Canada’s agricultural production is under threat as never before, but the Harper government is deaf, dumb, and blind to the threat. The threat is the climate crisis. Even if global emissions of greenhouse gases were to be stabilized tomorrow, we would face decades of destabilized climate conditions. However, there is no sign of current levels stabilizing, and as carbon emissions ramp up, so too does the threat of increasingly-severe droughts and flooding disrupting agriculture across Canada.

Last summer saw a record-breaking heat wave with widespread severe drought conditions right through the breadbasket of North America. Budgets, year after year, include hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to help farmers who have suffered crop loss due to droughts and floods. And the climate models project this worsening year after year.

Globally, crop failures due to climate change have already created food prices to spike. The 2010 heat wave that hit Russia, as fires ringed Moscow, caused Putin to end wheat exports. The international programs to meet the threat of famine were unable to meet the demand as higher food prices meant their budgets could not extend to buy the needed emergency food. Repeatedly and with increasing frequency, the world has faced food emergencies in the last few decades due to climate change.

All around the world, governments are mobilizing resources to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions while adapting to the climate crisis. Everywhere around the world that is except Canada. In the last few months, the Harper administration has cut programs to confront the threat to agriculture around the world and right here in Canada.

The inexplicable decision to legally withdraw from the UN Convention to Combat Drought and Desertification (UNCDD) makes Canada the only nation on the planet not to be part of the multilateral effort to help farmers deal with drought. The only explanation giventhat the treaty costs Canada too muchis laughable. At roughly $300,000 per year, the convention cost less than half the cost of one G8 gazebo, 109 days worth of care and feeding of one rented panda, one-third of the cost of shipping an armoured car to India, three per cent of the cost of the new Office of Religious Freedom, four per cent of the Prime Minister’s Office budget, or less than two days worth of the government-paid advertising of its own partisan agenda. The idea that Canada cannot afford $300,000 per year to participate in global efforts to confront the threat of drought and expanding deserts is a non-starter. That dog (as they say) won’t hunt. The more plausible explanation is that since drought is connected to climate change, and since the Harperized climate policies will not meet any targets, Canada wants out.

Domestically, the Harper administration has just killed activities to help make our Prairies more drought-resistantsome of which have been in place for over 100 years. The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration was created following the Great Depression and the devastating Dust Bowl in the Prairies. The 1935 Act of Parliament to create the PFRA explained its role was to “… secure the rehabilitation of the drought and soil drifting areas in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, and to develop and promote within those areas, systems of farm practice, tree culture, water supply, land utilization and land settlement that will afford greater economic security…”

The PFRA took over the Prairie Shelterbelt program, which had been in existence since 1901, to help reduce wind, and thus erosion, through tree planting along the borders of productive fields. Now all of that is being cancelled.

One can search in vain, as I did to research this article, for any federal program to pursue adaptation to climate change for Canadian farmers. I found old references, but then realized the programs described were discontinued and their websites cached. There was a lot of activity on adaptation in the last years of the 1990s and early part of the 2000sbut no more. Even a program described as Canadian Agricultural Adaptation Program (sic) does not reference climate change. A $163-million, five-year program running from 2009-2014 has the following objectives: “Facilitate the agriculture, agri-food, and agri-based products sector’s ability to seize opportunities, respond to new and emerging issues and pilot solutions to new and ongoing issues in order to adapt and remain competitive.”

Is “new and ongoing issues” code for the climate crisis? Is this government so hobbled by ideology that its minions are too afraid to even mention the threat of climate change when discussing adaptation? Of course, if the program was focused on adapting to climate change, we would be helping farmers shift to more drought-resistant crops and practices, including those just cancelled in killing the PFRA.

The biggest threat to Canadian agriculture is the climate crisis. Stephen Harper’s personal unwillingness to confront the threat, or to admit its severity, must not be allowed to undermine our agricultural sector.

Originally printed in the Hill Times.

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“Soil is key to our ability to feed ourselves and survive on this planet,” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, MP Saanich-Gulf Islands. “If we are going to provide for future generations, we simply cannot be reckless with this basic resource.”

May noted that the Conservatives’ secretive withdrawal from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa (UNCCD) was symptomatic of an exploitative and short-term attitude toward soil – and all natural resources.

“Canada should be using its knowledge and influence to work with the UN, providing cutting-edge research and solutions to protect and preserve threatened land areas,” said May.  “Instead, we are turning our backs on very vulnerable populations.”

