Foreign cleanup adding to Canada’s $7.7B tab

Canada’s multibillion-dollar environmental liability for cleaning up polluted federal property stretches overseas, where nearly 130 international sites around the world, such as embassies and official residences, are on contaminated lands.

The nearly 130 foreign locations are part of the more than 22,000 federal contaminated sites, highlighted in a new report this week by Canada’s environment commissioner, that will cost the government at least $7.7 billion to clean up.

“The government needs to assess the full impact of all federal contaminated sites on the public purse,” federal environment commissioner Scott Vaughan said this week in publishing his report, which looked only at domestic sites and did not examine the contaminated foreign lands.

“Many of these sites are buried and out of the public eye, but they will impose human health risks and environmental and financial burdens for generations to come.”

Canadian embassies, high commissions, official residences and other federal lands in countries such as the United Kingdom, Brazil, the United States, Sudan, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Egypt, Finland, Jordan, Mexico and Syria are listed on the federal government’s inventory of contaminated sites.

Although the cases of dozens of foreign sites are now considered closed (no further action is deemed required, but they’re not necessarily remediated), they are still listed as contaminated and remain on the federal inventory.

Dozens more remain active and are in various stages of testing or remediation, although it’s uncertain how much they’ll cost the federal government to clean up.

For example, the Canadian Embassy in Brazil, in the capital of Brasilia, is listed as an active contaminated site that is in Step 3, an initial testing program, of a 10-stage process for identifying and cleaning up contaminated sites.

Soil at the embassy site is contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons, according to the federal inventory. An initial review of the site has been completed and additional “detailed testing (is) underway,” explains a summary report.

A suspected contaminated site on the list is the Canadian High Commission to the United Kingdom (Macdonald House), in trendy Grosvenor Square in the heart of London, where one tonne of contaminants are located, says the registry. Initial testing is underway.

Canada House, another part of the Canadian High Commission in Trafalgar Square, has five tonnes of contaminated material, although no further action is required.

More than 60 of the contaminated sites that the federal government is responsible for are in the U.S., with the U.K. next at 15 and Mexico at 11.

There is also a $500-million shortfall to deal with the sites within Canada that have already been assessed, and federal funding is shrinking significantly for examining the remaining locations.