The Dominion - 85

Issue #85

Tim McSorley — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 19:44:02 +0000

Subhead:

November/December 2012

Cover Image:

issue_85_cover_web2.jpg

Body:

Download Issue #85 (November/December 2012) [7MB, PDF]

To read articles from this issue on the web, visit this page.

Issue #85 is formatted as 24 pages of letter sized paper (8.5x11).

(You need Acrobat Reader or an application that reads pdf files to view the print version of this issue.)

Distribution rights:

You are free (and encouraged) to download, print, and distribute as many copies of The Dominion as you like, with the following restrictions:

the content of the paper will not be modified
no advertising or additional content will be attached to the paper
15 per cent of any profits derived from the sale or distribution of The Dominion will be paid to The Dominion
We ask regular readers for a voluntary contribution of between $2 and $10 per issue. See our donation page for details.

Exceptions to any of these restrictions may be granted on a case by case basis. Contact us with any questions.

Sinking Ships

dawn — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:39:32 +0000

Shipwrecks, shellfish and the future of the BC coast

HARTLEY BAY, BC—The two ex-lovers who were at the helm of the BC Ferries ship Queen of the North during a routine overnight sailing from Prince Rupert to Port Hardy six years ago probably didn't expect their first reunion after a two-week separation to end the way it did. Years later, despite a lengthy investigation into what happened that night (with which the ex-lovers refused to co-operate), only the bridge crew on staff know the specific details of the human error that caused a 700-passenger ferry to collide with Gil Island and sink in the early hours of March 22, 2006.

Soon the jagged rocks and narrow channels that consumed the ferry may be an obstacle course for much larger ships, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

If the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal is accepted, tankers will cross the ferry route at Wright Sound, passing the sunken ship as they start up Douglas Channel.

The tankers would carry hundreds of millions of litres of bitumen from Kitimat to China, making the 250,000 litres of diesel on the Queen of the North seem paltry by comparison.

Each tanker is three times the length of the ferry, requiring two kilometres to stop completely. There is far less room for human or technical error. With growing opposition to the gas and oil pipelines proposed to cross BC, a closer look at the Queen of the North incident sheds new light on the dangers of tanker traffic on the wild, rocky coast.

The passengers and crew stranded in the dark, isolated sound on that fateful March night in 2006 were fortunate to be in Gitga’at Nation Territory.

Upon hearing the radioed distress signals, nearly all of the 200 Gitga’at residents of the nearby Hartley Bay leapt out of bed, mobilized every boat in the village and prepared the community centre to accommodate 99 exhausted and traumatized survivors. Their life-saving efforts came well in advance of the arrival of the Coast Guard. Even with this effort, two of the passengers aboard the Queen of the North, Shirley Rosette and Gerald Foisy, were never found and are presumed dead.

When it sank, the Queen of the North brought hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel, oil and hydraulic fluid down with it. First responders on the scene that night reported that the entire surface of Wright Sound was covered in a film of diesel.

Hartley Bay residents as far as 11 kilometres away reported that they could smell the accident from their homes. The 2007 Queen of the North Monitoring Summary Review, an environmental report commissioned by BC Ferries, found that following the sinking, patches of diesel dotted several hundred square kilometres of ocean surface and may have contacted 100 kilometres of shoreline.

Six years later, community members from Hartley Bay are still dealing with the impacts of the sinking. The ship remains on the ocean floor. Even today, they say, diesel patches are visible when the weather is calm.

“If the Queen of the North had sunk anywhere near Vancouver or Victoria, it would still not be sitting at the bottom of the ocean, leaking contaminants,” said Cameron Hill, a Hartley Bay Band Council member. “There’s no way that would have happened anywhere else. But it’s happening right outside Hartley Bay.”

Hill claims that two days after the sinking, former BC Premier Gordon Campbell and former BC Ferries CEO David Hahn promised the ship would be raised. “At the very least, [they said] they will take out all of the contaminants,” said Hill. “The technology is there to do that. That never happened either. And still to this day it leaks.”

Following analysis from the Canadian Coast Guard and London Offshore Consultants, BC Ferries determined that it was not worth raising the wreck or attempting to remove the diesel. Nobody knows for certain whether all of the diesel was dispersed in the incident, or if some is still trapped in the hull. The Queen of the North remains 430 metres under the ocean.

Removing the diesel floating on the ocean surface also proved to be an insurmountable task.

Diesel is a very light fuel that spreads to less than one millimetre of depth. Without a very calm surface it is difficult to extract. “There was not a heck of a lot that you could do,” said Ernie Hill, one of three Hereditary Chiefs of the Gitga’at. “They had booms out there, but all they could do was redirect it. I think somebody said they collected, maybe ten gallons or something, of actual diesel fuel. But the rest went to the beaches.”

Western Canada Marine Response Corporation, the company contracted by BC Ferries for the cleanup, did not respond to interview requests before this article went to press.

Ernie Hill and others think the diesel is already taking a toll on marine life.

“Unfortunately there were really big tides,” said Hill. “Our major clam beds were just totally below it. We looked at the clams the following year and they were just not good. You know, dark inside and not very much of it. And it drifts up to the high water mark and it affected a lot of our plants there too.”

BC Ferries, a private corporation contracted and legislated by the BC government, promised the region would be restored to a pristine condition and that it would fund a yearly contribution to the Hartley Bay Band to pay for monitoring and testing of marine life in the area. The monitoring included visually inspecting the wreck area to check for leaking fuel as well as sending shellfish to a lab to check for contamination.

BC Ferries paid for monitoring until March 2011, when the company decided it was no longer effective at detecting pollution. The decision to axe the monitoring program occurred the same year that BC Ferries was facing a $20 million budget shortfall, following years of controversy surrounding high executive compensation. The company considers the monitoring unreliable at detecting spills because of factors such as weather conditions, timing of the upwelling, underwater currents and limited time spent on the water.

“The result of this monitoring disclosed extremely minor leakage from the wreck of approximately half a litre of fuel per day or less, which spread and dissipated quickly on the surface without any identified environmental impact,” wrote Deborah Marshall, Executive Director of Public Affairs for BC Ferries, in an email to The Dominion. “Upwelling monitoring did not provide any useful data other than to establish that, over the five-year period, the wreck appeared to be very stable with decreased residual leakage,” she wrote.

The Queen of the North Monitoring Summary Review suggests that the effects of the Queen of the North were short lived. “Local residents have indicated that their food resources are still contaminated, but the science indicates that resources closest to the wreck site were ‘recovered’ by June of 2006 and contaminant levels reached the same level as sites that had not been affected by the spill,” wrote John Harper, who coordinated the monitoring program for BC Ferries, in an email to The Dominion.

Hartley Bay residents, believing there are lingering impacts from the vessel, are now paying for their own visual monitoring. Many residents still won’t eat from certain shellfish beds.

