The Dominion - Atlantic

Was the fix in for Mi'kmaq Warriors at Elsipogtog?

dawn — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 15:56:49 +0000

Signs point to some having prior knowledge October 17th was 'take down' day

MONCTON, NB–Coady Stevens, the first of six Mi'kmaq Warrior to appear on charges related to the anti-shale gas encampment along Highway 134, has been denied bail.

As bail hearings today continue for the five remaining incarcerated members of the Mi'kmaq Warriors Society, enough information is beginning to surface to suggest that the vicious pre-dawn RCMP takedown of the anti-shale gas encampment on the morning of October 17th was a well known fact among some before it happened.

This is not to suggest that these people necessarily knew of the severity or magnitude of the RCMP raid, or even what it would look like. On the other hand, the possibility that others knew of the raid on October 17th is becoming too real to ignore.

Not only this, but there is a clear possibility that the greater narrative behind the raid is the measured destruction of the Mi'kmaq Warriors Society, to be replaced in their stead by a joint Assembly of First Nations/RCMP force.

Did Elsipogtog First Nation Chief Sock know that Thursday was the day?

Much has been made of the fact that Chief Sock and members of his council were arrested on the morning of October 17th. Sock and council were arrested in the second confrontation with RCMP, after the police had swept through the encampment, making numerous arrests, with guns drawn in the pre-dawn hours.

What brings Sock's pre-awareness of the events of the 17th into question is a series of notes obtained by APTN journalist Jorge Barerra.

The notes, which Sock has since admitted to Barerra that he penned, were taken during a meeting between Chief Sock, Robert Levi and 'Jumbo' Sock, who are both councillors from Elsipogtog First Nation, Tobique First Nation member John Deveau and Listuguj First Nation member Wendell Metallic, and two provincially-appointed advisors and other members of the New Brunswick provincial government, which included premier and Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Alward, as well as Energy minister Craig Leonard.

The Sock notes suggest that the talks focused, at least for a period, on a timeline of when to take down the ongoing blockade.

Point '8' on page one reads: “Blockade down, protest continues.”

Point '3' on page two of Sock's hand-written notes says: “Week – time limit Monday to next Wednesday.”

Point '4' on the same page reads: “Equipment out Thursday?”

These notes were written on Monday, October 7th, so it is reasonably safe to conclude that the “next Wednesday” in question refers to Wednesday, October 16th. The Thursday in question is October 17th, the date of the vicious raid.

Granted, Sock does continue to publicly denounce SWN Resources Canada's seismic testing in the area. In an attempt to patch up relations between his community and the RCMP, he even helped clean up the wreckage of six torched police cars. But based on his own notes, one must consider the possibility that he was aware that there was a plan in motion to dismantle the encampment and end the peaceful anti-shale gas encampment on Thursday, October 17th.

A blockade of millions of dollars of seismic testing equipment, without which SWN could not work, is one thing. A peaceful protest alongside the highway, where people can vent their indignation without actually stopping the Texas-based company from testing for shale gas deposits, is quite another.

One is effective, albeit potentially illegal in the eyes of the Crown. The other is a co-option of energy towards ineffective means, that is, if you actually want to stop the company from working.

The fly in Sock's ear: John Deveau, heir to the director's chair of the joint AFN/RCMP crisis response team in New Brunswick

Deveau, one of Sock's provincially-appointed advisers, is an intriguing character and no stranger to the anti-shale gas protests in Elsipogtog. We have written in more detail about him here.

But to fully understand his role in the current anti-shale gas movement – and it is a big one – we need to back up for a moment to late June of 2013, when Elsipogtog's anti-shale gas movement was being led by Elsipogtog 'War Chief' John Levi.

After 12 anti-shale gas arrests occurred on June 21st, 2013, along Highway 126 in Kent County, the community of Elsipogtog was understandably up in arms. A eight and a half month pregnant woman had been arrested, and an elder had been roughed up enough by RCMP that she was bleeding from the mouth by the time they zip-strapped her and tossed her in their wagon.

In response, on June 23rd, two new players were introduced to the community during a town hall-style meeting in Elsipogtog.

The first was the Mi'kmaq Warriors Society. The second was Tobique First Nation member Wendell Nicholas.

When first brought before the community of Elsipogtog, Nicholas was introduced as a 'UN Independant [sic] Observer'. His rather vaguely defined mission at the time was related to making observations and preparing an upcoming report for a branch of the United Nations.

Claire Stewart Kannigan, working for rabble.ca, identified a mis-print on Nicholas' shirt and started snooping. When Kannigan couldn't find an established connection between Nicholas and the United Nations, and proceeded to out him on rabble, Nicholas promptly re-branded himself - with the assistance of a Chief Sock-led press conference - as the leader of a new 'peacekeeping' team known as the 'Elsipogtog Peacekeepers'.

In the midst of a heated summer of protests, with residents tired of watching their community members being roughed up by the RCMP, the press conference introducing Nicholas was awash with hand shakes, ceremony and praise for Nicholas' new team – even if his role wasn't entirely understood beyond being something of a liaison between Elsipogtog band council and the RCMP.

As it turn out, Nicholas is something of an old hand in the game of liaising between First Nations communities and the Royal Colonial Mounted Police. In fact, he is the brainchild behind the Public Safety Cooperation Protocol (PSCP).

At the very least co-authored by Nicholas in 2004, the PSCP is amongst the modern day memorandums that facilitates sharing information between Indian Act chiefs and the RCMP on Indigenous unrest across Turtle Island. It is, in essence, an agreement between then AFN Chief Phil Fontaine and RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli – on behalf of the Queen – to spy on and squash Indigenous grassroots unrest before it starts. The terms used in the PSCP are more flowery and bureaucratic than that, but the song remains the same.

Fontaine found himself outed and discredited when he collaborated with the RCMP to quash Indigenous unrest in 2007. His intelligence sharing with the police smacks of the Nicholas-penned PSCP agreement.

As for Nicholas, he hired members of the Elsipogtog community on as peacekeepers, and also hired people from outside of the community.

Suddenly summertime anti-shale gas protests alongside of the highways in Kent County were highly monitored affairs, with people wearing bright orange 'Elsipogtog Peacekeepers' t-shirts wandering around everywhere, some speaking to the police, some taking notes on clipboards.

One of those bright-shirted protest monitors was former US National Guardsman and police officer –and Nicholas' cousin- John Deveau.

At some point, possibly due to failing health or prior commitments, Nicholas stopped being the public face of the Elsipogtog Peacekeepers. Handing over the daily duties to Deveau, Nicholas retired to a behind-the-scenes roll as Elsipogtog's Public Safety Advisor, where he appears to remain.

Deveau, for his part, took over the directorship of the 'peacekeeping' team, and is actively drawing a salary of $60,000 a year as the director of the 'Wabanaki Peacekeepers', essentially version 2.0 of the Elsipogtog outfit, but with better equipment and full-time salaries.

Make no mistake. This is the pleasant name given to the Deveau-run joint AFN/RCMP crisis response team, the team that all summer long was liaising with SWN, the RCMP and Elsipogtog Band Council – all the while presenting itself as a neutral negotiating body to grassroots activists actually on the ground.

October 16th, 2013: John Deveau gets outed by the grassroots.

On Wednesday, October 16th, a crew of grassroots activists from Elsipogtog, as well as members of the Mi'kmaq Warrior Society, broke in on a John Deveau-chaired meeting. Present were numerous members of the RCMP, Elsipogtog 'War Chief' John Levi and several members of the Elsipogtog community.

Elsipogtog elder – and Levi's aunt – Norma Augustine requested that Deveau, as well as bad-faith RCMP negotiator “Dickie” Bernard, be escorted out of Elsipogtog First Nation.

And by now the entire nation knows what took place on Thursday October 17th.

A tale of two Johns. Dividing camps, co-opting a movement

Elsipogtog 'War Chief' John Levi's influence upon the autumn anti-shale gas blockade along Highway 134 was virtually non-existent before October 17th. Levi, a clean and sober sun-dancer, has made much of what he perceived as the Mi'kmaq Warriors less-than-puritan lifestyle, and has privately used this as his reasoning not to attend the blockade.

It is possible that some of these disparaging remarks were fuelled by the general misunderstanding over Levi's role as Elsipogtog's 'War Chief', and where exactly that placed him within the Mi'kmaq Warrior Society.

In effect, it placed him nowhere.

The Mi'kmaq Warrior Society operates as an independent body, with it's own Chief and ranking system.

For his part, Levi was appointed 'War Chief' of Elsipogtog by Noel Augustine, Keptin of District 6 of the Migmaw Grand Council. The Grand Council is a modern day facsimile of a traditional Mi'kmaq government style that does not appear to wield much more than figurehead-style power. Noel Augustine, for example, has issued a variety of eviction notices to SWN Resources Canada, all of which have fallen upon the deaf ears of the Texas-based gas giant.

The more nefarious possibility is that Levi, under the influence of Deveau, could not infiltrate the encampment to any degree of information-gathering success, and thus reverted to a public smear campaign against the Warriors.

In any case, with the violent takedown of the Warrior Society out of the way, Levi is once again a common sight at the quickly rebuilding camp along Highway 134. It has been reported that Levi's main aim at Highway 134, however, is in actively trying to encourage activists to move towards last summer's encampment along Highway 116.

To boot, it has been reported that Levi is in negotiations with RCMP, offering the police that he can move the camp to the out-of-the-way Highway 116 location, in exchange for the police grounding their ever-present spy plane that continues to monitor the encampment along Highway 134.

Despite the destruction of the encampment during the raid of the 17th, the Highway 134 encampment by far remains the more tactical of camps.

SWN's seismic testing lines are slated to be near Highway 11, one of the main arteries of transport in New Brunswick. Snap highway blockades, as occurred on October 19th as a show of defiance in the face of the RCMP's raid, are also a quick and potential technique when the encampment remains on the 134. The 116 camp, arguably safer due to it's proximity to Elsipogtog First Nation, is tucked far out of the way of any action save the falling of leaves.

Sadly, especially considering the very real legal costs now being incurred by the five Warriors who remain without a bail hearing, Levi's camp division has also reached a financial level.

Splitting up donations from well-intention sources, including accepting money from the popular group The Indigo Girls, and then funnelling this money towards other side-projects, rather than towards the immediate legal costs of the Mi'kmaq Warriors, is only the tip of the iceberg.

At the Wilsons' gas station in Elsipogtog, there are now two donation jars side by side. One for donations to the Highway 134 encampment, and one for the Highway 116 encampment. Social media has also begun offering a variety of sources for donations. Most appear to agree that the Warriors' legal defence fund, which has already paid out a retainer to lawyers Lemieux and Menard, is the grassroots choice for donations.

APTN reported Monday that Chief Sock may well give the Elsipogtog band seal of approval, as it relates to anti-shale gas protests, to Levi. What exactly this means is entirely unclear.

With a summer's worth of experience in leading blockade-free anti-shale gas protests on the side of the highway, and with close friend John Deveau there to guide him, Levi may well be the front-runner for the band's endorsement.

The case of the missing van – and the missing Christian Peacemaker Team

At the rebuilding encampment along Highway 134, rumours continue to circulate of pre-October 17th tip-offs to the effect that Thursday would be a bad morning to be there. None of these rumours have been validated, yet, except for one.

On the evening of October 16th, Lorraine Clair, whose van originally had been blocking the entrance to the compound where SWN Resources Canada's seismic testing equipment was being held, left the encampment. She left with her van.

It is unclear whether she had some kind of verbal altercation with members of the Mi'kmaq Warriors Society before she drove off.

In any case, before leaving the encampment, Clair contacted Chris Sabas Shirazi, the senior member of the Christian Peacemaker Team that had been monitoring the Indigenous anti-shale gas activists from Elsipogtog since the summer. Clair asked Shirazi to leave the encampment with her.

