Problems with Funding and Reporting in Canadian Government’s Environment Policies
Money flowing into Canada’s government to protect the environment may actually never be going there… and nobody would know any better. An analysis done by the country’s Commissioner of the Environment shows the lack of a cohesive structure to Canada’s system of funding for environmental causes. Scott Vaughan, the commissioner, said that the government has no way of knowing if the right amount of money is going into even climate change policies, and that’s only supposed to be a $1.5 billion effort.
The problem, according to Vaughan, is that there’s no effective way to measure progress, and therefore no way to measure results. Billions of dollars, if they have gone to the right places, might not be paying off, but there’s no way to know.
The Canadian Press, which reported the story, also quotes Vaughan as saying that the numbers Canada is aiming for in greenhouse gas reduction have no basis whatsoever in science or politics or, well, anything at all. That $1.5 billion toward climate change is supposed to go into a fund to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 16 megatonnes a year from 2008 to 2012 - a number, said Vaughan in The Canadian Press, that was “pulled from thin air.”
And money is technically not required to be spent on emissions reductions, according to Reuters. Nor are territories required to report their results.
>>Read more about Canada’s environmental issues at Green Options
The problems go beyond the fund for climate change. The target emissions goal of a public transit initiative to decrease pollution was eventually lowered so much that the amount wouldn’t have any big impact on emissions - yet it was still funded by the government. And another analysis found the same sort of problems with management in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The government appears to be even failing on enforcing the pumping of gasoline in service stations - a measure that would prevent chemicals from escaping to the air.
Photo Credit: PMG-Canonfire at Flickr under a Creative Commons License
