Pallister must work harder to be greenest premier

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/02/2020 (1727 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s pretty clear Premier Brian Pallister desperately wants to be known as the greenest first minister in the country. To date, we can confirm that among premiers, he is without peer when it comes to the recycling of past policies and initiatives.

This week, Pallister treated political reporters to another hastily convened news conference — with only two hours’ notice from media advisory to appearance — to announce more than $150 million in “historic and significant new green investments” that showcase his desire to make Manitoba “Canada’s cleanest, greenest and most climate-resilient province.”

Taken together, Manitoba “continues to lead the nation in green investments.”

That would be quite an accomplishment, if it were true. Instead, Pallister demonstrated that his much-touted made-in-Manitoba green plan is little more than a catalogue of political rhetoric punctuated by healthy doses of hyperbole.

Let’s work through the $150-million in “historic” announcements. The biggest chunk — $103 million — will be dedicated to the cleanup and monitoring of abandoned mines. Another $50 million will go to wetlands preservation, through an investment in a trust fund being monitored by the Winnipeg Foundation.

The province will also spend $8 million to clean up contaminated sites, such as abandoned gas stations, and $3 million will go into a contingency fund pending recommendations on how to deal with unhealthy lead levels in some areas of the province.

It should be said at the outset that all of these are, indeed, significant programs. Manitobans have every right to expect their provincial government will set aside funds to deal with things such as contaminated and abandoned mines and other sites. Wetland preservation is also a key ecological concern for many citizens. And you need only ask people in some areas of St. Boniface about the value of taxpayer investments in lead mitigation.

However, are these investments, taken together, worthy of such adjectives as “new” and “historic?” And do they justify a claim that they make Manitoba a “leader in green investments?” Not really.

Manitoba has had an orphaned-mine rehabilitation program for many years, as part of a national initiative to co-ordinate the remediation of mines that are abandoned by private owners. According to a background document on the program, found on the province’s own website, by 2016 the province had spent more than $214 million on abandoned-mine rehabilitation.

A spokeswoman for the premier said a new contribution of $103 million is “nearly double” what the NDP committed to the program, but could not say over what period of time or how long it would take to spend the new moneys.

Significant? Perhaps. Historic? A hard no.

Similarly, Pallister included $50 million for wetland protection in his “new and historic” investments announcement this past week. Again, the province has long supported the preservation of wetlands. This is particularly so for Progressive Conservative governments, which have a deep connection to leadership at Ducks Unlimited, an organization of hunters that has for decades helped to preserve the province’s majestic marshes.

It proved difficult to get clarity on this issue. The premier’s spokeswoman said the $50 million announced this week was a doubling of support for the Growing Outcomes in Watersheds (GROW) trust, which was announced last summer.

Odd, but government news releases failed to mention that this was a doubling of the GROW program, which seems like a pretty big fact to leave out of a news conference. Even if that’s the case — and there is plenty of reason to believe that something else is going on — this is still an augmentation of an existing program, rather than a new and historic initiative.

Which brings us to the $8 million for contaminated site cleanup. Manitoba passed the Contaminated Sites Remediation Act in 1996, and in the ensuing years has invested significant funds in cleaning up abandoned gas stations, manufacturing facilities and other contaminated properties. An additional investment in this program is positive, but it hardly represents a new initiative.

The investment in lead mitigation does appear to be a new program. Opinions may vary on whether this level of funding is adequate or historic.

However, the much larger concern here is that Pallister is using investments in environmental mitigation and preservation as evidence that Manitoba is the most “climate-resilient” province in Canada. Clearly, most of these programs — as valuable as they may be on their own — do not speak directly to the issue of climate change and the ongoing feud between Manitoba and Ottawa over carbon pricing.

When he was announcing the $150-million in not-so-new initiatives this week, the premier was waving around a copy of the Made-in-Manitoba Climate and Green Plan, which was released in 2017. It is true this plan contains a wide range of environmental priorities and that at some level, the health of the soil and the health of the air are linked. But the main issue at stake here is the crisis that we face in terms of climate change.

Pallister’s 2017 plan was to include a $25 per tonne price on carbon he promised would be re-invested in a variety of ways to reduce our overall carbon output.

When Ottawa demanded that Manitoba increase its carbon tax in lockstep with a federal tax — which would rise ultimately to $50 per tonne — Pallister balked. And then, in 2018, he simply cancelled plans to implement a Manitoba carbon tax and sat back and let the federal government impose and rebate its own carbon-pricing plan.

Last month, after meeting briefly with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a Liberal cabinet retreat held in Winnipeg, Pallister suggested he might be willing to modify his position to partially meet federal demands. However, he has refused to offer any details on whether a compromise is really possible.

Which brings us back to this week’s announcement. Pallister made it clear he was holding his news conference, and emphasizing these investments, to show Ottawa that Manitoba is sharing its burden of the climate-change challenge. “We’ve listened to Ottawa’s entreaties about upping our game, and we have,” the premier said.

But this week’s announcements could not possibly impress anyone on the federal side of this dispute. This is not to criticize Pallister for doing the right things for mines and wetlands; rather, it’s an acknowledgement that what he is announcing doesn’t speak to the issue at hand.

The investment in wetlands is directly connected to climate change. Preserved wetlands are one of nature’s most effective carbon sinks; preserving them is an excellent way of helping the planet process carbon. However, you would have to draw a long bow between the other programs and climate change.

It’s like explaining to your teacher that you didn’t do your math homework but you did cut the lawn, so you should be given a passing grade.

Blaming a politician for an addiction to hyperbole is like criticizing a fish for swimming underwater. That having been said, the premier needs to do a bit more work proving that there is actual evidence to support the usage of such terms as “new” and “historic” and “most climate-resilient.” Otherwise, he’s just contributing to the climate crisis with a lot of hot air.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca