The doors to the Experimental Lakes Area may be open, but scientists can’t do their science.

Recently, many people ― myself included ― cheered after Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne announced an interim agreement to resuscitate this world-renowned freshwater science centre. The short-term agreement allows the International Institute for Sustainable Development to oversee lake monitoring while the federal department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada continues its remediation work. Wynne’s commitment of up to $2 million per year was welcome news to the tens of thousands of scientists and citizens who rallied together to save ELA after the federal government cut its funding and planned to shut the facility.

Underneath all the applause was an ugly, little-known truth — it is now illegal to conduct whole-ecosystem experiments at ELA.

What put ELA, a region of 58 lakes in northwestern Ontario, on the world map for aquatic science was its unique capacity for whole-ecosystem experimentation. Since 1968, scientists performed experiments on these lakes to understand a wide range of environmental problems, from mercury pollution emitted from coal-fired power plants to synthetic hormones in birth control pills found in sewage. These experiments simply mimic pollution levels occurring in many lakes across Canada.

The power of whole-ecosystem science is that it allows scientists to determine cause-and-effect relationships in a controlled but real-world natural setting. These experiments provide strong scientific evidence that a specific human activity causes explicit harm to lakes and fish populations. Such decisive evidence has been essential for guiding sound policies to protect and manage Canada’s freshwater resources, including legislation to curb phosphorus discharges, acid rain and mercury pollution.

The ability of scientists to conduct whole-ecosystem experiments at ELA, and nowhere else, stemmed from a legal agreement between the province of Ontario and the government of Canada. The land and lakes of the ELA are owned by Ontario, but under this agreement the federal government was permitted to conduct experiments on the lakes and assumed responsibility for the remediation of the site.

Last month, the government of Canada ― out of either woeful ignorance of the tremendous value of whole-ecosystem experimentation or worse, purposeful crippling of Canada’s science capacity ― officially withdrew from this long-standing agreement.

When this agreement was terminated, so too was the ability of scientists to continue their important lake manipulations. In one study, unique in the world, researchers had been adding phosphorus to a body of water known as Lake 227 for more than four decades to convert this once unproductive lake to a nutrient-rich one teeming with blue-green algae. The experiment’s results have long guided strategies to manage algal blooms — and their effects on fisheries — in lakes around the world. Scientists are no longer allowed to add phosphorus to Lake 227, but at a time when massive blooms are happening in Lake Winnipeg, Lake Erie and hundreds of other lakes across Canada, such experimental studies are urgently needed.

Two other whole-lake experiments at ELA were also cancelled this year. First, researchers from Trent University planned to add nanosilver, a common material found in hundreds of household products, to a lake to understand if this compound disrupts lake ecosystems. Second, government scientists were to release a fast-growing strain of rainbow trout to assess its impact on native fish. This experiment intended to simulate what would happen if transgenic fish, genetically modified to grow faster, were to escape from fish farms. Both of these crucial experiments were nixed this year under the order of the federal government.

Conservative Members of Parliament, including Joyce Bateman, Dean Del Mastro and Tony Clement, have praised the federal government for working hard to create a bright future for the ELA after eliminating its funding. The claim that the government deserves credit for “saving” the ELA is grossly misleading.

The ELA is like a Ferrari race car, government scientists its drivers. But Ottawa has stopped putting fuel in the car’s tank, has yanked the experts from the wheel and now has ripped up their driver’s licences. What the federal government is handing over to Ontario and the IISD is a fuel-less, driverless, licence-less car.

This Ferrari of freshwater science won’t be of much use to anyone. Not until we sort out the legal mess that prohibits scientists from doing their work.

Diane Orihel is an aquatic ecologist at the University of Alberta who has conducted research at the ELA over the last decade to understand the fate and effects of contaminants in freshwater ecosystems.

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