Report sees end to climate work
Scientist disputes feds’ estimate of finish at Farm by 2018
A controversial new federal report suggests that most of the climate change studies at the Central Experimental Farm will wrap up by March 2018.
The report was prepared by Environment and Climate Change Canada in response to a series of questions submitted by the commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
It was recently published on the website of the Auditor General of Canada, but at least one federal scientist insists that it is plain wrong. The report says that eight scientific studies are underway at the Central Experimental Farm that deal with specific issues related to climate change. According to the report, two were completed in March 2016, one is to be completed in March 2017 and five more in March 2018.
Three other studies that address climate change issues are planned for the site, but have yet to be launched. One of those studies could be conducted elsewhere, the report says, but two others are specifically designed to take advantage of the unique characteristics of the farm’s soil and the detailed, historic knowledge of its land management.
“Overall,” the report concluded, “the impact of closing down studies on the site (is) more relevant to scientific knowledge supporting the agricultural productivity and economy than scientific knowledge on environment and climate change.”
The authors of the report said they could not assess the value of the climate science that would be lost by transferring 60 acres of the farm to the National Capital Commission for the construction of a new hospital: “At this point, the value of this forgone knowledge cannot be assessed, nor the acceptability of this knowledge not being created.”
A federal scientist who works at the Central Experimental Farm, however, called the report deeply flawed and insisted Friday that its authors do not understand the nature of climate studies.
Ed Gregorich, a soil scientist whose research contributed to the 2007 Nobel Prize awarded the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the report’s conclusions are based on a poor understanding of the way climate change research is funded — usually in renewable, three-year blocks.
“Climate change research is not ending at all,” he said. “I have one that will go beyond 2018, but our funding cycle is three years.”
Gregorich said long-term research on the field is valuable because it’s built on a base of historical knowledge. If that research is moved, he argued, its value is lost.
“Climate change science is going to continue, but if we move, that changes everything because you start from zero. Then you don’t have the data that you have accumulated that you can use to validate models,” he said. “We are trying to address big questions here and you need this type of long-term information.”
Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre said Friday the government report leaves little doubt that eight of the climate studies now underway at the farm would be completed before any shovel goes into the ground for a new hospital.
“The argument we’ve been hearing from the friends of the farm is that this is critically important to environmental and climate change research. But this document says explicitly the contrary.”
Poilievre has asked federal officials to explain what specific research will be scuttled by the hospital proposal that could not be moved to another part of the farm, or to a new site. He is still waiting for that breakdown.
“I don’t see any irreplaceably precious research happening — certainly not any that would justify blocking the construction of a public hospital,” he said.
Leslie Maitland, co-chair of the Coalition to Protect the Experimental Farm, said the value of the farm’s climate change research is “pretty obvious.”
“We’re losing unique studies that have been underway for decades,” she said.
“Meanwhile, we just had the driest summer in Eastern Ontario in decades, and farmers are desperate for the information and the strategies that the Experimental Farm can provide for them to cope with a changing climate.”
Maitland’s coalition petitioned the federal government in January under Section 22 of the Auditor General Act, demanding answers to a series of questions about the former Conservative government’s decision to transfer a parcel of farm land to the NCC for a new hospital in Ottawa.
The current government handed the file to the NCC. Last week, the NCC held a consultation session to solicit public opinion about 12 potential sites for a new Civic campus of The Ottawa Hospital. Four of the 12 sites being evaluated are on the farm, a national historic site that dates to 1886.
The NCC board of directors will vote on a site in late November