In Joyce Murray's report on the Bali Conference, she uses the H-word.  She writes of the "shameful hypocrisy" of the Canadian government. 

Joyce Murray's commitment to the environment is presumably above reproach.  Some people would say that would have to be the case if she is going to call other people hypocrites.  She and her husband Dirk Brinkman run Brinkman & Associates Reforestation, a forestry renewal consultancy group.  The website for Brinkman & Associates sings Joyce Murray's praises:

Joyce Murray developed her MBA thesis in 1992, setting forth Canada’s obligations in responding to the climate challenge and the opportunities that presented for its forests. At that time she was awarded the Deans award. Now, fifteen years later, her policy analysis and conclusions still stand the test of time.

In 2000 Joyce became the Minister of Water, Land and Air Protection for British Columbia after working as a cofounder and Director of Quality for Brinkman & Associates for twenty five years. In that role she drafted the BC Climate Policy statement. Now Joyce is running as the Federal Liberal Candidate in Vancouver Quadra to be a part of a new Stéphane Dion government. We wish her the best.

If she wins in the by-election for the Liberal Party, Joyce Murray can join Stephane Dion in the fight against global warming.  Including that most terrible polluter, Canada's vast forests!

Forests?

The government decision has angered environmentalists, who say the Kyoto opt-out clause, negotiated under the Chrétien government, means Canada is not taking responsibility for its total emissions.

"The problem is that ultimately we're going to have to include our forests because forests and ecosystems can be bigger emitters (of greenhouse gas) than industry," said Brinkman.

In 2003, Brinkman said, forest fires in Europe, the United States, Australia and Canada sent more emissions into the atmosphere globally than any other source, including industry.

Brinkman, a recognized specialist in sustainable forest management, is married to Joyce Murray, who is contesting the federal Liberal nomination in Vancouver Quadra riding.

You see, forests are being damaged by the pine beetle.  The trees die, dry out, and ultimately burn, emitting greenhouse gases.  Now Canada has the option under Kyoto to either count forests or not in emission calculations.  The Liberals made sure that escape clause was in there.  If forests acted as GHG sinks, then they'd be counted in, and Canada's emissions would look better on paper.  If forests acted as GHG sources, then you can bet any Canadian government would take them out of the calculation, and so not worsen our numbers.

The Conservative government has done that, exactly as the Liberals intended.  Arguably, that's a good conservative thing to do, because a damaged forest isn't an emitter unless it's on fire, and if it isn't on fire, it's still absorbing some amount of carbon dioxide.  What do you do?  Assume that it'll burn?  By taking it out, our numbers look worse in the normal situation.  On the off chance the forests burn, then we get the net benefit.  But no one wants a forest fire.

But Brinkman says we ought to include forests on the emitting side.  Does Joyce Murray agree with that?  Would she insist that Stephane Dion make that calculation should the Liberals ever form the government?  In other words, will she advocate that a Liberal government not use the forest escape clause put in by a former Liberal government, a position taken by her own Brinkman consultancy group?  Is she willing to go on record on that point before the by-election?

But then when it comes to the environment, Joyce Murray's decision making process when she's actually in government seems less black-and-white.  It is rich with shades of grey, like the colour of raw untreated municipal sewage.  Sorry for the imagery, but one of Joyce Murray's more remarkable decisions when she had the environmental file was to allow the city of Victoria to dump raw sewage directly into the ocean:

The raw waste itself resembles a weak, greyish tea, and throws off a muted scent of compost and a cloying whiff of decay. "It's 99.9 per cent water and 0.1 per cent solids," says [Jim McFarland, environmental services operations manager for the British Columbia's Capital Regional District], whose responsibilities include the region's sewer system. "We use a lot of water to wash our waste away." The entire Pacific Ocean, in fact.

Canadians generate an impressive three trillion litres of sewage annually: a mix of water, human waste and the pathogens it can contain (such as cholera, typhoid and hepatitis B), microorganisms, toxic chemicals, heavy metals and excreted pharmaceuticals. The waste threatens drinking water, as well as recreational users, aquaculture and fisheries. "Municipal sewage is the largest source of pollution discharged to surface water bodies in Canada," warns the Canada Council of Ministers of the Environment, a political group that has finally awakened to the issue. And Environment Canada says, "It is widely recognized that inadequate or no waste water treatment have negative impact on aquatic life, human uses of water, fisheries and human health. Therefore it is unacceptable and shortsighted not to maintain and upgrade infrastructure."

