“It’s almost like dealing with a government that has an allergy to renewable energy, but it’s more than that,” Winfield told The Energy Mix.
“This is a program of extermination, for lack of a better way of
describing it. They’re going through the last vestiges of the [former]
Green Energy Act that facilitate renewables in the province and
systematically eliminating them. Other than in ideological terms, it
doesn’t make any sense.”
“Doug Ford’s government continues to demonstrate evidence-free
decision-making,” agreed Greenpeace Canada Senior Energy Strategist
Keith Stewart. “Renewable energy was always the cleanest form of power,
but in the last few years it has become the cheapest form of new
generation. We should be welcoming it into the mix, not strangling it
with red tape.”
Aamjiwnaang First Nation is surrounded by ‘Chemical Valley,’ a large complex of petrochemical plants, located near Sarnia, Ont. (Jon Lin Photography/flickr) CC BY-NC
Bill C-230, a private member’s bill that aims to address environmental racism, has passed second reading in a 182-153 vote, and is now under discussion with the environment parliamentary committee before it returns to the House of Commons. If the bill is passed, Canada would become one of the first countries in the world to require the government to develop a national strategy to tackle environmental racism.
As law professors with expertise in matters relating to both the environment and social justice, we argue that this move is necessary both for reasons of justice and also to fulfil Canada’s human rights obligations.
What’s in the proposed bill
Nova Scotia MP Lenore Zann introduced Bill C-230 to compel the minister of the environment to create a national strategy to redress environmental racism within two years.
This strategy would include making efforts to identify, document and monitor environmental racism, creating processes to increase the participation of Indigenous, racialized and other affected communities in environmental policy-making, providing redress for harm due to environmental injustice and ensuring access to clean air and water.
The case for a law like this is stronger than ever. Other jurisdictions are currently seeking to address environmental racism, and the federal government is taking action to tackle climate change and other environmental issues. But most importantly, unjust environmental burdens continue to be placed on racialized communities in Canada.
Trailer for ‘There’s Something in the Water,’ a film about environmental racism in Nova Scotia, based on the book by Ingrid Waldron.
When Baskut Tuncak, the U.N. special rapporteur on toxic chemicals, visited Canada in 2019, he found that Indigenous people are disproportionately affected by toxic exposures. In a statement, he wrote that he had “observed a pervasive trend of inaction by the Canadian government” in addressing the health threats of toxic exposures and their cumulative effects.
Canada, unlike the U.S., lacks data on environmental racism. Bill C-230 would require the federal government to:
“Collect information and statistics relating to the location of environmental hazards … examine the link between race, socioeconomic status and environmental risk … [and] collect information and statistics relating to negative health outcomes in communities that have been affected by environmental racism.”
Historic Africville is a notable case. Africville, a Black community in Halifax, became the site of a railway, a slaughterhouse and an open-pit dump. The city then relocated residents, under the auspices of neighbourhood improvement, and acquired the valuable shoreline. Black communities in Nova Scotia continue to resist proposals to locate environmentally hazardous facilities near their communities.
A man fishes next to a refinery south of Sarnia, Ont., in 2007. CP PHOTO/Dave Chidley
As climate change and its impacts become more significant, it’s important to pay attention to who it affects most. In its recent decision on climate pricing, the Supreme Court of Canada declared that climate change is “an existential challenge” that has the potential to cause “irreversible harm [that] would be felt across the country and would be borne disproportionately by vulnerable communities and regions.”
Recent efforts at reconciliation with First Nations, Inuit and Métis people and the Black Lives Matter movement have demonstrated the continuing salience of — and urgent need for — anti-racist and decolonial strategies. The fight against systemic environmental racism is a key element of this.
Climate bills with a strong focus on environmental justice are also moving through legislatures in New York and Massachusetts. Canada could follow suit by linking its proposed Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act (Bill C-12) with environmental justice and Bill C-230.
The net-zero bill is stronger than Bill C-230 because it would legally bind the feds to achieving the net-zero target by 2050. It also requires five-year targets with mandatory plans and progress reports, and an independent review of the results by the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, so that changes in government will not derail the goal. Adding an explicit commitment to environmental justice and plans to achieve it would enhance Canada’s net-zero bill.
In addition, proposed changes to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act include adding a right to a healthy environment, a commitment to uphold the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the obligation to consider vulnerable populations and the cumulative effects of harmful substances.
