OTTAWA - A spokesman for NAFTA's environmental watchdog has blasted Canada for failing to release two reports that examine Ottawa's alleged failure to enforce its own environmental laws.
But the office of Environment Minister John Baird denies any intention to suppress the reports, and says Canada is working with its NAFTA partners to make them public.
One of the reports examines a complaint that the Ontario logging industry is allegedly destroying 45,000 birds' nests annually in violation of the Migratory Birds Convention.
The other deals with allegations that Canadian pulp mills are releasing toxic effluent in contravention of the Fisheries Act.
Geoff Garver, a senior official at the NAFTA Commission for Environment Co-operation (CEC), which prepared the reports, says they should normally have been released within 60 days.
"We're now at seven months and that is unprecedented," said Garver. "We're very concerned about the time it is taking to vote on these factual records."
The Montreal-based CEC was set up to address concerns that free trade could lead countries to neglect their environmental laws in order to gain a trade advantage.
Its mandate includes investigation of citizen complaints deemed to be of significant public interest. Its investigations are influential because of their thoroughness and objectivity.
"They do take quite a bit of time," said Garver. "Just for the investigation part alone, we're typically talking $50,000 - $100,000, not including staff time.
"We rely on the governments for a lot of information. For the pulp and paper report we made five site visits, had meetings, hired a consultant. They are major efforts."
Under CEC rules, environment ministers from the three NAFTA countries must vote on release of a report, but in practice it is generally left to the country that is being investigated to release the findings.
Baird's director of communications, Mike van Soelen, said the reports will be released, but could not say when.
"They're complex, lengthy, very thorough documents so it requires all three governments to essentially review them and greenlight them."
Albert Koehl of the Canadian Environment Law Association, which filed the complaints leading to the investigations, says the credibility of the NAFTA environmental side-agreement is at stake.
"Generally people don't have a high regard for environmental protections in trade agreements," said Koehl. "So there's a small price for each of these countries to have some credibility when it comes to environmental protection.
"The government is really undermining the NAFTA environmental watchdog by not releasing these investigations."
Koehl said he finds it implausible that the United States or Mexico would object to release of the reports, suggesting that Ottawa wants to avoid publication of embarrassing facts.
