Dear editor:
Premier Harris’ open letter of June 3 is absolute proof that you can’t believe everything you read.
There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that the premier’s initial strategy during this brief visit to Walkerton was to blame the NDP for the town’s contaminated water tragedy.
As we quickly saw, that course of action didn’t work. People rightly criticized the premier for finger-pointing rather than accepting responsibility.
Despite his denials, the premier knew exactly what he was doing when he played “Blame the NDP.” He was trying to deflect the public’s focus away from his Conservative government and the $100 million in cuts it made to environmental protection, enforcement, and monitoring.
It may be easier to cast blame than accept the truth but it’s patently dishonest to do so. The truth is that the Conservatives let go 900 front-line environmental law enforcers.
As a result, the resources no longer are available to ensure the tough standards of enforcement and the proactive protection of the environment the NDP had in place.
The truth is, the NDP government was an environmental leader. In 1994-95, the NDP’s environment budget was $558 million, including $200 million that went to establishing the Ontario Clean Water Agency (OCWA), specifically dedicated to dealing with water and sewer issues.
OCWA was one of a number of environmental initiatives brought in by the NDP.
In the 2000-2001 Ministry of Environment budget, the Ontario Conservative government’s spending in real dollars is actually below the 1971-72 levels the year the ministry was first created. It was Mike Harris who closed the provincial water testing labs and put those operations in private hands.
The NDP consulted with municipalities and, in 1994, agreed to give them the option they wanted of using private labs for water testing. In contrast, the Conservatives shut down the public labs and pushed more than 400,000 more water tests into the for-profit arena–at quintuple the price that municipalities paid for provincial lab tests the NDP provided at cost.
The Conservatives took, and continue to take, money out of the environment ministry to finance tax cuts. That’s the last place the premier wants the spotlight to land.
During a massive global recession, the NDP chose to maintain or increase spending on the environment because we recognize the key role government has in keeping our air and water safe and clean.
Now, as people begin to see the correlation between tax cuts and the erosion of essential services like clean air, safe drinking water, and failing infrastructure, the government digs deeper to find someone else to blame.
What a shame.
Signed,
Howard Hampton
Leader, Ontario NDP