Shirazi then asked Elsipogtog elder Kenneth Francis, who was on the scene to give Clair's dead van a battery boost if she should leave. Francis concurred that the CPT team should leave the encampment.

In her attempt to justify fleeing a scene that in hindsight was in desperate need of some kind of independent monitoring to counter the RCMP narrative that is seeing multiple charges being levied at all six incarcerated members of the Warrior Society, Shirazi noted that Clair – after John Levi became a non-factor at the Highway 134 encampment – was her “community partner from Elsipogtog.” Rather than seeking a new “community partner” at a live situation with the very real potential for confrontation to erupt, it appears that the CPT's partnership chain ended with Clair.

So on the night of the 16th, at the request of Clair and Francis, the CPT left the as-yet peaceful encampment on Highway 134.

In her defence, Shirazi did attempt to return to the site in the morning. She also took some great video – amongst many other great videos – of the secondary confrontation with RCMP on the morning of the 17th.

Of the initial conflict, precious little footage exists that is not in RCMP hands.

Clair, for her part, appears to have located a computer on the evening of the 16th. She wrote a short message, all in caps, and posted it on the most visited of social media sites. The message mentioned that the “peaceful” part of the protest was over, and encouraged all supporters to meet her and others at the Highway 116 encampment for a noontime ceremony on the 17th. It cannot be determined what Clair was basing her assessment on; as a first-hand observer I saw no violence break out at the encampment on the night of the 16th to suggest that the peaceful part of the encampment had ended.

Confrontataion at Elsipogtog

Anti-Fracking Protest in Nova Scotia Draws Hundreds, Shuts Down Highway

Tim McSorley — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:04:41 +0000

Protesters want province to halt gas exploration at Nova Scotia's largest lake

AULD'S COVE, NS—Upwards of 200 people, coming from all corners of Nova Scotia, responded to the imminent threat of exploratory oil and gas drilling on the shores of Lake Ainslie, and on September 22 staged an information picket outside the town of Auld's Cove.

Protestors, in this case assisted by the RCMP, created a colourful gauntlet of signs, strings of prayer flags, song and dance, through which passing motorists were directed. The action auspiciously took place on Global Anti-Fracking Day.

Despite the slow-down, motorists responded in an overwhelmingly positive manner to the action; thousands of pamphlets were distributed, and the afternoon resonated with the emphatic staccato of fists pumped to passing car horns. During the third hour of the action, in deference to a Mi'kmaq water ceremony to which all those in attendance were invited, the RCMP fully blockaded the highway—the only roadway on or off the island of Cape Breton—for about 20 minutes.

“I thought this was just going to be a bunch of raggedy-assed Indians,” said Elizabeth Marshall of the Treaty Beneficiary Association, conjuring the memory of Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash. “And you showed us that the raggedy-assed Indians have a bunch of raggedy-assed residents backing us up. We're not going to give up, because we love our ancestors, we love our future generations, and we love our children and grandchildren. And we know that water is sacred. Nothing, nothing can change that. So I'd like [Nova Scotia Premier] Darrell Dexter to tell me how much I should charge for a sacred spirit.”

The focus of the day's action, in a specific sense, was to protect Lake Ainslie, Nova Scotia's largest freshwater lake, from any and all fossil fuel drilling on her shores. Currently, the provincial government has only issued one exploratory well permit to Toronto-based company PetroWorth Resources Inc.; the company has promised no “fracing” [sic] will occur at the drill site.

Most likely the word “fracing” is referring to the technique of hydraulic fracturing, the water-intensive and often environmentally damaging technique of drilling for fossil fuels. “Fracking,” the commonly accepted slang term for the technique, has left a path of chemical pollution, sunken water tables, earthquakes and displaced residents across North America.

It is difficult to take PetroWorth, a company that has made its name fracking Western Canada and Nova Scotia's neighbouring province of New Brunswick, at its word, especially when that word appears to be knowingly misspelled. To Robert Parkins, closest neighbour to the potential drill site on the shores of Lake Ainslie, the question is one of semantics.

“There are three other terms that I've come across—well stimulation, well cleaning and well completion—which all fall under the heading of well alteration, which hydraulic fracturing also falls under,” Parkins told the Halifax Media Co-op. “They all use the same processes and the same chemicals.”

Parkins views the positioning of the site, which has been selected by PetroWorth due to various 19th-century finds of oil and gas in the area, as an attempt by the province and the corporation to force a "worst case" scenario situation. Essentially, claims Parkins, if a drill site can be established on the shores of relatively pristine Lake Ainslie, the province's largest freshwater lake, at the head of the Margaree River Watershed and with some of the last remaining viable Atlantic salmon spawning grounds in the province, then it can be done anywhere.

“It's one of the worst possible locations that you could ever put a drill site. So if they can get away with putting a drill site there, it's going to set a precedent in Nova Scotia that they can place them anywhere,” says Parkins.

It would appear that protest actions, which have included a partial blockade of the same stretch of highway on September 14 and 15, are beginning to have an effect on local Mi'kmaq chiefs.

Initially the chiefs appeared to sign off on PetroWorth's exploratory well permit, after being consulted by the provincial government. But the recent unrest, coupled with the effort of a group of local Mi'kmaq organizers who forced their way into a meeting of the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq Chiefs (ANSMC) on September 20, has caused the chiefs to do something of a public about-face.

A press release, issued on September 21, notes that the ANSMC are “in support of the community's concerns on hydraulic fracturing in the Lake Ainslie area of Cape Breton.” The press release, while cause for some degree of hope, does not demand that PetroWorth's exploratory well permit be rescinded. Nor is it certain that the ANSMC would have to ability, without entering into the legal sphere, to literally change its stance mid-stream on the permit issuance.

Wilbert Marshall, chief of Chapel Island, was the only Mi'kmaq chief to attend the September 22 action. Judging from his response and the escalating public display of Mi'kmaq disapproval, it would appear that the ANSMC may soon be faced with that exact dilemma.

“From day one, we were totally against it,” Marshall told the Halifax Media Co-op. “It's just fighting against the government and all that, it's just kind of back door deals, and we're trying our best to fight it. I remember them coming down the first time, we were totally against it. We are totally against [all oil and gas exploration on Lake Ainslie]. We have to be, because it's going to ruin the water. It's just kind of hard to fight these people. They're always taking the back door, like we said. If it's not one thing, it's the other. It's kind of hard to keep track, but we've got the people behind us, so hopefully we'll fight it at the end of it. We're not going to give up.”

Ginny Marshall, one of the main forces behind the recent Mi'kmaq actions against the potential drill site, appeared willing to ensure that the chiefs don't “give up.”

“[The chiefs] don't have the last say,” said Ginny Marshall. “They work for us, so they better behave.”

Despite the presence of concerned citizens from all walks of life, noticeably absent from the day's action was the mainstream media.

“I'm really kind of disappointed that the mainstream media is not here,” said Emmett Peters, local sweat lodge keeper. “We had, at the peak, probably over 200 people here. And there's nobody to show the rest of Nova Scotia that there's a lot of support for protecting the water. We told them, so they know. They know we're having an event, they just chose to stay away.”

“The one thing I notice that is not standing here with us is the mainstream media,” said Parkins to the gathered crowd. “Why? Because they don't want people to know that there are over 200 of us protesting the fracking that's about to go on in Cape Breton. They want to keep people in the dark. Ladies and gentlemen, we are tired of being mushrooms. No longer can they feed us horse shit and keep us in the dark...This is enough and this is what we're here for today. We have to tell them, even though they say that there is no fracking going on in Lake Ainslie, we know that there's well stimulation, well completion and well cleaning. And we all know it's the same thing...So ladies and gentlemen, from today on when anybody says to you that there is no fracking in Lake Ainslie, you say, 'Of course there isn't, because we're not going to let it happen.'”

It would appear that perhaps PetroWorth, and the provincial NDP government, may well have bitten off more than they can chew in attempting to drill for oil and gas in Cape Breton. Since being taken to court earlier in the year, albeit unsuccessfully, by the Margaree Environmental Association, PetroWorth has seen its stock value nosedive from a November 2011 high of eight cents per share down to a current value as of press time of two cents per share. Resistance to oil and gas drilling in Cape Breton, if the weekend's demonstration are any indication, is riding a surge of energy, and organizers are already talking of following Quebec's recent provincial moratorium on fracking.

“Whatever it takes,” Ginny Marshall told the Halifax Media Co-op. “I'll die. And that's very, very—that's the wrong thing to say to stop an oil company. But if my children are going to get a benefit out of it, then I'm willing to put my life on the line in order to protect them. I'm a mother bear. It's born in me, and I will be doing what I have to do in order to get this done.”

Miles Howe is an editor with The Dominion and a member of the Halifax Media Co-op, where this article was originally published.

Lake Ainslie Fracking II

Lake Ainslie Fracking

Mi'kmaq to Obstruct Traffic to Fight Oil and Gas Exploration at Lake Ainslie

Moira Peters — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 14:14:51 +0000

First Nations call for a complete halt to drilling in Cape Breton

AULD'S COVE, NS—Mi’kmaq people from Cape Breton and the Nova Scotia mainland are preparing to set up a “partial blockade” of the Trans-Canada Highway in Auld’s Cove, on the mainland side of the Canso Causeway, the access point to Cape Breton.

By 1:30 yesterday afternoon, about 25 people had gathered, setting up flags and signs, and organizing a teepee and food for the warriors and their supporters.

The blockade is in opposition to exploratory oil and gas drilling by PetroWorth Resources, scheduled to begin later this year on the shore of Lake Ainslie in western Cape Breton.

"We’re going to be slowing the traffic down to a bare stop," said Ginny Marshall, pipefitter and mother of four from Potlotek (Chapel Island) on Cape Breton. "But we’ll be allowing people to go through," while handing out information and pamphlets, she explained. "We have to make it known why water is sacred."

Mi’kmaq communities—and many non-Indigenous residents around Lake Ainslie—have been clear in their opposition to exploratory drilling around the watershed, saying that no amount of money is worth risking the pristine water resources that Lake Ainslie supports.

"I’m a pipefitter and I would benefit from this type of job," said Marshall, referring to the development the province says is necessary to the economically depressed region. "But...I’ve seen all the damages that it does...I cannot tell my children, my child...I didn’t try. I let this go. I knew they were going to destroy the water...and money was too important."

Emmett Peters of Paq’tnkek (Afton) emphasized the importance of the action for future generations.

"I don’t know if you’re familiar with the 1752 treaty, [which was affirmed in the 1999] Marshall Decision, where we’re allowed to hunt and fish. So they thought about us 300 years previous. That’s how strong that treaty was," said Peters.

"So now what we’re trying to do is leave something for our children...maybe all it could be is fresh water."

A ceremony is planned for this morning at the blockade site, to which all people are invited.

"We’re going to put up a teepee and we’re going to have a fire, drummers are going come in and drum, sing the honour song and we’re going to have one of our elders say an opening prayer just so everything goes good," said Peters yesterday. "We’re leading, but it’s for all human beings."

Organizers of the action are expecting supporters from Paq’tnkek, Eskasoni, Waycobah, Membertou and Potlotek First Nations. They are also expecting non-Indigenous supporters from the Green Party, Protect Lake Ainslie and the Margaree Environmental Association.

Peter Bernard, a Chief of the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society from Waycobah, estimated this action will last two days.

"We’re trying to do this as peaceful as possible," said Marshall. But she, Peters and Bernard added that they will not give up if the partial blockade doesn’t affect the changes they are looking for: a complete halt on any oil and gas exploration or drilling at Lake Ainslie.

"If they do drill that [exploratory] well, what’s going to stop them from fracking?" said Paul. "It’s going to cost them millions of dollars to drill that one hole. And just leave it? I don’t think so."