Health Canada has done shellfish testing since BC Ferries ceased doing it, although residents are uncertain how long that will continue. Even if the toxins are at low levels now, without daily monitoring, residents have no way of knowing if an underwater "burp" has unleashed a fresh batch of diesel onto the clam beds.

Ernie Hill takes this contamination very seriously. His peoples’ traditional harvesting grounds hold centuries of cultural significance, and are also a major food source. Their territory is remote; the nearest grocery store is in Prince Rupert, a four-hour ferry ride away. Since goods shipped to the region are expensive, access to local seafood is a matter of survival.

“Any oil spill, anywhere in our territory, that’s the end for us,” said Hill. “Our people would cease to exist, really. We’ll have to move out.”

The Queen of the North isn’t the only abandoned shipwreck in Gitga’at Territory. In 2003, the Coast Guard noticed a mysterious crude oil slick in Grenville Channel that polluted five kilometres of shoreline.

Shortly after the discovery, an underwater robot determined it was the Brigadier General MG Zalinksi, a long-forgotten US armament ship that sank in 1946, approximately 30 kilometres northwest of the ferry’s shipwreck. The Canadian government sent divers down to plug the corroded rivet holes. The quick fix was repeated this spring when more bunker oil was discovered to be leaking.

Although the Zalinski sits under only 27 metres of water, a long-term solution is complicated by the fact that the ship contains at least a dozen 500-pound aerial bombs. The United States government has absolved itself of any responsibility, and the Canadian government has been deliberating on a solution for years.

For now, other ships have simply been warned not to anchor near the site.

The Gitga’at are left hoping for a solution before the 93-year-old ship rusts away, releasing whatever remains of the 700 tonnes of bunker C fuel the ship was carrying. Bunker C is a much denser and more persistent toxin than the diesel released by the ferry. Its consistency and effects are more like the crude that was carried by the Exxon Valdez tanker that crashed in Alaska in 1989.

As unhappy as the Gitga’at are about the abandonment of either shipwreck in their territory, they know they still aren’t dealing with the worst-case scenario.

“The Queen of the North spilled thousands of litres of diesel that impacted our territory,” said Cameron Hill. “In the overall scheme of oil spills, diesel is a pretty light material compared to the crude that’s going to be in these tankers.”

Members of Indigenous communities from Alaska have visited Hartley Bay to share their experiences of the Exxon Valdez. One such community was so badly hit that the people had to be permanently relocated. “Everybody involved knew that there was no way that their territory was ever going to rebound for these people,” said Hill. “They moved them off of every bit of passed-down knowledge that they had ever known about the territory that they were in.”

If industry gets its way, Northern Gateway tankers will carry diluted bitumen, which is much more expensive and difficult to clean up than crude oil. Unlike diesel, bitumen does not evaporate, and unlike diesel or crude, it doesn’t really float. Once it is spilled in water, it separates into a poisonous gas condensate and a dense sticky resin that is too heavy to be caught by surface skimmers. It coats the surrounding wilderness with a persistent toxic sludge.

According to a Canadian Press report, the head of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Centre for Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research, Dr. Kenneth Lee, believes that Enbridge has done insufficient research on the differences between crude oil and bitumen spills.

While the Enbridge bitumen pipeline is heavily contested, construction has already begun to accommodate tankers carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG). Hartley Bay residents are more or less resigned to the LNG tankers, which are slightly smaller than the bitumen tankers and carry different risks. An LNG spill would not coat sea life in a heavy toxic slick, but it can become flammable as it evaporates.

“We’ve been trained by Burrard Clean, that’s an oil cleanup company,” said Marven Robinson, a Hartley Bay Band Council member and part of the marine guardianship program. “They told us, ‘See what you guys did the night the ferries sank? Don’t do it with any of those ships going up to Kitimat.‘ The guy said they’re being paid, for dangerous pay. They said ‘Don’t you guys ever go out to one of these boats. If it’s condensate, don’t go out at all. If anything you might have to move all of the people in the community.’ We said ‘Why?’ and he said ‘Well the condensate is under pressure. And it’s safe while it’s under pressure. But as soon as you take that pressure away it starts to evaporate.’ They said ‘If you guys go to one of these accidents your outboard motors will ignite the condensate.‘”

Unlike BC Ferries, which is controlled by the province, Northern Gateway tankers will be owned by a variety of foreign entities who would be liable for costs of cleanup in the eventuality of an ocean spill. Enbridge is promising to extend its spill response plan to the ocean, though it isn't legally responsible for the oil once it has left the pipeline. Spill costs that exceed $1.3 billion will be on Canadian taxpayers. The 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker accident resulted in $3.5 billion in cleanup costs and $5 billion in legal and financial settlements.

The historical precedents set by past wrecks have the Gitga’at apprehensive about the future of their territory. Once a ship goes down, it appears it does not come back up. Once a contaminant is in the water, it can’t easily be removed. Long-forgotten wrecks can come back to haunt the living. Parties liable for cleanup, if they accept accountability at all, can unilaterally decide when the work is done. Experienced crews on established routes with sophisticated technology remain vulnerable to human error.

Erin Empey is a Vancouver based writer.

Hartley Bay

Map of routes of Queen of the North & proposed Northern Gateway

Supporting Independent Media to Grow

taramichelle — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 11:13:01 +0000

Innovative financial models along with public policy support are key

OTTAWA—If independent and alternative media are important to the success of social movements, then finding ways to fund that media is something that needs to be taken seriously.

This is a subject of vital discussion, and there are people in Canada and abroad working on suitable approaches to this problem, both in terms of structural models and also supportive public policy.

Viable media projects are able to sustain themselves over the longer term as well as allowing a more diverse set of media-makers to take part, especially those who aren’t able to pour so much of themselves into a (low-to-no-paying) “labour of love.”

Christine Crowther, a PhD student in Communication Studies at McGill and part-time Journalism lecturer at Concordia in Montreal, sees a need for broad support networks to get involved in advocating for public policy supporting responsible journalism.

“We're talking about people who care about journalism and public policy taking responsibility to put these issues on the public agenda in various circles: in community journalism organizations, in professional journalism organizations, through professional associations, through unions,” Crowther told The Dominion. “There is a history of public policy supporting journalism in this country. It's a matter of making sure that Canadians understand that.”

Along with a need for public policy support, independent media-makers are also confronting immediate funding challenges to keep their media outlets and projects afloat and sustainable.

One inspiring model is led by Tom Stites, Founder and Director of the Banyan Project in the US. The Banyan idea won a Game Changer award from the We Media Conference in 2010, which paved the way for Stites’ fellowship to work on the project at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

The project is also backed by the National Cooperative Business Association in the US because it is a co-operative model, something akin to The Dominion/Media Co-op. The Banyan Project seeks to be the first community-level journalism co-operative in the United States.

