Sustainability starts with natural resources

One of Canada’s greatest riches is our wealth of natural resources. From the Great Lakes to old-growth trees, our land and waters have supported people living in Canada for generations. Yet current resource extraction continues at unsustainable levels, and we must act quickly to protect our land and waters and to mitigate climate change. First and foremost, that means keeping as much oil in the ground as possible. Last month, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer fulfilled a campaign promise by ordering the shutdown of Enbridge’s Line 5 crude oil pipeline to protect the 20 per cent of the world’s freshwater stored in the Great Lakes. Enbridge has a long and devastating history of oil spills that have polluted the environment and cost billions to clean up. In 2010, the company’s Line 6B leaked more than three million litres of oil over 17 hours near the Kalamazoo River. Despite 16 high-priority alarms sounding, Enbridge restarted the pipeline twice. The number of jobs at risk from a Line 5 rupture far exceeds the jobs supported by the pipeline. And while additional independent research is needed to assess the full impacts of closing Line 5, it appears that capacity exists in other pipelines to weather the shutdown without significant shortages or higher prices for people in Canada. The Green Party joined the Anishinabek Nation and all U.S. federally recognized Indigenous tribes in Michigan to support this shutdown in defense of Indigenous sovereignty. Indigenous peoples have stewarded Canadian land for millennia, and we must support their efforts to prevent energy extraction from threatening our natural resources. Despite the Anishinabek’s support for shutting Line 5 and Whitmer’s decision, the Canadian government has sided with Enbridge against Michigan in court to keep it open. Environmentalists and Indigenous peoples welcomed the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline that ignored treaty obligations and has left Albertans on the hook for $1.3-billion. However, construction continues on the Coastal GasLink and Trans Mountain pipelines, even though they infringe on Indigenous sovereignty and bring work camps. Greens also support a ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a process that contaminates drinking water and emits methane, a highly potent gas that contributes to rising carbon pollution, and a shift to investment in green energy technologies which produce far more jobs per dollar invested than the fossil fuel sector. The case is clear: the benefits far outweigh the costs when it comes to moving away from oil and gas. The Canadian forestry industry is not sustainable either. This is obvious in British Columbia where more than 97 per cent of original high-productivity old-growth forests have been logged to oblivion, and 75 per cent of the little that remains is currently slated to be logged as well. Canada’s forests are one of the best carbon sinks on Earth, and these trees hold immense value to Indigenous peoples. They are also essential for salmon and watershed health, draw tourism from around the world, and hold so much water that they are a line of defence against increasing forest fires. We must recognize the precious assets in old-growth and borealis forests that are at risk from exploiting Canadian forests. Timber can be a more sustainable building material than concrete or steel, but we must be careful about what forests we use for timber and what practices we employ to do so. Canada has 10 per cent of the world’s forests, a source of enormous national pride and economic value—economists estimate the value of carbon stored in Canada’s boreal forest at $3.7-trillion. These forests are arguably priceless. The Green Party of Canada has called for at least half of all boreal forests to be legally protected and for policies that balance the forestry industry with ecological integrity. When we talk about natural resources, especially in the context of the climate emergency, we cannot overlook the second-largest domestic source of greenhouse gas emissions: the transport sector. Twenty-five per cent of Canada’s emissions come from our transportation. Greens support the sustainable mining of necessary materials within our borders with the understanding that we must not exploit any more of these resources than is necessary, and local mining must be done with accountability and long-term planning for toxic mine pollution. And while there may still be room for increased sustainable mining of these materials, we must also increase investment in zero-emissions mass public transit to minimize the need for private electric vehicles in the long-term. Public transit is a crucial option for accessible transport for many communities that have been underinvested in for decades, including Indigenous communities, rural communities, and for low-income people across the country. Canada is at a crossroads. We can continue to invest in and subsidize extractive industries, with limited job creation and growth potential, or we can embrace a new vision for responsible natural resource stewardship and a sustainable energy supply. The Green Party has proposed bold changes for a better future. That future is now. Annamie Paul is the leader of the Green Party of Canada. The Hill Times

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Sustainability starts with natural resources

Current resource extraction continues at unsustainable levels, and we must act quickly to protect our land and waters and to mitigate climate change.

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