4 - Wednesday, October 28, 1992 — North Shore News Yes or No, environment needs protection STRICTLY PERSONAL THIS COLUMN is wiitten, due to pitiless deadline pressures, somewhat in ad- vance of the referendum vote. itis also written without the - benefit of any precognitive ability. I don’t know the outcome of the balloting, as you do. I do know, however, that at one very important level, namely mat- ters concerning protection of the natural environment, the outcome of the referendum hardly matters. Either way, Yes or No, as of Oct. 27, the environmental movement has its task in Canada carved out for the next several years. It’s nog just lawyers finding work in all this, Environmenial consultancies are proliferating. The deal contains (or contained) no substantial gains for the en- vironment, so a No would arguably be better if there was any guarantec of making progress at some later date. **Progress’’ from the point of view of most environmental specialists | talk to, would be merely going back to what we had before the constitutional tinkering began. As they see it, what was lost when the Charlottetown Accord was drafted was an historical op- portunity te build some fun- damental environmental rights in- to a national constitution. That opportunity would have been lost with a Yes vote on the assumption that the accord would have become the new law of the land, for however long the land might last. The opportunity might have been preserved by a No vote, but only if there turns out to be another chance to play the game. Hf a No vote in the rest of Canada was to drive Quebec to separate, the only remaining ‘‘op- portunity”’ for envircnmentalists would be to get lofty ecological pledges written into the constitut- ion of a much smaller Canada. Quebec would be getting on, virtually unrestrained, with megaprojects. From the point of view of hard-working ecologists who had attended all the constitutional committees and hearings and public meetings, making sugges- tions all the way, only to find the environment shunted off to the side in the final ‘‘consensus’’ Charlottetown draft, it was a bit- ter pill to swaliow: no matter how much you Joved the flag or how good Canada looked from the outside, from a strictly pragmatic environmental point of view, the accord sucked bad. Orn the plus side — a very slight plus -- they could say that at least property rights, which would have tidden roughshod over en- vironmenta} consideration — weren’t included in the accord, which was a victory for ecology. Environmentalists felt they had managed to deflect the govern- ment from its worst course of ac- tion by successful lobbying. What they failed to stop, how- ever, was the overall downgrading of the environmentalist agenda. The best the eco-groups had been able to manage was a certain amount of damage control. None of the participants ex- pected that in the end en- vironmental concerns would be booted down to the secondary levels of the document. Barbara Kutherford of the Ca- nadian Environmental Law Association told a press con- ference the week before the vote that since early in the constitu- tional hearings environmentalists had been making the point that the environment had to be a fun- damental value, and that to throw national policy-making powers to the wind in order to appease the provincial power-mongers was a disastrous mistake. The argument Pierre Trudeau made about not giving in to blackmail was a good one but it didn’t go far enough, she said. The problem wasn’t just na- tionalist blackmail from Quebec, it was from other provinciai na- tionalists, who didn’t get iden- tified as such because they call themselves something else: Tory, Liberal or New Democrat. The provinces want control over natural resources within their borders, The deal promised this, with knobs on. Under the terms of the package, if Ontario, for instance, wanted to clear-cut all its forests, there would be nothing Ottawa (or B.C., for that matter) could do to stop it. If this seems far-fetched, con- sider the recent experiences of Australia, where a constitution that excluded federal powers from state (their equivalent of provin- cial) jurisdictions led to logging interests in Tasmania nearly succ- ceeding in destroying the last old-growth forests before the United Nations intervened. By giving away a Senate veto over natural resource taxation in the Charlottetown Accord, the would-be new fathers of Re- Re-Confederation gave away the eco-shop, in the view of Ms. Rutherford. In Europe, she said, the most effective way to impose actual reductions in greenhouse gas- causing emissions has been through a carbon tax. By means of the accord, Ottawa has either left itself or would have left itself in a position where it might not be able to enforce the agreement it signed at the Earth Summit in Rio this summer to cut down on carbon dioxide emissions by 20% by the year 2000. That’s 20% federally, you see. Thus, the Balkanization of Canada — as concocted under the Charlottetown proposals — could kneecap any future federal initia- tives to protect the environment. Would this be a ‘major disaster’ or merely ‘‘a serious setback?”* A ‘‘major disaster,’’ Ms. Rutherford decided. She stressed that none of the enviro-groups were going to try to tell anyone whether to vote Yes or No, not simply because the eco- leaders were abdicating leadership, as it might seem, but because, since there was nothing in the ac- cord for the environment in the first place, the best bet, if No won, was to start doing some serious green lobbying for the next round of constitutional negotia- tions, and hope that Quebec’s there. And if Yes won, the best bet was to start doing some serious green lobbying for the next round of constitutional negotiations, and hope that someone listens this Your Professional, Committed, - OFFICE 984-9711 PAGER: 645-9651 FAX: 984-3350 Real Estate Expert Sussex Realty 2996 Lonedale Ave. North Vancouver HEAR YE~HEAR YE. Noiice of Public Meeting Esplanade Flea Market Temporary Use Permit Notice is hereby given that it is the intention of the Council of the Corporation of the City of North Vancouver, to adopt the following resolution at the regular Council meeting to be held MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1992 in the Council Chamber of the City Hall, 141 West 14the Street, commencing at 7:30 p.m.: “THAT Temporary Use Permit No. 8 be issued to C. ANDERSON, 116 East Esplanade, to permit on a tem- porary basis, a Flea Market Use on the following lands: LOTS 33 TO 55, BLOCK 166, D.L. 274, PLAN 878.” The lands referred to are indicated in the hatched pattern on the map below. ALL PERSONS who believe that their interests in property is affected by the proposed permit shall be afforded a reasonable opportunity to be heard - in person, by attorney or by petition. The TEMPORARY USE PERMIT may be i at the office of the City Clerk, 141 West 14the Street, North Vancouver, B.C. between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday, except Statutory Holidays, from OCTOBER 19 - NOVEMBER 2, 1992. Written submissions will be accepted up to and including November 2, 1992. However, siumissions will not be accepted after the conclusion of the meeting. Bruce Hawkshaw City Clerk : y of North Vancouver be The Hear of Your NORTH VANCOUVER CITY LIBRARY is now THERE’S SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE CHECK US OUT! 121 WEST 14TH STREET AY 5