The first place they will try out this model is Haverhill, Massachusetts, a city of 61,000 that last had its own daily newspaper 14 years ago. The aim is for this model to be used in many different cities experiencing a journalism deficit, across the US and eventually elsewhere.

Stites explains the starting idea was a value proposition to “deliver journalism that people experienced as relevant to their lives, respectful of them as people and worthy of their trust.” The co-operative model was deemed to be the best way to deliver this service even prior to the recent collapsing of traditional journalism business models which didn’t necessarily deliver on those three vital aspects.

The Banyan business model will rely almost entirely on financing from inside the community, not only in the form of regular memberships, but also through community advertising, “extra” memberships specific to businesses or institutions, crowd-sourcing, foundation funding and ancillary sales. Content will be free to view online, but a provisional membership will be required to engage in the interactive portions of the site.

“Think of it as a food co-op,” Stites told The Dominion. “We are operating at the community level where civic engagement happens and the idea is that these news co-ops are going to be generators of civic adhesion and engagement. That's where you get a really rich democracy and...you can have a healthy co-operative.”

There will also be the Banyan Publishing Corporation, a non-profit organization or maybe eventually a co-op of co-ops, to provide the sophisticated software infrastructure for both the journalism and community engagement website features and for what is needed to successfully run and administer a co-operative.

“The Internet culture is changing; for a long time, the idea was start your thing up, get a lot of people engaged in it, and then we'll figure out how to monetize that,” says Stites. “There are not very many [journalism] places where it has worked. So I do think that the kind of deliberate work that my colleagues and I have been doing for three-and-a-half years now seriously, to build this model and shape it and start to test it and do it with real care, is crucial.”

Another person who’s been looking at how different types of media projects can finance themselves is David Skinner, a professor of Communication Studies at York University in Toronto.

He’s co-editor of the newly released book, Alternative Media in Canada (UBC Press, 2012). A few of the book’s chapters look at this issue, including Skinner’s, entitled “Sustaining Independent and Alternative Media.”

He looks at three main alternative media outlets: rabble.ca, The Tyee, and The Dominion/Media Co-op. “[The] people that do run these organizations are very entrepreneurial, so they often cobble together different kinds of financing to keep the organization going,” he told The Dominion in an interview. “They may have some sort of membership dimension, where people provide even a small monthly amount; they may also solicit donations from unions or other kinds of organizations; or look to philanthropists to help support them through different times. Some of them even have different kinds of advertising.”

While Skinner describes the three alternative media outlets as extremely valiant and creative efforts, he also highlights the role of federal policy.

“It's not as though we're talking about these being unsuccessful organizations that need a hand out of some sort, that's not the case at all. Historically in Canada, almost all media fields have had some kind of policy help from the federal government simply because the economics of media production in Canada make it much more difficult to produce media than say in the United States, and as such Canadian media fields simply get filled up with American product,” he says. “It's only at this time, in this historical moment, that really the government is retreating from that role. And it's at a moment where it's particularly important, I think, for them to maintain or even step up that effort.”

Crowther agrees that government has an important role in supporting a strong and healthy media environment. She was the lead co-ordinator of and part of a diverse volunteer team that put on the Journalism Strategies conference in Montreal last spring.

“The framework of the conference was based from the outset in the notion that public policy has a key role to play in journalism in Canada,” she says. She went on to say public policy not only refers to the federal government, but also municipal and provincial governments, as well as educational institutions such as universities.

The conference was meant to generate ongoing networking and discussion around public policy advocacy. Crowther noted that OpenMedia.ca, which does advocacy work on net neutrality in Canada, was featured prominently at the Journalism Strategies conference as an organization to look to and work with on public policy advocacy.

“Community-powered” news organization OpenFile.ca was represented on the conference panel, “Paying the Bills,” by their CEO Wilf Dinnick. “Community-powered” means that users suggest stories they would like to see covered, suggestions get voted on and leading suggestions are added to the “file.” Journalists are assigned to cover the stories that are voted the highest.

Both the cost structure and revenue streams are non-traditional, stemming from the fundamental idea behind the site's concept: “If we started from scratch journalism, like we weren't shifting from a newspaper model to digital, and we were just working in digital, what would we do? And we'd say, 'Well, social media is connecting everyone, why don't we hear from people what they want to see reported, what's important to them?'" Dinnick told The Dominion.

Dinnick explains that there is less overhead to OpenFile than a traditional news organization due to the user-generated portion of the process that doesn't require comprehensive news coverage, but more of a selective approach. There is also a different market to sell the content to; they work with news, media and marketing organizations that pay for some of what the OpenFile journalists produce.

The notion of new or alternate journalism as “social entrepreneurship” is something Tom Stites of the Banyan Project welcomes as a label. He notes that public policy could help journalism, but he’s not waiting for anyone to take up his suggestions: “The most important support government could offer journalism would be to absolutely insist on net neutrality, and then subsidize the net so that broadband access is ubiquitous.”

David Skinner noted that one “self-starting” concept that can help alternative media outlets in becoming more sustainable and successful is the model of The Media Consortium in the US, which provides its member organizations collective public policy advocacy, along with offering up economies of scale for developing and distributing content and support for technical infrastructure. This model of collaboration could also be something that would work in Canada.

There is no shortage of discussion about the many available possibilities for a better future for independent media in this country. Perhaps, as Crowther notes, it is time for people who care about journalism and public policy to put these issues on the public agenda.

Greg Macdougall is a media activist, organizer and learning coach based in Ottawa on Algonquin Territory. More of his work is online at EquitableEducation.ca.

Editor's note: Since this piece was written, OpenFile temporarily suspended publication.

Media Seeks Change

Canada’s Spy Groups Divulge Secret Intelligence to Energy Companies

Miles — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:03:11 +0000

Documents raise fears that info on environmentalists, Indigenous groups and more shared with industry at biannual, secret-level, briefings.

TORONTO—The Canadian government has been orchestrating briefings that provide energy companies with classified intelligence from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the RCMP and other agencies, raising concerns that federal officials are spying on environmentalists and First Nations in order to provide information to the businesses they criticize.

The secret-level briefings have taken place twice a year since 2005, and are detailed in documents obtained under the Access to Information Act, and in publicly-available government files.

The draft agenda for one of the briefings, acquired by The Dominion, shows that the RCMP and CSIS assisted the department of Natural Resources in organizing a daylong event on November 25, 2010, at CSIS headquarters in Ottawa, and a networking reception the previous night at the Chateau Laurier.

The focus of the classified briefing was on "the geopolitics of the Arctic," but there were also presentations on topics including cyber-security, intellectual property rights and the Toronto G20 summit. Speakers at the event were from the RCMP and CSIS, as well as the Department of National Defence and Public Safety Canada. Two presenters had their names and affiliations redacted from the document.

