"Canada's environment ministry will cut or reassign around 10 percent of its workers, unions said Thursday, prompting fears that services like weather forecasting and environmental protection will suffer."

"Critics are concerned that the B.C. government is allowing a natural gas company to draw water from a northern BC Hydro reservoir to use in a controversial technique called fracking."

"With hundreds of fires scorching northern Ontario, and Alberta and Northwest Territories battling bigger blazes than usual, this is potentially shaping up as one of the nation’s most destructive wildfire years."

"The devastation that bark beetles and fungus have wreaked on hundreds of thousands of acres of whitebark pine trees in the northern Rockies has been tracked and chronicled for 30 years. Now the Fish and Wildlife Service has weighed in with a finding that climate change threatens the long-term survival of the species."

"Newfoundland and Labrador intends to join the growing ranks of provinces that have banned the sale and use of cosmetic pesticides on household lawns."

Lake Ontario, the farthest downsream of the Great Lakes, suffers from water quality problems.

"The Canadian delegation at an international summit admitted Thursday it agrees with the work of a United Nations scientific panel that wants limits placed on the export of chrysotile asbestos, but Canada still won't back the move."

"Canada told the world Wednesday it opposes placing limits on the export of chrysotile asbestos -- a 'bombshell' expected to derail international efforts to list the mineral as hazardous."

"[A House subcommittee] took a first step on Wednesday to fast-track a controversial Alberta tar sands pipeline, ordering Barack Obama to reach a decision on the project by 1 November."