A new precedent
The Biden administration’s plan sets a much more ambitious goal than Bill C-230. However, Bill C-230 is the perfect opportunity for Canada to set a national precedent with this demonstrable commitment to environmental justice and addressing the legacy of environmental racism.
Laws and rights, on their own, can be toothless if they do not come with binding duties, explicit standards and adequate enforcement. The government, civil society and citizens will need to be active and vigilant to redress and prevent environmental racism. The law will also need to be backed up with adequate resources and transparency to ensure that the national strategy is participatory, adequately resourced and leads to continual renewal and improvement.
Although Bill C-230 would merely be a first step in a larger process, it is an important one in the right direction that can act as a catalyst for more transformative change, particularly if it is linked with other current policy ambitions, such as the net-zero carbon emissions bill and the proposed amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
The Speech from the Throne opens every new session of Parliament. The Speech introduced the government’s direction and goals, and outlines how it will work to achieve them. One of them was standing up for Canadian values, including progress on reconciliation, gender equality, and systemic racism.
The Council of Canadians understand the direct link between austerity, racist violence and the erosion of democratic processes. The U.S. is bearing the fruit of decades of cruelty — breaking up unions, cutting public services and siphoning public resources and wealth into the hands of the very elite. These policies, also present in Canada, inevitably deepen racial divisions because our systems already marginalize Black, Indigenous and people of colour. Combined with explicit scapegoating, this creates fertile ground to justify political power for white leaders while targeting state and communal violence toward racialized peoples. We respond to threats against democracy.
It’s a daily reality for many Black, Indigenous and People of Colour in Canada. In the wake of public outrage about the systemic racism and disproportionate police violence experienced by Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC), a new report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council documents troubling findings of environmental racism and injustice in Canada.
So far, the Trudeau government has declined to recognize this right, despite more than 100 MPs from all parties pledging their support and Liberal Party of Canada members voting for it to be a policy priority. While the federal government has committed to “modernizing” CEPA, there is no guarantee that this right will be recognized.
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A western Canada think tank is calling on Alberta to lower regulatory barriers that it says discourage businesses from reusing abandoned and unreclaimed oil and gas well sites. Observers say the scheme could allow fossils to hand off many billions of dollars in environmental liabilities.
Making it easier to convert an old well site into anything from a geothermal plant to a municipal park would speed site restoration and help ease the burden of unfunded cleanup costs in the energy sector, said Energy Futures Lab animator Juli Rohl, co-author of the report by the Canada West Foundation.
“We think these wells should be cleaned up, where possible,” Rohl told The Canadian Press. “But where that either isn’t going to happen or where there is a viable new life for them, that should be considered.”
Critics suggest the approach would allow industry to avoid cleaning up the mess it creates.
“It’s a transparent attempt to pass this liability to someone else,” said Regan Boychuk of the Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project, a group that monitors industrial effects on landowners.
Alberta has more than 7,700 orphan wells—abandoned and unreclaimed by formers owners, often during bankruptcy. Another 95,000 wells are inactive. (Another count in 2018 put the total at 155,000.)
The cleanup liability for those wells has been estimated as high as C$260 billion.
Rohl’s paper suggests at least some of those sites could be reused, more or less as is. Some could generate geothermal power. Others could provide now-valuable minerals such as lithium. Others could house small solar farms.
A few companies in Alberta have repurposed old fossil energy sites for geothermal and solar projects. Allowing more such activity could create jobs and diversify the economy, improve the energy sector’s outlook and keep new industry off undeveloped land.
But Alberta law requires a fossil energy company to fully clean up a site before it can be transferred. Concrete pads or roads must be removed, even if a new user wants to keep them.
The Calgary-based foundation, a think tank on western issues, suggests a company should be allowed to defer its cleanup responsibilities and transfer them to a new operator. “This would allow transfer of the remaining surface infrastructure and reclamation liability to the repurposer,” the report says.
Rohl acknowledges only about 10% of orphan wells are suitable for geothermal or solar development. Greenhouses or even municipal parks could be considered. “We decided to leave it open for any uses.”
Boychuk said repurposing would allow an industry that has taken billions of dollars out of the ground to walk away from its environmental responsibilities.
He said the effect would be to move environmental liabilities off the books of oil companies and move them to new ones. How many greenhouses, he asks, can afford to pay the $100,000 the C.D. Howe Institute says is the average cost to reclaim a well?
