Harper picks environmentalist as new Ontario lieutenant-governor

In a surprise move, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has picked an environmentalist critical of his government’s handling of the Alberta oilsands to be Ontario’s new lieutenant-governor.

Among Dowdeswell’s vast list of accomplishments, the former federal Environment Canada bureaucrat was chair of a panel in 2010 commissioned by the Conservative government that concluded the Alberta oilsands may be a massive threat to water, wildlife and the atmosphere, but added it was difficult to say for sure because of inability of governments to conduct proper environmental checks.

Previously she was an undersecretary general of the United Nations, and executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, the first woman to hold that position. There she tackled issues of trade and globalization.

In 1996, she issued a report warning the planet was experiencing an unprecedented mass extinction. The report, called Taking Action, stated the world’s environment was deteriorating in nearly every category — from the water we drink and the air we breathe to the oceans and forests that sustain life.

Dowdeswell estimated then that between 150 and 200 species of life become extinct every 24 hours — a mass annihilation caused by humankind's unsustainable methods of production and consumption. “We know that if the pollution we're dumping into the water and the atmosphere around us is affecting insects, birds and then animals — can humans be very far behind?”