Also, in Bill C-38 last year, the Conservatives quietly eliminated the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act and with it the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA). The Act was designed to “… secure the rehabilitation of the drought and soil drifting areas in the Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, and to develop and promote within those areas, systems of farm practice, tree culture, water supply, land utilization and land settlement that will afford greater economic security…”

The Green Party encourages holistic, long-term, science-based soil and land management and permaculture, along with tree plantings and straw mulches to protect and feed crucial soil life.

“Canada should be stepping up with real solutions to help the world’s farmers make the most of the water they have,” said Green Party Agriculture Critic Kate Storey. “Holistic land management works on my farm by increasing water cycles, improving the soil, and preventing erosion.

“Across the world, holistic sustainable grazing with the provision of effective fencing materials and management education can bring degraded land back into food production and raise water tables, thus reversing desertification, building soil carbon, and reducing climate change by using healthy soil to capture and store carbon dioxide.”

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I remember the struggle to develop a treaty to combat drought and encroaching deserts. Canada was one of the few countries in the lead to negotiate the treaty. I was not intimately involved, but I knew people who were. When it was signed in 1994, I was elated. Along with the conventions on climate and biodiversity, the treaty to combat drought addressed a global and pressing concern. It was clearly related to climate change, but was more regionally specific. And, although desertification is not a current threat to Canada, certainly drought is.

There had been no inkling or rumour that Stephen Harper wanted to exit another global environmental law. Given that the only treaty from which Canada has ever withdrawn, since 1867, was Kyoto, the cavalier way in which this news leaked out—posted on a Foreign Affairs website and noticed by Canadian Press— added to the shock. That we gave no notice to the secretariat for the Convention was further evidence of our contempt for both the United Nations and the threat posed by climate induced drought and desertification.

In Question Period the next day, Ralph Goodale (former Liberal finance minister and now only the MP for Wascana) posed an excellent question in which he linked other recent Harper administration decisions reducing the Prairies’ preparedness for drought. He charged ‘Maniacal front-line cuts have killed PFRA (the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration), which had world-class Canadian brainpower on soil and water conservation. Conservatives vandalized community pastures, the prairie tree farm and Experimental Lakes Area. Now Canada is the only country in the world sneaking out the back door on the UN Convention Against Drought.’

I was grateful Goodale noted cuts to programmes put in place after the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, as I have been trying to draw attention to them. What Harper has against hedgerows and water conservation in the Prairies is certainly a mystery that has angered Prairie farmers. The Prime Minister’s response was spun to create the impression that the convention on drought and desertification was akin to a poorly run charity, in which aid dollars were poorly spent: ‘This organization spends less than 20% of the funds that we send are actually spent on programming. (sic) The rest goes to various bureaucratic measures. That is not an effective way to spend taxpayer money.’

‘This organization?’ The Prime Minister is speaking of a treaty, within which every other country on earth is making some level of contribution, financial and otherwise. How much were we spending? An astonishingly low pittance… $290,000/year. Admittedly that is a nice amount of money if you are collecting for a new school gymnasium, but it is chump change in the federal budget. We approve more than that routinely by unanimous consent for Parliamentary committee travel. Equated with those things the Prime Minister thinks are a good use of taxpayer funds, things like renting Pandas at $1 million/year, the drought treaty was a bargain.

Canada’s diplomatic corps is shocked. Former Ambassador to the United Nations, former Deputy Minister of National Defence and victim of a terrorist kidnapping in Mali, Robert Fowler, sent an email to the media. Calling our withdrawal from the treaty ‘a departure from global citizenship,’ here’s what he said:

‘It (the Harper administration) has taken climate-change denial, the abandonment of collective efforts to manage global crises and disregard the pain and suffering of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa (among many others) to quite a different level.’

Responding to Foreign Minister John Baird’s defence that Canada won’t ‘go along to get along,’ Fowler continued:

‘No, by jingo, we’re not going to go along to get along! Such vainglorious nose-thumbing at the international community’s efforts to tame a very present threat to hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest and most desperate is nothing short of incomprehensible.’

Another former Ambassador to the United Nations, Paul Heinbecker, agreed that the move was both inexplicable and bound to confirm to the international community that Canada cared nothing for climate action, nor for the fate of Africa.

The UN itself was shocked. Noting that Canada will now be the only nation on earth not part of the convention, it, in typically understated diplomat-speak, called Canada’s decision ‘regrettable.’

It turns out our notice of intent was sent on January 14. The treaty requires only a 90-day period for full withdrawal so we exit the treaty on April 14, right in the middle of an important scientific review of the threat of desertification and drought, running April 9-19. ‘The next gathering of the scientific conference … is expected to deliver a major breakthrough by presenting the first ever cost-benefit analysis of desertification and sustainable land management,’ an UNCCD statement had commented, of the review and of Canada’s withdrawal.

