Healthcare — long the sole
political issue that could stir up the passions we Canadians
normally reserve for hockey and beer — has been
replaced as voters' top concern. According to a Decima
poll released this month, 19% of Canadians said the
environment is the issue they're most concerned about;
healthcare placed a distant second at 13%.
In the same poll the governing
Conservatives took a drubbing with 74% of voters expressing
disapproval of their handling of the environment. Even
a strong majority of self-described Tories deemed the
Harper government poor caretakers of the earth. This
year's topsy-turvy winter, widely attributed to global
warming, isn't restoring anyone's faith.
But doctors needn't be concerned
that healthcare is playing second fiddle to the environment
in the national conscience, according to the Canadian
Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE),
because the two issues are inextricably linked.
Dr Warren Bell, an FP from Salmon
Arm, BC, and past president of CAPE, says our polluted
environment plays a direct role in the health of patients.
"The most immediate crossover health/environment issue
is the level of contamination in food," he says. "That
ranges everywhere from deliberate manipulation of the
food supply — like hormone residues and antibiotic
residues — to unintended contamination with heavy
metals and all sorts of infective agents like viruses
resulting from the use of sewage on crops as a so-called
growth enhancer."
SOMETHING
IN THE AIR
Your patients most directly affected by environmental
changes are those with respiratory ailments. The OMA
estimated that in 2005, about 5,800 people in Ontario
would die because of dirty air. The newly-released Air
Quality Report revealed that 2005 was Ontario's smoggiest
in the 35 years air quality has been measured. "We're
getting a little bit worse each year," the OMA's clean
air adviser Dr Ted Boadway told the CBC, predicting
that smog advisories will become more and more common
in the winter.
For CAPE president Gideon Forman,
our leaders' inaction on this front is a national scandal
nonpareil. "The government's initial proposals around
the Clean Air Act were woefully inadequate. I mean they
were talking about cutting emissions by the year 2050
— that's just silly," he says. "We need, minimally,
to agree to our Kyoto targets."
He thinks we should take immediate
action on the biggest polluters. "In Ontario we have
the Nanticoke Coal Plant, the biggest air polluter in
Canada," he says. "It should be shut down and converted
to natural gas." According to the Ontario Clean Air
Alliance, Nanticoke and the three other coal-firing
facilities in Ontario are responsible for 27% of the
province's sulphur dioxide emissions — a key ingredient
of smog and a major trigger of asthma attacks.
BIRD'S
EYE VIEW
"Climate canary" — one of the buzz terms of the
environmental movement — describes those who are
the first to be affected by climate change. Dr Bell
feels the Inuit are Canada's climate canaries and they're
telling us that things are already bad. "Climate change
is already having a very significant effect on fauna
at the extreme northern margin of the country. Polar
bears ending up drowning in the severely broken ice
cover," he says. "The Inuit have been commenting on
this for 10 or 15 years."
Dr Bell argues that the reality
on the ground — including our weird winter —
delivers a crushing blow to climate change sceptics.
"The last couple of years illustrated the kind of turbulence
and what people describe as 'extreme weather events'
that make it very clear that the process predicted by
the International Panel on Climate Change is in fact
accurate — they said that when the climate warms
up there will be these unusual weather patterns," he
says.
GREEN
WITH ENVY
When Stéphane Dion launched his campaign for
the federal Liberal leadership crown, he wore a green
scarf to advertise his devotion to environmental matters.
The strong win by underdog Dion — who named his
dog Kyoto — showed the power of the green vote.
Since then politicians have been scrambling to catch
up. "This issue has never been this prominent," says
Mr Forman. "You have a situation where the federal parties
are trying to outdo each other to say who's greenest
— I've never seen anything like this in Canada."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper evidently
began to feel the heat of global warming himself this
month, when he replaced floundering Environment Minister
Rona Ambrose with John Baird.
CAPE naturally has lots of advice
for Mr Baird. "A huge issue I would like to bring up
with the new health minister is the Alberta oil sands,"
says Mr Forman. "Some estimates have said that 50% of
the increase in greenhouse gas emissions in Canada in
the coming years will be due to the tar sands projects.
Minimally we should have a moratorium on oil sands development
until we get our head around it."
Dr Bell also has a pretty good
idea of what he'd do if he were in Mr Baird's shoes.
He'd start by harnessing Canada's natural energy-producing
resources like wind and sun. Then he'd offer federal
incentives to the provinces to encourage green initiatives
in farming and construction. "I'd make it easy for people
who want to do it right and difficult for people who
want to do it wrong," he says.
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