcome for energy and environmental policy in the aftermath of the election. Baring any unexpected developments over the remaining few days of the campaign, the NDP is almost certain to emerge holding the balance of power between the Liberals and Conservatives (the most recent Laurier Institute seat projection (http://www.lispop.ca/Ontarioseatprojection.html), based on September 26 polling data is Liberals 46, PCs 42 and NDP 19). Despite a solid effort by new leader Mike Schreiner the Greens seem on track to a 4th place finish, with a slight loss in their popular vote relative to 2007 (5-6% seems likely relative to 8% in 2007), and are unlikely to elect any members.
Although the NDP and PCs have come to share considerable ‘pocketbook populist’ policy space, particularly with respect to the removal of the HST from electricity, natural gas and gasoline, party history and the overall distance between the two mean that the possibility of a Hudak government supported either formally (e.g. via an accord similar to that signed between David Peterson and Bob Rae in 1985) or informally on a vote by vote basis, by the NDP, is remote.
The much more likely outcome is a continuation of Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government, with some form of support from Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats. Predicting the direction of such a government offers some challenges. The Liberal platform, for its part, is decidedly thin on new commitments on the energy or environment fronts. A vague promise to expand the greenbelt, an option first presented in the party’s 2007 platform, seems the only new element. The remainder of the platform focuses on past achievements and the continuation of existing initiatives like the Green Energy Act, transit funding and mining development in the far north.
The NDP platform is more substantive on energy and environmental matters, presenting clear opposition to new nuclear construction or refurbishment projects, major new commitments on energy efficiency and combined heat and power, and maintaining the FIT program for small and community based renewable energy projects. Larger renewable projects would however be moved into the hands of a recreated Ontario Hydro, an institution whose principal successor Ontario Power Generation, has no experience in developing renewable energy sources other than hydro, and is noted for its institutional commitment to hard path technologies like nuclear and coal.
Otherwise the New Democrats have committed to increased funding for public transit, continued participation in the Western Climate Initiative’s greenhouse gas emission cap and trade system, Anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) legislation, protecting public participation rights under the Liberal’s “Open for Business” inspired reform of the environmental approvals process, and action to transfer a greater portion of recycling costs onto product manufacturers and importers.
Given all of this it is possible to speculate on the possible directions for the 2011 version of a Liberal-NDP accord.
Energy
• Both parties have committed to a phase-out of coal-fired electricity. It will almost certainly proceed.
• The new build nuclear projects contained in the Liberal’s Long-Term Electricity Plan would almost certainly not proceed. As I have noted in previously blogs the proposed two new reactors at Darlington were already in serious doubt, given declining electricity demand, rising cost estimates and, with the recent sale of Atomic Energy of Canada, the lack of a viable vendor. The need to make peace with the NDP could provide the government with a way out on the projects.
• Although a renewed commitment to energy conservation seems likely, the fates of the Darlington and Bruce B refurbishment projects will be more contentious. Some delay is likely at least as some sort of review of the province’s options is undertaken, perhaps even under the Environmental Assessment Act as the NDP has proposed.
• The fate of the Green Energy Act, particularly the FIT program for larger renewable energy projects, is very uncertain. The popular MicroFIT program for small household and farm level projects is likely to survive given the support from both parties – although probably with reduced rates, particularly for solar. There is far less common ground on the main program. The NDP has yet to clarify how it would maintain the renewable energy industry development aspects of the Liberal initiative if its leadership were transferred to a resurrected Ontario Hydro. Potential compromises include reductions in the FIT rates, or even moves back to competitive bidding (RFPs) for larger renewable energy projects. The continued strong backing of the FIT system by Germany, and the powerful connections the Germans have made between their FITs and the development of what is now a very robust renewable energy manufacturing sector should give the New Democrats cause to rethink the desirability of major changes on the green energy front.
• The NDP’s proposal to remove the HST from energy prices has the potential to create some serious challenges as well. Notwithstanding the obvious contradictions with the NDP’s emphasis on energy conservation and its implications in terms of revenue losses in the context of the province’s overall fiscal situation, the proposal has been central to the party’s ‘pocketbook populist’ campaign, making a compromise with the Liberals on the HST front difficult. A middle way may be to introduce additional tax credits and other supports, especially for energy efficiency investments for low-income households and others for whom energy costs present particular hardships or challenges.
Climate Change
• The government has been backing away from any serious action on reducing the province’s GHG emissions, beyond the coal phase-out, for some time. Although the NDP has committed to continuing participation in the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), the Liberals and NDP have retreated from any suggestion of introducing carbon pricing, especially given the WCI’s difficulties on the US side. Although Quebec remains a potential partner engaged on the WCI cap and trade system, in the short term the most likely outcomes for Ontario are to further reinforce the focus on energy conservation and transit funding.
Land-Use and Transit
• The existing policy framework for land-use and infrastructure planning, established through the 2005 Greenbelt legislation and 2006 Places to Grow Act seems likely to be maintained. Some enhancements to funding for specific transit projects may emerge, although this is complicated by the presence of the Ford administration in the City of Toronto.
Far North
• The NDP’s positions on the north are in many ways even more pro-development than the government’s, which has itself enthusiastically backed the “ring of fire’ and other mining developments and transferred of forest management from the more conservation-oriented Ministry of Natural Resources to the development focussed Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forests. Good news on the northern conservation front seems unlikely under a Liberal-NDP alliance.
Anti-SLAPP Legislation
• Some form of anti-SLAPP legislation seems probable, given the backing from both the NDP and the government’s own pre-election advisory panel on the issue. The low cost of such legislation (from a government perspective) makes it even more likely win for the New
Democrats and environmental groups pressing for legislation.
Approvals reform and ‘Open for Business’
• With some pushing from the environmental groups (principally CELA and EcoJustice) that have led the criticism of the government’s ‘regulatory reform’ proposals, some movement on their worst aspects may be possible, particularly with respect to their impact on public participation rights under the Environmental Bill of Rights. The legislation was virtually the only part of the 1990-1995 NDP government’s environmental legacy to survive the Harris ‘Common Sense Revolution’ intact.
Waste
• As with some aspects of the energy file, some pressure from the NDP might provide the government with the opportunity for a reset and restart on the blue box and household hazardous waste funding issues, which have been stalled since last summer’s ‘Eco-fee debacle.