Marshall said that if the traffic slowdown doesn’t succeed in stopping PetroWorth’s well, a full blockade will be organized.

"We will take your time...we understand your time is your money," said Marshall. "If no other way is gonna put a stop to this, this is our last resort."

"We’re so lucky to have a place so safe in the world compared to other places," said Marshall. "Blue gold is going to be the next commodity...just like oil, it’s gonna be our water, because water is a key element to life."

PetroWorth Resources could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.

Moira Peters lives and bikes in Halifax. Ben Sichel is a teacher and writer, and editor for the Halifax Media Co-op, where this article was originally published.

Ginny Marshall

Causeway Blockade

What Happens in Newfoundland and Labrador, Stays in Newfoundland and Labrador

Sandra — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 13:15:20 +0000

Province passes amendment that limits access to information and protects the privacy of its goverment

HALIFAX—Despite a four-day, record-breaking, filibuster in mid-June, the provincial Conservative party of Newfoundland and Labrador passed a bill that will radically reduce public access to government information in the province. Bill 29 has drawn widespread criticism from legal experts, opposition politicians and working journalists alike, who have called the bill regressive and draconian.

“It's more of a piece of legislation that sets rules on how not to release things,” Russell Wangersky, an editor and columnist with The Telegram in St. John's, told The Dominion.

The amendment to the province’s Access To Information and Protection of Privacy Act (ATIPPA) has the potential to drastically reduce the need of the Newfoundland government to respond to, well, anything, really.

Requests that Cabinet determines are “vexatious, frivolous [or] trivial” can now be disregarded. The definition of "Cabinet confidences” has also been expanded to include documents that have been prepared for Cabinet, but which Cabinet doesn't need to have ever seen or used.

Bill 29 took its cue from a review of the ATIPPA, released in January of 2011, undertaken by career NL bureaucrat John R. Cummings, Q.C. Among other high-ranking governmental positions, Cummings has been Newfoundland's Deputy Minister of Justice, Deputy Attorney General and Secretary to the Cabinet. The new law subsequently implemented 16 of the review's 33 recommendations.

Cummings' review was supposed to rely heavily on a public consultation process, but Wangersky sees it differently.

“The review [to] our Access to Information Privacy Act...was overseen by a former civil servant who had a number of years experience turning down Access to Information requests,” says Wangersky. “[Cummings] heard primarily from civil servants and government departments and came up with modifications to the Act that substantially restrict the release of documents and put more and more of a control over what can be released into the hands of Cabinet.”

What won't be released under Bill 29 is substantial and subjective: No definition of vexatious, frivolous or trivial were provided in the amendment. Newfoundland and Labrador Minister of Services Paul Davis justified the addition of these terms into the Act by claiming that “countless” requests for information were swamping the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation subsequently weakened this argument when they revealed that the Information and Privacy Commissioner received an average of 11 requests per week from across the province.

Sections 24 and 27 of the bill are of special concern and could be potentially problematic, especially when considered in a political climate where the lines between commercial and political interests are becoming increasingly blurred. Section 24 relates to the prerogative of the 'public body,' in this case the Privacy Commissioner, to potentially refuse to disclose the release of any information that could relate to economic, technical or scientific information that is determined to have monetary value. Within this lies the potential to refuse disclosure of information related to public-private partnerships.

Section 27 applies to the disclosure of information that would impact business interests of a third-party (like labour relations or trade secrets). In these cases that the public body has the duty to refuse to disclose. In the cases applicable to section 24, the public body may also choose to do so.

When coupled with the new, wide-sweeping, re-definition of Cabinet confidences, suddenly the avenues towards accessing information stand to become quite narrow indeed.

Hugo Rodrigues, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, sees this as a step away from governmental transparency.

“When you're creating new classes of information for documents and briefings prepared for Cabinet that extend to not just what hit the Cabinet table, but to what is prepared for Cabinet but is never actually considered by Cabinet, then you're excluding that entire class of information from ever being accessible,” Rodrigues told The Dominion. “The intent there is obviously to keep information from ever reaching the public eye.”

To Gerry Rogers, Member of the Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly for St. John's Centre and NDP Justice Critic, there's more than just control for the sake of control behind the Conservative government's rushing through of Bill 29 just before parliament took its summer break.

“We asked a number of times during the filibuster: 'Why?'” Rogers told The Dominion. “We had a very good Act as it stood. And particularly during this time when we have huge decisions to make—why they would do this? And there was no answer.”

Rogers suspects, however, that the potential of the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric facility and the interests of numerous companies—including Alderon Iron Ore Corp—the Quebec-based mining company looking to develop thousands of hectares in Labrador, loomed large in the Conservatives' decision to rush through Bill 29.

On March 28th, 2012, Alderon provided former provincial Progressive Conservative Premier Danny Williams with a stock option for 1,125,000 shares—the same day that Alderon appointed Williams to its Board of Directors. Representatives from Alderon have argued publicly for Muskrat Falls, and Williams, now at least officially out of the political sphere since 2010, has gone so far as to publicly chastise the Public Utilities Board (the arm's length body responsible for sifting through the data around—and ultimately approving—Muskrat Falls) for requesting more data from the provincial government and more time to complete it's review.

That current Premier Kathy Dunderdale and the current provincial Conservative government, responsible for passing Bill 29, rode into another majority in 2011 on the coattails of Williams' local popularity, is an agreed upon truth among political pundits.

The interests of Altius Minerals Corporation, the Newfoundland-based company, add more shades of grey to a picture whose lines stand to become increasingly difficult to discern under Bill 29.

Altius is one of several companies whose proposals concerning the Lower Churchill Project—of which Muskrat Falls is but a part–was selected by the Williams government in 2005 for "more substantive evaluation and discussion.”

Altius Investments Holdings owns 32,285,006 common shares in Alderon, while Altius Minerals Corporation, under the name 2260761 Ontario Inc, owns 584,000 common shares in Alderon. Alderon, whose need for a source of power is one of the few missing puzzle pieces between themselves and Labrador mineral development riches, would arguably be one of Altius'–and Muskrat Falls'-main clients. With Danny Williams on the Alderon board, things begin to become complex.

Muskrat Falls, which has not yet begun construction, has a 2010 estimated cost of $6.2 billion and an estimated generating capacity of 824 megawatts. It is publicly being touted by the governments of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia as a key component towards shifting their respective grids to "renewable” energy.

The scope of the proposed project is vast and involves linking the dam from the Lower Churchill River in Labrador–via undersea cable–to Newfoundland. It will then be linked to Nova Scotia via another undersea cable and will feed the Nova Scotia grid approximately 170 megawatts. It is a massive undertaking and partners Nalcor Energy—Newfoundland and Labrador's Crown corporation—with Emera Inc, Nova Scotia's private monopoly energy provider.

While 13 contracts have been signed on the deal and clear cutting has begun near the proposed site, Muskrat Falls is awaiting federal loan guarantees to begin construction.

“Muskrat Falls...is perhaps the biggest project this province has ever undertaken aside from whether or not to join Confederation,” says Rogers. “It will be very expensive. It may have a number of players. And this government ran on a platform of accountability and greater transparency. This amendment (Bill 29) came out of the blue and it's so contrary to the platform that they ran on. The other thing is that there's huge mining and resource projects in Labrador. And there's a lot of decisions that will have to be made in that area.”

Brad Cabana, who maintains the blog rocksolidpolitics.blogspot.ca, was the first to publicly write about the potentially troublesome links between the current provincial government, Williams, mining interests, financing and Bill 29. Cabana is currently in a suit/counter-suit with Danny Williams and Alderon, but maintains that the public in Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia, are being fleeced if they think that Muskrat Falls is in any way about them or so-called "green” energy.

“There's upwards of 13 mining developments going on in Labrador right now. And even Muskrat Falls couldn't possibly [power] all of that,” Cabana told The Dominion. “It's illogical...it makes no business sense to send power to Nova Scotia, to Emera. I propose that [former PM Danny] Williams used that strategy to hook in [federal MP] Peter McKay and company to try and get [federal] loan guarantees for Muskrat Falls...[Williams] has been trying to get the feds in and get a loan guarantee since the 2006 [provincial] election.

"I think the only way they could do it was to hook up with Emera and get that power to Nova Scotia, and I don't think it's going to happen. I think Williams is just using it as a ruse to get a loan guarantee and then they're going to find a way to get out of it. It just doesn't make any sense on any level. It doesn't send enough megawatts to earn any money for Newfoundland – 400-500 megawatts is nothing in the market. I don't even know if it replaces one coal plant down in Nova Scotia.”

Whether or not Muskrat Falls is meant to serve the potentially lucrative Labrador mines, or is truly the "renewable” energy source that the Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia populace are being told it will be, will become increasingly difficult to determine under Bill 29. It essentially ensures that the public will have to take the provincial government of Newfoundland, and corporate spokespeople, at face value, and guarantees that whatever happens in Newfoundland and Labrador, stays in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Miles Howe is an editor with The Dominion and a member of the Halifax Media Co-op. Follow him @MilesHowe.

NL under lock and key

Rebuilding the Wabanaki Confederacy

Miles — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 10:52:09 +0000

Non-Indigenous participate in Confederacy Gathering for first time in centuries

ST MARY'S FIRST NATION, UNCEDED WABANAKI TERRITORY (NB)—For the first time in several hundred years, non-Indigenous peoples were invited to participate in the last two days of the week-long Wabanaki Confederacy Gathering this September 1 and 2.

The Wabanaki (translated roughly as "People of the First Light") Confederacy's current incarnation comprises five principal nations—the Mik'maq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki and Penobscot—and stretches from the colonial borders of Newfoundland in the North, mid-Maine in the South, and parts of Quebec in the West.

At its zenith, the Confederacy consisted of close to 50 nations, went South to the mid-Carolinas, included most of the interior of the United States, and reached into Ontario.

Approximately 150 people attended the final two days of the almost week-long meeting, held on the shores of the Wulustuk (Staint John) river.

The open portion of the gathering, from the perspective of a non-Indigenous participant, can perhaps be described as a meeting between Indigenous and non-Indigenous environmental activists, placed into a paradigm in which environmental activism is no longer a lifestyle choice, or "something one does."

Invitation to participate in ceremony, and patient explanation on the part of the Indigenous hosts, brought about the notion of inter-connection between self and the natural world—so that the notion of 'activism' was simply replaced by the reality of "being."

"When we talk about Wabanaki people, we're also talking about Wabanaki people being the land, being the trees, being the animals, because in that cultural perspective, we're all related," says gkisedtanamoogk, the Gathering's fire keeper. "We're everything. We're not just a species standing apart from everything else."

The notion of special inter-dependence was also co-joined with the necessity of placing oneself into an historical narrative that is not static, but developing.

Portions of sacred bundles, which included ancient Wampum belts—themselves a recorded, as well as symbolic, history in bead work—and the box gifted from the French to the original Wabanaki Confederacy in 1701 upon their acceptance to participate in the Confederacy were brought out and explained, and allowed those in attendance to see themselves as part of something continuous, historic and challenging.

"Within the Wabanaki territory we're looking for allies that are going to stand against the total annihilation of our land and water and air," says jeaba-weay-quay (roughly translated from Obijway to 'The woman whose voice pierces'). "We're looking for allies who will help us to put our nation back together and put it back in order. And we're asking our allies to help us empower that. And in the process of doing that, they will be decolonizing us and they will be decolonizing themselves."

The notion of a fluid historical narrative also extends to the treaties that exist between the Wabanaki and those who have subsequently colonized their territories. The treaties that do exist are of peace and friendship, not of subservience of self and ceding of land.

The Wabanaki thus provide not only a paradigm alternative on the metaphysical sphere, but also a legal umbrella under which the real concerns to the natural environment, and thus all of us, can find sanctuary and process.

