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Ottawa - The Canadian government was among a group of developed countries at a UN conference last week opposing language intended to protect human health and the environment from mercury pollution. At the United Nations treaty negotiation session (INC4) held in Punta Del Este, Uruguay last week, Canada and its partners refused to include stronger language, even though it was supported by two-thirds of delegates engaged in the international negotiations.

"Developed countries should not stand in the way of the rest of the world on the issue of including health in international environmental agreements," said Eric Uram of the Sierra Club. "Everything in nature is connected, and people and the environment cannot operate on separate planes. Protecting the health of the planet is an international responsibility that needs to be supported by all countries."

The federal government’s budget legislation has forced the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to cancel nearly 3,000 screenings into potential environmental damage caused by proposed development projects across Canada, including hundreds involving a pipeline or fossil fuel energy, according to published records.

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Critics of Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to tankers on the British Columbia coast say there is no time for the science to be completed before a federal deadline for the environmental assessment currently underway.

Documents filed with the National Energy Board show the environmental review panel studying the Northern Gateway project asked Fisheries and Oceans Canada for risk assessments for the bodies of water the proposed pipeline will cross. The pipeline is to traverse nearly 1,000 streams and rivers in the upper Fraser, Skeena and Kitimat watersheds.

The department didn't have them.

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Ontario’s last coal-burning power plants will close by the end of this year, Premier Dalton McGuinty is expected to announce Thursday.

The closure is either one year earlier than scheduled, or six years late, depending on your perspective.

The current deadline for closing the coal plants is Dec. 31, 2014 — which makes the new deadline a year early. But the McGuinty government had ridden into office in 2003 promising to close the coal plants by the end of 2007.