Canada’s Conservative government is doing what every country has to do, cut costs.
But Canada is doing it in style:
Canada’s environment ministry will cut or reassign around 10% of its workers, unions said Thursday, prompting fears that services like weather forecasting and environmental protection will suffer. Officials said the move was designed to help eliminate the budget deficit. Critics said it underscored what they portray as the right-leaning Conservative government’s contempt for the environment.
…
Those affected include engineers, meteorologists, scientists, chemists and biologists. William Pynn, head of the Union of Environment Workers, said meteorology, water monitoring and enforcement of regulations would suffer. “The cuts are so massive that the support mechanism for the research that Environment Canada does … is certainly going to be challenged,” he told Reuters.
The new cuts follow last month’s already-announced cuts to Environment Canada.
The Sierra Club of Canada is outraged, which is a good sign the Harper government is doing something right:
“This is not about the deficit. This is about a blatant disregard for need to protect our natural heritage,” said John Bennett, the executive director of Sierra Club Canada. “It will give the polluters what they want, a toothless Environment Canada with no scientific or enforcement capability,” he told Reuters.
Right now I can hear the howling from south of the border from folks wishing the same could be said of the anti-business, anti-energy EPA.
A note from the ironing department: If Environment Canada had wanted to avoid becoming an easy cost-cutting target, they should have tried recycling:
The federal government’s lead department on protecting the environment is opting to buy new office furniture instead of recycling and re-using several hundred work stations from a building under renovations
…
“I’ve been dealing with the product for 26 years,” said Bill Toutant, president of the company. “This is like the BMW of furniture. It will last forever and is not obsolete. So to me, it’s just a crying shame that it’s being thrown out and could wind up being used for scrap steel.”
The planet is probably better off without Environment Canada’s help, something our majority government seems to understand.
The meteorologists were replaced by global warming cultists years ago… there are none left to lay-off.
In Australia, the opposition party, which looks set to win the next election no matter when it is held, flagged the possibility of disbanding the department of climate change, a 2000-strong department of people who have been diligently achieving nothing for 4 years straight. Of course, there was howls of protest, but for a department concerned with changing the climate, so far you’d have to say they’ve been quite ineffective as it seems to be exactly the same as 4 years ago. You could Australia could have managed the first 106 years of it’s life without a department of climate change, if it is that important.
No word yet on the department of asteroid avoidance and the department of tidal prevention. It appears they are still framing their mission statements.
Sack them all, I say.
This is really not a loss. All the provinces have environmental departments that can look after inspection/enforcement. If the Sierra Club is so concerned maybe they can free up some of their millions and get a bit of help from their friends at PEW, Packard, Hewlitt, Hienz and others to pony up a few million for poor top-heavy overstaffed Environment Canada Ministry.