Many in attendance over the two-day period spoke of the environmental perils that are now at the doorsteps of their respective Maritime-area backyards.

To observe effort and concern on any number of particular environmental issues come together and begin to form a cohesive whole, under the watch and fostering of the Wabanaki, was as if watching pieces of a puzzle come together in an already-existent frame.

To be invited into this process, as partners with equal concern, has the potential to be extremely empowering on many fronts.

"The Wabanaki are in a far better position to defend the land," says gkisedtanamoogk. "No land was ever ceded, and that's acknowledged by both the province and the federal government. So on the basis of the treaties, what we're suggesting is that you and I have a common responsibility to the land under those treaties.

"You and I, we also have a common responsibility to each other, as holder and keepers of those treaties. Those treaties are as important to Wabanaki people as they ought to be important to you. Those are your treaties too. And under those treaties we are also invoking on international protocol, so we have a social potential of being responsible to each other's needs, but in an entirely different context. And that presents immense implications, both legal implications as well as social implications and economic implications that are more just."

Harry LaPorte, grand chief of the Maliseet First Nation, agrees.

"We're going to rebuild the Wabanaki Confederacy," says LaPorte. "We also invited some non-Natives...to come and be with us and to help us build an alliance, so that when we...come into conflict with the government and some of their decisions and policies...to have them stand beside us and to let their government know that it's not only Native people who are worried about the water, the land, the air. But it's also people from their nation that are concerned."

While some at the Gathering were eager for quick pacts and commitments, due in no small part to the urgency of the environmental issues—such as 'fracking'—that are affecting the area, this was to be sure among the first steps.

Gaps in culture, in no way limited to the most obvious identifiers of language and religion, are real, and will require concerted effort and patience to overcome. Judging by those in attendance however, the willingness to make this alliance work is both urgent and real, not only in terms of ideas shared, but also willingness to participate in ceremonies not necessarily completely understood, but partaken of in a spirit of peace and friendship.

As for the next steps of this alliance, that will be up to the grandmothers.

"The grandmothers are going to be meeting in the meantime to make sure that we keep cohesion of this alliance together and to provide that communication, and to put that wise, white hair together to sit down and talk about what needs to be done," says jeaba-weay-quay. "That's who's going to point the way...the women. The grandmothers. And then we're going to turn around and tell the men 'This is what we need to do. This is what we want. So we need you to help us.'"

"This is a preliminary investigation of what that relationship looks like," says gkisedtanamoogk. "What are the expectations? What are the long-term implications? What are some of the things we can do in the immediate? I'm really excited about this. I sense that something of this magnitude is a paradigm shift of global proportions."

This article was originally published on the Halifax Media Co-op. Miles Howe is the Halifax-based editor of The Dominion and is a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op.

gkisedtanamoogk

The Ground Beneath Our Feet

Miles — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 14:24:14 +0000

Despite missing grave markers, lack of map, Dartmouth cemetery is not for the dogs

DARTMOUTH, NS—A small party stands at the northwest corner of St. Paul's cemetery, staring pensively at what appears to be nothing but a grassy knoll.

We are hemmed in by the thick foliage of Giant Knotweed (polygonum sacchalinese) that surrounds the burial ground on three sides. Behind us lean a smattering of aging tombstones from Catholic families.

Here though, 100 feet away in the field next to the grave markers, there is only the whisper-silent undulation of clean-cropped, rolling grass.

A casual observer would likely not conclude that this field is part of the cemetery. But this is what Don Awalt has come today to explain.

“Lewis Benjamin Paul, Mi'kmaw Grand Chief, was buried almost right here,” says Awalt, an environmental planner with a grandfather buried somewhere in St. Paul's cemetery. “In the late 1970s, there used to be a tripod of stones here, marking his grave,” he says.

Bonnie Murphy, cemetery administrator for the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), looks on, clutching a rolled-up surveyor's map of St. Paul's. We spread the map, but it gives no hint of Paul's final resting place. Paul, the great leader, upon seeing his people driven to starvation by British colonization, famously wrote to Queen Victoria in 1841:

“I have seen upwards of a thousand Moons. When I was young I had plenty, now I am old, poor and sickly too. My people are poor. No Hunting Grounds, No Beaver, No Otter, No Nothing. Indians poor, poor forever, No Store, No Chest, No Clothes. All these woods once ours. Our Fathers possessed them all. Now we cannot cut a Tree to warm our Wigwam in Winter unless the White Man please.”

Indeed, most of Murphy's map is nothing but blank, white space hemmed in by surveyors’ lines. There are several rows of numbered plots outlined on the map, but no more than two dozen are even named.

Murphy can't even be sure whether the nameless plots contain bodies or not.

“We've only taken it over since amalgamation [of Halifax and surrounding areas to create the HRM], and our records are very scarce,” says Murphy. “We're digging [for information] ourselves. We've contacted St. Paul's to see what we can get. We're trying to talk to people who've maintained it prior and everything's scarce.”

The wind picks up, and the map begins to buckle and crease. The group cannot determine which way is north on the map, and it is decided that an HRM survey team will be contacted to re-determine the boundaries of the cemetery.

Awalt leads the group over to a willow tree.

“This is where Napwisin We'jitu is buried, and there used to be a marker somewhere in the grass,” says Awalt. The group peers amidst the overgrowth.

“He was among the top Mik'maq warriors of all time.”

Despite HRM Parks and Open Spaces’ lack of knowledge, there is no question that this site has been a Mi’kmaq burial ground, as well as a Catholic cemetery, for a long time. It has also changed hands, and fallen into states of neglect, several times in recent history.

John Martin's The Story of Dartmouth notes that the cemetery first opened in 1835, and consecrated in 1845. Awalt says that Mi'kmaq were using the land as a burial ground long before that, and notes that the oral tradition suggests Father Thury, one of the famous French “Warrior Priests,” consecrated the land in the late seventeenth century.

A marble tablet, which still stands at St. Paul’s, was erected in Dartmouth in 1962. The tablet notes that “Hundreds of Indians and Two of Their Chiefs” are buried there—though it also says that, despite an ever-increasing number of Catholic dead in the 1800s, the cemetery was only used until 1865. (Awalt says this applies to “white” burials only, and that Mi'kmaq continued to use the area after this.)

The 1962 monument unveiling also saw an extensive clean-up of the property. A Dartmouth Free Press article notes that “20 truck loads of rubbish were carted away” before Father Michael Laba, of St. Paul's Parish, had the area fenced in.

According to Kenneth Redmond, boyscout leader at St. Paul's parish at the time, Father Laba also undertook an extensive mapping of the area to determine exactly where the “Hundreds of Indians and Two of Their Chiefs” were buried.

“Father Laba asked me to...survey St. Paul's cemetery, like record where the stones were; show where Mi'kmaw people were,” says Redmond. “And so I did that and gave him a plan. Since that time Father Laba has died, and I lost all my belongings, including [the cemetery map] in a house fire.”

That map, of which there is perhaps one surviving copy, is currently in absentia.

“We stood [the grave markers] where they were laying,” says Redmond. “They were a little bit scattered but you could see a pattern to it.”

In 1967, a re-development plan was undertaken to see St. Paul's become an active burial ground once again. But by the late 1970s, the place had become a “jungle.” Cora Greenway, writing in the summer 1980 edition of Canadian Collector, notes that when she walked the area in 1978 she found “no trace” of the shale slabs.

“The place was in a mess,” writes Greenway. “The grass was knee-high, half the stones toppled over and the walking most treacherous due to the rocky terrain.”

In 1979, as part of a neighbourhood improvement program, the City of Dartmouth remodelled the cemetery into its current incarnation. Benches were added, stones were again righted, and a paved walk was laid that connected urban development above the cemetery to Alderney Drive. It became something of a park, with a cemetery in the middle.

In 1994, with space for the deceased again at a premium in Dartmouth, the city cast an eye towards re-developing St. Paul's and expanding the cemetery onto the grassy field next to the tombstones. But a strong campaign, led by then Mi'kmaw Grand Chief Ben Syliboy, halted the expansion plans. A 1994 Daily News article notes that estimates as to the number of Mi'kmaq buried there ranged “into the thousands.”

There are now clear signs that people have been sleeping, drinking and defecating in the thick recesses of the knotweed. The shale markers are long gone, and the paved path between the tombstones and the grass, the same area where Redmond remembers righting the fallen grave markers, has become a popular dog-walking thoroughfare.

Mi'kmaw tradition speaks to allowing a burial site to reconstitute itself with native species, but the knotweed is an introduced, invasive species, and Awalt wants it removed. He also wants the HRM to ensure cemetery bylaws, which include letting no dog walk on grave sites, are enforced over the entire area. (Domestic animals defecating on graves is one of those taboos that transcends cultural boundaries.)

As we stand, a member of [the] Mi'kmaw Warriors Society, one of whose mandates includes protecting the burial places of Mi'kmaq, approaches the group. In a clear voice he promises to return to the cemetery with his Warriors, armed if need be, if the entire area is not given the same jurisdiction as any cemetery in the HRM; meaning no dogs, and no sleeping, partying, or defecating on graves, marked or not.

In 1990, a significant percentage of Warriors at Kanesatake were Mi'kmaq, and the man's words bring a stunned hush to the group.

Two weeks later, St. Paul's cemetery is undergoing another facelift.

Bonnie Murphy's survey team has put down preliminary markers. Rebar stakes, driven into the ground and spray-painted neon orange, indicate that Lewis Paul's grassy knoll, and more, is indeed now considered part of the cemetery. Knotweed is being attacked by a crew of city workers with a small backhoe.

“Since our meeting, we have had the surveyors…lay out the boundaries on the site,” says Brian Phalen, of HRM Parks and Open Spaces. “The preliminary work does show that that area that we were in, up by the steps, is certainly included in the cemetery site...We'll be posting the 'No Dogs Permitted Under The Cemetery Bylaws' signs in that section of the property.

“Certainly there are portions of that property that aren't laid out as grave sites, per se...But certainly we do know and recognize that being a traditional burial site, there were many Mi'kmaw burial sites that wouldn't be marked.”

As for the shale slab grave markers and Father Laba's corresponding map, it remains to be seen if they will ever be found. It may well be a return to tradition—in which Mi'kmaw graves went unmarked—by necessity.

"The important thing here is that a pre-contact burial ground is recognized for what it is," says Awalt. "That the grandfathers and grandmothers buried there finally receive the dignity and respect deserved...and this applies to non-natives buried there as well."

Miles Howe is an editor with The Dominion and is a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op

Marker at St. Paul's Cemetery

Halifax Rallies for Cultural Connections for Aboriginal Youth

dawn — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 07:09:19 +0000

Campaign to reverse cuts to Mi'kmaq Native Friendship Centre's Kitpu Youth Program ramps up

K'JIPUKTUK (HALIFAX)—The shutting down of the Mi'kmaq Native Friendship Centre's Kitpu Youth Program, and subsequent campaign to reinstate it, was the catalyst for a national day of action last Thursday against the federal government's decision to freeze funds for Cultural Connections for Aboriginal Youth programs across the country.

The Halifax contingent held a rally in Grand Parade Square, which opened with a Mi'kmaq honour song and drumming. Indigenous elder Billy Lewis said a few words, followed by Kitpu Youth Program coordinator Glen Knockwood. Local MP Megan Leslie was also present, providing her take on the federal government's decision.

Most touching, though, were the testimonials from those directly affected by the program: Tayla Paul, a local Indigenous woman who experienced a difficult childhood and is thrilled her teenage children can benefit from Kitpu; and three youth whose lives were, in their words, irrevocably changed by the friendship centre's doors being open to them.

Following the speeches, the group marched through downtown Halifax holding candles. "Walk with fire and light," is the campaign slogan. The participants held posters, beat drums and chanted as they wound their way to the friendship centre.

The campaigning didn't end with the rally. The Halifax support group has several emergency fundraisers planned, and there is also discussion about making the twelfth of every month a day of action for this cause until the government reverses its decision.

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the July 12 action in Halifax.

Natascia Lypny is a regular contributor to the Halifax Media Co-op, where this story originally appeared.

Rally to Save Kitpu

Who Pays When Your Well is Sucked Dry and Your Home is Contaminated?

Tim McSorley — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 11:25:10 +0000

Supreme Court denies Port Colborne class action victory, squashes hopes for communities affected by industry across Canada for compensation in the courts

PENOBSQUIS, NB—Wilf Pearson was a jovial but straight-shooting retired truck driver who painted Christmas murals on downtown business windows in the small city of Port Colborne, ON, on Lake Erie. Pearson, like many others who lived on Rodney Street in the shadow of a nickel refinery, felt the city's largest employer, the refinery, was responsible for contamination and sickness in his working-class neighbourhood and surrounding farmlands. He didn’t live, though, to see the day that the Supreme Court of Canada denied his community a hearing on the matter.

Pearson, the original claimant on a historic class action lawsuit filed over 10 years ago, died in March of this year at the age of 80. Pearson and the other claimants on the suit made the difficult decision of going after Inco for only the devaluation of their properties—and not a list of other impacts they connected to the refinery (such as sickness) because of legal advice on how the courts work. In their class action suit, Port Colborne residents claimed that their property values were diminished by the nickel emitted from Inco's refinery over a 66-year period prior to 1985.

On July 6, 2010, Ontario Supreme Court Justice JR Henderson sided with the residents and awarded $36 million to 7,000 Port Colborne households, including Pearson's, in what was Canada's largest environmental class action lawsuit award. Households in the Rodney Street area, the location of the refinery, were each awarded $23,000. In their appeal, Vale, formerly Inco, questioned whether the trial judge had erred on different accounts, including whether the nickel discharge by Inco onto the property of the claimants had actually constituted an actionable nuisance. In April, the Supreme Court of Canada sided with Vale and ruled that the claimants had failed to establish Vale’s liability.

Diana Wiggins, a mother who pulled her son out of a Port Colborne elementary school in 2001 because she suspected that it was making her son sick, says she is not surprised by the court ruling given that three of the judges on the case had recently been appointed by the Harper government. "Harper won't be happy until this country has third-world standards," says Wiggins.

Beth Norrad argues that her farming community of Penobsquis, New Brunswick, has been living under similar standards for years. Norrad's house was one of the first to lose its artesian spring water in 1999. Hers and her neighbours’ wells went completely dry in 2004. Their homes are situated directly above the potash mine workings. Norrad and others in Penobsquis have been watching the Port Colborne lawsuit closely and thinking about what it could mean for their community's pursuit for compensation for devalued property.

Beth Nixon, spokesperson for the Concerned Citizens of Penobsquis and mother of four children under the age of 12, says that 60 wells in Penobsquis were lost at the same time that PotashCorp and Corridor Resources Inc were conducting rounds of seismic testing. Penobsquis residents reported hearing and seeing the seismic blasts, noticing dirty water or total loss of water not long afterwards. Seismic testing is occurring in different places in New Brunswick in the hunt for shale gas.

Penobsquis residents have expressed their frustrations of feeling abandoned by the provincial government. Chris Bell, a Penobsquis woman who lost her well water in 2006, attended an open house on natural gas in nearby Sussex in January 2011 to voice her opposition to shale gas and fracking to then Environment Minister Margaret-Ann Blaney.

"Blaney said to me: 'You people in Penobsquis are just so angry.'" Bell says she was shocked by the comment. "I responded with: ‘Don't you think I have the right to be angry? I have lived here for years without water. I have been manipulated, lied to and no one seems to care—especially the government.’" In May, Blaney, then Energy Minister, resigned from politics to accept an appointment as the Chief Executive Officer of Efficiency New Brunswick, a position that many including opposition parties say is a patronage appointment.

The Concerned Citizens of Penobsquis are taking their case to the Mining Commissioner, a public mechanism set up to deal with grievances related to mining in New Brunswick. They are asking for compensation for a long list of impacts they say are caused by potash mining including the loss of 60 water wells, plunging property values, the sinking of land that is damaging their homes, dust, noise and light pollution, and stress. The hearings before the Mining Commissioner, which started in the spring of 2011, are ongoing in Sussex. Regularly found at the hearings are supporters of Penobsquis from across the province. Rallies are occasionally organized outside the hearings to draw attention to the problems in Penobsquis and to protest against shale gas development and fracking, which has also occurred in the rural community. The Alward government has rejected calls for a moratorium or a ban on shale gas. The anti-shale gas alliance in New Brunswick includes more than 40 organizations, most of them community-based.

Natural Resources Minister Bruce Northrup, who represents Penobsquis and Sussex in the provincial legislative assembly, said in May during the release of a discussion paper on regulating shale gas that there have been no issues with seismic testing in the province in the past year. Heather Whalen, an organizer against shale gas from Durham Bridge, near Fredericton, disagrees with Northrup's claim.

"We ended up with dirty water after seismic testing for shale gas. We had to remediate the water ourselves by shocking it and then they tested again and it was clean. There was no proof it was from seismic testing but our water was fine when we bought the house a few weeks before," says Whalen. Whalen says that seismic testing in her neighbourhood has brought truck traffic, noise and dust to her back-country roads. "We moved here for peace and quiet. I had many sleepless nights due to stress of feeling like we were under attack, watching for them everywhere, having security parked at the end of our road, just a few metres up from my driveway."

New Brunswick was recently ranked as the top jurisdiction to mine anywhere in the world by mining companies in an annual survey published by the Fraser Institute. But mining has left Beth Norrad and other residents of Penobsquis, about a two hour drive from Fredericton, wanting to pack up and leave their communities forever.

“Residents of Penobsquis and of New Brunswick deserve better. We deserve a government that looks out for our communities. Instead, the burden of proof and the costs to prove anything rests on us,” says Nixon. Nixon says it is emotionally draining to watch her neighbours testify—many of them elderly, some in tears, their voices trembling.

The shale gas industry took a hit in May when the Royal Planning District Commission reported that New Brunswick's groundwater from the Bay of Fundy to Grand Lake is vulnerable to contamination. "This study is the only case of mapping of aquifers done in recent memory in the province of New Brunswick. We need groundwater mapping in order to assess future developments. They did this study not only for planning, but also because of the Penobsquis situation and the threats from the proposed Salt Springs gas storage, fracking and the proposed Millstream mine. We should be insisting that all planning commissions undertake studies like this around the province. This is one government body that is actually standing up and working for its residents," says Nixon.

For standing up to big industry in their communities, Diana Wiggins, Beth Nixon, Beth Norrad and many others have been labelled and are the object of looks and comments that make them feel uneasy. But they've also been recognized and celebrated for their efforts by different organizations and their neighbours, some who quietly support them but are afraid to do so publicly out of fear of losing their jobs, among other reasons.

"I know I will not stop until justice has been served," said Wiggins, contemplating the next course of action to take in the wake of the disappointing Supreme Court ruling. Wiggins, who originally called the Canadian Environmental Law Association, setting the lawsuit in motion, says her fight is not over. She says Port Colborne residents are contemplating filing individual lawsuits that will extend beyond asking for compensation for devalued properties, and will include health, environmental and other impacts.

"In Canada, one can appreciate the importance of jobs in the resource sector. If health and environmental issues in particular are not addressed by government, and legal processes don't allow for compensation, then there is no deterrent for companies. And communities like Penobsquis and Port Colborne will suffer the consequences," says Nixon.

A civil disobedience workshop was held on Saint Mary's First Nation on May 26. Many people who actively oppose shale gas are new to activism. They are quickly learning that the government and the courts are not there to protect them and that they need to take bold and decisive action that defies the current legislative and court frameworks to protect their families, communities and the entire planet from the devastating impacts of fossil fuel extraction.

Heather Whalen says that the prospects of shale gas development in New Brunswick has had one positive side-effect. "It has made some people who never fought anything in their life stand up and fight for what they believe in."

Tracy Glynn is an environmental activist in New Brunswick and a contributor to the New Brunswick Media Co-op.

PotashCorp

Beth Nixon

Food For Thought

Miles — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 14:24:56 +0000

DARTMOUTH, NOVA SCOTIA—As government agencies find themselves unwilling or, more likely, unable to solve Canada’s poverty problems, provincial organizations like Feed Nova Scotia and individual food banks like Stairs United, in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, confront these issues head-on, constantly enlarging and improving as they daily wage one of our nation’s most difficult battles: to keep our poorest and most vulnerable citizens as well fed as possible.

Canada’s first food bank opened its doors in Edmonton, Alberta in 1981. Prior to this, low income people scrounged extra food from a miscellaneous assortment of soup kitchens, churches and charities, or simply went without. Of course, poverty and hunger were not restricted to Edmonton and very soon other cities and towns followed the food bank’s example. Since that time, those providing free food to Canada’s poorest citizens have opened over 800 food banks and now operate more than 3,000 food programs.

In many ways the food bank at Stairs Memorial United Church in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia is a microcosm of the national food bank movement, expanding and modifying its services to meet an ever-growing and changing need.

Martin Walker is the current president of the North Dartmouth Outreach Resource Centre (NDORC), the organization that now officially runs the Stairs food bank. “I’m really impressed by the hands-on attitude of the volunteers here, the get-it-done attitude. They know that people need this and they just do it.” says Walker. “There’s almost no turnover here among our volunteers. Once people come here to help out, even if they didn’t plan a long-term commitment, they really tend to stay.”

Back in the mid-seventies when Stairs first started, it wasn’t really a food bank at all. Parishioners would bring contributions directly to the minister at the time, Reverend Vince Ihasz, who stored the food in his clothes closet and discreetly allocated the donations to those in need.

By 1987, the demand reached such proportions that a Food Bank Committee was established to be directly responsible to the congregation.

The passing decades have seen not only the growth of food banking but constant evolution and adaptation to changing times and needs. Many food banks have expanded their mandate to include provision of other services such as training in food preparation, assistance with job searching and raising awareness of hunger and poverty. Food banks have become one-stop-shops, offering clients resources and referrals to other support services, such as child care and affordable housing. All of this has been accomplished with heavy reliance on volunteer labour: almost half of all food banks in Canada are run entirely by volunteers.

There would appear to be three major factors fueling the evolution of food banks in Canada. First are the basic improvements and efficiencies gained through experience.

Frances Hunter, who has been Food Bank Manager at Stairs for 15 years, remembers driving to several different grocery stores to pick up day-old bread and items from the donation bins. Workers from other food banks would be doing much the same thing in their locale. “It’s just something I was called to do,” Hunter says. She’s very animated when discussing the clients. “Each one is different. They need to feel they are respected. Each one has a story and they want to be listened to. They want to be hugged and see a friendly face and that’s what I do – give them a hug and a big smile. That’s my reward too, the hugs and smiles I get.”

Increased demand in Nova Scotia, like all provinces in Canada, has seen the creation of central collection and distribution agencies. Feed Nova Scotia, a non-profit NGO created in 1984 as a Metro Food Society, now coordinates food bank operations in the greater Halifax area. Today it gathers and allocates food to more than 150 member agency food banks and meal programs across Nova Scotia.

The second factor that appears to be stimulating food bank modifications is contact with clients at the grassroots level, which is bringing into focus previously unrecognized needs. Stairs United, for instance, like almost every food bank in the country, now supplies diapers, dish and laundry detergent and toiletries. The church has also set aside an area for clothing and book donations.

Regular interaction with clients also allows volunteers to get a sense of the extreme social and psychological isolation poverty produces, causing most food banks to invite other agencies to visit during open hours and make themselves more readily available to those in need. Gordon McKeen, president of NDORC for the past ten years, explains the benefits of regular interaction.

