New Environics poll reveals Canadians reject SPP priorities

Ottawa - As Stephen Harper prepares to attend the North American leaders’ summit on the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in New Orleans next week, a new Environics Research poll shows that Canadians disagree with key elements of North American integration. The survey commissioned by the Council of Canadians shows considerable opposition to regulatory harmonization, energy integration and bulk water exports. It also reveals that Canadians are not sold on security cooperation with the U.S. and would overwhelmingly like to see the SPP debated publicly and voted on in Parliament.

“It’s been four years since the launch of the SPP, and while corporations have been given a seat at the negotiating table, the Canadian government has never asked the public how they feel about it,” says Maude Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians.

Highlights:

* 87% of Canadians agree that Canada should be able to set its own independent environmental, health and safety standards and regulations even if it could limit trade with the United States.

The SPP commits Canada to widespread regulatory convergence which has already resulted in Canada adopting weaker standards, most recently through consumer product legislation.

* 89% of Canadians agree that Canada needs an energy policy that protects Canadian supplies and the environment even if it means placing restrictions on exports and foreign ownership.

The SPP calls for greater energy integration and a fivefold expansion of the environmentally destructive tar sands project in Alberta.

* 88% of Canadians want a national water policy that recognizes clean drinking water as a basic human right and that also bans bulk water exports.

But at an SPP-related meeting in Calgary last year, commissioned by all three governments, the issue of bulk water exports was firmly on the table.

* Only 47% of Canadians feel that improving the Canada-U.S. trading relationship would justify harmonizing our security policies with the US and sharing personal information with American security agencies.

This means that Canadians are not sold on the very raison d’être of the SPP, yet the last Harper budget committed an additional $165 million towards security initiatives in the SPP agreement.

* 86% of Canadians feel there should be an open, public debate on the SPP, and that the agreement should be brought to Parliament for a vote.

Four years after the launch of the SPP there has been no public consultation or any parliamentary debate. “How can the government continue to push this agenda behind closed doors, when the public overwhelmingly rejects it?” asks Barlow.

The organization is calling for public consultation and parliamentary debate on the SPP and an end to all talks aimed at promoting continental integration between Canada and the United States.

Environics Research interviewed 1,007 Canadians by telephone during the period: April 7th – 10th, 2008. The margin of error for a survey of this magnitude is +/-3.1 percent, nineteen times out of twenty.

- 30 -

For more information, please contact:
Meera Karunananthan Media Officer: Tel.: (613) 233-4487, ext. 234; Cell: (613) 795-8685; meera@canadians.org.

–
The Council of Canadians
700-170 Laurier Avenue West, Ottawa, ON K1P 5V5.
Tel: (613) 233-2773; Toll-free: 1-800-387-7177
Fax: (613) 233-6776
inquiries@canadians.org
www.canadians.org

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/410662

Great Lakes levels are plunging yet we still treat water like it’s a limitless resource. We have to get our act together and start paying the real price. And soon
Apr 06, 2008 04:30 AM
Chris Wood
Special to the Star

The Great Lakes, and those who work or live around them, are witnessing profound changes in climate. No one knows that better than Linda Mortsch.

Her childhood was spent near the banks of the St. Lawrence River, at Cornwall, in a house built in 1958 from lumber salvaged from an historic inn that was due to be submerged, along with half a dozen riverside villages, to make way for the St. Lawrence Seaway. Today, she teaches geography at the University of Waterloo, investigating how the changing weather will affect the Great Lakes.

Mortsch walked me through the Lakes’ historic water calendar. Typically, the year begins with most smaller lakes and rivers – and large expanses of the great ones – locked in ice. Snow covers the land. As spring comes, the snow and upland ice melt, releasing a vast pulse of fresh water to the Lakes.

Superior, the largest lake, receives the biggest pulse. As the winter’s snow-melt flows in, the Lakes’ levels rise, with Superior reaching its peak earliest and the lower lakes peaking progressively through the summer until the annual pulse of winter runoff reaches Lake Ontario, usually around Labour Day. The Lakes are at their lowest in December and January, when the cycle begins again.

Now this timeless rhythm is changing. Average air temperatures in the Great Lakes region rose by nearly a degree Celsius over the last 100 years, faster than the world average. Winter and spring have warmed even more, with highs as much as 4 degrees Celsius above those of the last century.

By 2003 places like Sault Ste. Marie and the Kawartha Lakes were getting a month fewer days below freezing and nearly two months fewer of cold nights each winter than in 1950, but 30 more very hot days and nights each summer.

With less snow hanging around anywhere in the Lakes’ basin, the yearly pulse of melting snow and ice starts earlier and carries less water into the Lakes.

By far the greatest threat to the Lakes, however, comes from the insidious amplification of evapotranspiration (ET). Evaporation already extracts more water from the Great Lakes than all our human diversions combined.

Across Ontario, calculated losses to evaporation claim two-thirds of every centimetre of rain or snow the province receives. Scientists who monitored lakes in northwestern Ontario between 1970 and 1990 discovered that as temperatures rose by 1.6 degrees Celsius – more than twice the global average for that period – rainfall declined. But evaporation ballooned by 50 per cent. Annual runoff into Lake Superior plummeted by almost two-thirds, from 40 centimetres to only about 15.

[The combination of late-forming ice on the Lakes, and that invisible thief evaporation, may have been largely responsible for this past winter's record snowfalls in eastern Ontario and Quebec. With little ice to protect the Lakes' water, it easily evaporated into the dry arctic air that flows south during the winter, riding the wind to fall back to land later as snow. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, the record heaps of snow were not evidence of climate change slipping into reverse — but of it going into overdrive.]

If less water flows into the Great Lakes each spring, and more of it is drawn out by evaporation over longer ice-free seasons, exactly how much lower will the Lakes be at the end of each year?

If Mortsch and her colleagues are correct, Lake Superior’s seasonal low-water levels could fall 38 centimetres below present-day lows before mid-century. Lake Ontario could drop more, losing 54 centimetres from present-day lows, with the deepest impact in the spring. But Lake Erie, already the shallowest of the five, could fall as much as 85 centimetres below its current low-water level. Another study has suggested that the St. Lawrence River at Montreal could in some late summers be at barely half its present volume.

THE CONDITIONS that will give our society its best shot at flourishing through the new climate’s violent mood swings are evident. We must use less water whenever we can, extracting more work from every drop we do use. We must minimize our vulnerability to extremes of weather. To reduce our risk, we must “design in” flexibility and resilient adaptive capacity from the get-go. At every turn we should copy or employ the original and still best example of resilience to climate change: nature itself.

And one more thing: any response that would prepare us adequately and in time for the turbulent weather ahead must surely find a way to work with the aspirations, psychology and economy of our society, rather than against them.

Improvements to the water efficiency of industrial processes, cropping and livestock practices and our personal sanitation occur incrementally, in the small or large innovations each of us makes. They can’t be centrally prescribed, any more than one device could solve every industry’s pollution problem. At best they can be motivated.

So why are we so unmotivated to make our water last? Perhaps for the same reasons so many of us fail when we try to diet: we cheat. While praising water as “priceless” in the abstract, we value it at next to nothing at the tap. When we treat water that way, it’s cheaper to let it leak from old pipes than to fix the holes.

Our systemic dishonesty about the value of water is of a piece with the larger fraud we’ve perpetrated by failing to account in full for the myriad other services that natural ecosystems provide to our dollar economy. These range from the “free” fish in the ocean to the marsh-raised wild waterfowl that fill the larders in many northern communities; from the carbon dioxide that forests scrub out of the atmosphere to the forests’ moist exhalations that cool the local environs before returning downwind as welcome rain.

They include the waters bearing freighters through the Rock Cut south of Sault Ste. Marie and the crust of ice that shoulders the weight of winter traffic into Manitoba’s St. Theresa Point. At the grandest scale, they embrace the vast planetary distillery and filtering system that cleanses our water.

Sixty per cent of these critical services are now over-exploited and run down, the United Nations Environmental Programme found in its Millennium Assessment of the global ecosystem, precisely because they are undervalued in commerce.

“Technology and knowledge can reduce considerably the human impact on ecosystems,” the project’s scientific board underscored in a statement. “They are unlikely to be deployed fully, however, until ecosystem services cease to be perceived as free and limitless, and their full value is taken into account.”

We dare not carry on this way. The health of our habitat must become as automatic and seamless a consideration in our economic decisions as the price of money (which affects everything from billion-dollar takeovers to personal credit-card spending).

Far from segregating nature from human commerce, in other words, we must urgently reintegrate the two. Bringing natural services “onto the books” of our conventional economy would mean not only fully acknowledging their benefits, but also paying for their maintenance. It would give each of us a sharp new awareness of the load we place on the planet and an immediate reason to lighten it.

NO DEVICE CAN accomplish this task better than a correctly set price. Price includes an entire chain of costs that go into a product’s creation and supply, from raw materials to labour. There’s more to getting a mango than a Macintosh apple to Toronto in January, so the mango costs more.

Over time, multiple considerations have entered pricing: the cost of insuring the workers who make the product, the cost of taxes to pay for the roads over which it gets delivered, and so on. Increasingly, prices for some products, like electronics, include disposal costs.

Certain social costs that should be included in prices aren’t yet: in particular, the burdens borne by the “low-wage” societies that manufacture exports. Overall, however, the trend is in the right direction. But while we’ve made progress in integrating human social costs in prices, we’ve done extremely poorly at including nature’s contribution. A more inclusive price for water would dramatically change the incentives in the countless decisions we make in our daily lives

“People say you can’t put a price tag on the priceless,” remarks ecologist Gretchen Daily. “I agree – nature is priceless. But if we don’t (put a price on it), it’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet: People go whole hog and it’s gone.”

Those who advocate the public commons and a human right to water are correct that water runs through us all. It infuses every aspect of economic, social and cultural life and every hour of the day. For this very reason, neither government, no matter how powerful and intrusive, nor any self-appointed overseer from “civil society,” can possibly ensure its wise use.

Only we can do that, through the decisions we make in our homes, fields, office cubicles, plant floors, schools and shopping malls or wherever else we spend our time. It’s what we each do daily in the marketplace that will determine whether collectively we protect our water and the natural systems that provide it, or despoil both.

The marketplace is the most flexible problem-solving institution we have. Adapting it to the smarter use of water veers away from the one-size-fits-all frame of last century’s “big engineering” and outdated eco-Marxism that sets disciples of Blue Gold on course toward a tragedy of the commons.

It directs us instead toward a liberating ecology of persistent innovation in which a diversity of solutions can prosper.

http://parentcentral.ca/parent/article/410906

April 7, 2008

Mary Ormsby
TORONTO STAR

The barbed wire atop fencing facing Unwin Ave. is a stark indication that a pair of never-used, artificial turf playing fields are off limits.

“No trespassing” signs, a padlocked gate and heavy black tarps flapping in the spring breeze are also keeping athletes from this verdant, landscaped oasis rising out of the portlands’ industrial blight.

Not only are the durable, regulation-sized fields nearly one year late in their planned opening and $1.5 million over budget, but also, bureaucratic paperwork about an adjacent parking lot continues to keep them closed even though they are safe to use.

But as long as the heavily polluted lot – formerly the site of an oil recycling facility – remains untouched, no one is allowed on this spectacular east-end playing area near Cherry Beach.

“We’re in dire need of fields and they’ve got to get it open,” said Rolston Miller, a director of the Toronto Central Sport and Social Club that has 15,000 to 20,000 adults playing spring field activities including ultimate frisbee, soccer and flag football.

“It’s very disappointing because it’s an awesome site, we can play under the lights (and) because it’s turf we can play late (into the early winter) … but we can’t even get a permit.”

The holdup has been due, in part, to the many stakeholders from three levels of government and other agencies all having input on these “desperately needed” fields, Toronto Mayor David Miller said.

“If the city issued environmental approvals, these fields would be open,” said the mayor, who sits on the board of Waterfront Toronto.

“We would have found a way, it’s a high priority for us … there’s lots of blame to go around but we’re at the point now where we simply need to sign off and it’s time to (open the fields).”

Waterfront Toronto, TEDCO, the City of Toronto, Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment and Toronto Public Health are the key partners in redeveloping the fields, to be part of a larger sports complex in the portlands that will include a four-pad arena scheduled for completion in 2010.

Since much of the 400-hectare portlands – bounded by Lake Shore Blvd. E. and the Don River to the north, Toronto’s inner harbour to the west, Ashbridges Bay to the east and Lake Ontario and Tommy Thompson Park to the south – is contaminated from prior industrial use largely involving coal and oil, the stakeholders have worked on risk assessments. They determine contaminant levels in air, soil and water and potential exposure to people and the environment, and are sent to the province for review.

Waterfront Toronto forwarded its third revised assessment last month to the Environment Ministry, which must approve completed cleanup procedures and, if needed, make remediation suggestions.

The proposed 200-vehicle parking lot, which abuts the western field, has had no salvaging work done on it even though Waterfront Toronto chief executive John Campbell favours installing a safe buffer zone between the field and the lot, then blocking off the rest of the unclean land until a permanent lot is constructed this winter.

“We want to open (the fields) as soon as possible because I don’t think we want to have the visual of brand new fields … closed off in nice weather,” said Campbell, who feels June would be the earliest use of the fields – first planned in 2004 to cost $5 million.

“It’s taken longer (than expected). We thought they’d be open last year and we’ve got to get them open.”

But the lot can’t be touched until the ministry gives its go-ahead – and that can’t happen until the assessment documents are delivered. Waterfront Toronto has had two prior risk assessments, from January and August of 2007, sent back for revisions. Campbell is to meet with ministry officials this week.

“I’m told the ministry is being co-operative but this really is an issue of common sense,” said David Miller.

“The pollution below ground doesn’t affect the fields and … surely reasonable people can come up with a solution pretty quickly so we can actually start using them.”

Rolston Miller wonders why the sports-minded public is served at a glacial pace when an event like Cirque du Soleil (which paid to have temporary parking built just north of Unwin on Commissioners St. for its performances last summer) was eagerly accommodated.

“If it was some other aspect of big business (such as) the Toronto symphony or the Toronto opera, would they get it done? Damn right they’d get it done,” said Rolston Miller, who is also a volunteer member of the Toronto Sport Council advocacy group.

The City of Toronto identified the need to build more artificial and grass sports fields as a priority in 2004. The new turfed surfaces are coveted because of their long wear and good drainage. They can be used as soon as the snow melts, unlike fragile grass fields. A Waterfront Toronto document emphasizes the necessity for fields in the underserved south end of the city.

Toronto Councillor Paula Fletcher, whose Toronto-Danforth ward includes the Lake Ontario Park project, said that, since the fields are clean and safe, people should use them now.

“I am moving heaven and earth to get these open ASAP,” Fletcher said recently.

“I’m hopeful – my fingers are crossed, my legs are crossed, my eyes are crossed – that at least one of (the fields) can be permitted early. That’s the suggestion I’ve made; permit one now and get the other one ready.”

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http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/411040

Apr 07, 2008 01:39 PM
THE CANADIAN PRESS

Too many people only consider the environmental impacts of global warming and don’t realize public health is at serious risk as well, the Ontario College of Family Physicians said today as it added its voice to the chorus of climate change concern.

The effects of climate change could bring on a new onslaught of health problems nationwide and even small incremental rises in temperatures could have a “profound effect” on public health, the review suggests.

“When we think about climate change, we typically think about how it will affect our environment, but we need to start thinking about how it affects our health too,” said college president Dr. Renee Arnold.

“The negative health effects of climate change are profound, and will be irreversible if we don’t get our act together now and stop damaging our environment.”

The review, which the college calls the most comprehensive of its kind worldwide, states there’s already evidence that abnormal heat waves can trigger public health crises.

A two-week heat wave in France in 2003 is cited as one startling example, when about 15,000 people died prematurely as the country was struck by intense heat.

The report also envisions a future where Canadians commonly return home from Caribbean vacations with malaria or dengue fever, and warns the medical community will have to be prepared to deal with conditions they’ve never dealt with before.

Warmer weather would also allow ticks that carry Lyme disease to survive in areas where they couldn’t before; if left untreated, Lyme disease can cause chronic arthritis and neurological symptoms.

Public health units could also be faced with more cases of the West Nile virus, which can cause meningitis, encephalitis and a polio-like syndrome.

The American Public Health Association raised similar concerns about climate change last week and said its effects on the public could be one of the top challenges facing the health community.

http://www.thestar.com/Canada/Census/article/409108

Apr 02, 2008 08:59 AM
THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA – Young workers in the Toronto region are more likely to pick “green” commuting options than their older co-workers, the latest census information shows.

Statistics Canada has released new data Wednesday from the 2006 census that gives more details about how people in the Toronto region most often get to work and how far they travel.

Workers under the age of 25 in the Toronto region use public transit 30.8 per cent of the time, while a further 9.5 per cent walk and 1.5 per cent use a bike.

That’s a considerably higher reliance on environmentally friendly means of getting to work than the average commuter in the Toronto region, who commutes by public transit 22.2 per cent of the time, by foot 4.8 per cent of the time and 1.0 per cent by bike.

The reliance on the car in the Toronto region seems to increase as the age of commuters gets older.

Commuters under the age of 25 used a vehicle to get to work – either as a driver or a passenger – 57.2 per cent of the time. Those aged 25-34 commuted by car most often 66.1 per cent of the time and those 35 and over drove or were driven 75.8 per cent of the time.

The census doesn’t ask commuters why they chose their mode of transportation, so it’s not known if younger workers pick greener commuting options because of their concern for the environment or whether their choice was related more to financial considerations.

Dan McDermott, director of Ontario’s chapter of the Sierra Club of Canada, says owning a car used to be a rite of passage for young people, but enviromental awareness in that generation has made gas guzzlers uncool. The high cost of gasoline is another factor for those with limited incomes.

“The desire to own a car is diminishing for a number of reasons – environmental consciousness being high on that list,” said McDermott.

“Certainly, economic reality weighs in as well and with gas scheduled to hit $1.50 a litre, that makes the question about buying a car one that young people on limited resources will look long and hard at before making that choice.”

Statistics Canada released initial information on commuting in the country’s major metropolitan region last month. The new information breaks down the data further to the municipal level.

In the city of Toronto, 34.4 per cent of workers use public transit while 55.8 per cent get to the job by car.

The median commuting distance for people in the city of Toronto is 7.5 kilometres – meaning the point where one half of the city’s population travels more than that distance and the other half travels less. Commuting distance is measured on a straight line from home to work – not the actual route travelled, which for most commuters would be longer.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/409003

Advocates devastated at failure of resolution to recognize water as a basic human right
Apr 02, 2008 04:30 AM
Linda Diebel
National Affairs Writer

Canada emerged as the pivotal nation behind recent manoeuvres to block the United Nations Human Rights Council from recognizing water as a basic human right, according to international observers.

The Geneva-based body wrapped up an intense three-week session late Friday without passing a German-Spanish resolution intended to enshrine its importance in a world where more than 2 billion people live in water-stressed regions.

It would have also set up an international watchdog to monitor the actions of individual countries.

After its 46 members accepted a consensus resolution – essentially for more study – Canadian representative Sarah Geh told the council: “Canada does not view this resolution as creating a human right to water under international human rights law.”

In his final speech, disappointed German representative Reinhard Schweppe stressed action is urgent. Access to clean water and sanitation, is “a part of human dignity,” he said, adding a child dies every 20 seconds due to water-borne diseases.

Advocates for water rights were devastated by the outcome.

From Oxford, Ashfaq Khalfan, co-ordinator of the U.K.-headquartered Right to Water Program, said he believes the resolution to make water a right would have passed without the resolute lobby efforts of the Canadian delegation.

“It’s rather unfortunate Canada put itself in that position,” he said in an interview.

Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, said reservations about specific aspects of the motion were raised by member nations, notably Russia and the U.K. But she said it was Canada that “derailed” the process, a view shared by other international observers who monitored the Geneva sessions.

Barlow also suggested Canada acted with support from the United States, which shares Ottawa’s view on water but doesn’t have a seat at the UN rights council.

“Canada failed to take up the challenge. Canadians would find it shocking to realize our role in this,” said Barlow, a veteran of battles about water.

She added that the resolution would have buttressed the argument that nobody should be able to expropriate water for financial profit. There have been battles in countries such as Bolivia over attempts to privatize water.

“It was a benchmark for the concept water is a right, not a commodity,” Barlow said, adding claims that the resolution would have forced nations to export water to drought-plagued regions were “fantastical.”

MP Peggy Nash (Parkdale-High Park), the NDP’s water critic, said: “Once again, we’re internationally disappointed and embarrassed. … How do you deny water is a basic human right?”

Nash criticized both the former Liberal government and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives for failing to take a progressive attitude on water rights.

However, siding with the government’s position in Geneva, her Liberal counterpart Francis Scarpaleggia (Lac-St.-Louis) raised what could become a critical public issue in the national dialogue over water.

The Quebec MP said Canada’s sovereignty over its own water was not established in the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, raising problems for Ottawa internationally. In trade terms, water arguably is a commodity or service like any other.

“I believe – and I guess the government sees it the same way —– if we start signing on to recognizing water as an international human right … it might make it easy for private companies, or for those south of the border, who would like to export Canada’s water in bulk to embarrass us on the public square,” Scarpaleggia said.

“These people could argue, ‘Well, you’ve agreed water is a human right, we here down in Atlanta have no water, there’s a drought,’ or in California or whatever. You have a moral obligation to be consistent with your word and let us take some water down here, by one means or another.”

He criticized the Harper government for failing to deliver on its pledge of a national water policy and said he intends to introduce a motion in the Commons to protect Canadian water.

Nash long ago tabled a motion of her own.

The consensus was worked out over three weeks. Minutes taken by representatives of NGOs who attended an open meeting March 18, show disappointment among representatives of countries including Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Finland, France, Norway, Switzerland and others.

Khalfan said that if the German-Spanish resolution had been defeated in a vote, it would have damaged any fight for water rights. Instead, there is at least a consensus to examine obligations “related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation under international human rights instruments.”

Khalfan and Barlow stressed their organizations haven’t given up. Among other avenues, they will focus on the report expected to be tabled in three years, under the terms of last week’s consensus.

Khalfan said it would have been particularly sweet for Canadians had the rights council enshrined water as a right. In his view, it would have been the next logical step to a report the council already requested from former UN high commissioner for human rights Louise Arbour. A former Supreme Court of Canada justice, Arbour stepped down from her UN post last month.

Her September 2007 report said: “The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights believes that it is now time to consider access to safe drinking water and sanitation as a human right. …”

In her comments Friday, Canadian representative Geh quoted Arbour’s report as saying “debate is still open as to whether water and sanitation is a human right.”

Khalfan disputed that view, arguing Arbour’s report said it was not clear whether the right to water was a “self-standing right” or derived from “other human rights.”

Yesterday, from Ottawa, foreign affairs spokesperson Shaun Tinkler said the compromise resolution “accurately reflects that a right to water is not explicitly recognized as a fundamental human right under international human rights law.”

He praised the consensus agreement for setting up an independent expert and said Canada had “worked constructively with other delegations to develop a negotiated text which accurately reflects the status of this issue.”

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/04/01/which-giant-corporation-owns-your-favorite-organic-food-brand.aspx

Did you know that Boca is owned by Kraft? That Naked Juice is completely controlled by Pepsi? That General Mills runs Cascadian Farm and Muir Glen?

This fascinating chart (to view it click the source link below) by Phil Howard, an assistant professor of Community, Agriculture, and Recreation and Resource studies at Michigan State University, will show you where your money really goes when you buy that name-brand “organic” snack — and you can bet that if it’s made by Kraft, it’s probably not coming from a small family farm, either.
Sources:

* Good Magazine March/April 2008
http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/features/009/009buyingorganic.html

(GO TO ABOVE LINK TO SEE FULL LIST!)

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/04/01/harvard-researchers-skeptical-about-multivitamins.aspx

An estimated 35 percent of U.S. adults take multivitamins regularly, but according to Harvard researchers, this could be causing more harm than good.

The researchers cited studies showing that antioxidant supplements do not protect against cancer or heart disease, and may actually cause harm in some cases. They also reported that recent clinical trials show that B-vitamin supplements (B6, B12 and folic acid) do not prevent heart disease.

One study even found an increased risk of cancer among people taking large amounts of folic acid (who were also at an increased risk of the disease), and other research has also suggested that folic acid may have contributed to rising rates of colorectal cancer in the United States and Canada.

The researchers pointed out that while government-mandated folic acid fortification in U.S. grain products has reduced the rate of spinal cord birth defects, it may, when coupled with a multivitamin, increase your risk of cancer.

“There is no proof that a daily multivitamin is harmful,” the Harvard newsletter concluded. “Still, it now seems possible that the high levels of folic acid achieved by well-intentioned people who take a multivitamin and eat healthful foods could increase the risk of colorectal and possible prostate and breast cancers.”

Sources:
http://www.naturalfoodsmerchandiser.com/ASP/articleDisplay.asp?strArticleId=2794&strSite=NFMSite&Screen=HOME

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http://www.naturalfoodsmerchandiser.com/ASP/articleDisplay.asp?strArticleId=2794&strSite=NFMSite&Screen=HOME

Harvard researchers skeptical about multivitamins
Vicky Uhland

3/4/2008 2:18:53 PM

Citing studies that show that the antioxidants and vitamins B6, B12 and folic acid in multivitamins not only don’t prevent disease, but that folic acid may actually cause cancer, Harvard Medical School researchers argued against taking a daily multivitamin in the March issue of their Harvard Men’s Health Watch newsletter.

The Council for Responsible Nutrition questioned the research the newsletter cited and called the multivitamin cautions “premature.”

Stating that an estimated 35 percent of U.S. adults take multivitamins regularly, Harvard researchers presented a history of multivitamin research in their newsletter article titled, “Multivitamins and your health: A reappraisal.” They began with antioxidant research, citing studies showing that antioxidant supplements not only don’t protect against heart disease or cancer, but “in some cases, they may actually do more harm than good.”

They next tackled research on the “three Bs”: B6, B12 and folic acid, and concluded that recent randomized clinical trials show that B-vitamin supplements don’t prevent heart disease. They also cited one U.S. study showing that people who took folic acid had more colorectal adenomas and more prostate cancers than those who took a placebo. However, the researchers cautioned, the study involved only people who were at high risk for colorectal cancer, and who took 1,000 mcg of folic acid, two and a half times the recommended daily allowance.

The researchers also cited a 2007 report in which scientists traced colorectal cancers diagnosed in the U.S. and Canada between 1986 and 2002. In the mid-1990s, they found an extra four to six diagnoses of colorectal cancer per 100,000 people in each country. “The researchers don’t know what caused the blip,” the Harvard researchers wrote, but “the scientists speculated that folic acid may have contributed to the uptick in colorectal cancers—not because of multivitamins, but because of foods.”

The Harvard researchers pointed out that government-mandated folic acid fortification in U.S. grain products has reduced the incidence of spinal cord birth defects by up to 50 percent since 1996, but cited an unproven theory that when those fortified foods are coupled with a multivitamin, blood levels of folic acid can increase to amounts that may be associated with increased risk of cancer.

The newsletter concluded: “There is no proof that a daily multivitamin is harmful. Still, it now seems possible that the high levels of folic acid achieved by well-intentioned people who take a multivitamin and eat healthful foods could increase the risk of colorectal and possible prostate and breast cancers. Perhaps, then, the answer is to give up the multivitamin, at least until scientists solve the puzzle of folic acid and cancer.”

Andrew Shao, Ph.D., CRN’s vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs, said he was “a little bit disappointed” in the research the newsletter cited, noting that the antioxidant studies it referenced have been “heavily criticized by the scientific community.” In addition, the folic acid research cited was “only one study. It may merit a follow-up, but it’s only one study,” he said.

He said the newsletter’s recommendation to jettison multivitamins is “clearly a premature action. Even the Harvard professors I contacted about this thought it was premature, and said they still take their multivitamins.”

Noting that multivitamins are vital to the vast majority of Americans “who come up short when it comes to getting the recommended daily nutrition,” Shao said “changes to the recommendations [that people take] multivitamins don’t make sense at this point.” He also cited an October 2007 CRN study of 1,177 healthcare professionals that found that 87 percent of doctors and 86 percent of nurses take multivitamins, and about three-quarters of them said “it is a good idea for patients to take a multivitamin.”

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080328/federal_surplus_080328/20080328?hub=Politics

Tax, GST cuts eat away at federal surplus

Updated Fri. Mar. 28 2008 7:56 PM ET

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — The days of the federal government routinely recording surpluses in the tens of billions appear to be over, a new finance department report on its fiscal position suggests.

The department’s fiscal monitor released Friday shows that revenue growth came to a sudden halt in January, shrinking the surplus for the month to a mere $600 million as the GST cut and personal income tax reductions announced last fall began eating away at Ottawa’s tax haul.

The finance department said revenues dropped $900 million, or 3.9 per cent, in January. Last year during the month, the budgetary surplus was $2.4 billion.

For the first 10 months of the fiscal year that ends Monday, the accumulated surplus was $10 billion, down $600 million from the corresponding period last year.

“The results to date reflect the impact of personal income tax relief measures introduced in the October 2007 economic statement,” the report states.

Meanwhile, program expenses were up $10.8 billion, or 7.2 per cent, for the period, due to higher transfer payments to provinces and individuals, and program expenses, such as the cost of fighting the war in Afghanistan.

Program spending by the Defence Department stood at $14.5 billion by the end of January, up 10.7 per cent from the corresponding 10-month period last year.

Prior to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s fall mini-budget, many had been predicting the federal surplus for the fiscal year could top $20 billion.

But in last month’s budget, Flaherty forecast the year’s surplus would be $10.2 billion, dropping to $2.3 billion next year and $1.3 billion in the 2009-2010 period.

The January fiscal monitor appears to confirm that the surpluses enjoyed in recent years are unlikely to be matched for some time due to a combination of tax cuts and a slowing economy expected to grow just slightly above last year’s 2.7 per cent rate.

But Dale Orr of Global Insight Canada said he doesn’t believe the government is in any serious danger of falling into a deficit position, even though economic growth this year is unlikely to reach the budget’s working premise of 1.7 per cent.

“The drivers of their revenues and expenses have been doing better than you would suppose because the labour market remains strong and payouts for employment insurance are low,” he said. “On top of that, they could get $1 billion from the spectrum auction (for cellphone providers), and they didn’t account for that in the budget.”

Orr said real gross domestic product growth is now expected to come in at about 1.5 per cent this year. But nominal GDP, which includes inflation, is likely to meet the government’s 3.5 per cent forecast due to higher revenues from high-priced oil.

And most government revenues from personal taxes, GST revenues and business taxes reflect nominal — not inflation adjusted — growth, he noted.

Another bright spot for the government is that the cost of servicing the national debt continues to fall as a result of lower interest rates and the government’s record of making payments on the principal. Debt charges were down $400 million during the first 10 months of the fiscal year.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ontario/article/404850

Ontario developing program to tackle 12 million old tires thrown away every year
Mar 28, 2008 04:30 AM
Kerry Gillespie
Queen’s Park Bureau

Ontarians throw away some 12 million used tires a year and, unlike other provinces with government recycling programs, too many are left in dangerous stockpiles, buried in landfills or shipped out of province to be burned as fuel.

That’s about to change, says Environment Minister John Gerretsen.

Ontario motorists will likely be required to pay a fee of a few dollars when they buy new tires to ensure they’re recycled later, under a plan now being developed.

“It’s unacceptable that Ontario is the only jurisdiction in Canada that doesn’t have (a tire recycling program) right now and that’s why we want to get one going as quickly as possible,” Gerretsen said in an interview.

He has already talked to Waste Diversion Ontario, which creates recycling programs, and Gerretsen said he expects the government will approve a tire program this year.

Tuesday’s provincial budget included $200,000 to prepare an up-to-date inventory of tire stockpiles because there’s little accurate information about the millions of stored tires.

In other provinces, when people buy passenger vehicle tires, they generally pay a fee of between $3 and $5. That money is used to recycle the old tires into products from running tracks to roof shingles.

Ontario once had a similar fee, $5 per tire, but don’t try calling that a recycling program in front of Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller.

“That was the worst of all worlds. They were charging and everyone believed there to be a program, but the money was going to the general revenue stream,” said Miller, who was a bureaucrat at the time.

Given that unpopular tire tax – introduced by David Peterson’s Liberals in 1989 and killed by Bob Rae’s NDP in 1993 – recent governments have shied away from implementing a new tire program.

In 2005, when Waste Diversion Ontario proposed charging a $4 fee on passenger vehicle tires and a $6 fee on truck tires – and making sure the money was actually spent on recycling – the ghost of the previous program rose and in the middle of the controversy, Premier Dalton McGuinty killed it.

“There will be no tire tax. Everybody get that one?” McGuinty told reporters then.

When asked about that, Gerretsen said: “I’d rather not dwell on the past as to what happened when it didn’t happen.

“We as a government want to get much more aggressive in the whole recycling field. Whether we’re talking about blue box, hazardous waste, electronic waste or the tire program, we can do so much more,” he said.

That Gerretsen is taking the plunge on a new tire program is great, Miller said.

Right now, it’s hard to say what’s happening with the 12 million old tires Ontarians throw away each year. The Canadian Rubber Association estimates roughly half are shipped to the United States where they are burned as fuel and the rest are recycled, here or elsewhere, or stockpiled.

“There is some amount of tire recycling, but it’s sporadic,” Miller said. There’s a firm in Toronto that turns used tires into subflooring for new buildings and car parts and another in Woodbridge that makes playground surfaces, so, left on its own, the private market in Ontario has made inroads.

But there are consequences to not having a provincial program to direct efforts, Miller said.

For one, there’s no way to know that a company that takes used tires is actually recycling them and not just stockpiling them or shipping them for use as fuel.

“Tires are still being stockpiled and improperly disposed of,” said Miller, who doesn’t oppose some tires being used as fuel but thinks public policy should push toward higher-end recycling uses.

This week’s budget included $1.5 million to clean up an illegal stockpile of 300,000 tires in Middlesex County.

The 1990 Hagersville tire fire near Hamilton showed just how dangerous such stockpiles can be.

That blaze, involving 14 million tires, burned for 17 days and forced the evacuation of 1,200 people. It cost the province $10 million to fight the fire and clean up the mess. (The blaze prompted other provinces to pass laws to properly handle and recycle tires.)

A government-directed tire program could also force higher-end recycling, such as breaking down the tires into their original components and reusing the oil, carbon and steel, said Miller, instead of doing what’s easiest – such as burning tires for fuel or making blasting mats that are used in mining and construction but ultimately wind up in a landfill.

“We have the economies of scale, the technology, the markets, we should be doing the best of anybody in Canada,” on tire recycling, Miller said.

Gerretsen seems to agree. He speaks excitedly about Nova Scotia where tires are turned into roof shingles.

“My golly, I had a couple of them in my hand, I actually couldn’t tell any difference. It’s imagination like that, that we need as we go along,” Gerretsen said.

There will be controversy, too. Whether the fee is upfront for consumers, as was suggested the last time, or is charged to manufacturers who pass it on through a higher priced tire, consumers pay more.

Other provinces have opted for the upfront fee. That generally goes to a not-for-profit corporation that manages the recycling program on behalf of the government. It is expected Ontario would do something similar.

“The current minister has said something is coming back, we’ll have to wait and see, but I don’t anticipate it will be much different” than the $4 fee system proposed in 2005, Miller said.

While environmentally positive, this is politically challenging for the Liberals because opposition parties will try to label it as a broken promise not to raise taxes.

But Miller thinks Ontarians are well prepared for this one.

Recently, a friend asked him about the “environmental tax” he paid when he replaced his old tires.

“It’s a disposal fee that (shops) are charging on the old tires when you get new ones and they’re calling it a tax,” Miller said. “That has been happening in many tire shops across the province. … So if (the government) put this in place to drive recycling, I don’t think it would be as hard to implement because there’s an expectation now that in most shops when you buy tires you have to pay something.”