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The Harper Government™ guts the environment
May 1, 2012 - 1:19am
Rabble poll: Harper's war against the environment continues
Harper deals threaten human rights and the environment in Canada and China, by Maude Barlow
Budget 2012: Good for Big Oil, bad for people and the environment, by Andrea Harden-Donahue
Conservative budget levies frontal assault on environment, First Nations, by Andy Crosby and Crystel Hajjar
On the environment, Canada is a rogue state, by Murray Dobbin
How the Conservatives stole environmental protection, by Elizabeth May
NUPGE: Omnibus budget bill will dismantle federal environmental policy
Budget Implementation Act is Gutting of Environmental Laws in Disguise
Podcast: Harper budget a disaster for the environment. Interview with Gwen Barlee, policy director for the Wilderness Committee.
Just saw on CBC that the Cons are limiting debate on the bill - especially the environment sections.
Elizabeth May on Facebook: There we go: Time allocation moved today on C-38. The Harper conservatives have moved to limit debate on the destruction of Canada's environmental laws.Jobs for Friends of the Conservative Party since 2006 Quite a few cushy job slots for Mulroney era hacks and current hangers on to environmental roundtables and patronage appointments galore.
The environment is pretty well screwed with these corporate-friendly appointments.
Elizabeth May on rabble.ca:
Bill C-38? You have to be kidding.
What gets me is this was all predicted before Harper won his first MINORITY as their platform..It was no secret back then and even MacLeans mag had a forum discussion and article on what the cons had planned for the environment. People were warned yet they still voted for them....which was the gutting of environmental assessment regulations ...under a Harper conservative regime you and your family's health , safety and life are nothing but a nusiance, obstruction, and irritant to them and their oil/gas friends.
Now we watch and listen to reports on how the budget wasn't as bad as people say and how the Harper regime isn't near what people warned about...I guess we'll know after the next accident or environmental catastrophe...the media for sure has to take some blame for being so blatantly ignorant.
200 fraudulent riding wins says they don't even have a mandate to legislate anything much less removing safegaurds that protect YOU from this terroristic behaviour.
New http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zky2bn0Gtyg New
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-QvXax88J8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0eQgUpkJ1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns8LD5Q8ecc
Mexico's senate unanimously passes climate change law
Mexico just passed a historic, ambitious law on climate change. All political parties worked together to make it happen - a stark contrast to what has happened in Canada.
And that country's leaders are corrupt. Doesn't say much for Ottawa or Canada's senate. What's afta NAFTA?
The international carbon-trading marketeers are calling the Mexican law "modest", which is about what you would expect given the political situation there.
Yup... and at this juncture it's a moot point what people thought "manage the economy" meant to them. Erode the funding then go for the regulatory jugular. Yah know... austerity sure seems like it's been a decades long process, or processes. It feels like it's become a part of our socialial psyche now. People can't seem to see how governments are edging closer to joining us in the "99%" club as the "1%" siphons what's left.
On June 4, 2012, join in the web blackout to protest the Harper Government's gutting of the environment.
http://blackoutspeakout.ca/ http://www.silenceonparle.ca/
ETA: David Suzuki's appeal to support June 4 - rabble.ca
It says here:
Meanwhile our absentee corporate landlords continue polluting hell out of Canada and exporting profits by the truckload non-stop 24-7. It's as if a banana republic only a bit cooler. And the Polar bears? Still homeless.
Day O!
Bill C-38: Environment Devastation Act
Elizabeth May explains Bill C-38
Quebec Innu Want to Stop Muskrat Falls Hydro
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2012/04/26/nl-...
"Quebec Innu are asking the Federal Court to reverse approval given by the federal government for the construction of new hydroelectric dams on the Lower Churchill in Labrador. The group says the federal government largely ignored the August 2011 advice of a review panel.
According to the panel, 'The project would be unlikely to deliver benefits to Aboriginal communities in Quebec and the project's impacts on their current use of land and resources for traditional purposes would be adverse.' The Quebec Innu group said the proposed hydro-electric dam at Muskrat Falls would create a reservoir 60 kilometres long and would flood an additional 36 square kilometres.
The Innu of Ekuanitshit, who live at the mouth of the La Romaine River in Quebec, said that 'since time immemorial' they have used the territory extending to the Churchill River in Labrador.."
Mulcair Says NDP's Quebec Caucus Fully Behind Muskrat Falls
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2012/05/14/nl-...
"Mulcair said he not only was still fully behind a federal loan guarantee for Muskrat - which the federal Conservatives announced before the 2011 election - but that the measure had the full support of the NDP's 58 - member Quebec caucus..."
NDP-Cons F**k the Ekuanitshit Innu
The federal government has confirmed what the rumour mill suspected: it shut down an arm's length, independent advisory group because it didn't like the advice it was getting on addressing climate change.
Funding for the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) was cut in the last budget, giving the group just one year to live. Since 1988, it has been producing research on how business and government policies can work together for sustainable development -- including the idea of introducing carbon taxes.
Environment Minister Peter Kent had initially said the reason for the closure was because such research can now be easily accessed through the Internet, and through universities and other think tanks.
But Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Monday the shuttering of the round table had more to do with the content of the research itself.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/05/15/pol-cp-nrtee-baird-sile...The killing of NRTEE is payback for a scathing report it issued last August about the failures and lies of the Harper Government™ on climate change policies.
The interesting thing is the NRTEE is hardly a radical environmental group. Its members – all Harper Government™ appointees - are pretty much grounded in the conservative mainstream of Canadian public and business life.
Wow, that's pretty shameful. You'd expect Mulcair not to be so tone deaf with aboriginal issues.
ETA: I'm going to be emailing my MP for answers on this.
Let it be noted that it is grossly misleading to talk about the "average Canadian", as if we are all individual gluttons for carbon consumption. What the report refers to is of course the per capita carbon emissions of the whole country. That's just total emissions divided by population. The per capita figure includes each person's per capita share of the tar sands operation; all the mining and manufacturing and energy and agribusiness and military operations; all the aircraft, trucks, trains, automobiles, etc.; all the deforestation and land use changes, etc. In other words, most of the per capita footprint has nothing to do with individual consumption and emissions, but is due to industrial use of carbon, much of it from fossil sources.
The solution lies in system change. Personal lifestyle changes just don't cut it.
Check this out:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/05/15/pol-cp-nrtee-baird-sile...
Yeah, who needs policy analysts when you can just use Google?
Why the Budget Act is bad news for fish
excerpt:
With the introduction of Bill C-38, the Budget Implementation Bill, Canada is proposing changes to the Fisheries Act. These changes would remove the protection of some fish habitat from the Act. But without their habitat fish will not survive. It's that simple. And you don't need a degree in biology or logic to figure that one out.
The environmental cuts just keep on coming.
http://www.canada.com/technology/Canada+pearl+Arctic+research+with+funding+freeze/6352109/story.html#ixzz1wCyVTtlfFederal grants that have kept the Arctic environmental station running continuously since 2005 have run out, forcing the science team that runs PEARL to shut it down, at least temporarily. PEARL, the Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Laboratory at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island runs this with funding from CFCAS, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. CFCAS projects, on everything from extreme weather to Prairie drought have now wound down — "just at a time when we require more intense, not less intense, research," says executive director Peltier, noting that the loss of CFCAS has "strongly diminished" the country's ability to assess what the future will be like.
http://www.canada.com/Conservatives+environment+panel+turn+Internet+information/6388549/story.html
The proposed elimination of a key federal business and environmental panel that delivered stern warnings about Canada's climate change policies will leave a ``policy vacuum'' in the country's economic development, according to a former CEO of the group.http://www.globalnews.ca/environment+canada+cuts+are+delusional/64426388...
Environmental programs intended to curb health threats will have their budgets slashed by nearly 15 per cent over the next three years -- a move the Opposition says makes the Conservatives look "delusional." Overall, Environment Canada is bracing for cuts of $79.3 million over three years, dropping its budget to $918.3 million in 2014-15 from $997.6 this year ... One of the department's stated goals is to mitigate any harm pollution could cause to Canadians and their environment. Two of the programs designed to do exactly that -- one through controlling waste management, the other through monitoring greenhouse gas emissions and improving air quality -- are seeing their budgets slashed by 14 per cent and 11 per cent respectively between now and 2015.
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Tories+anti+pollution+scientific+unit/6683957/story.html#ixzz1wCtY77k6A spokes-man said the department was shifting toward using outside sources of research to avoid "duplication" on information that "already is obtained from credible sources". ... The federal government plans to break up a team of Environment Canada smokestack specialists that played a key role working with enforcement officers and industry to crack down on toxic pollution, a Postmedia News investigation has revealed. ... While Minister Peter Kent has acknowledged in a recent report tabled in Parliament that budget cuts were putting his department's scientific expertise and capacity to protect Canadians at risk, Environment Canada has said budget cuts will not have any impact on its core services.
The Union of Environment Workers has described the emissions research and measurement unit as a unique team that provides expertise that is not available from other sources.Thomas Duck, an atmospheric scientist from Dalhousie University in Halifax, suggested the cuts would jeopardize the government's plans to create a credible monitoring plan for the oil-sands, which are needed to help boost the industry's environ-mental reputation on the inter-national stage with scientific evidence about its footprint.
"It's vandalism of our scientific capacity," said Duck. "Why announce a [oilsands-monitor-ing] plan and then undermine your own ability to implement it. So to me it suggests that they never had any intention to follow through on the [oilsands] plan and that it's for show only."
Bill C-38: 'Being Pissed On By The Rich'
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/freedrick/11357
"Let me put this plainly. Bill C-38 is equivalent to being pissed on by the rich, and then being told to like it..."
Deep Green Resistance Strategy to Save the Planet
http://www.scribd.com/doc/62058061/Deep-Green-Resistance-Strategy-to-Sav...
"This book is about fighting back. The dominant culture - civilization - is killing the planet, and it is long past time for those of us who care about life on earth to begin taking the actions necessary to stop this culture from destroying every living thing.."
'Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just do not dare express themselves as we did.' Sophie Schell - The White Rose Society
Further to that - Budget offers new tools to "authorize" water pollution, says Harper minister The honesty is refreshing.