Attendees were also given the option to review selected classified reports. However, note-taking at the event was prohibited.

Natural Resources spokesperson Jacinthe Perras stated that the classified briefings enable the owners and operators of energy infrastructure, “to plan and develop measures to protect their facilities.”

In an email to The Dominion, Perras explained that the department is mandated to “engage with partners and key stakeholders” by federal policy such as the National Strategy and Action Plan for Critical Infrastructure.

This plan is based on the concept that some infrastructure is so vital to the functioning of the country that it deserves special protection. Ten critical infrastructure sectors are identified including finance, transportation, health care and energy. For each sector a government department has been charged with fostering relationships with partners, including through the sharing of information. Natural Resources is the lead department for the energy sector.

"These forums provide excellent opportunities for energy sector stakeholders to develop ongoing trusting relations which facilitate the exchange of pertinent information 'off the record,'” writes Felix Kwamena, a director of energy infrastructure security at Natural Resources, in a 2010 summary of various governments’ efforts to protect energy installations.

But groups protesting energy projects such as the tar sands have misgiving about this cozy relationship.

“I see a worrying trend of blurring the lines between government security apparatus and the private sector,” said Keith Stewart, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace Canada. “What we are seeing is government working at the behest of these big multinational corporations, rather than seeing themselves as a regulator of those companies in the public interest.”

“They have created this security culture where there is no separation between the federal government, and the fossil fuel sector,“ said Clayton Thomas-Muller, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, a group fighting for the rights of Indigenous people around the world and a vocal opponent of tar sands projects.

Thomas-Muller and Stewart both told The Dominion that they are concerned that groups opposing energy projects may be spied upon by intelligence agencies that report on their activities to energy companies.

“We know [Greenpeace] have been surveilled...and we also know we have had undercover officers attend our trainings,” said Stewart. “The concern for me is if they are doing this to hand over information to the private sector.”

“Natural Resources Canada does not monitor these groups nor does it provide information on them to private companies,” Perras asserted.

However, the perceived threat to energy infrastructure by organizations and First Nations opposing energy projects was revealed in an academic paper by Jeff Monaghan and Kevin Walby who exposed a CSIS document from 2008 that claims, “Multi-issue extremists [including environmental groups] and Aboriginal extremists may pursue common causes, and both groups have demonstrated the intent and the capability to carry out attacks against critical infrastructure in Canada."

“I have no doubt whatsoever that there are active files on dozens and dozens of First Nations who are quite simply asserting their rights to title over their traditional lands,” said Thomas-Muller.

He pointed to revelations that an RCMP unit was tasked with monitoring First Nations communities with the potential to engage in protests. Operating between 2007 and 2010, the unit sent their weekly report to roughly 450 recipients, including energy companies.

The Mounties say they’re just doing their job.

“The RCMP is required to produce and disseminate criminal threat assessments and other criminal intelligence related to critical infrastructure protection,” explained Greg Cox, a spokesperson for the RCMP. He maintained that “no personal information is shared,” and that “the sharing of criminal information between law enforcement and the private sector is nothing new.”

CSIS declined to comment for this story.

However, documents released to The Dominion show that a component of CSIS, the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC), has been writing intelligence reports on environmental groups.

An August 2010 ITAC intelligence document on the 2010 World Energy Congress, which took place in Montreal the following month, notes that "companies such as Shell, Encana, Enbridge, to name a few are amongst conference participants who have been subject to demonstrations in the past."

It goes on to state that "pro-environmental groups...intend to stage what they refer to as an 'emergency forum on energy,'" specifically naming the group Mouvement Sortons le Quebec du Nucleaire, an organization challenging nuclear energy plans in the province. The document also names Climate Action Montreal, a group that held a climate camp to train activists opposed to the tar sands.

The ITAC documents were of a lower security clearance than the classified information being provided at the Natural Resources briefings.

“There should be a lot more transparency,” Stewart said. “We are not saying they need to be publicizing all of the results of their investigation, but if they are going to be working closely with the private sector and sharing that information with them and granting them security clearance, Canadians have a right to know.”
The names of the companies invited to attend the classified briefings have never been revealed. However, the former Minister of Natural Resources, Gary Lunn, boasted at the 2007 International Pipeline Security Forum that his ministry had “sponsored over 200 industry representatives in obtaining Secret Level II security clearance. This enables us to share information with industry and their associations.”

A 2006 report by Natural Resources names the industry associations with which its energy infrastructure protection division liaised. These included the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which represents nearly 100 oil and gas companies including Shell and Suncor; and the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, which represents companies such as Enbridge and TransCanada and the Canadian Nuclear Association.

In addition to holding briefings, Natural Resources also distributed reports to the energy sector that contained “unclassified information and intelligence” and were shared with “approximately 300 stakeholders three to five times every week,” according to an internal review.

The classified briefings even touched on seemingly unrelated topics such as the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto. An internal RCMP email dated October 21, 2010, reveals that Natural Resources requested the RCMP provide a review of the G20 summit at a briefing taking place the following month.

“This didn't make a lot of sense to me because of course the G20 and the protest against it happened in Toronto, and the energy companies are based in Calgary. There isn’t any energy infrastructure in downtown Toronto,” said Stewart.

During the classified briefing, held November 25, 2010, RCMP Staff Sergeant John Shoemaker reported to energy companies on intelligence efforts to protect the Summit.

The G20 intelligence unit employed surveillance, monitoring and undercover infiltration of protest groups including First Nations and environmental groups. They showed a keen interest in Greenpeace’s activities. However, PowerPoint slides from Shoemaker’s presentation made no direct mention of Greenpeace or any other environmental or First Nations group, beyond listing “issue specific extremism/activism” and “Aboriginal activism” as a “public order” threat.

Although the presentation did not deal specifically with energy infrastructure, Perras said the “report helped inform the development of an all-hazards approach to critical energy infrastructure protection.”

Stewart doesn’t think that intelligence agencies should be focusing their energies on non-violent groups like Greenpeace.

“The only threat we pose is the threat to change peoples minds, and changing public opinion—and I understand why oil companies might be worried about that. I understand why government might be worried about that, but I think that is a fundamental part of democracy and they just have to learn to live with free speech,” declared Stewart.

He believes the Harper government is trying to demonize groups opposed to energy projects. He pointed to legislation that was introduced to increase the budget for the auditing of environmental organizations, a document that lists “environmental NGOs” and “Aboriginal groups” as adversaries, an increased budget for the auditing of environmental organizations, and a commentary by Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, who warned that environmental groups ”threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.”

“In terms of democracy, you need a separation of oil and state. We need to separate the private interest of corporations from [the] interest of Canadians, and we’re seeing a lot of blurring of that line,” said Stewart. “The government seems to be saying what is good for companies like Shell or Enbridge is good for Canada. We think that is an important debate in a democracy."

