The Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Government of British Columbia have partnered to ensure the continued protection of several ecologically-sensitive properties formerly owned by The Land Conservancy of BC.

These high-priority properties contain some of the most biodiverse habitats in B.C., and are home to a wide variety of wildlife.

In October, the Province assumed ownership of the following properties:

• 3.7 hectares (two land parcels) along the Cowichan River on Vancouver Island, which includes streamside habitat with a maple forest grove and rare wildflowers.
• 45 hectares on the Similkameen River, featuring a rare riparian floodplain and upland grasslands habitat for species at risk, which is part of the South Okanagan Grasslands Protected Area.
• 35 hectares known as the Woods Family property, which provides habitat for bighorn sheep and is adjacent to Syringa Park near Castlegar.“The Nature Conservancy of Canada was extremely motivated to ensure these important properties remain protected, and to uphold the expectations of the donors who had originally contributed to their conservation,” said Nancy Newhouse, B.C. Regional Vice President with the Nature Conservancy of Canada. The Honourable Mary Polak, B.C. Minister of Environment, says she is “thrilled that the Province and the Nature Conservancy of Canada worked together to ensure these important properties remain protected for future generations to enjoy.”Quick Facts

“These lands will complement B.C.’s already beautiful world-renowned parks system,” she added.

“We are grateful for the support of the Province in helping to ensure these conservation lands will continue to be part of the British Columbia’s incredible conservation legacy.”

The Province intends to add these properties to existing parks and protected areas within the next five years. Additional properties to be acquired as part of this partnership will be announced next year. The Province has committed $1 million and will assume ownership of several of the 26 conservation properties transferred from The Land Conservancy to the Nature Conservancy of Canada in September 2015. The Province‘s contribution supports the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s agreement with The Land Conservancy, which required a cash contribution to assist in the repayment of creditors.

Quick Facts

• There are 1,029 provincial parks, recreation areas, conservancies, ecological reserves and protected areas covering more than 14 million hectares or approximately 14.4% of the provincial land base
• British Columbia has one of the largest protected areas systems in North America.
• One of the largest park systems in the world, British Columbia has the highest percentage of its land base dedicated to protected areas of all provincial Canadian jurisdictions.
• Since 2004, the system of Class A parks, conservancies, ecological reserves and protected areas has increased by more than 3.3 million hectares.
• Since 1962, Nature Conservancy Canada and its partners have helped to protect more than 2.7 million acres of land (1.1 million hectares) coast-to-coast

If Canada’s wetlands were a political party, they should get a majority government in the upcoming federal election, according to Ducks Unlimited Canada.

The award will be handed out annually to an individual, group or business who has demonstrated leadership in promoting or improving water and the environment within the NPCA’s watershed.

Net proceeds from the evening will support the work of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority through its Foundation, as well as establish the Rt. Hon. John Turner Environmental Scholarship.

The scholarship will be awarded to a student entering their second year of environmental study at Brock University with exceptional academic standing.

Mr. Turner has long been an outspoken advocate for good conservation practices, water resources, and wildlife issues.

The ongoing problem of drought in the United States means that Canada needs to stay vigilant in environmental policy, says former Canadian Prime Minister John Turner.

In a sweeping interview with Leaders and Legacies from his summer home in Kenora, situated on Canada’s storied Lake of the Woods, Mr. Turner sounded wary about the situation in the U.S.

“Arkansas, California…and other states are all drying up,” Mr. Turner says. “And they’ll (the U.S) eventually be looking at Canada’s water.”

Canada has one fifth of the world’s fresh water supply.

In fact, California has now entered its fourth consecutive year of drought. There is also general agreement that the entire American Southwest and the Central Plains regions are going to get drier due to an increase in greenhouse gas trapped in the atmosphere.

“The Americans claim that (water sales) are a part of the free trade agreement,” adds Mr. Turner, who is not a supporter of the deal in general. “But I say it’s not.”

He points out that Americans are already “swiping Lake Michigan’s water” which affects the overall Great Lakes basin.

U.S. companies are already making waves in other ways when it comes to water consumption, such as Nestlé Waters, Walmart and Coca-Cola. They own many of California’s bottling plants (more than 100) and have historic rights to huge quantities of water resources throughout the state. Nestlé also bottles water in B.C. Companies like this continue to divert water from various sources despite the ongoing drought in the U.S. As well, fracking within the natural gas industry uses millions of gallons of water.

“The environment is so important,” says the former Liberal prime minister. “And water is my number one priority. We just need to be careful in future negotiations with the United Sates.”

Meighen first joined ASF in 1993 as a Director, and has served as Chairman of ASF (Canada) since 2004. He helped to form the Meighen-Molson Professorship in Atlantic Salmon Research which led to the establishment of the highly regarded Canadian Rivers Institute at the University of New Brunswick, dedicated to aquatic science.

“Michael is a passionate salmon angler, conservationist and philanthropist who has worked tirelessly on behalf of wild Atlantic salmon,” said ASF President Bill Taylor when presenting the award to Meighen. “…We honour him for his great contribution to conserving, restoring and protecting this iconic species.”

In January, 2014, McGill University appointed Meighen as its 19th Chancellor, for a three-year term.  Then on December 26, 2014, Governor General David Johnston named Meighen to the Order of Canada.  He was named a Member of the Order, for his contributions to public life as a lawyer, politician (he served in the Senate from 1990 to 2012) and philanthropist.

Meighen is the son of lawyer and philanthropist Theodore Meighen and philanthropist Peggy deLancey Robinson, and the grandson of former Prime Minister of Canada Arthur Meighen. He is past chair of the Stratford Festival and current chair of the T. R. Meighen Family Foundation.

The Atlantic Salmon Federation is dedicated to the conservation, protection and restoration of wild Atlantic salmon and the ecosystems on which their well-being and survival depend.

A new expert panel report, Assessing the Evidence: Wind Turbine Noise, released today by the Council of Canadian Academies provides an in-depth examination of 32 potential adverse health effects linked to wind turbine noise. For most of the identified symptoms, the evidence is inadequate to draw a direct link between wind turbine noise and a negative health effect.

However, there is sufficient evidence of a causal relationship between exposure to such noise and annoyance.

Determining whether wind turbine noise causes adverse health effects is an important issue as demand  for renewable energy, including wind power, is expected to grow in Canada and around the world. The wind sector has expanded rapidly since the 1990s, and Canada is now the fifth-largest global market for the installation of wind turbines. With this demand, however, come concerns that the presence of wind turbines may pose a public health risk to nearby residents. In response to public concern, Health Canada asked the Council of Canadian Academies to conduct an in-depth expert panel assessment to evaluate the evidence and identify gaps in knowledge.

“The Panel looked at what had been written on the potential health effects of exposure to wind turbines, in the scientific literature, legal cases, and the most informative public documents,” said Dr. Tee Guidotti, Expert Panel Chair.

“We identified 32 health issues and then analyzed the published peer reviewed studies on each problem to determine if there was evidence for a causal relationship with wind turbine noise.”

The Panel’s report stresses that, given the nature of the sound produced by wind turbines and the limited quality of available evidence, the health impacts of wind turbine noise cannot be comprehensively assessed and further information and study are required.

The Panel outlined 11 main findings discussed in the full report. Some findings include:

1. The evidence is sufficient to establish a causal relationship between exposure to wind turbine noise and annoyance.
2. There is limited evidence to establish a causal relationship between exposure to wind turbine noise and sleep disturbance.
3. The evidence suggests a lack of causality between exposure to wind turbine noise and hearing loss.
4. For all other health effects considered (fatigue, tinnitus, vertigo, nausea, dizziness, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, etc.), the evidence was inadequate to come to any conclusion about the presence or absence of a causal relationship with exposure to wind turbine noise.
5. Technological development is unlikely to resolve, in the short term, the current issues related to perceived adverse health effects of wind turbine noise.
6. Impact assessments and community engagement provide communities with greater knowledge and control over wind energy projects and therefore help limit annoyance.

