Lorne Nystrom - Response to the NDP Environment Caucus Questionnaire 1) What is your past experience in related advocacy work and initiatives? I have served in Parliament for 25 years, and I've been involved in my share of causes and battles. Some lessons I've learned: *Stand on principle:* In October 1970, despite the near-unanimous support the government enjoyed across the country, I stood with Tommy Douglas and opposed the imposition of the War Measures Act by the Trudeau government. Our case was clear: the government suspended the civil liberties of Canadians to respond to the acts of a handful of terrorists - a grossly disproportionate measure. We have to deal with all major issues this way: standing by our principles - when they're popular, and when they're not. *Build the team:* I served as chair of the Saskatchewan caucus of our party. It is a role that calls for some of the qualities the July 1995 NDP environment caucus *Environment News* says Canadians want from leaders: "knowing when to act and when not to"; "delegating responsibilities within a team"; requiring "pragmatic determination, as well as political techniques and skills"; and "being conciliatory and bringing together conflicting parties." Our party has been in power provincially in Saskatchewan for much of my career. We have applied many of the lessons learned to the federal scene, which is why much of our federal caucus in Saskatchewan was able to survive the 1993 election. Balancing competing federal and provincial interests within the party, and keeping our team on the same page, working together, is a major challenge - and a big reason for our success on the prairies. I'd like to see similar success across Canada. *Know the country:* I served as our party's spokesperson on constitutional issues. It's an issue few people in our party are more anxious to forget than me. But whatever else we can say about it, it was an unparalleled opportunity to get to know the country from coast to coast. I have crisscrossed our country many times, and gotten to know people in communities across Canada. *Make the economy the issue:* I served as finance critic for our caucus. In that role I learned a great deal about effective opposition tactics. I helped lead our filibuster against the introduction of the GST, for example. More important, it was also a chance to think through our party's policies on jobs and economic development. My conclusion, reinforced by many years touring the country: we have to make the economy the issue and make it our issue. As I set out below, our party's strong environmental commitment, and the ideas about environmental policy we have developed together during our party's renewal process, should be central to our jobs and economic message. 2) What is your present assessment of the state of Canadian and international environmental protection and sustainability? What still needs to be done? In April of this year the National Centre for Economic Alternatives issued a report comparing the environmental records of nine industrialized nations. According to the report, Canada has the second-worst record, behind France. The main reasons cited: a huge increase in pesticide and fertilizer use; increasing municipal waste; severe loss of wetlands, and wasteful water and energy use. Canada's poor record on environmental protection and sustainability is destroying jobs. The best example - the commercial extinction of the northern cod and other fisheries on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Canadian firms are exporting our country's frequently poor environmental practices. The cyanide spilt into the Essequibo River in Guyana - caused by a Canadian-owned gold mine - is a good example among many. Some pressing environmental priorities, both in Canada and globally: * Energy: We are (at most) approximately a generation away from exhausting the world's supply of readily-recoverable fossil fuels. * The atmosphere: The Rio convention provides an outline for global action on the issue, but we are still far away from the goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions in the developing world, or from preventing a massive increase in developing countries. * Water: Too many of our cities and towns still dump untreated or inadequately-treated household and industrial waste into water systems. In much of the rest of the globe, water is or will be a key strategic issue, on a par with dwindling fossil fuel supplies. Lakes and rivers throughout Eastern Europe are hopelessly fouled with industrial waste. Countries in arid and semi-arid regions are grappling with water mismanagement that is destroying water tables and salinizing marginal farmland. * Agriculture: Chemical-intensive, water-intensive, and energy-intensive agriculture pose multiple threats to the global environment. * Waste disposal: We are only beginning the task of grappling with ways to safely dispose of industrial and household waste - and to reduce the production of that waste in the first place. * Wastefulness: Our current industrial economy is grossly wasteful through the entire product cycle. Energy inefficient. Material inefficient. Producing waste and over-complex products that are difficult or impossible to recycle. The state of our fishery and of our forests demonstrate some of the consequences. * Population and biodiversity: The global population is rising, helping to drive all of the challenges outlined above, and threatening the biodiversity of our planet. 3) What future commitments will you undertake personally, and on behalf of the NDP, to ensure specific environmental protection and sustainability policy and practice is advanced? What are your priorities on such matters? In the consolidated renewal paper on global economic and social policy issues, our party's federal council adopted the following basic goals (advanced by the environment caucus, and based on work by Herman Daly): Our goal is to work with other nations to achieve sustainable communities, capable of living within the carrying capacity of the environment. That means working towards economies: * That use renewable resources at rates within their ability to regenerate; * That reduce the use of non-renewable resources so they do not exceed the rate at which sustainable renewable substitutes are developed; * That steadily reduce the emission of pollution until it no longer exceeds the ability to assimilate it. I believe these goals should be integrated into both our full employment policies, and our environmental strategy. Some examples of first steps to achieve this: *Energy:* The federal government should make a serious commitment to reducing energy consumption within our economy, and to developing sustainable energy alternatives. For example, a large-scale home insulation program would both reduce energy consumption and create real jobs. Canada could also work to take the lead on solar, thermal, wave energy alternatives - all also good potential job and export creators. *The atmosphere:* Canada needs to be serious about building on the Rio convention stabilizing and then reducing greenhouse gas emissions here, and working at the international level to sustain progress globally. *Water:* A nationally-coordinated strategy to reduce and fully treat industrial and household discharches would be a good start, and yet another excellent job creator. *Agriculture:* Our goal should be a less chemical-intensive, less water-intensive, and less energy-intensive agricultural industry. Applied biotechnology, efficient green farm implements and systems, and the steady replacement of bulk commodity exports with locally-produced value-added products are the beginnings of a solution. *Waste disposal:* Like all industrialized countries, Canada has an inheritance of poorly-stored toxic waste. We need to work to steadily and safely dispose of existing toxic wastes, and to stop adding to the problem. That means increasingly tough national standards. That means a new approach to production that plans for the entire cycle, including the recycling or effective treatment of by-products and waste - and the reduction in the production of by-products and waste in the first place. *Wastefulness:* More broadly, Canadians have to become much better stewards of our resources. Protecting our remaining forest resources is an obvious first priority. *Biodiversity:* In the consolidated policy statement adopted in June, our party's federal council called for a new approach to international trade agreements. A key priority: working through these agreements to set new international economic rules reducing environmental damage. Better standards around the globe is the strategy to reduce the destruction of our planet's biodiversity.