Tim Groves is an investigative researcher and journalist based in Toronto. He can be reached at timgrovesreports [@] gmail.com. For more information on his work and writing, click here.

Oilspy

Stopping Nuclear Waste in its Tracks

Sandra — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 10:10:27 +0000

Communities, Indigenous organizations pass resolutions against transportation and storage of nuclear waste in Saskatchewan

BEAUVAL, SK—Three places in northern Saskatchewan may be on the map in Canada's search for a high-level radioactive waste dump site, but the spent nuclear fuel bundles may be stopped in their tracks. Communities and Indigenous organizations along potential transport routes and beyond have been passing resolutions against nuclear waste.

The Northern Village of Pinehouse, English River First Nation and the town of Creighton are all currently in the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) site selection process to find a "willing host community" for a deep geological repository to house the waste piling up at nuclear reactors in Quebec, New Brunswick and especially Ontario.

Canoe Lake First Nation, the town of La Loche, trappers from the Fur Block near Beauval, the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Women's Circle Corporation (SAWCC) and the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC) have all formally opposed the transportation and storage of nuclear waste in Saskatchewan. Others criticize NWMO for refusing to deal with site selection process on a regional basis, even though a decision would affect much more than a single community.

Emil Bell has been educating Band and town councilors about the Nuclear Waste Management Organization process and the dangers of nuclear waste. A Cree grassroots activist, he lives in Fire Lake, outside of the Canoe Lake First Nation reserve.

"Canoe Lake is against this whole thing," Bell told the Media Co-op. Located in northwestern Saskatchewan, east of the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range and tar sands exploitation, the First Nation passed a Band Council Resolution against the transportation and storage of nuclear waste.

"I was the one that was going around, getting all the signatures of the councilors," said Bell. "They are dead set against the nuclear dump. It goes against our Treaty rights, our inherent rights. If we get a major disaster wherever they put the nuclear dump, our waterways are, you know, shot. Animal life, the plant life, are going to be drastically affected."

Bell has been traveling up and down the province, meeting with other First Nations, municipal authorities and groups and urging them to take an official stance against the transportation and storage of nuclear waste. "There's a few of us that are going around, doing a lot of work, and we do it out of our own pocket," he said.

But northern activists are not the only ones speaking about nuclear waste in the region. "The nuclear industry people, NWMO, have a lot of money. They're also going around, trying to convince people to, you know, accept the nuclear dump [with] the promise of a lot of money, the promise of jobs...they keep telling people 'oh yeah, it's safe, it's safe,'" Bell told the Media Co-op.

The predominantly Métis community of Île-à-la-Crosse has yet to take an official position on nuclear waste transportation and storage and will likely revisit the issue after the October 24 municipal elections. Île-à-la-Crosse Mayor Duane Favel says he and others requested that NWMO communicate and deal with municipalities in northwestern Saskatchewan collectively because a nuclear waste repository in the area would impact the entire region.

"Our proposal was, as Northwest municipalities, that we try and get NWMO to deal with us as a region, as the Northwest municipalities. We drafted up a letter [and] we tried to get the signature of every mayor—I believe there's 17 municipalities on the northwest side—[so] that NWMO would have to deal with us collectively, if they were, you know, to talk about nuclear waste within their region," Favel told the Media Co-op in an interview in the Île-à-la-Crosse village office.

"However, that got kind of sidetracked," he said. "They started meeting with municipalities individually and convinced, you know, one or two municipalities to agree to—for NWMO to go into their communities and start this process that they talk about."

Many mayors did sign the letter and a copy was given to the Northwest municipalities and to NWMO. But NWMO declined to pursue the regional approach requested by the municipalities.

"They didn't want to deal with that as a collective organization. They wanted to deal with specific municipalities. And I believe some of the reasoning was, you know, the areas that they were looking for, that would be good for this deposit of nuclear waste, wasn't throughout this region," said Favel. "However, that was not our argument. Our argument was if nuclear waste was to be stored in the northwest side of Saskatchewan, that they should be dealing with us collectively and we should vote as a region whether or not we want nuclear waste stored within this area."

The communication between Île-à-la-Crosse and NWMO is currently non-existent, Favel told the Media Co-op.

"I'm still kind of baffled in terms of why they didn't use that approach and actually consult with everybody within the region and try to, I guess at least in the beginning, have a good working relationship in terms of addressing the issue with the people of Northwest Saskatchewan," he said. "I thought it was a completely disrespectful approach."

While Île-à-la-Crosse and other municipalities consider whether to take an official position on the issue, some locals of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan have been actively organizing opposition to the transportation and storage of nuclear waste. Bryan Lee and other members of the Fish Lake Métis local began looking into the nuclear waste storage issue a few years ago, when they heard locations in northern Saskatchewan were under consideration.

"Once we heard this, then we started looking into the whole issue ourselves because we had heard some things in [the] press, that the NWMO was looking for a 'willing host community' in northern Saskatchewan," Lee told the Media Co-op. "We brought forward a motion within our local to take a position...to oppose the storage and transportation of high-level nuclear waste."

After passing at the Fish Lake Métis local, the resolution was taken to Western Region 2, where it passed as well. A motion for the resolution to be adopted at the provincial level by the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan did not succeed in 2010, but Lee presented it again in 2011.

"I reformatted the resolution and I brought it forward to the annual general assembly November 5, 2011. And in the presentation, we were successful in getting a two thirds majority approval at the assembly, for the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan to take the official position to oppose the storage and transportation of high-level nuclear waste anywhere in Saskatchewan," said Lee.

The Saskatchewan Aboriginal Women's Circle Corporation of Saskatchewan also passed a resolution last year, opposing the transportation and storage of nuclear waste in Saskatchewan. The resolution was then adopted by the Native Women's Association of Canada at its annual general assembly held in Saskatoon in August 2012.

The town of La Loche and the trappers' organization from a Fur Block in the Beauval area have also passed similar resolutions. More communities and organizations are currently considering taking an official stance against nuclear waste in the province.

NWMO is moving forward in its search and Pinehouse, English River First Nation and Creighton are still under consideration. But with all the resolutions against nuclear waste transportation, whether the high-level radioactive waste would ever make it to a storage site in northern Saskatchewan without roadblocks along the way is beginning to look increasingly unlikely.

Sandra Cuffe is a freelance journalist and member of the Vancouver Media Co-op. She recently returned to the west coast after eight weeks in Saskatchewan. This article was originally published on the Media Co-op.

Saskatchewan Nuclear Dump

Honouring the Dead, Standing with the Survivors

Tim McSorley — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 10:40:08 +0000

Seventh annual Sisters in Spirit vigil still seeking answers, action for missing and murdered women

MONTREAL—Close to 200 people joined Montreal's seventh annual Sisters in Spirit vigil and march last night. It was one of more than 160 vigils across North America on October 4 in commemoration of the thousands of Native women who have been murdered or gone missing over the past three decades.

