Alberta government to take reins of environmental monitoring agency

Monitoring the environmentalimpacts of industry is a core function of government, and the vital work should be the responsibilitynot of an arm's-length agency but of the province itself, says Alberta Environment Minister Shannon Phillips.

The minister announced Tuesday the governmentwill disbandthe Alberta Environmental Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Agency, created twoyears ago under the Conservatives.

Under the new system, the province will retain AEMERA's independent scientific review panel, but that panel, now headed by a chief scientist, will report directly to the department.

The panel will advise the chief scientist about what to monitor and how often to do so, and will report on its performance.

"In the past there have been questions about the credibility and transparency of this work," Phillips said. "Environmental monitoringwill now take its place alongside public safety and public health as part of the core business of government."

Outsourcing the work created duplication and wasted money, said Phillips, who had some harsh words for the Tory government her party replaced last spring.

"Certainly, the previous government, there were many instances in which they didn't take these matters seriously at all," she said. "Which led, in many ways, to the tarnishing of our international reputation."

The announcement came hours after a review called AEMERA a "failed experiment" and said its work should be rolled back intothe government.

The report said AEMERA wasneedlessly expensive, poorly co-ordinated and split by bureaucraticinfighting.

"It is hard to escape the conclusion that AEMERA is a failedexperiment in outsourcing a core responsibility ofgovernment to anarm's-length body," wrote report author Paul Boothe, director ofthe Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management at WesternUniversity's Ivey School of Business.

"Three years and tens of millions of dollars later, the resultsare an organization that is still struggling to get established,dysfunctional relationships with its two key partners ... and afailure of all three parties to realize the promise of the ... planto bring critically needed, world-class environmental monitoring toAlberta's oilsands."

New structure met with support

The agency was founded in 2012 after years of criticism about howAlberta was keeping track of the environmental impacts of thethen-rapidly expanding oilsands.

The plan was to bring provincial scientists together with resources from Environment Canada to jointly co-ordinate the study of how the industry was affecting the region's air, land and water.

The Wildrosesupports the government's move to dissolve the agencyand bring environmental monitoring in-house again.

"I think what we want most is world class environmental monitoring," said Todd Loewen, environment critic for the Wildrose.

Liberal leader David Swann said he will have to wait and see whether the NDPis able to provide better transparency than the previous government.

"In the past government there was no credibility about what the government was doing in-house," Swann said. "It remains to be seen now whether this government will provide the credibility in-house."

PC leader Ric McIver, whose party created AEMERA, said duringquestion period at the legislaturethat industry should not have to put money towardmonitoring that is no longer arms-length.

"This is taxation without representation," he said.

Industry pays $50 million to the agency, while the province contributes another $28 million to fund the expansion of environmental monitoring across the province.

Phillips said that will not change under the new structure.

'Bureaucratic infighting'

The agency's research plans have been hailed as a dramaticimprovement and numerous scientific papers have been published fromits work. But Boothe, a former Environment Canada deputy minister,said the organization itself never gelled.

Boothe's report points out thefunding agreement between government and industry expired a year agoand has never been renewed, "in part because of AEMERA'sunwillingness to accept (Environment Canada) as an equal partner inoilsands monitoring."

How the agency was supposed to work with the provincialEnvironment Department and who it was accountable to was never madeclear, he wrote.

The transfer of provincial scientists to the agency made it hardfor the government to fulfil its other environmentalresponsibilities. The agency's reluctance to allow for a federalrole restricted its use of Environment Canada resources.

Andrew Read, a policy analyst from the Pembina Institute, said even though AEMERA was considered arms-length, there was still political interference.

"Some of our concerns at the onset of AMERA was that there was still a check with the environment minister for the release of any environmental information," Read said."That will not be the case in the future and that is a positive step."

A steep price

It also costmore than it should.

"In part, the higher costs come because its governance andadministrative structures duplicate structures that already exist,at lower cost, in the public sector," wrote Boothe."In addition, costs are higher because AEMERA has chosen privaterather than public sector salary and benefit comparators."

Boothe outlined several options for Alberta Environment MinisterShannon Phillips. But his preferred path is to return the agency'swork to her department with clear lines of accountability to theminister.

"This option has the benefit of consolidating scarce scientificexpertise in one location in Alberta," he wrote. "Theadministrative structure of this option is likely to be the leastcostly to operate."

His concerns were presaged in February by a scientific peerreview, which found the agency's work was poorly focused andco-ordinated. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers alsoexpressed concerns about the need for more integration, analysis andcoherence.

Boothe concluded the agency failed because it was based on afalse belief that the public didn't trust Alberta's environmentalmonitoring because it was done by government. Instead, he said, thepublic didn't trust it because it was bad monitoring.

The new monitoring structure will be in place by summer 2016. The auditor general will review how it's working within two years.