Why then is Canada flushing some 200 billion litres of raw sewage into its waterways every year, enough to fill more than 40,000 Olympic sized swimming pools? It's a situation the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, which monitors effluent discharge, calls a "national disgrace."

There are three levels of sewage treatment: primary, which reduces some solids through a settling process; secondary, which further reduces solids and other pollutants; and tertiary, the most stringent.

The council's push for standards is led by federal Environment Minister Stéphane Dion, who says he wants "at least secondary treatment" across the country.

Then there is Victoria, as genteel and photogenic a provincial capital as Canada has: a city of afternoon tea, of horse-and-carriage rides, of museums and pleasant walks along the harbour. It is a city of whale-watching tours, of waterfront cafés - and a capital region that pees into the ocean some 34 billion litres of raw sewage a year. It pees without shame. Indeed, it pees with pride, convinced it is on the side of the environmental angels. "We think we're doing the right and responsible thing," says Denise Blackwell, chairwoman of the liquid waste management committee of the regional government. Montreal rated an F on the sewage report, but a despairing Sierra fund ranked Victoria "suspended" for its refusal to see a need to change.

The bulk of the region's sewage - the waste of about 210,000 residents as well as businesses - is only screened to remove solids larger than six millimetres and floatable objects like tampon applicators and condoms. It's then pumped through two outfall pipes running more than 60 m deep and a kilometre into the swirling currents of the strait. There, it diffuses "without causing environmental harm," says the regional district. Or, as critics claim, it makes an ominous return up the food chain - starting as a buffet for fat colonies of sea worms and swimming scallops congregating at the outfalls, and ending in the frightening toxic load carried by resident pods of killer whales.

In 2003, after years of delay, the province signed off on the capital region's waste management plan. It is essentially a 25-year permit allowing Victoria and environs to keep voiding its sewage into Juan de Fuca Strait, unless certain environmental "triggers" show it is causing irreparable harm. The regional government considers this a validation of the status quo, but it's clear that staff in what was then the Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection harbour significant doubts. 

Two ministerial briefing notes written in early 2003 - and obtained through a freedom of information request by Jim McIsaac of the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation - outline several concerns, including:

• "considerable uncertainty" about the long-term fate of contaminants in raw sewage, "which the trigger process will not address";
• the unacceptable dependence on dilution to manage the environmental impact of flushing heavy metals into the strait;
• the "limited capacity" of source control to reduce contaminants. "Treatment is not only more effective in reducing contaminants, it is effective immediately ... and will remove a wide array of contaminants not targeted under source control."
• a study for Environment Canada that found the "effluent plume reaches the surface eight months of the year ... Seabirds feed on the sewage and there is potential health risk to recreational users such as windsurfers, kayakers and recreational fishers."

The capital region's waste plan also reneges on a 1993 agreement B.C. reached with neighbouring Washington state after Victoria was hit by a tourist boycott for its refusal to treat its sewage. B.C. committed Victoria to having primary treatment by 2002, and secondary treatment by 2013. But with the boycott long behind it by 2003, Joyce Murray, then B.C.'s water protection minister, ignored staff concerns and let the region drop plans for treatment. Considering the reservations officials had, McIsaac is stunned that Victoria's waste management plan was approved. "They're giving us this image," he says, "that there's some kind of magical water out there, that all of the contaminants, all of the pathogens in there are not impacting the marine ecosystem as they would anywhere else on this planet." That's not much of an exaggeration. As the region's website puts it: "The south coast of Vancouver Island where the outfalls are located may be the best location for the discharge of municipal waste water on the entire west coast of North America."

The best location to dump human waste?  A municipality tries to create a landfill, and environmentalists go ballistic.  And Victoria brags about having best spot to chuck sewage into the open ocean?  And Joyce Murray lets them do it for another quarter century?

So let's get this straight.  While Stephane Dion was environment minister, he was working towards national standards on waste water treatment.  Consider this one more thing Stephane Dion failed to actual do anything about.  But even as he was doing this, Joyce Murray overruled her own people and gave the city of Victoria permission to continue to dump raw sewage into the ocean for the next 25 years, endangering not only wildlife but people as well.

It gets better.  Joyce Murray approved the discharge of effluent into another ecologically sensitive location.  But not just that, it was also a burial ground for a First Nations tribe:

"We have come to show that we will not forget about our burial ground," said Penelakut First Nations elder August Sylvester as the barge transporting him and other Kuper Island residents pulled up on the white sandy beach.