‘Canada played crucial roles in both processes. Crucially, these processes have also moved the actions taken by parties to a result-based management approach where performance and impact are not only measured using indicators, but also assessed and monitored every two years.’

The rumours in Ottawa is that all our multilateral commitments are under review. I have heard well-connected folks express fear that we may withdraw from the United Nations Environment Programme and UNESCO. To block further erosion of our role in the world, we need to ensure that the reaction to this cutting and running from the problems of the world will not disappear as a one-day headline.

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Did the support of 24 per cent of the electorate on election day give the federal government a mandate for its radical project to gut environmental protection? Apparently. In our apathy-inducing first-past-the-post political system a small minority can translate into a big majority, which can disregard public opinion and do whatever it wants.

Here is a list of what the feds have accomplished so far in their three-pronged environmental strategy of deregulation, cutting information and research and targeting dissenting voices:

1. Eliminated Canada’s international commitment to mitigate climate change, including the repeal of the 2007 Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act.
2. Undermined global climate negotiations to avoid climate action.
3. Failed to create a plan to address climate change.
4. Eliminated energy conservation and efficiency and renewable energy funding while continuing subsidies to fossil fuels.
5. Eliminated funding for the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences.
6. Eliminated the climate adaptation research group within Environment Canada.
7. Eliminated scientists in Natural Resources Canada to study ice core data.
8. Cut hundreds of millions of dollars from Environment Canada.
9. Repealed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, weakening the federal environmental assessment process.
10. Eliminated accepted criteria for compulsory environmental assessments, leaving such reviews to the discretion of the Minister of the Environment and political appointees.
11. Eliminated the jobs of hundreds of scientists working for various government departments that focus on the environment and wildlife.
12. Weakened elements of the Species at Risk Act.
13. Amended the Species at Risk Act and Navigable Waters Protection Act to allow the National Energy Board to assume jurisdiction of endangered species or navigable waters in the way of any pipeline.
14. Allowing the federal cabinet, rather than the National Energy Board, to make decisions about approvals for major pipeline projects.
15. Introduced cuts to ozone monitoring.
16. Ended monitoring of smoke stack emissions.
17. Eliminated the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission.
18. Weakened the Fisheries Act in the areas of habitat protection and eliminated the marine contaminants program.
19. Fired all DFO habitat officers in British Columbia.
20. Killed the Navigable Waters Protection Act, replacing it with the Navigation Protection Act, which effectively makes major pipeline and interprovincial power line projects exempt from requirements for proponents to prove they wouldn’t damage navigable waterways.
21. Reduced federal protection of waterways to a small number of water bodies and rivers.
22. Parks Canada no longer has to conduct periodic environmental audits or management plan reviews.
23. Eliminated funding for the National Round Table on the Economy and the Environment.
24. Eliminated support for the Experimental Lakes Program.
25. Eliminated funding for a dozen Arctic science research stations. Closed the Polar Arctic and Environmental Laboratory and the Yukon Research Lab.
26. Started privatization and eliminated ecological staff positions in National Parks.
27. Made a systemic effort to cut research, information and analysis with respect to environmental issues.
28. Attacked environmental and First Nations organizations for critiquing resource development.
29. Provided the Canada Revenue Agency with an extra $8 million to crack down on environmental charities.
30. Provided oil companies with unprecedented access to senior government leaders.
31. Muzzled government scientists who have been conducting research on various climate and environmental issues.
32. Cut funding to the Network on Women’s Health and the Environment.
33. Cut funding of the Canadian Environmental Network.
34. In addition to changing the definition of “aboriginal fishery” in the Fisheries Act, without consulting First Nations governments introduced changes to the Indian Act designed to make it faster and easier for First Nations to “take advantage of economic opportunities” by leasing designated reserve lands based on a majority of votes from those in attendance at a meeting or in a referendum, instead of waiting for a majority vote from all eligible voters.
35. Gave the aboriginal affairs minister the authority to call a band meeting or referendum for the purpose of considering a surrender of the band’s territory.
36. The minister can accept or refuse the land designation after receiving a resolution from the band council.
37. Eliminated the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, the Indian Head Tree Nursery and the PFRA pasture management program on millions of acres of sensitive grasslands.
38. Provided unprecedented support to industries to exploit natural resources with minimal environmental oversight.

Originally printed in the Star Pheonix.

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