“Our clients can be very fragile because of the problems they have and also because of the way that society treats them,” says McKeen. “For many people, it’s not easy to come to a food bank. One woman told me she walked past half-a-dozen times before she came in. For this reason we want to be very gentle in our dealings. We also want to be humble. Any of us can fall victim to circumstance. Finally, we need to be frugal both with our assets and our energy so that we can make sure every client gets help and shares the resources we have to offer.”

Stairs is regularly visited by Dartmouth Family Centre, Dalhousie Legal Aid, the Public Good Society and the newly formed Community Health Team, among others. Thanks to these organizations, clients can get advice and assistance with child-care issues, tenant-landlord problems, education and employment concerns, and questions about medical access and health issues.

The current minister at Stairs, Reverend Sarah Reaburn, remains closely connected with the food bank as well, usually spending the entire morning speaking (and sometimes praying) with clients who otherwise might not have that kind of spiritual connection in their lives.

“People frequently want to discuss their grief, often old grief that hasn’t been dealt with. There are also relationship problems and these often involve addiction issues. Lots of people just want to pray,” says Reaburn. “Of course, some people just want to chat! Since I’ve been doing this for over five years, I know these folks and they know me so there’s always lots of catching up.”

Stairs may be slightly ahead of the curve with one of their client services: transportation. Recognizing that many people have trouble getting their groceries home due to handicaps and other access issues, Councillor Jim Smith (District 9 Albro Lake Harbourview) has been offering rides to Stairs patrons almost every Wednesday morning for the last six years.

Last year Smith invited Ralph MacKenzie to join him and just a few months ago, the two men, along with the Public Good Society, a Dartmouth-based non-profit, obtained the license to operate the first urban community-based van in the Halifax Regional Municipality. The van is available to other charitable organizations and agencies making food bank visits available to those who otherwise could not participate.

“Some people wouldn’t come to the food bank at all without a ride home,” says MacKenzie. “They can’t afford cab-fare and physically can’t carry the groceries home. People talk about what a great thing you’re doing, but I feel really rewarded. I’m building relationships with these people. I know their names, where they live, and what’s going on in their families. I'm making friends. I love it.”

Being face-to-face with poverty is a powerful motivator and food banks like Stairs have responded. With only two paid staff, Stairs makes sure that one of them is an outreach worker, in this case, Tom Clarke. Clarke joined the food bank for what he thought was a one year stint. Fifteen years later he’s still the outreach coordinator.

Stairs also invites another outreach worker, Kevin Little from the non-profit Public Good Society, to attend the food bank to arrange job postings, education and employment opportunities, housing connections, and contacts with other helping agencies. Thanks to their work, clients have improved their education, gotten jobs and training grants, and became acquainted with numerous other beneficial organizations.

Lamont Dobbin volunteers at Stairs United. He lives and works in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

Helen and Heather prepare client orders in the pantry at Stairs United.

Jeremy’s Case, Jordan’s Principle

dawn — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 14:35:50 +0000

Historic court case in Halifax identifies gap in health services for First Nations children

HALIFAX—In a precedent-setting case that continued in Halifax on Monday, Maurina Beadle and Pictou Landing First Nation took the Government of Canada to court over its failure to provide Beadle’s son the same level of health care that a child living off-reserve would receive from the province of Nova Scotia.

On the fourth anniversary of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's historic apology to First Nations people for the forced separation of children from their families under the residential school system, the Mi'kmaq mother was in court fighting for the health services that would allow her son Jeremy to remain at home under her care.

"All the things that were promised in Harper's apology are things they are not doing for Jeremy," said Philippa Pictou, Health Director for Pictou Landing First Nation, sitting on a bench in courtroom 501 in the Law Courts on Lower Water Street in Halifax on Monday morning. "Kids being pushed into institutions, instead of being cared for at home."

Jeremy Meawasige is a 17-year-old from Pictou Landing First Nation who was born with a complex array of disabilities and medical conditions. His mother, Maurina Beadle, had been providing all of his care without government assistance until a double stroke in May 2010 left her physically unable to meet his needs at home.

When, with help from the First Nation, Beadle applied for funding for home care health services, she found that her family's Aboriginal status caught her son in jurisdictional red tape that prevented him from receiving the same care on-reserve that he would be provided with by the province of Nova Scotia if he lived off-reserve.

With the support of Pictou, Beadle is invoking Jordan’s Principle for the first time in its history. The child-first policy passed unanimously in the House of Commons in 2007. It dictates that in the instance of a jurisdictional dispute over which level of government foots the bill for a First Nations child in need of medical care, the government first contacted must come up with the funds; any arguments over who ultimately pays for the child's care are to be argued later.

Jordan's Principle is named after Jordan River Anderson of Norway House Cree Nation, who lived all four years of his life in hospital while the governments of Manitoba and Canada fought over which level of government was responsible for paying for his home care.

Jordan's Principle has never been implemented in any province or territory.

"Should a disabled First Nations child on-reserve be entitled to the level of care available to any child off-reserve?" asked Paul Champ, the lawyer representing Beadle and Pictou Landing First Nation, in his opening comments.

Provincial governments generally provide continuing care health services in the home. But because First Nations fall under federal jurisdiction, provincial governments do not provide on-reserve health services.

The federal government, either under Health Canada or Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC, formerly INAC), is responsible for allocating to First Nation bands the resources to provide services "reasonably comparable to those provided by the province," Champ told the court on Monday. Bands must "administer program according to provincial legislation and standards."

In her decision to deny Beadle the requested funding, AANDC official Barbara Robinson argued that Beadle and Pictou Landing First Nation were requesting services above and beyond the "normative standard of care in Nova Scotia."

Champ argued that Robinson's interpretation of the normative standard of care in Nova Scotia is flawed. She determined that Jeremy Beadle is eligible to receive $2,200 per month, "full stop," explained Champ. $2,200 per month is the standard respite cap in Nova Scotia, according to a Community Services policy document.

However, a support program available for persons with disabilities in Nova Scotia—one designed to "maintain the integrity of families," including enabling people with disabilities to live at home&mdashincludes a section in which "exceptional circumstances" allow for additional respite funding. These circumstances are defined in a number of points, and all apply to Jeremy.

Upon cross-examination, Robinson conceded that the Beadles meet all exceptional circumstances criteria, but she also said that the "exceptional circumstances" part of the policy doesn't apply to Jeremy's case. Her reasoning, explained Champ, was that she relied on what happens "in practice," not necessarily in policy or law.

According to the Social Assistance Act, the government "shall furnish assistance to all persons in need," and this includes home care. Cabinet can prescribe maximum levels of assistance. No maximum has been legally established; the $2,200 cap is, effectively, arbitrary.

On Monday afternoon, the proceedings turned to Section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the equality guarantee that ensures that all people have access to equal benefit of the law. Champ reminded the court that the purpose of the Charter is to entrench the goal of equality, in particular to protect those who have been historically disadvantaged.

"The disadvantage that First Nations have historically faced on reserves has never been resolved," said Champ. "Never. Never. First Nations people do not have equal access to schools, home care, or health."

Robinson, when making her decision in the Beadle case, stated that the Charter doesn't apply. Champ explained the exception to the guarantee of equality that excludes First Nations people who, because of their unique status, are not entitled to the equal benefit of the law.

First Nations people are the only legal group in Canada identified by race; they therefore fall into a "legal no-man's-land" because their situation can't be compared to anything--there is no comparative group with respect to which they can be discriminated. Therefore the Charter, and cases argued on the basis of discrimination, cannot be argued. Champ submitted that this is an improper way to interpret Section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The services provided by the federal government--either by Health Canada or by Aboriginal Affairs--to people on-reserve, are not provided by legal obligation, but as a matter of policy, based on agreements and programs negotiated with First Nations band councils.

These services are policy, not law, Champ told the court. They are therefore discretionary, and provided according to the government official who interprets the policy. These agreements use such language as "Canada has elected to provide" a given service. These services are therefore a choice, provided at the discretion of the Government of Canada.

One such policy is Jordan's Principle. As an "expression of the House," it is not legally binding, but the federal government is seeking to implement the principle across the country. Where there is no formal agreement, there are dialogues premised on Jordan's Principle, said Champ. He added that in any other case he would not make the argument that Jordan’s Principle legally applies.

"But in this case, there are no statutes. We have policy manuals, funding agreements that change over time in content and funding levels essentially at the whim of the federal government. Do these policies have the form of law? Yes, because there is nothing else," said Champ. "This is, in a sense, is the best that we have."

The animated purpose of Jordan's Principle, he said, is to acknowledge the fact that First Nations people are in a unique legal situation, and also to rectify the historical disadvantage of First Nations people.

A breach of Jordan's Principle is evidence of discrimination, said Champ. "When a child is denied service for one day, as a result of a jurisdictional dispute, that is a breach of Jordan's Principle, and it is always a breach of Section 15 of the Charter."

After the Crown’s submissions and the applicants' responses, Judge Mandimen acknowledged that the case is time-sensitive. Recognizing that the Pictou Landing First Nation cannot continue to provide funding for Beadle’s home care, Mandimen said that he would move his decision through as soon as possible.

Beadle—and First Nations across the country who are watching this case—will still have to wait up to six months for a ruling, although after the trial Champ said he hopes for a ruling by the end of August.

"I know this [case] won’t necessarily change things for Jeremy, by the time it’s over," said Beadle. "But this isn’t for Jeremy. This is for children across the country. They shouldn’t have to wait while the people in power procrastinate."

Moira Peters lives and bikes in Halifax.

A version of this article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op as a series, including an introductory article and blog posts about Monday’s morning and afternoon court proceedings. The last post of the series covering Monday’s court proceedings will be published by the Halifax Media Co-op later today.

Maurina Beadle at Pictou Landing

Sloughs of Despond

Tim McSorley — Fri, 11 May 2012 10:29:53 +0000

Fracking wastewater ponds languish in Hants County

HALIFAX—Hydraulic fracturing wastewater shown to contain high levels of radioactive contaminants has been sitting in two open containment pits in Hants County, Nova Scotia, since 2007, the Media Co-op has learned.

A Freedom of Information request has also revealed that the water likely contains a slew of other chemicals, including known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors.

Triangle Petroleum Corporation, the Denver-based company responsible for creating the ponds, announced on April 16, after having stalled on remediating the wastewater for over four years, that it was “contemplating a total exit” from its operations in Nova Scotia. The company’s announcement coincided with the provincial NDP’s announcement that its review of the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing, initially slated for a Spring 2012 release, would be extended into 2014.

The first company to explore Nova Scotia’s shale formations for natural gas using the contentious horizontal-drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, Triangle had been threatening for some time to renounce its 10 year exploration lease on 475,000 gross acres—known as The Windsor Block—spanning Kings and Hants Counties along the Minas Basin.

In an email to Nova Scotia Environment (NSE) dated August 29, 2011—obtained through a NS Freedom of Information request—Dr. Peter Hill, at the time Triangle’s CEO, threatened his company’s withdrawal from the province.

Should the [fracking] Review fail to support deep re-injectivity [sic] of formation waters back to their formation of origin, or ban, restrict or delay shale gas activity for a long period, then we will drain the ponds by the then best method available, remediate all sites, return our licenses back to the Nova Scotia Department of Energy and cease any further investment in the Province of Nova Scotia.

The wastewater comprising the ponds was generated in 2007 when Triangle drilled and fracked two wells in the Kennetcook area of Hants County.

NSE and Triangle have since been at loggerheads concerning the best method of remediation for the 15 million litres of wastewater—the former insisting on trucking the wastewater to appropriate treatment facilities, the latter on injecting the “formation waters back to their formation of origin,” or, namely, drilling an on-site disposal well and injecting it into the earth.

While the deep-well reinjection of fracking wastewater is common industry practice, it runs counter to NSE’s best practices guide.