Since it was founded in 2005 by Bridget Tolley, an Algonquin woman whose mother was killed when Surete du Quebec officers hit her with their car, organizers of the Sisters in Spirit vigil have argued that government and police need to take the situation of missing and murdered Indigenous women more seriously. Estimates range from 600 (according to police) to more than 3000 (according to researchers and human rights activists) Native women who have faced disappearance or a violent death since the 1980s.

While violence against Indigenous women may have appeared more often in the headlines due to high profile cases like the William Pickton trial in BC, vigil organizer Bianca Mugyenyi said people need to realize that this is a national crisis, where women from across the country find themselves threatened and in danger on a daily basis.

“Our goal is to raise awareness of high rates of violence that Native women face in this country,” said Mugyenyi, who is with Missing Justice, a Native women solidarity group that has helped organize the Montreal vigil since 2009.

Nina Segalowitz, an Innu woman and frontline case worker with abused women, echoed Mugyenyi's concerns. “We've lost a lot of women in Montreal to violence, from partners and ex-partners...While we're here for Native women, I like to think that we're here for all women who are abused simply for being women.”

First Nations women are five times more likely than other sectors of the population to face violence, she said.

Speakers at the vigil pointed to two significant places where action is needed: government action to ensure the safety of Native women, but also transformation and education in society to decrease violence against women in general, and against Native women in particular.

Mugyenyi had particularly harsh criticism for recent actions of the federal government. Budget cuts have led to the significant reduction and elimination of resources meant to combat violence against Native women. One aspect has been the federally funded Sisters in Spirit program, organized by the Native Women's Association of Canada. The federal government provided funding to the program from 2005 until 2011, in order to build a database of information on unsolved cases of missing and murdered Native women. In 2010, the Conservative government announced it would not continue funding the program, and that the group would need to cease operating. The decision came as a blow, since the program had already built profiles of more than 500 cases and was seen as doing effective work.

Instead, the government announced $10 million in funding, mostly for police operations.

Mugyenyi said that this decision, as well as the Conservative government's “tough on crime” stance, will do little to improve the situation of Native women.

“In the case of missing and murdered women, the police are part of the problem,” she said. “They make assumptions, perpetuate stereotypes. Bridget Tolley's mother was killed by the Surete du Quebec. She's been calling for an independent inquiry, outside of the police, which the government has continued to turn down.” In 2001, Tolley's mother was hit by an SQ police car and died. The investigation into her death, which cleared all involved of wrongdoing, was led by the brother of the officer at the wheel of the car.

Sisters in Spirit has been instrumental in researching and recording cases of native women who have been killed or gone missing.

Instead of more police operations, said Mugyenyi, better education around violence towards women and more social services to help women who are in precarious social situations are needed. She also said the government should heed the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in their support of a national inquiry into violence against native women. That call was put out in December 2011, but the federal government has yet to take action.

While government and police actions play an important role, another significant issue that speakers pointed to is the need for more action against sexism and racism in all communities.

Segalowitz added that she was at the vigil not just to honour the women who have died, but also to stand beside the women who have been able to survive and carry on, and because of her three children, whom she hopes will not have to deal with the same issues of violence and abuse.

Irkar Beljars, a Mohawk man who has helped organize the vigil over the past several years, called on the men in the crowd to make sure they pass the word on and tell their friends where they were tonight, and why it is important to raise their voices against violence towards women.

After seven years of vigils, Mugyenyi expressed hopefulness that the message is being heard. “Every year there are more people, media coverage goes up,” she said. “It's encouraging to be here to see so many people come out to honour the lives of missing and murdered women.”

Tim McSorley is an editor with the Media Co-op and a contributor with the Co-op media de Montreal.

Sisters in Spirit 2012

Buffalo Hat Singers

SIS 2012 signs 2

Sisters in Spirit 2012 signs

The Cornerstone of Gentrification in the Downtown East Side

taramichelle — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:00:12 +0000

From the Woodward squat ten years ago, to a displaced neighbourhood

VANCOUVER—Towering 43 storeys at the corner of Abbott and Hastings Streets, in the poorest neighbourhood in Vancouver—the Downtown East Side (DTES)—sits the new Woodwards.

The $400 million project, launched by the City of Vancouver, is a mixture of market and social housing, commercial stores, offices, a public atrium, part of Simon Fraser University's (SFU) downtown campus and a community space. It takes up three quarters of the block, or 1,222,230 square feet.

The block looked very different on September 14, 2002, when a number of people from the DTES and their allies occupied the then-abandoned Woodwards department store in a bid to have the site made into social housing.

“There was gentrification happening all around the world and we saw it coming,” said Shawn Millar, who broke into the Woodwards building with around 60 other people to begin the occupation. “The saying was, 'As Woodwards goes, so goes the neighbourhood.'”

On September 21, police arrested 54 squatters and sealed the building, only to see them return the next day and set up a tent city on the sidewalk. Their numbers swelled to 150 as homeless people and their allies set up camp.

Police later arrested tenters and City workers disposed of their belongings in garbage trucks. The City promised temporary housing for squatters, as well as room in the future Woodwards social housing project.

According to Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP, an organization that advocates on DTES housing, income and land issues), co-ordinator Jean Swanson, there was no mention at that time of having condominiums at the site.

"At the last minute developers put in two condo towers,” said Swanson. “They said the rich needed to be there in order to make the project pay. Instead the area around Woodwards became a zone of exclusion.”

“Thirty per cent of the Woodwards is social housing, but only 15 per cent is actual welfare-rate social housing that were part of the original demands,” said Ivan Drury, a researcher for CCAP. “A good part of the project is supportive social housing, which is not in accordance with the Residential Tenancy Act and so can be run with immunity.”

Commercial space in Woodwards was offered a ten-year tax break as an encouragement to set up in the neighbourhood, which was deemed to be a high-crime area. Shops such as Nester's Market and London Drugs changed the space by policing it with private security.

“[When you go in there] you're treated like a thief,” said Millar. “They have a sign: 'Where The Community Shops.' It's not where the community shops. The community is not welcome there.”

The September 15 sixth annual Women's Housing March, organized by the DTES-based Power of Women group, called out many high-end cafes and other shops that are now taking over the DTES for making the neighbourhood unwelcome to low-income people. This pattern of gentrification began with the stores situated in Woodwards.

In September 2010, SFU moved its School for Contemporary Arts from its Burnaby campus to Woodwards, into what became the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts.

“We were concerned about the naming of the building because it's alleged that Goldcorp mining in Latin America is pursuing an environmentally and socially destructive policy,” said Dr. Ian Angus, a Professor of Humanities at SFU who was part of a faculty group that took these concerns to the university president. “Naming the school this way connects SFU to corporate practices that have come under widespread criticism.”

