In his recently released Annual Report, Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller points to a number of cases where bureaucratic or political inaction has ended up threatening the environment and undermining the government’s stated environmental policies.
The report found:
The Ministry of the Environment has failed to keep an up-to-date inventory of closed landfills that could be polluting nearby groundwater.- Municipal wastewater discharges are worsening the pollution of our Great Lakes because the Ministry of Environment’s discharge rules fail to factor in the rapidly increasing population of southern Ontario.
- Ontario’s air quality standards are not airtight, allowing the government to exempt whole sectors of industry from tougher provincial rules.
- One billion more trees need to be planted in southern Ontario – far more than the government’s target of 50 million trees by 2020 – to conserve biodiversity and respond to the challenges of climate change.
- Legislation has been introduced to protect half the boreal forest in the Far North, but ineffective oversight by the Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry has allowed mining service companies to set up illegal camps and landing strips.
- The government made a commitment to protect the dwindling number of caribou in the province. But the Ministry of Natural Resources has not protected their habitat from mining or forestry to prevent their likely disappearance from Ontario.
The entire 2009/2010 Environmental Commissioner Annual Report is available at www.eco.on.ca
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