“Hurray! We got solar panels,” he said. “But the contamination sits there.
“The only real issue in the industry is escaping a very, very large liability and this is the latest attempt.”
Nigel Bankes, dean of resource law at the University of Calgary, said it’s a good idea to favour the reuse of old industrial sites instead of creating new ones. But, he added, much more work needs to be done to ensure the public believes cleanup costs aren’t just being kicked down the road.
“It’s going to take a lot of work to put together a liability regime that makes sense (for) existing licensees, the people who will inherit that liability, and to convince the public that the deal offers better assurance,” and “that remediation issues will be adequately dealt with.”
Start small, advised Bankes, who suggested transfers of unremediated sites should be initially restricted to between energy companies.
“Maybe it makes sense to start with a narrower focus.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 26, 2021.
This chart shows where all of the greenhouse gases are coming from. The plurality comes from transportation, mainly from burning fossil fuels for vehicles, closely followed by the industrial sector, which includes everything from greenhouse gas waste from manufacturing processes, to electricity for industrial buildings. “Other” emissions include those from agriculture, landfills, and sewage.
Electricity generation as a whole accounts for more of the city’s emissions than burning fuel for cars, but this is divided between the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. A paper published by Stantec in 2019 said that electricity accounts for 43% of the city’s emissions, mainly due to the fact that Alberta’s electricity grid is almost entirely sourced by coal and natural gas — the two most carbon-intensive emitters. The other main source of emissions in these sectors is natural gas burned for heat.
The Biden-Harris Leaders’ Summit on Climate was scheduled to open with statements from leaders of more than two dozen countries, in what the White House signposted as “an opportunity for leaders to highlight the climate-related challenges their countries face and the efforts they are undertaking”.
Here’s a run-down of the day’s commitments.
United States:50 to 52% emissions reduction below 2005 levels by 2030 and restrictions on financing of overseas fossil fuel projects.
United Kingdom: 78% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2035, including a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the 2015 Paris Agreement that includes emissions from international shipping and aviation for the first time. The UK supports ending support for fossil fuels overseas and doubling international climate finance.
“If we actually want to stop climate change, then this must be the year in which we get serious about doing so. Because the 2020s will be remembered either as the decade in which world leaders united to turn the tide, or as a failure,” said Prime Minister Boris Johnson, based on his prepared remarks for the summit. “Let the history books show that it was this generation of leaders that possessed the will to preserve our planet for generations to come,” added Johnson, whose updated NDC was described earlier this week as “a bit of a Boris blunderbuss”.
European Union: The EU confirmed a 55% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2030 and a target of “climate neutrality” by 2050, a week after seven European countries agreed to put an end to export financing for fossil fuels. While politicians in Germany welcomed the EU deal, Clean Energy Wire says EU member states remain divided on its implementation, while The Guardian has environmental groups declaring the new target a failure.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the 55% goal, an improvement over the continent’s previous 40% threshold, will “put the EU on a green path for a generation”. But European parliamentarians had sought a 60% commitment. “The ‘at least 55% emission reduction target for 2030’ is not in line with the Paris agreement’s ambition to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C by the end of the century,” said Climate Action Network-Europe Director Wendel Trio. “Today’s agreement is not a victory for climate action, it’s a farce,” agreed Barbara Mariani, senior policy officer for climate and energy with the European Environmental Bureau.
Germany: 55% emissions reduction below 1990 by 2030, coal-fired electricity phaseout by 2030, and further investments in renewable energy.
Italy: The country has made climate one of the main priorities for its year in the G20 presidency. Italy will devote 10% of its budget to green infrastructure, circular economy, and sustainable mobility.
Japan: The country almost doubled its emissions reduction target to 46% below 2013 levels, with “neutrality” by 2050, after adopting a two-page partnership with the U.S. on “ambition, decarbonization, and clean energy”. The Japan Climate Initiative said the target was just 1% higher than its 291 members had asked for. No Coal Japan welcomed the Japan-U.S. commitment to align public finance with a 2050 target for net-zero emissions, but pressed the country to withdraw financing from two coal projects.
“Japan deserves recognition for adopting a new climate target that is a significant and important improvement over the very weak one that it submitted a year ago,” said Helen Mountford, vice president, climate and economics at the World Resources Institute. “Given the sharp decline in the price of renewables and electric vehicles over the last five years and strong business support for bold action, Japan should aim to cut emissions by 50%, as Prime Minister Suga said the government will strive to do. This will be important so that Japan does not lag behind its peers as the world races towards a clean energy future, or lose out on the economic opportunities from a cleaner, healthier, low-carbon economy.”
