Inco’s VP seeks stricter environmental controls on new

Government funding assistance for new developments should be conditional on meeting environmental standards, says a senior Inco executive.

“There is no way that we should have the taxpayer’s money being spent on supporting dirty projects”, said Roy Aitken, executive vice- president of the nickel mining company.

He emphasized in a speech to the Canadian Institute Conference on Environmental Law that he was not talking about the cleanup of existing problem industries where assistance will be needed.

“I am talking about new activities for development purposes, in this country or anywhere else.”

Aitken told an audience consisting mainly of lawyers who practice environmental law that government, industry and other vitally concerned groups should practice co-operation rather than confrontation in order to reduce conflicts over the environment. He said regulations to protect the environment are necessary and in place to deal with existing problems and it is time to look beyond past conflicts and concentrate on solutions to the problem facing us. The co-operative route

Aitken is also a vice-chairman of the National Task Force on Environment and Economy, a coalition of Canadian environment ministers, industrialists, business leaders and environmentalists. The fact that this disparate group was able to reach a consensus is proof that the co-operative route is the one to follow, he said.

Aitken said most industries or big business do conduct a form of environmental assessment on any new project which they are contemplating. “They are well advised to do so because it is much easier and in the long run cheaper to build it clean than to clean it up later.”

He added, however, that the problem with this particular objective is that the only environmental assessment process generally known today is the governmental one, “which can take forever.”

Industry can’t afford that time and will resist the process as it stands because development could grind to a halt, Aitken said. A way has to be found to accelerate the process to make it acceptable.

“We build clean plants today because the technology exists to allow us to do so,” he said. “We are not, in fact, unreasonable people and we are not looking for a hidden subsidy in the form of a licence to pollute.” Formal mechanisms needed

Aitken said there need to be formal mechanisms to hold the responsible government ministers accountable for promoting environmentally sound economic developments.

It does not make sense to have environmental ministers imposing policies which do not recognize the economic impact of those policies and, equally, ministers in charge of development should not be allowed to promote development which is not environmentally sound, he said.

He said that by putting the history of environmental degradation behind us, recognizing that regulations are necessary and in place to deal with such problems, “then we can move beyond `react and cure’ methods which are necessarily adversarial, on to `anticipate and prevent’ systems which are co-operative and constructive.

“All of us, industry included, need to get past the conflicts, the stereotypes, the misconceptions, to reconcile some of those (confrontational) situations and to get to solutions.

“We need to do this constructively and pro-actively rather than defensively and re-actively because, in the final analysis, industry has to tackle the problems. They can’t be swept under the rug — nor can they be legislated away,” he said.

Aitken said industry members of the task force had no problem with the co-operational rather than the confrontational solution to environmental problems.

At the same time, trade associations must police their own and keep their members informed of the significance of the link between the environment and the economy, he added.

“If associations won’t undertake an element of policing of their members, then they invite policing by government and we have enough of that already,” he said. “So associations had better advise recalcitrant members of the error of their ways and if they won’t shape up, throw them out.”

Industry must operate responsibly in all jurisdictions, foreign as well as domestic and, if going offshore, must behave as if it were at home, he said.