Despite student protests that called for an end to the association between SFU and the mining company, SFU has yet to address concerns about Goldcorp's $10 million donation to the university.

After the City of Vancouver paid $50 million of the $70 million price tag on the Centre for the Arts, SFU was left to raise the rest through private donations. Half of Goldcorp's donation went towards paying for the construction of the Centre, while the rest was earmarked for cultural programs. SFU Woodwards hosts events and talks as part of its community mandate.

“It's disgusting because Goldcorp has demonstrated itself to be abusive,” said Christopher Pavsek, Assistant Professor of Film with the School for Contemporary Arts. “It puts to lie anything SFU has said about caring about human rights.”

Woodwards developers' major concession with regard to the DTES neighbourhood, other than fractional social housing, was a community space. A call was put to community groups to to create this space. Of four main groups that attended these consultations, three pulled out and left just one to take the space. The group, known at the time as Creative Technology, became W2 Community Media Arts.

“The place was designed to fool,” said Jim Carrico, who represented one of the many smaller organizations making up the community groups involved with the consultations. “The whole building was designed to not have real mixing. It was built into the architecture. For us, the main floor was off-limits. We were given a smaller space. It was not about helping the groups involved. [The groups] had to come up with the money to finish the space.”

As a result of this perceived exclusion, Carrico left the consultations.

W2 has burgeoned into a number of projects including a cafe, meeting space, arts society and radio show on Co-op Radio. It has also become a controversial space because of its existence in the DTES.

“We had fundraising events to keep W2 running,” said Donna Chen, the organization's former Volunteer Co-ordinator. “We had majority middle-class white males partying in the DTES. How much is this befitting of W2's mission and mandate?”

Strategies like this have had repercussions from the DTES community.

“I don't trust [W2's] motives,” said Lyn Highway, who has worked with a number of social services organizations in the DTES. “I still to this day boycott them. They're in the cornerstone of gentrification in the DTES...They're so eager and willing to participate in that and be at the forefront of its community acceptance.”

Ten years after the squat, the Woodwards building has lived up to its promise of mixing in a different way. It combines housing, commercial space and education, under the guise of community benefit via social housing and a media space.

“What we really need is for the social housing programs to be restored,” said Swanson. “We need self-contained housing with enough space to think that is resident-controlled. The City needs to slow down gentrification and stop pushing low-income people out of the DTES.”

Isaac K. Oommen is a freelance journalist and academic researcher based in the Unceded Coast Salish Territories. Murray Bush is a Vancouver-based photographer and regular contributor to the Vancouver Media Co-op.

dominionwood8

dominionwood1

dominionwood2

dominionwood3

dominionwood4

dominionwood5

dominionwood6

dominionwood7

September in Review

Sandra — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 21:45:29 +0000

Safer streets, detention deaths, anti-oil actions, and Harper's hairdo

Motion 312, which proposed to study the Criminal Code's definition of when life begins, was defeated 203 to 91 in the House of Commons. The motion could have opened the door for the criminalization of abortion. Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose voted in favour of the motion.

Hundreds of people rallied in Christie Pits, following a string of sexual assaults against women in the Toronto neighbourhood. "I think the sheer numbers of individuals who attended on such a short notice demonstrate that individuals recognize that only collective and community based resistance will stop this kind of violence," Liz Brockfest told the Toronto Media Co-op.

Rallies, marches and vigils against violence against women were held in cities across Canada, including Take Back the Night in Sudbury and a SlutWalk protest in Winnipeg.

An internal RCMP report released through Access to Information laws found an overwhelming perception that perpetrators of harassment and bullying of female officers would face no real consequences. The RCMP is facing lawsuits, including a case seeking class action certification, from more than 200 current and former female RCMP officers and employees.

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO) representatives took the province and RCMP to task on policing and detention issues in the Northlands Denesuline First Nation in Lac Brochet. The community hockey arena is being used for indiscriminate detention for safety reasons, assault or drug and alcohol issues.

Inmates were found dead in the Saskatoon Correctional Centre and the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre.

Iraq war resister Kimberley Rivera was deported from Canada, separated from her family and placed in custody in the US, despite widespread protests and organized support efforts.

The House of Commons Public Safety Committee recommended electronic ankle bracelets for refugee claimants. The committee's report recommends that the Canada Border Services Agency "review the use and cost effectiveness of electronic monitoring with the aim of reducing the occurrence of inadmissible individuals who are not presenting themselves for removal," according to Postmedia News.

Provincial Health Minister Theresa Oswald announced that Manitoba will provide refugee health services and bill the federal government, despite Canada's decision to cut some health benefits.

Lake St. Martin First Nation evacuees held a roadside camp and protest to demand solutions to their relocation and housing issues. The Manitoba reserve has been considered uninhabitable since flooding in May 2011.

Dozens of Northwest Territories residents attended a hearing to express concerns about clean-up plans for the thousands of tonnes of arsenic dust left behind by the Giant Mine.

After a four-year assessment, the Nunavut Impact Review Board approved Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation's plans to build a $4 billion project at the top of Baffin Island, including a 17,000-hectare open pit iron mine, railway and port.

A Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board report estimates that electricity rates would increase between 10 and 20 per cent if a proposed mine near Mayo is added to the power grid.

The Resource Revenue Transparency Working Group, a new group comprised of mining industry associations and NGOs focused on transparency, announced that it would begin work on disclosure policies regarding company payments to governments. "This is a groundbreaking collaboration between the mining industry and NGOs," said Mining Association of Canada CEO Pierre Graton.

The new Quebec government announced that the province's only nuclear power plant, Gentilly-2, will be shut down instead of undergoing a $2 billion refurbishment. The Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in New Brunswick is still not back online despite completing refurbishment, after three years of delays. NB Power refuses to provide an explanation.

Mi'kmaq people set up a partial blockade of the Trans-Canada Highway in Auld's Cove, NS, the access point to Cape Breton, in opposition to exploratory oil and gas drilling by PetroWorth Resources. Many people travelled to support the action, including an anti-fracking brigade from Halifax. A week later, an information picket drew more than 200 people. "We're not going to give up, because we love our ancestors, we love our future generations, and we love our children and grandchildren," Elizabeth Marshall told the Halifax Media Co-op.

Tsleil Waututh, Squamish and other paddlers signed a declaration to protect the Salish Sea from Kinder Morgan's pipeline expansion plans, after they paddled past the company's tar sands-linked project in the Burrard Inlet. Activists in Victoria crashed a Kinder Morgan open house and intercepted Union of BC Municipalities delegates on their way into a Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers reception.

After months of Musqueam protest to protect an ancient burial ground site from condo development, the BC government changed the site's heritage value and allowed alteration permits to expire.

