This week:

• We feature a talk by Dr. Doug McDonald, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Environment and author of Business and Environmental Politics in Canada, a new book about how business reacts to environmental regulatory pressure.
• Engineering correspondent Nicholas Wood discusses biodiesel production with Tim Haig, the CEO of BIOX corporation, which is widely considered the major biodiesel producer in Canada.

The headlines in brief:

• Quebec’s provincial government has announced that it will protect over 18,000 square kilometers of forest and wetlands in 23 new conservation areas;
• A private member’s bill that would require mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods has been defeated in federal parliament;
• A major civil lawsuit has been launched by the Beaver Lake Cree Nation in Northern Alberta seeking to block oil and gas development in their territory;
• 53 ducks were killed in a second tar sands incident involving a Newalta Corporation tailings pond in west-central Saskatchewan;
• EnCana Corporation, Canada’s biggest energy company, will split into separate natural gas and tar sands companies;
• NDP and Bloq Québeqois parties now reject federal ethanol plans;
• Environment Minister John Baird has agreed to support heritage status for the Ottawa river;
• Scientists in Australia have published the genome of the duck-billed platypus;
• US courts have ruled polar bears are an endangered species, although Canada has not followed suit;
• Spain is importing water to the drought-stricken region of Catalonia.

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