These subcategories reflect a review of major themes in story content. Environment & Natural Resources includes: Environment, Climate Change, Natural Resources, Energy, Oil and Gas, Nuclear power and weapons, Fisheries.
Environment & Natural Resources
| wdt_ID | Author | Date of Publication | Media Outlet | Title | Category Name | Story summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ellen Roseman | 26/12/1983 | Globe and Mail | Move to reduce lead in gas queried | ENVIRONMENT | In a document submitted to the government last May, John McMullen of James F. Hickling Management Consultants Ltd. in Ottawa said biochemical effects of lead exposure appear to have a threshhold level and do not develop at blood lead levels less than 40 micrograms per decilitre. When Ethyl Canada tried to get a copy of this report, it was turned down by Environment Canada. It finally obtained one five months later, using the new ATI Act. The report was stamped "draft" and had a covering letter saying it was not endorsed by Environment officials. Included with the draft report was a final report from the same consultant, John McMullen, which reached quite different conclusions. |
| 2 | Christopher Waddell | 30/12/1988 | Globe and Mail | PCs tipped on pollution by survey; public paid | ENVIRONMENT | A poll paid for with public funds just before the election call warned the governing Conservatives that Canadians wanted stronger anti-pollution legislation, clean water supplies, and programs to deal with literacy and housing problems, documents obtained by The Globe show. The poll indicated that voters believed these issues were critical and had been ignored by the Conservative government. In the run-up to the election call on Oct. 1, and in the early weeks of the election campaign, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney dealt with these four issues as well as several others considered important by survey respondents. The poll cost $90,000 and was conducted by Angus Reid for the Finance Department. A copy of it was obtained by The Globe under the ATIA. |
| 3 | Ken MacQueen | 11/12/1989 | Vancouver Sun | Study says large spill likely every other year | ENVIRONMENT | A large oil spill can be expected to hit in or near Canadian waters "every one or two years," says a study conducted for Environment Canada and the Canadian Coast Guard. And a "catastrophic-size" oil spill of greater than 150,000 barrels (about 24 million litres) could foul Canadian waters once every 53 years, says the study, obtained by Southam News. An Ottawa environmental research firm calculated the probability of a spill based on existing tanker traffic in or near Canadian waters and recent international accident rates. It was commissioned after the disastrous spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound in March. Coastal B.C. faces the risk of being hit by 45 per cent of all spills of 1,000 barrels or more, say the calculations by S. L. Ross Environmental Research Ltd. |
| 4 | Anne McIlroy | 06/06/1990 | Ottawa Citizen | Green Plan is already 40% over budget, with no environment strategy in sight | ENVIRONMENT | There is still no strategy, but Monday, Environment Canada released a summary of what it had learned in cross-country negotiations on the Green Plan. The document contains hundreds of ideas, few of them new, and no conclusions. "Canadians have given us this mass of advice," said the assistant deputy minister at Environment Canada. The next step is to "focus the discussion." The $6 million is $2.2 million more than had originally been budgeted, according to documents obtained under the ATIA. Slater didn't know why the extra money was needed, but said he assumed costs of public meetings were higher than expected. Environment Canada held 41 information sessions involving 6,000 people and 17 two-day meetings |
| 5 | Ken MacQueen | 23/11/1990 | Vancouver Sun | Forest-product boycott by Europe possible, documents say | ENVIRONMENT | Canada faces the risk of a devastating European boycott of forest products if it loses its reputation as a country of sensitive lumberjacks and endless forests, say documents obtained by Southam News. Those show that the federal government is working in Europe to counteract the risk of a boycott caused by comparisons with "tropical-forest countries such as Brazil on the issue of deforestation and global warming." A media-content analysis commissioned by the federal forestry department was accessed under the ATIA. |
| 6 | Ed Struzik | 14/12/1990 | Edmonton Journal | Ottawa will bid to save spruce | ENVIRONMENT | Federal Environment Minister Robert De Cotret says he's going to make an offer to buy a logging lease in Wood Buffalo National Park to end the clear-cutting of Alberta's largest stand of white spruce. He intends to negotiate for the lease held by Canada Forest Products Limited. De Cotret expects tough bargaining because "the logging rights were given out years ago. It lasts until the year 2002 and there's no buy-back provision in the deal." Canfor vice-president Wayne Jacques said the company welcomes the offer. Using documents obtained under the ATIA, The Journal described how Canfor's lease allows it to cut 98 per cent of the harvestable timber in a 49,700-hectare area of the park. NDP environment critic Jim Fulton credited The Journal with forcing Ottawa's hand. |
| 7 | Tom Spears | 27/04/1991 | Ottawa Citizen | Toxic-waste cleanup at Ottawa airport could take eight years, cost $12 million | ENVIRONMENT | It will cost more than $12 million to clean up toxic waste dumped decades ago at Ottawa International Airport, Transport Canada says. Tenders for construction of a $4.5-million water treatment plant will go out later this year, the department says. The plant will probably run for eight years at an annual cost of $1 million. A report from MacLaren Engineers says the soil is polluted with DDT and chlorine-based toxins such as vinyl chloride, and poses a "serious environmental impairment." Transport Canada hired MacLaren five years ago to figure out how to fix the mess. Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin obtained copies of two MacLaren reports through an ATIA request. |
| 8 | Glenn Bohn | 20/07/1991 | Vancouver Sun | {*} Pollution controls exaggerated, report claims | ENVIRONMENT | An Environment Canada report kept secret for a year says the B.C. forest industry has published "misleading" claims that exaggerate how much money it spends on pollution controls. It attacks arguments the pulp industry used to persuade the B.C. government to abandon tougher limits on dioxin pollution. The report is dated June 1990, some six months before premier Bill Vander Zalm overturned a long-standing B.C. environment ministry commitment to impose the tougher limits on dioxins and other organochlorine pollutants. The pulp industry report that convinced him was submitted to Victoria, released to the public and publicized. But Environment Canada kept its scathing report secret until this week, when it released it in response to an ATIA request by the West Coast Environmental Law Association. |
| 9 | Ross Howard | 31/10/1991 | Globe and Mail | Cultivating Green Plan cost $12.5-million; New consultation on competitiveness is similar to recent exercise on environmental strategy | ENVIRONMENT | While Ottawa launches a national consultation on the economy, the cost of a similar exercise on the environment has gone past the $12.5-million mark. Documents obtained under the ATIA reveal Ottawa spent more than $11.8-million to produce and promote the Green Plan, its national environment strategy. It met with a wave of negative political response, and the government spent another $700,000 in less than two months on additional public relations and new promotions. Initially touted as the companion to national unity in the government's "good news" re-election agenda, the plan included more than 100 promises on cleaning up and protecting the environment, at a cost of $3-billion over five years. That was later slashed by $500-million |
| 10 | Kirk LaPointe | 06/04/1992 | Ottawa Citizen | Audit finds staff had conflict of interest | ENVIRONMENT | An internal audit found Environment Department employees were engaging in conflicts of interest, employees knew and suspected others were doing so, and ''deficient, inefficient and ineffective'' measures were adopted to grapple with the problem. It found a number of employees hadn't ''disclosed potentially problematic situations,'' while others ''did not view potentially problematic situations as a (conflict).'' Obtained under the ATIA, it even found many employees ''were not aware of the criminal implications of accepting gifts, entertainment and preferential treatment from suppliers.'' What's worse, it said employees ''often perceive and sometimes know that there is a (conflict-of-interest) situation but are cynical (about reporting it) because they believe management is not clearly and fairly addressing the situation.'' |