Time for stewardship

Dear editor:
Please accept this open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the closure of the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA).
Dear Prime Minister:
The Globe and Mail calls your government’s decision to close the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) a “travesty.”
Well before the Globe adopted the word, two thinking people of people of my acquaintance—a judge and a children’s mental health worker—used the same word when commenting on the closure.
The Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal calls the decision “appalling.”
But scorn, reason, and the demand for evidence-based decision-making have had no effect on you, Prime Minister, or your government. So let me appeal to your sense of patriotism and to the roots of conservative thinking.
As Kenora residents, Darlene Stepanik and Teika Newton, have told readers of the Miner and News, the ELA is Northwestern Ontario’s “gem” and “treasure.” The ELA produces world-class freshwater science which protects the Earth. It teaches school children from Northwestern Ontario something about that science—and it is right in their own backyard.
ELA is something which the world admires and respects; it is something all Canadians can take pride in.
Patriotism is built on pride. Pride comes from creating institutions which preserve and conserve traditions that are emblematic of our shared values and sometimes, as with the ELA, produce excellence and greatness.
The government spent how much helping us recall, with pride, the war of 1812? The government was prepared (perhaps still is) to spend $65 million, or is it $85 million, for a single F-35—enough money to keep the ELA running for at least 30 years.
So why not, Prime Minister, actually make the “conserve” in conservative resonate with patriotic Canadians and preserve one of our best and brightest?
The government’s handling of the ELA has produced not just scorn and ridicule, here and abroad, but it has weakened the trust of many in this government’s wisdom and commitment to democracy.
At a time when Canada, in its quest for Keystone, is selling itself as an environmentally-friendly good steward and at a time when the degradation of the oilsands is squarely in focus, why not take up Dr. David Schindler’s suggestion and use the ELA to do the science on oilsands pollution—the same science the ELA has done on phosphorus, acid rain, and mercury; the same science which protects the fish and the water and human health, here and around the world?
Why not take one important, one small but credible step, towards proving our “greenness” to our American brothers?
Why not do the patriotic thing—the conservative thing?
Remember, that the United States uses ELA science—in fact, has sent its scientists to ELA to do the science—to control phosphorus, acid rain, and mercury. Is not this reason enough to keep the ELA open?
Is the ELA not an asset which a steward would wish to proudly display?
Some see the death of the ELA as part of a war on science. Prime Minister, you must know that this is a war you cannot win; indeed, it is a war you really do not want to win.
Remember that some of the research at ELA involves data collection and research on the effects of climate change.
For example, Prime Minister, you can tell your fishing buddies that ELA’s climate studies tell us that the observed rise in water temperature in the ELA lakes since 1969 has reduced the cold-water habitat upon which lake trout depend.
The war on science makes you appear, Prime Minister, both unpatriotic and despotic.
It is a war which divides Canadians, erodes trust in your government, and makes us doubt your commitment to conservation.
It is a war which no one can win, and in which everyone will lose because if we refuse to defend our land with what science has to teach us, all life on the planet will suffer.
Put the rancour aside, Mr. Harper. Let the Trent University science team do its nano-silver work and others continue their long-term research.
Open the gates or the studies will be lost or compromised, and money wasted, dreams shattered, careers frustrated, and our health more at risk.
Open the ELA. You have nothing to lose.
Sincerely,
Peter Kirby
Kenora, Ont.