Alberta shuts down environmental monitoring agency after report
EDMONTON: Alberta is closing its arm’s-length environmental monitoring agency and moving its work back to the government after a critical report called the group a “failed experiment.”
“Government is responsible for government business, including monitoring, which has an effect on public health and public safety,” Environment Minister Shannon Phillips said Tuesday.
Phillips pointed to the report done for her office that painted the Alberta Environmental Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Agency as needlessly expensive, poorly co-ordinated and split by bureaucratic infighting.
“It is hard to escape the conclusion that AEMERA is a failed experiment in outsourcing a core responsibility of government to an arm’s-length body,” wrote report author Paul Boothe, director of the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management at Western University’s Ivey School of Business.