Black cod, a previously undomesticated fishery, represents a new aquaculture industry which is actually quite exciting, said Eric McLay, an archaeologist with the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group, representing Vancouver Island Salish Nations.

“The problem,” he explained, “arose when Sablefin placed its wells and utility pipes through the midden area as a natural filter for its industrial effluent into the marine environment."

Backhoe trenching of over 250 metres through the site unearthed the remains of at least 13 individuals. Those bones were recovered by Penelakut elders and reburied on Kuper Island.

Sablefin was granted provincial government permits to dig wells and discharge effluent through the midden, but no preliminary Archaeological Impact Assessment study was required to evaluate the site's exact size, depth, content and scientific and/or cultural significance.

"We have no way of knowing what is gone or damaged because there was no baseline study," said Kim Kornbacher, an archaeologist and member of the Salt Spring Island Residents for Responsible Land Use. That group has accused Sablefin of causing unknown environmental harm to an ecologically sensitive area, as well as disturbing a culturally significant site.

The minister who allowed this to happen?  Joyce Murray.

Stephane Dion has accused the government of telling First Nations people that their rights aren't worth defending because the government won't sign on to the UN declaration of native rights.  What's worth more?  A piece of paper from the UN, or actually protecting First Nations land?

Stephane Dion is concerned about the paper.  Maybe that's why Joyce Murray's record is not a concern to him.

But then sewage and old bones are not greenhouse gases.  Stephane Dion has pushed just about every other real and legitimate environmental concern off the table to focus on the phantom of global warming.

So Joyce Murray approved the dumping of waste and heavy metals into ocean waters used by dolphins and other adorable sea mammals.  So Joyce Murray allows a cod fishery to spew out effluent into another marine environment while digging up native graves.  Not global warming, so not a problem for Stephane Dion.

Joyce Murray's record on global warming is interesting:

Wherever BC environment Minister Joyce Murray spends her New Year’s Eve, I hope that she will be making a New Year’s resolution to be a stronger advocate for the environment at the cabinet table, if indeed she manages to hold onto the post.

Two things came out of her Ministry just in time for Christmas: an approval in principle for a fossil fuel fired power plant in Nanaimo, and an opinion piece patting her government on the back for its “good year” of environmental accomplishments. Unfortunately, this juxtaposition of bad decisions with positive spin sums up the BC Liberals’ approach to environmental management.

A fossil fuel fired power plant?  Say it ain't so!  The Duke Point plant was the target of protesters, and ultimately the plan was shelved, no thanks to Joyce Murray:

“It was due to GSXCCC and thousands of Vancouver Island residents that BCHydro’s first attempt at constructing a fossil-fuel power plant at Duke Point was rejected by the BCUC (BC Utilities Commission) in 2003,” said SPEC President Gerry Thorne. “And the way  Duke Point will finally be put to rest is by again working together to demonstrate the potential harm  that would result if Duke Point were constructed.”

The Society Promoting Environmental Conservation  (SPEC) is joining the Georgia Strait Crossing Concerned Citizen’s Coalition (GSXCCC) in opposing a second attempt l by BC Hydro and its private partner Pristine Power Corporation to build  a 252 mw gas-fired power plant at Duke Point near Nanaimo.

An independent analysis conducted in 2002 by SENES consultants for SPEC, GSXCCC and the David Suzuki Foundation, found that  Duke Point would pump dangerous amounts of nitrous  oxide, sulphur dioxide, fine particulate matter and other harmful air pollutants into the Nanaimo and Georgia Basin airshed.

“Duke Point would, moreover, emit more than 900,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases annually,” said Thorne. “This is ironic given that just last month the Provincial Government released its Climate Change Plan that calls for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in BC.”

What about windmills?  What about solar panels?  What about energy derived from positive feelings emitted by progressive British Columbians openly smoking weed and feeling oh-so-mellow?

These are questions Stephane Dion could ask Joyce Murray.  But then Joyce Murray co-chaired Stephane Dion's leadership campaign in British Columbia.  You know, the leadership campaign he won on the strength of his environmental record and commitment?

Presumably Stephane Dion has long ago come to the conclusion that Joyce Murray was enough of an environmentalist for him.  You know.  Not too much of an environmentalist.  Just a good talker.