Stop stalling on VW probe
What’s with all the foot-dragging at Canada’s environment ministry?
As the Star’s Jesse McLean and David Bruser report, it’s been nearly two years since it announced it was investigating Volkswagen Canada for allegedly installing “defeat devices.” The secret software allows cars to pass environmental standards tests when they are actually emitting 35 times the permitted levels of harmful nitrogen oxides on the open road.
It’s long past time that Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s department stopped stalling and completed its investigation.
After all, the car company has already faced stiff consequences in several other jurisdictions.
Regulators in the United States, for instance, managed to secure billions in penalties and settlements after the disgraced automobile manufacturer pleaded guilty there to installing the devices on its 2009 to 2015 2.0 litre diesel engine Volkswagen and Audi models. (Volkswagen owns Audi.)
In April, courts in Ontario and Quebec approved a $2.1-billion settlement in a class-action lawsuit that offered cash payments to 105,000 Canadian customers.
The company then agreed to pay an additional $15-million penalty resulting from an investigation by the federal Competition Bureau, which said Volkswagen and Audi misled consumers with false environmental marketing claims.
The environment ministry’s phlegmatic approach stands in stark contrast to the swift action elsewhere. As three prominent environmental groups argued in a letter to the ministry this week, the delay is sending a message to other businesses that they can get away with breaking environmental regulations.
“If you have rules you’re not enforcing, they’re not real rules,” said Sidney Ribaux, executive director of the environmental group Équiterre.
Équiterre is among the groups frustrated by the government’s handling of the long-running case, which the letter decried as “both unimpressive and unacceptable.”
The ministry says staff are working hard on the “highly complex” investigation and it must “be certain that we have gathered and analyzed all of the necessary evidence and supporting information before any charges are filed.”
That may be true, but why should it take two years, especially in light of all the confessions, evidence and precedents out there? The environmental groups are calling on the minister to take control of the investigation. McKenna should at the very least tell her ministry staff to step on the gas, explain the delay to the public and assure Canadians that justice will be done.
As part of its settlement in the U.S., Volkswagen agreed to pay governments $2.7 billion for environmental mitigation and spend another $2 billion for research on zero-emission vehicles there. If the company is found to be in breach of our own regulations, it will likely have to pay significant environmental penalties to Ottawa, monies that critics have pointed out could be well-used on pollution-related issues in Canada. The stakes are high.
The federal government must send a strong message now to businesses that its environmental rules are not just for show and that it will act quickly and effectively if it believes they have been skirted. The ministry must do what it is there to do: protect the environment and penalize those who would illegally pollute it.
The Environment Ministry has had almost two years to investigate the German automaker’s suspected use of secret software to cheat emissions tests. Why is it taking so long?