The Expert Panel’s assessment was extensive; they considered a wide range of evidence and developed a rigorous methodology for their work. The resulting report provides key information and insights on what is known and not known about wind turbine noise and its possible impacts on human health. The foundation of knowledge contained in the report can support all levels of government, the scientific community, industry, and community stakeholders as future policies, regulations, and research agendas are considered.

One out of every five Australian households are turning to solar energy for their electricity or hot water, new data has reveled.

RenewEconomy in Australia reports that the Australian Bureau of Statistic (ABS) shows that 19 per cent of households nationally now currently use either rooftop solar panels or solar powered hot water systems – up from about 5 per cent back in 2011, when the ABS first started publishing statistics on solar.

Of the 19 per cent, 14 per cent of these households have rooftop PV, according to the ABS’s Karen Connaughton.

“Add in solar hot water heating and we’re up to 19 per cent, so one in five households are now using some form of solar power.”

South Australia scored highest for rooftop solar installations, with a huge 24 per cent of households there tapping electricity from the sun.

The ABS’ statistics also found that almost all households in Australia (99.7 per cent) used electricity as a source of energy, while half (50 per cent) used gas.

One in five households used LPG/bottled gas (20 per cent), and 14 per cent of households used another source of energy.

The report also notes that three-quarters of Australian households use some form of cooling, with just under half choosing reverse cycle air conditioning and the remainder mostly split between refrigerated air conditioning and evaporative coolers.

“The hot spot for cooling was the Northern Territory,” said Connaughton, “where 97 per cent of households had some form of cooling.” Tasmania had the least, with only about half of all households having air conditioning.

— This article was first published at RenewEconomy.

Annette Verschuren is the CEO of energy storage company NRStor.

Interviewed by Brenna Atnikov.

Atnikov: What keeps you up at night?

Verschuren: The discussion of the economy versus the environment. We’re never going to create innovation if we polarize ourselves on these two issues. Why can’t we both add value to our industries and take greater responsibility for managing our natural resources? It’s healthy to have differences of opinion, but not when we reduce issues to black or white. When you’re too far to the right or to the left on an issue, you very rarely succeed in solving problems. The gray area is where the resolutions happen. Right now, we’re fighting on the details and not on the big issues. We have to find more things we can all agree on.

There’s not enough concern in our country about the economy. The jobs aren’t there, the pension funds aren’t there, people aren’t living happily ever after. Maybe we haven’t hit the wall hard enough. I am worried about where the new jobs are going to come from and that other countries are going to steal them away. The clean technology that’s happening in Korea, China, Japan, and in parts of Europe is so advanced relative to what we’re doing. We’ve got to catch up.

A weakness in Canada is that there aren’t enough women in senior leadership roles. Imagine how much more productive our country could be if we called on all of our talent as opposed to parts of it! We have the brains and are blessed with the greatest natural resources in the world; we now need a lot of courageous leadership to be able to sustain and build on what we have.

Atnikov: If things turn out well over the next 20 years, what needs to happen?

Verschuren: The new economy is going to come from finding more productive ways to produce food and energy, to use water, to extract and refine oil and gas, to extract minerals. Why can’t we be the country that takes on the challenge of reducing the carbon footprint? Why can’t we be the country that most responsibly produces fossil fuels and minerals and the like? We’re really good at so many things! We’re one of the leaders in the world at brain research and cancer diagnostics. We also have some great stuff happening in information and communications technology, in data management, in big data analytics. With our educated workforce and the myriad of research facilities across the country, we have enormous potential to solve all kinds of problems.

I would love the story to be that Canada was a little bit stuck for a few years on where it was going, but look at what it did. It reduced its energy footprint. It’s got the best cities and transit systems. For these things to happen, we need to take a longer-term perspective; we can’t just wait for the next quarter and see what the results are.

Atnikov: How would we shift to more of a longer-term mindset?

Verschuren: There are all kinds of things we could do, but you’ve got to know where you’re going. Deficit cutting is great, but sometimes too much deficit cutting hurts the economy. If you know where you’re going, you can develop whatever you need. For instance, we could do what London did and institute a congestion charge to manage the number of cars in our cities and increase money towards transit. We could start to think about pricing greenhouse gases. Healthcare is another area that has enormous potential. We aren’t talking enough about what we can do to build the healthcare business; instead, we focus on costs, costs, and costs!

