Stand up to Trump on Great Lakes folly
EDITORIAL: WHAT OTHERS THINK
Never one to abandon an idea simply because it’s generally seen as terrible, Donald Trump is again proposing to gut protections for the Great Lakes, thus threatening the environment, drinking water and a great many jobs in his country and ours.
Policymakers of every stripe, on both sides of the border, should again stand up, as they did last year, and decry this idea as the outrageous folly it is. The proposal was killed once. It can be killed again.
Last year, Trump sought to reduce funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, an Obamaera program that has done much toward its titular aim, from around $300 million per year to about $10 million.
Mayors, governors and premiers, researchers and advocates in the Great Lakes states and provinces and beyond, warned that this was a very bad idea. These lakes, polluted and beset by algal blooms and invasive species, are under threat, they argued, and this should not be taken lightly.
The Great Lakes, after all, comprise one of the largest freshwater resources in the world, a source of drinking water for some 40 million people in the United States and Canada. They provide hundreds of thousands of jobs and habitat for an extraordinary diversity of animal species. They play a profoundly important role in many communities and in the overall health of our part of the planet.
Congress, seized by rare good sense (or perhaps by fear of political fallout), blocked the cut. Nevertheless Trump persisted, proposing a cut nearly as deep in this year’s budget, released earlier last week.
This squeeze is part of a larger attempt to defund the Environmental Protection Agency, which Trump has often called a “job killer,” unfriendly as it is to environment-corroding industry.
But you know what would be a real job killer? The destruction of one of the world’s most significant fresh-water fisheries, for example, the inevitable outcome if the Great Lakes are left unprotected from polluters, algal blooms and invasive Asian carp. These lakes, also vital to local tourism, farming and hydroelectricity industries, are thought to sustain about 1.5 million jobs in the U.S. alone.
In Canada, the importance of the Great Lakes can hardly be overstated. They provide drinking water to a quarter of our population and their basin is home to a quarter of our agricultural production. They have played a central role in our cultural and economic history and are held as sacred by First Nations communities.
The prime minister and the premiers of Ontario and Quebec have all vowed, at various times, to protect the Great Lakes. But clearly they can’t do that alone. This attempted assault by the White House on our shared environment requires a response.
Nobody thinks this budget will be passed in the form laid out, not least because of the president’s dismal legislative record. Still, defenders of the lakes, including those in Canada, would be unwise to take on faith that Trump’s proposal will fail. They must impress again on members of Congress what a short-sighted and dangerous idea this is and urge them to hold the line.
An editorial from the Toronto Star (distributed by The Canadian Press)