China: The country will strive to peak emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060. Pledged strict controls on coal-fired power plant construction over the next five years, with a phasedown of coal consumption in the next five-year plan. (The current one was just announced last month.) China also issued a joint statement with the U.S. last week, undertaking to address the climate crisis with seriousness and urgency.
The South China Morning Post says the U.S. and the EU have been pressuring China for a more aggressive climate pledge and an earlier target year for peak emissions, and most experts agree the earlier target is doable. The Guardian says Chinese President Xi Jinping “is likely to push back” against Biden’s claim to global leadership, but veteran China-based climate analyst Lauri Myllyvirta argues a healthy competition between the two superpowers can actually spur faster, deeper carbon cuts.
Climate vulnerable countries attending the Summit pushed developed countries for increased finance, particularly for climate adaptation], and for debt relief, WRI reports. The vulnerable countries attending the summit include Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Jamaica, Kenya, and the Marshall Islands.
Australia: Avidly pro-coal Prime Minister Scott Morrison entered the summit with a new technology roadmap that called for A$540 million in new carbon capture and hydrogen spending, while critics described his government as “increasingly isolated due to a lack of climate ambition,” The Guardian reports. Morrison reportedly planned to use the summit as an opportunity to troll for international partners for the plan. The Biden-Harris administration pressed Australia for faster, deeper carbon cuts, and nearly a dozen environmental and humanitarian groups from the Pacific region urged the country to reduce its emissions 50% by 2030.
Brazil: President Jair Bolsonaro offered up carbon neutrality by 2050 under pressure from the Biden-Harris administration, promised to double funding for environmental enforcement, and maintained a past target of zero illegal deforestation by 2030. But Inside Climate News says the U.S. is already looking past Brazil to Colombia to find a climate leader in the region, and Reuters writes that Brazilian environmentalists are skeptical of Bolsonaro’s sudden policy shift. “The government makes totally empty promises,” said Climate Observatory Executive Secretary Marcio Astrini.
“Bolsonaro has paid lip service to the U.S. demands, sending Biden a seven-page letter which includes figures and claims that Brazilian environmentalists say are distorted and even false,” adds Climate News Network. “But 15 U.S. Democratic senators, apparently worried that Biden might be taken in by Bolsonaro’s message, have sent him a letter of their own, asking him to link any support for Brazil to progressive reductions in deforestation.” In a post yesterday in The Guardian, two former Brazilian environment ministers say billions of dollars in new U.S. funding won’t stop the country’s “ruinous government” from “destroying the Amazon rainforest”.
India: The country announced the launch of a U.S.-India climate and energy partnership to help it reach 450 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030. India, which ranks 87th in the World Economic Forum’s Energy Transition Index, may still be planning a new generation of coal-fired power plants, according to a draft electricity policy reported in an exclusive by Reuters.
South Korea: The country committed to end public financing of overseas fossil projects. “I applaud South Korea for halting financing for new overseas coal plants,” Mountford said. “This is a historic step, as South Korea was one of the three biggest financial backers for coal plant construction. The announcement sends a strong signal that the era of dirty fossil fuels is coming to a close. Japan and China should quickly follow South Korea’s example and reorient their own overseas funding away from coal to clean sources of energy.”
South Africa: The country said its emissions will begin falling in 2025, a decade ahead of its previous schedule.
Russia: President Vladimir Putin said his country’s “cumulative net emissions” over the next three decades should be less than the European Union’s. “It wasn’t immediately clear how the target would be achieved in the country where fossil fuel production is the single-biggest source of budget revenue,” Bloomberg writes. But the remarks “mark a sharp turnaround from Putin’s past rhetoric on climate action, which typically includes mocking statements about renewable energy. Russia’s current commitment under the Paris Agreement implies a small increase in emissions from current levels because it uses the highly-polluting Soviet Union as its baseline.”
The Washington Post points to climate diplomacy as one area of common ground between Putin and Biden amid a mounting pile of “stress points”.
(h/t to Climate Action Network-Canada for the Day One summit summary that supplied the skeleton for this report.)
The Biden-Harris Leaders’ Summit on Climate was scheduled to open with statements from leaders of more than two dozen countries, in what the White House