And for good reason, according to Jennifer West, groundwater coordinator at the Ecology Action Centre (EAC).

“When you punch a hole through the overlying rock formations, which act as seals, and then dump millions of litres of wastewater into that hole, there’s no way you can guarantee that it’s not going to change the quality of the drinking water,” she says. “The practice is appalling given the number of chemicals and anthropogenic contaminants in wastewater.”

Families of chemicals that Triangle used in its fracking slurry for the Kennetcook wells (among others):

Diethylene glycols: An endocrine disruptor known to adversely affect development, the reproductive, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, respiratory and nervous systems, and to impair function of the kidneys, liver, skin, and eyes.

Isopropanols: Known to have adverse effects on the sensory organs, the liver, kidneys, brain, and blood, and the immune system.

Methanols: A mutagen known to have the preceding effects.

Sodium persulphates: Causes skin, eye, sensory organ, and respiratory, gastrointestinal, nervous and immune system damage.

Trisodium nitrilotriacetate monohydrates: Known to cause cancer, and gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, kidney and ecological damage.

In December 2011, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a draft report on the effects of hydraulic fracturing on groundwater in Pavilion, Wyoming. “Using a lines of reasoning approach,” the study found that “inorganic and organic constituents associated with hydraulic fracturing ha[d] contaminated ground water at and below the depth used for domestic water supply.”

Reinjection has been linked to a marked increase in seismic activity in the American Midwest over the past ten years. According to the US Geological Survey, “the injection of [fracking] wastewater into the subsurface can cause earthquakes that are large enough to be felt…and cause damage.”

Earlier this year, Ohio’s Natural Resources Department introduced stringent new regulations for oil and gas drilling companies after several earthquakes in the state had been linked to fracking-wastewater reinjection.

Although its development plan application, submitted to the NS Department of Energy in 2008, states that Triangle would commit “to safeguarding the environment…through the application of best practices,” the company has been stalwart in its opposition to NSE’s insistence on draining the ponds and treating, rather than reinjecting, the wastewater. The company has stated that trucking the wastewater to treatment facilities would be too expensive and would undermine road safety.

Ken Summers is a member of the Nova Scotia Fracking Resource and Action Coalition (NOFRAC) who lives near the Kennetcook ponds. He believes the lengthy impasse highlights the slapdash nature by which shale gas exploration activity in Nova Scotia has emerged.

“Up until they launched their review [of hydraulic fracturing in April 2011], the provincial government was relying on regulations designed to cover conventional drilling, which are insufficient mechanisms when applied to the so-called unconventional method of hydraulic fracturing,” says Summers.

Summers contends that the Kennetcook ponds are the direct result of an absence of fracking-specific provincial wastewater remediation regulations, and are exemplary of a savvy company taking advantage of the tenderfoot provincial government.

“The industry is so new and has developed so fast that provincial and state jurisdictions are way behind the industry players in terms of knowledge and expertise,” he explains.

According to the Kennetcook drill-site plan Triangle submitted to the province, the pits were dug to hold freshwater to be used during the fracking process.

“NSE notes in its documentation that it didn’t give approval for waste ponds, that no permits were issued,” explains Summers.

In 2008, when NSE realized the ponds were holding wastewater, it issued Triangle a two-year temporary storage permit during which time Triangle was to have the water transported to treatment facilities in Dartmouth and Debert, 20 kilometres west of Truro. When the temporary permit expired in June 2010, with no remedial action having taken place, NSE issued a one-year extension with the proviso that by the end of the one-year term they expected definitive plans for draining the ponds and reclaiming the sites.

In August, 2011, two months beyond the extension deadline, with Triangle still pressuring for reinjection, and proposing they “wait for the decisions and recommendations of the Review Committee on Hydraulic Fracturing that [were] expected later [that] year,” NSE demanded that the ponds be drained before winter freeze, or November 1, which Triangle claimed unfeasible, suggesting instead “the gradual use of the brines as a de-icing/wetting agent on Nova Scotia roads.”

Months later, Triangle agreed to drain one of the ponds before winter freeze, which they began to do on November 21. Shortly thereafter, on December 2, NSE received test results showing the wastewater contained high levels of radionuclides, and consequently, owing to the fact that there is no facility in Atlantic Canada capable of treating radioactively contaminated wastewater, suspended all drainage activity.

Radionuclides are unstable forms of nuclides, a generic term for the atomic form of an element. The most common radionuclides in groundwater are radon, radium, thorium and uranium. Radon and uranium occur most commonly in shale and granite formations, which comprise a significant portion of Nova Scotia’s geology. The EPA states that although “most drinking water sources have very low levels of [naturally occurring] radioactive contaminants,” human activity can incite drinking water contamination “through accidental releases of radioactivity or through improper disposal practices.”

Exposure to high levels of radon and uranium has been linked to bone and internal organ cancers in humans.

“They were trucking water out for less than two weeks in five or six trucks a day to Debert, and part of it is sitting in a pond in Debert, but most of it is still sitting in the pond in Kennetcook,” says Summers.

Compounding the matter, the water that was already drained and trucked to the Atlantic Industrial Services facility in Debert before NSE suspended drainage activity now has to be removed from that location because it cannot be treated at that facility.

“Who’s to say where they’re going to go from here, because now we’re talking about a much more expensive process for the company, so it’s back into limbo,” says Summers.

Meanwhile, one of the Kennetcook ponds is leaking and has spilled over in heavy rain, augmenting concerns within the community over groundwater contamination.

The EPA draft report on groundwater in Pavilion, Wyoming, found that “high concentrations of benzene, xylenes, gasoline range organics, diesel range organics, and total purgeable hydrocarbons in ground water samples from shallow monitoring wells near [wastewater] pits indicates that pits are a source of shallow ground water contamination in the area of investigation” representing “potential source terms for localized groundwater plumes of unknown extent.”

Oil and gas companies are not lawfully compelled to disclose the chemicals they use in their slickwater, the proprietary nature of which can make it notoriously difficult when it comes to delineating which toxic elements have been introduced by industry and which are naturally occurring.

A recent EAC Freedom of Information request has disclosed the group of industrial chemicals that were used in the fracking fluid for the Kennetcook wells (See sidebar).

“Chemicals associated with fracking are just the tip of the iceberg,” says West. “We found dozens of dangerous substances which were used for fracking in Hants, but also for drilling and site preparation. We found these through a Freedom of Information request—they weren’t handing out this information at an Open House in Kennetcook.”

The potential for the contamination of our drinking water is multifold, yet the result is singular, according to West.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s the methane, or wastewater, the natural contaminants, or the chemicals that get into our drinking water, it’s just that something [toxic] can get into our drinking water and that’s not acceptable.”

Despite numerous delays and Triangle’s departure announcement, NSE remains firm that the company will clean up its mess. “They are required to meet the terms and conditions of their approval, which includes draining the ponds, treating the wastewater at an approved facility, and returning the site to its natural state before the end of this year,” says Karen White, NSE Director of Communications.

White further emphasizes that “any materials that meet federal legislation requirements under the Nuclear Substances Act and/or the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act must be shipped to an appropriate facility out of province.”

West maintains reservations, given that the government, to no avail, has been asking the company for almost five years to comply with regulations. She says more decisive action needs to be taken. "[Triangle] should be forced to immediately clean up the ponds in Kennetcook before drinking water is impacted by these chemicals, and be held accountable if contamination has occurred."

Steven Wendland is a graduate student and contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op.

This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Tailings in Hants

Poem to Raymond Taavel

Miles — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:44:27 +0000

For Raymond, and for all of the Raymonds, which is to say: for everyone

Editor's note: In the early morning of April 17th, prominent gay rights activist Raymond Taavel was fatally assaulted as he tried to break up a fight outside a popular Halifax nightclub. Later that day, as rumours swirled that the murder was a hate crime, hundreds gathered on Gottingen Street, in Halifax's North End, to collectively mourn and pay respect to Taavel. Tanya Davis, Halifax's poet laureat, recited the following poem.

There are words that spring to mind
like sadness
like violence
like senseless crime
like how this affects all of us
like how every tear in every eye falls from all of us
and today Halifax is an ocean of anguish
a sea of angry
beside the Atlantic.

And how do we handle this
what happens next
how do we manage the sorrow and the stress?
This afternoon I walked the sidewalks
not so different than the one where he met his death
where no person should ever have to lay their head
both concrete and Raymond were innocent.
I walked the sidewalk and every person I met
I tried to look into them

Do you know? Do you know?
Do you know what we're supposed to do now,
'cause I don't

I won't hate more
I won't love less
so many people - maybe even his killer - are loveless
not unloveable
maybe ignorant, definitely sick
and probably he shouldn't have been let out to walk around
and probably he was hateful and homophobic
but what's painful
besides this loss, besides all death
is the simple fact of it that remains:
this isn't over yet
- people left behind for every step we gain

I walked down the sidewalk that is in the city where I live and love
I look for eye contact
for allies in the right to live and love
I wore black and tough
as it is complicated stuff
how to protect oneself and yet open up

I stumble here
it isn't clear
I put my ear to the ground to listen for the sounds of people's fear
being taken down by other people's fear
who are guilty for their deeds but do not live in isolation here

There are systems failing us everywhere
prisons and education and mental health care
there is separation stark and severe
we reach out our hands to make connection
but some are all mixed up
bring death and destruction
it's all fucked up
like when he struck him, here

And, now, a being from the tribe of Love is gone
and we are one less strong
in a battle we are tired of fighting in the first place
lay down your arms
peace is your birthright

One more time we pick up the pieces and we keep loving
struggle for freedom
for all beings
Gottingen street gets another beating.

Well, we'll love it harder
reach our arms out further
to encircle all of our neighbours
'til we work through all of the hating

this is for all of you
this is for the pain in our city today
this is for Raymond

Tanya Davis is Halifax's poet laureat

Remembering Raymond Taavel on Gottingen Street, Halifax

Sustainable

Zinta — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:22:16 +0000

sustainable.jpg

No Abortion Services on Prince Edward Island

Miles — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:18:50 +0000

Island women fight for access in their own province

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND— Kandace Hagen expected her nomination for a youth social justice award to be slightly controversial. After all, if she won, she would be recognized for her work advocating for abortion access in Prince Edward Island. She didn’t, however, expect to face a campaign by anti-abortion activists trying to ensure she didn’t win.

The Atlantic Council for International Cooperation’s Active8! campaign highlights eight youth, and awards one, who have demonstrated outstanding leadership for social justice. The leading contestant, Tara Brinston, was entered into the campaign in recognition of her advocacy work for the rights of people with disabilities, but ended up alongside Hagen in the middle of an abortion access debate.

In a leaked email, a spokesperson of a local anti-abortion group sought to convince its supporters to pledge in favour of Brinston: “Please have all the youth you know sign in and vote for TARA BRINSTON [sic],” the email read. “We want to make sure that Kandice [sic] doesn’t win this award for youth leadership. The vote is close so please send this to all the youth and youth groups you know.”

Hagen, 24, has been part of a reinvigorated movement to get access to abortion services on PEI and to increase women’s access to information about their reproductive options. PEI is the only province in Canada with no abortion services offered within its borders.

This is despite the fact that since 1988 the Supreme Court has interpreted the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ guarantee of the “security of the person” as protecting women’s access to abortion services. This removed legal barriers to abortion for the majority of public hospitals across Canada.

Currently, a PEI woman seeking an abortion would have to travel out of the province. She could pay about $800 to the private Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton, NB, or access a PEI-funded abortion at the Halifax General Hospital after a referral from her doctor. Either way, she would pay for her own travel costs. If she were in her second trimester, she would have to travel to Ottawa or Montreal, covering medical and all other costs as well.

