Who is our MP, John Weston, kidding? His recent announcement of funding for upgrades to the Tenderfoot Hatchery (“Local salmon hatchery receives $500,000,” July 16), while welcome, is so obviously timed right before the election that it can only be an attempt to hoodwink Sea to Sky Corridor voters into believing Stephen Harper and his government give a whit about fisheries.
Their record of favouring industry over environmental protection is consistent and undeniable. In a 2011 letter, later obtained through Access to Information and leaked to the media, a consortium of oil-and-gas lobby groups told Mr. Harper and his government that six existing pieces of legislation – the Environmental Assessment Act, the Species at Risk Act, the National Energy Board Act, the Fisheries Act, the Migratory Birds
Protection Act and the Navigable Water Protection Act – were “outdated” and onerous for the petrochemical industry and its pet projects.
A mere four months later, through their omnibus 2012 budget Bill C-38, the Tories handed their petro-friends everything they wanted on a silver platter. Most egregiously, the Fisheries Act that had served Canada’s environment well since the mid-1970s was significantly weakened. Instead of prohibiting the “harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat,” as before, industry now only has to show its activities do not cause “serious harm to fish that are part of a commercial, recreational or Aboriginal fishery.”
C-38 was, of course, just one part of the Harper government’s so-called “war on science,” which has also included deep cuts to federal habitat protection staffing here and elsewhere.
Mr. Weston blithely voted with his caucus on all these changes. Afterward, he talked about trying to “bridge the distance” between the corridor and Ottawa, setting up meetings with local First Nations and fisheries groups. But mostly, those who care most about our corridor’s fisheries have been frustrated by the Conservatives’ appalling lack of commitment to real, science-based habitat protection.
I’m happy that the local hatchery is getting some much-needed love, but compared to the across-the-board, long-term damage being done through the Harperites’ actions, this money is far too little, too late.
David Burke
Brackendale