Atnikov: Are there examples of where we’ve done particularly well in addressing such challenges?

Verschuren: The forestry industry faced a crisis, got together, and made changes. There’s a lot of progress happening in the mining industry and in the oil and gas businesses. You learn from trying. All kinds of spinoffs and new products come out of doing things innovatively. For example, the clothing that people wear in the winter came out of the American and Canadian space programs. We’ve got all these innovation incubators—we now need to advance the commercialization of some of the research they’re doing.

Atnikov: What important upcoming decisions does Canada have to make?

Verschuren: Canadians have to rethink what we want to be and how we want people to see us. We’re not putting the right investment in the right places, because we don’t know where we’re going. We have to be more optimistic and find ways to move our society towards creating value. People want to rally behind a future, and right now, nobody is describing what that future is. Leadership can really create change, and people will follow behind a sensible vision for the country. If the vision is clear, we will find a way to get there. We need inspirational leadership—from unions, First Nation, business, government—to take us to that point.

— This interview originally ran on Possible Canadas.

There’s a lingering perception that solar power is expensive. It’s a myth that Joseph Barker spends his days happily busting. In fact, he says, it’s not only free but a money-making opportunity for consumers.

As senior broker and managing partner at Solar Brokers Canada, Barker loves nothing more than ensuring that people across the Greater Toronto Area and other select communities not only get free installation of solar panels, but also showing them how they’ll make money doing it.

In select markets, Solar Brokers Canada and its partners can finance solar panel installation and share the profits from Ontario’s unique MicroFIT (feed-in-tariff) program. The profits are shared with the home owner, while also ensuring that there is zero cost for them.

The typical southern Ontario suburban home can generate an annual revenue of over $4,500, says Barker, which translates to a return on investment of over 10 percent.

“There’s a perception that solar is too expensive,” says Barker, “but now we have financial models that make it accessible. I’m literally offering you, as a home owner, $60,000 in investment with no strings attached.”

“Honestly, it’s too good to be true.”

Barker recently found out he’s not the only who thinks it’s too good to be true. He says a woman who was recently quite interested in the program shared it with her financial advisor, whom she had known for a long time. The advisor declared that it couldn’t be true – that there must be a catch – and told her not to go through with it.

Barker just shakes his head now at the memory but getting through to people is part of the work he, and others like him, have cut out for him in this relatively new industry.

He says the biggest correlation in sales is whether or not one’s neighbor has a solar system installed.

“Once neighbours hear about it from each other, it sells itself,” he says.

There’s no doubt neighbours must be talking. Barker says his organization is less than three years old, and last year they had eight percent of the market. In just the last three months, they now have 50 percent of the contracts.

According to Solar Brokers Canada’s website, as a part of the free solar program, the home owner can share in the profits without spending their own money, and can be paid upwards of $32,000 (based on a 10kW solar system, which requires approx. 800 square feet of roof space) over the term of the MicroFIT contract.

Once the term is completed, the solar system is transferred to the home owner, which increases the home’s value. Furthermore, the home’s hydro bill can be reduced by up to 100 percent by using the power generated by the solar panels.

The Ontario government launched the MicroFIT program in 2009 with the goal of increasing renewable energy in the province.

Barker points out it is the “largest climate change initiative in North America.” It essentially encourages the development of ‘micro’ renewable electricity generation plants (of 10kilowatts or less) on home owners’ properties.

Once this is established, the program participants are paid a fixed price for the electricity produced which is then delivered to the province’s electricity grid.

For more information about the solar programs offered in Ontario, visit Solar Brokers Canada.

Roger Gibbins is senior fellow at the Canada West Foundation.

Interviewed by Monica Pohlmann.

Pohlmann: What concerns you about Canada these days?

Gibbins: We’re losing our sense of community in terms of the country as a whole. Many people feel that, if you’ve got a great local community and you have a rapid rail line to an international airport, that’s all you need. So the provincial and national communities become irrelevant. The opportunity to go and experience the world and then come back to a base is great, but I worry about a loss of purpose for Canada as a whole. We’re losing faith in our political institutions and our capacity to do things together. There is a narrowing of perspectives that’s not unique to Canada, but nonetheless, having people in this large, ungainly country turn inward is alarming.