This hypothetical "she” could have been Hagen. When Hagen sought the procedure two years ago, her doctor only informed her of the private option in Fredericton. The clinic, in turn, advised her to wait two weeks out of uncertainty that she would be past the necessary eight-week mark.

“When I did arrive, I found out that I was within a week of missing my first trimester date,” says Hagen. “Had my physician acted in my best interest, I could have had an ultrasound and found out that it was indeed a timely issue and been referred to Halifax immediately. Instead, I was almost put in an even more difficult position.”

It was in large part due to this experience that Hagen helped launch the PEI Reproductive Rights Organization (PRRO). The group raises awareness on what options already exist for women on PEI, and how these compare to the rest of Canada. “A lot of people were very surprised. Some had no idea that there were no abortion services available on PEI. Others were equally surprised that there was any funding at all,” says Hagen.

Bronwyn Rodd, another founding member of PRRO, sees a particularly strong “culture of silence” on PEI surrounding abortions— a culture that extends well into the local medical community.

PRRO sent a survey to every doctor in the province with detailed information about current abortion service options. Though many doctors responded by stating that they are pro-choice, none were willing to take a public pro-choice stance.

So far, the group has found one doctor from off-island willing to provide abortions on PEI. “One doctor anonymously spoke to the media here, saying he would be in favour of providing the service, but he would be afraid of retribution by the pro-life people. They are very active. PEI is so small and confidentiality is a challenge,” says Rodd.

Anti-abortion activists on PEI refer to their province as Canada’s "life sanctuary." In other words, “the only place without any legal access to abortion,” says Rodd. “[PEI] is very high on the priority list for the national pro-life movement, because we are sort of their ‘in’ for regressing [abortion] laws in general.” She believes local anti-abortion groups receive substantial financial support from their counterparts across North America.

A spokesperson for one such group,the PEI Right to Life Association, urged people to intervene in the Active8! campaign. Similar activists turned up in equal numbers to counter-demonstrate at PRRO’s 300-person protest last fall, the first pro-choice rally in the province in 20 years.

The association also published in PEI’s main newspaper, The Guardian, in which the group purports to clarify “a number of errors that can be confusing and present a false basis upon which to view the abortion issue on PEI.” The highlighted “errors” paint a picture in which PEI is in fact enshrining the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, rather than transgressing it.

PEI Liberal Premier Robert Ghiz has so far stood against any reforms to current practice. He’s gone on record stating that as long as he’s Premier, he’s “going to stay with the status quo," which he insists is a “good compromise.”

PRRO intends to push for abortion accessibility as far as it can. Rodd understands the Premier’s stance as an implied threat to legislate a barrier, should doctors start offering services. “We don’t think he has the jurisdiction to say that. There is no legal barrier in place here. So, we think he would be acting illegally...And if things do progress that way, we would be looking at launching a lawsuit.”

The Active8! campaign ultimately declared Hagen and Brinston joint winners earlier this month. To Hagen, the PEI government is “simply waiting for us to shut up,” she says, “which we won’t do until women in PEI have the same access as women in the rest of Canada.”

Peter Driftmier is a producer and collective member of Redeye on Vancouver Co-operative Radio, and a community organizer. He spends his mornings trying to convince elementary students at a Downtown Eastside breakfast program of the virtues of tofu, wholegrain bread, fruit and veggies.

Kandace Hagen

The Greenwashing of Sustainable Seafood

Miles — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 09:13:01 +0000

The environmental community rejects the sustainable certification of Nova Scotia longline caught swordfish

HALIFAX—Sustainable seafood certification announces to consumers that the fish they are buying is caught using ecologically sound practices that ensure the conservation of the species of sea life in question. But not everyone feels the not-for-profit organization charged with certification process is doing its job in ensuring the sustainability of fisheries.

The not-for-profit Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) runs the world's main seafood certification program with a corporate vision of “the world's oceans teeming with life, and seafood supplies safeguarded for this and future generations.” Various environmental NGOs, such as the David Suzuki foundation, the Sea Turtle Conservancy and Nova Scotia's Ecology Action Centre (EAC) have been sounding the alarm against MSC's certification of one fishery in particular: the Atlantic Canadian pelagic longline fishery for swordfish, which has been regulated through the MSC process since 2009.

“Personally I am very frustrated by the thought of consumers being misled by eco-labels or not being able to trust sustainability certifications,” says Jordan Nikoloyuk, Sustainable Fisheries Co-ordinator at the EAC. “The [longline swordfish] fishery kills two sharks as bycatch for every one swordfish they bring in ... That fact alone should mean that people shouldn't spend more for it at the stores.”

Pelagic longline fishing is a large-scale industrial approach to fishing. Pelagic longlines have upwards of 1,500 individual baited hooks coming off a central line up to 60 kilometres long. The technology is non-selective, meaning that anything that bites a hook will get caught. There are around 20,000 swordfish caught annually in the Atlantic Canadian longline fishery. But the catch of other, incidental, or “non-target” species is much higher.

The EAC and the other NGOs, as official stakeholders in the certification process, recently filed a formal objection against the recommendation that this swordfish fishery receive its MSC certification. “Our objection was very wide-ranging. It was about bad data, monitoring the fishery and very high levels of bycatch,” says Nikoloyuk.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) estimates that 100,000 sharks and 1,400 sea turtles are caught annually in the fishery. Most sharks and turtles are released alive but approximately 35,000 sharks and 200 to 500 turtles die annually. “Blue sharks are the ones they catch most of ... Do we have to wait for those sharks to be endangered before you can stop catching so many of them?” asks Nikoloyuk.

It is important to note that while the MSC bestows certification and the use of its blue eco-label—an image of a fish combined with a check mark of approval—on fisheries that pass its international sustainable fisheries standard, it does not conduct the certifications. Jay Lugar, MSC Fisheries Outreach Manager for the Americas, says, “The MSC role in our process is to make sure that individual assessments are technically correct. In other words, we review documents that are posted on our website ... for technical correctness, but we don't evaluate the content and the analysis. We don't undertake the scientific analysis, the scientific team does.”

Third party certification firms are hired to conduct fishery assessments for upwards of $70,000, usually paid for by the fishery association benefiting directly from the certification. They are re-assessed every five years.

Fisheries paying for their own assessments can create a catch-22, whereby if the certification company applies the standard stringently and fails fisheries often, they will not be the assessment company of choice by other fisheries wishing to gain certification.

“I am increasingly unconvinced by the third party accreditation model," says Brendan May, CEO of the MSC from 1999 to 2004. "At the end of the day it is the MSC’s brand. There are also big questions about the model in which fisheries pay for their own audits and choose their own auditors. This is a common problem with all major certification systems.”

Intertek Moody Marine, a worldwide technical services firm with its head office in England, is the largest certifier of MSC fisheries worldwide. Moody Marine was hired by the Nova Scotia Swordfisherman’s Association, the organization that represents the pelagic longline fleet in Atlantic Canada, to assess their fishery. Moody Marine then hired a team of experts who found that the fishery passed the MSC standard for a sustainable fishery.

The EAC, on the periphery of this process, provided advice and information and highlighted relevant issues for the Moody Marine experts throughout the assessment. Left unsatisfied by the decision to certify the fishery, the EAC and other environmental groups made an official objection to the MSC directly. This was dealt with by MSC appointed adjudicator, Wylie Spicer.

According to Spicer's decision, he did not see it as his role to give the evidence and conclusions reached by Moody Marine a thorough second look. Rather, he deferred to the authority of the Moody Marine's role as certifier and limited his task to determining whether the organization's decision was “so unreasonable that no certification body could have come to that conclusion.” This limited view of the adjudication meant that there was very little within the objection that Spicer would actually comment on.

“I was surprised that this fishery, with its evidently high bycatch, did not meet the criteria for an objection,” says May. “I established the objections procedure around ten years ago ... It was, and I assume still is, designed to give stakeholders a final opportunity to present their case against a proposed certification. To my knowledge, however, no objection has ever been upheld, which must lead to some asking why it exists at all.”

Nikoloyuk and the EAC are asking question of their own. “It makes us wonder why a group like ours would put all the effort into participating in this if we are not going to be able to affect the outcome at all,” says Nikoloyuk.

The EAC has been involved in other MSC assessments, such as the Atlantic Canadian harpoon swordfish fishery, which was certified in 2010. This fishery targets one swordfish at a time with a modern-day spear. This fishing method has no bycatch and only catches mature swordfish and the EAC fully supports its certification.

Nikoloyuk says “[The swordfish harpoon fishery is] a Nova Scotian fishery that is environmentally sustainable, could be marketed with very high value and be something we could be proud of. I think the [longline] certification diminishes that.”

The harpoon fishery only holds ten per cent of Canada's swordfish quota and the longline fishery holds 90 per cent.

The MSC doesn't see any problem with two fisheries of contrasting scales and impacts both being certified as sustainable under their standard. “All fisheries go through the same process and they have to meet the same criteria in order to become MSC-certified,” says Lugar.

Lugar says the MSC standard reflects global best practices, but Nikoloyuk says that Canada's longline swordfishery is far from a global best and advocates looking at what some other longline fisheries are doing that Canada is not.

“What the Hawaii longline fishery for tunas has done is set a hard cap on the number of endangered sea turtles that can get caught every year,” says Nikoloyuk. “So in Hawaii it is 18 loggerhead and 18 leatherback turtles. Combined with that, they have 100 per cent observer coverage, which is key because when the fishery as a whole goes over 18 it gets shut down for the season.”

Observers are independent fisheries technicians who collect data from on board fishing vessels about what is caught, how much is caught and where it is caught. Canada's observer coverage has fluctuated from five to eight per cent since 2004 and has no hard caps or legally binding limits for bycatch.

Despite the issues with the MSC process, Nikoloyuk says: “We would really like to see a strong viable Marine Stewardship Council labeling system. It's enormously valuable to have one really good, really dependable certification ... I don't think it helps anyone to have a Marine Stewardship Council that got watered down, got some bad fisheries in it and isn't reliable.”

The EAC, David Suzuki Foundation and Sea Turtle Conservancy are currently drafting a formal letter to Whole Foods Market, requesting that it not carry Canadian longline-caught swordfish. Whole Foods is the largest retailer of MSC-certified swordfish and the NGOs hope that the retailer will help communicate the issues with the fishery and the certification process back to the MSC.

It turns out, however, that Whole Foods has already taken longline caught sword-fish off the menu.

“Prior to Earth Day 2011, we eliminated all swordfish and tuna from red-ranked fisheries,” says Carrie Brownstein, Whole Foods’ Seafood Quality Standards Coordinator. Canadian longline-caught swordfish is ranked as red by both SeaChoice and Seafood Watch, two sustainable seafood guides also used by Whole Foods. As such, it would have been removed from the shelves and replaced by other sources of swordfish.

Brownstein says that this move helped to forge longer-term commitments between Whole Foods and smaller niche suppliers of swordfish such as the Nova Scotia harpoon fishermen.

When asked if Whole Foods will re-stock the shelves with Atlantic Canadian pelagic longline caught swordfish once it is MSC certified, Brownstein replied, “Our purchasing decisions depend upon a number of factors and—as with any product—we’ll evaluate all of the science out there before making a final decision on what to sell.”

Brownstein says that Whole Foods considers MSC certification to be the gold standard, so the worry is that once certified it will go back on the shelves even though nothing has changed and it is still ranked as red by these other seafood guides.

If Whole Foods decides to stock MSC-certified longline swordfish, the MSC will have opened the market door for the longline fishery to be branded as “sustainable.” This also stands to decrease the short-lived benefit to the truly sustainable harpoon swordfish fishery.

“I am still hopeful that one day the MSC will take ownership over its brand and remove it from [the pelagic longline] fishery's products,” says Nikoloyuk. “In the meantime we are asking retailers not to carry this product.”

Palmira Boutilier is a biologist and journalist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia

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