to the Response of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency
to a report prepared by Andrew Nikiforuk
on the status of environmental assessment in Canada.
That it took more than a year for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to craft a response speaks volumes about the agency's accountability. That it's reply says "Shut up. Nothing is wrong!" speaks volumes about the agency's credibility.
Not only does the emperor wear no clothes but he is actually proud to be running around buck-naked.
If the agency and the law are doing such a fine job than why is the Sierra Club suing Ottawa over its brazen evasion of the CEEA with its Candu reactor sale to China?
And if the agency and the law are doing such a fine job than why is UNESCO and the conservative Canadian Nature Federation raising questions about the agency's latest assessment on Alberta's Cheviot coal mine? And why has this one been challenged in the courts, too? "When you have an international body and the Canadian Nature Federation saying, 'What's going on?', it's a sign there is something wrong with the process," notes Cliff Wallis, president of the Canadian Nature Federation.
The agency's six page letter is a neat reminder that the bureaucratic keeper of that process is also rotten.
I stand by the accuracy of my report for the foundation and the frankness of its conclusions; that the law is inadequate; that the agency will not defend the public interest and that the federal government has no intention of being a leader in this field. Period.
--Andrew Nikiforuk nikifor@telusplanet.net
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