Overall, the situation with aboriginal people is positive, with a lot of energy and innovation. But at the same time, I fear First Nations will become more and more isolated rather than part of the national mainstream. That isolation is not going to be healthy. When groups are close to the larger society, all of the positive things about integration can work. It’s the small, remote communities that concern me. That’s not a future.

We have a fetishlike approach to the environment: We focus on these seven trees or this particular lake, and fail to engage in trade-offs. You would hope that if I’m in my neighbourhood protecting my trees, there’s a local attachment, but also in the back of my head there’s something about, how does this work for the province? How does this work for Canada? You want that internal debate in people’s heads, and I don’t think that’s there right now.

Pohlmann: What important decisions do we have to make?

Gibbins: We are a resource-based economy. It is a pretty sound prediction that a resource-based economy is not going to serve us well 20 years down the road. We’ll have to transform ourselves, but how do we do it? A lot of people want to establish Calgary as a leader in the energy field. But we’re never going to out-compete the Chinese on solar power or the Germans on wind power. If we have a niche in the global economy, what is it?

We import a lot of water these days through agricultural products such as tomatoes and avocados. Water is difficult to move around—it’s heavy, it’s expensive—but the products that come from water are easier to move. Water is going to be a strategic asset. Do water shortages elsewhere create openings for Canadian agriculture? Is agriculture in fact, one of our niches? If so, what form of agriculture? And how can we be promoting that?

Pohlmann: What lessons do we need to learn from our past failures?

Gibbins: You’ve heard the old Alberta expression, “Give me another oil boom, and I promise not to piss it away!” Alberta is a great example where we took in huge amounts of wealth but this didn’t leave us better off. In BC, Premier Christy Clark has a vision that the resource wealth from liquid natural gas will generate a bounty that can be used to do different things within the province. She is on the right track, in that we have to use that bounty in a transformative way.

If you’re in the travel business, you sell the destination not the trip. Christy Clark is trying to sell the trip, and that’s not good enough. Harper has a destination in mind, but he hasn’t clearly articulated it. If people fear the end that Harper has in mind, they are not going to buy into the means. If we had a clear vision of where we are heading as a country or as a province, a vision that is a bit better than lower taxes or higher salaries, then it would be easier to sell. We haven’t articulated that vision. As a consequence, it’s hard to counter the opposition that comes up.

Pohlmann: What energizes you about Canada?

Gibbins: I like what we’ve done in urban Canada; despite the big challenges out there, we’ve been able to create urban environments that are pretty safe, interesting, and energetic. We’ve created a degree of political tranquillity in the country that in some ways is stifling but also has given us a great deal of internal comfort. In our national politics, we don’t tear people down. We’ve done reasonably well in knitting together a difficult country into a society that is remarkably inclusive and diverse. We have been a significant international player. We beat ourselves up all the time about our track record on the environment, and yet we’ve accomplished quite a bit at the local scale. There are exceptions, but nonetheless, we have done things pretty well. We should take pride in what we’ve accomplished in this country.

Pohlmann: As a country, what should we be talking about that we are not?

Gibbins: The 150th anniversary provides an opportunity to push Canadians into thinking about the future. In 1967, the premiers of Ontario and Quebec hosted a conversation called the Confederation of Tomorrow Conference. It’s time for us to have another national conversation about a whole set of pressing concerns. The world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket in ways that are quite discouraging. It makes it even more important for Canadians to begin to talk in constructive ways about our own country, what can we do here, and how can we protect the kind of prosperity and social harmony that we’ve had. The infamous UN report of 20 years ago or so that described Canada as the best place in the world to live may have done us a disservice by making us complacent. We didn’t get here by accident; we’ve created the kind of country we have through an act of will. If that will weakens or loses its focus, then a lot of what we have will be precarious. My fear is that we’ve solved the problems of the past but we’re rapidly being overtaken by the problems of the future. We somehow need to crystallize our best thinking into a vision for the future.

— This article originally ran on Possible Canadas.