Newfoundland and Labrador MHA for Lake Melville Keith Russell criticized some Muskrat Falls hydro-electric mega-project critics on CBC radio, saying, "I don't buy into the mumbo jumbo about the trail leading to the Muskrat Falls site as being sacred ground. You can romanticize and sensationalize that particular piece of land all you want, but it is a resource."

A rock drill, acid and a power washer were used to destroy ancient pictograms and petroglyphs on a rock formation in Glenwood, Alberta, shortly before they were to be closely surveyed.

Christian and Muslim parents came together to take issue with any classroom discussion of homosexuality, birth control, evolution, wizardry or "environmental worship" in Greater Toronto Area schools, requesting advance notification.

In support of their teachers' right to strike, Manitouwadge High School students held a protest march against Bill 115 in Ontario. Hamilton public high school teachers wore black to protest the imposition of a contract involving a wage freeze and a two-year strike ban. Education workers staged a funeral for collective bargaining rights.

The Conservative majority blocked PEI MP Wayne Easter's attempt to table for debate a report about the impact on workers of changes to Employment Insurance.

Posing as Stephen Harper, Quebec radio comedy duo The Masked Avengers managed to speak with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during the UN General Assembly. "Harper" apologized for not being able to attend the meeting because he was too busy combing his hair with super glue.

Girls can have the night

Canoes against KMP

Turning Around Turcot

Tim McSorley — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 10:44:52 +0000

New hope for highways on a human scale in Montreal

MONTREAL—After months of protests that captured the imagination of the world, things have quieted down on Montreal streets. But the impacts of the mobilizations, which began as a college-student-led rejection of proposed tuition increases and grew into a social strike, are still echoing throughout the city and the province. Environmentalists, anti-highway activists and community associations are but a few of the groups whose organizing is currently riding the upshot of a new government forced to take positions by ongoing neighbourhood organizing in Montreal and beyond.

"The Liberals had a reign of about nine years and we've seen pretty much the worst things that we’ve seen environment wise," said Bruno Massé, the coordinator of the Réseau Québécois des Groups Écologistes, a Quebec-wide network comprising 60 grassroots environmental groups. "Since the [Parti Québécois] took power, there's been a lot of optimism, but mostly people holding their breath," he said.

By the time the government of Jean Charest called elections on August 1, his government was left with little legitimacy in the eyes of a mobilized public. And while the September 4 election distracted from the popular agenda being set in assemblies in colleges and neighborhoods around Montreal and Quebec, it also marked what student associations called a victory when the incoming Parti Québécois cancelled the proposed fee hike.

Massé said that two big victories are on the horizon for environmental organizers: he expects the Gentilly-2 nuclear power plant to be shut down, and a moratorium to be achieved on fracking to extract shale gas.

The Plan Nord, one of Charest's most controversial policy pieces, is progressing as if nothing is changing, said Massé, though it could still be scrapped or changed since the enabling legislation has not been passed. The Plan Nord proposes the opening up of Quebec's northern territories to increased investment in the energy, mining, forest and wildlife sectors, as well as new transportation and communications infrastructure.

But another victory could be on its way, this time resulting from years of community organizing against freeway expansion. Late last week, Montreal's city council issued a surprise request to the PQ government to go back to the drawing board and re-design the Turcot Interchange so that it is on a human scale and prioritizes public transit.

The Turcot Interchange highway complex is Montreal's (and perhaps Canada’s) most famous spaghetti junction, made up of three separate interchanges that tower above cyclists and pedestrians in the streets below. A steady stream of cars and trucks roll up, around, and back down onto the roadways below. Cranes hover underneath the concrete structures, evidence of construction and maintenance work on the decaying elevated highway system.

The Turcot Interchange was unveiled on April 25, 1967, just in time for the World Exposition in Montreal. Once a stately showpiece of modernity and car culture, today the crumbling Turcot is at the centre of a debate about sustainability, transportation and the future of Montreal. The recent announcement by the City of Montreal follows years of community organizing against a new mega-interchange complex, as proposed by the Charest Liberals.

"Part of the idea of building this interchange was that people would be transporting themselves by car in the city, so it's to provide better car transport infrastructure," said Shannon Franssen, an organizer with Solidarité St. Henri and spokesperson for Mobilisation Turcot, a group formed to organize for transit and against highway expansion. "In the 60s that made sense as a vision...Nowadays we know that's not an efficient way to move around the city," she said.

The Quebec government's proposal would see the Ville-Marie highway enlarged, the Turcot expanded, and Highway 20 moved north onto one of the city's last remaining wetlands, at a price tag of $3 billion. But with the exception of a few new busses, the government plan doesn’t include any public transit.

"We have this opportunity here to make this smaller, more efficient highway interchange that has alternatives," said Franssen in an interview in Montreal. An estimated 70 per cent of the 290,000 vehicles that travel on the interchange every day are commuters. "There are way better ways to transport folks from the West Island to downtown, and most people that are in their cars, going through the interchange, don't want to be in their car."

Opponents of the expansion say its not that the interchange needs to disappear, but that there are alternatives to spending $3 billion to expand the towering highway system, which include an emphasis on rail and other public transit. "We're arguing with very precise proposals for a dedicated bus corridor [for commuters], plus accelerating the investment for the train in the West Island...and review the design to reduce the capacity of the highway," said Dr. Pierre Gauthier, a professor in geography at Concordia University.

Montreal has already demolished one urban interchange, which was on Parc Avenue leading into downtown, with great success. "The old one was this crazy thing and they decided that it was more than what was necessary in the city and so they they kind of dismantled that interchange, there's no tunnels there, and it is a good example of how we could be building things better, and how it has happened before in Montreal," said Franssen.

St. Henri, where Franssen works, is a traditionally working class, Québécois neighbourhood that has been impacted by the mega-highway for decades. It isn't only the daily nuisances of traffic jams and noise. There is, of course, the climate change impacts of the estimated 290,000 vehicles that travel through what are in fact three interchanges commonly known as the Turcot interchange every day. But there are also very real health impacts.

"The public health department has identified it as a risk to one's health to live within 200 metres of a highway where there are so many cars going through," said Franssen. "We hear stories about parents bringing their newborns into the hospital and saying, 'well they're having breathing problems' and this kind of thing, and the hospital, when [the hospital workers] find out that they live where they live, basically say 'well, this is an effect of living there, so that's just the way it is.'"

Public hearings about the highway received over 400 submissions from locals and concerned groups. According to Franssen, 95 per cent of them were against the Quebec government's proposal to rebuild the interchange. These petitions for a smaller interchange and for more public transit were largely ignored by the Quebec government until the city’s announcement last week.

In the face of government indifference, local organizers conducted various campaigns, articulating their own vision for the highway, handing out information, holding occupations and marching in the streets in solidarity with students and against austerity. These constant mobilizations, together with an increasing awareness even among the political class that highway expansion is a road to nowhere, may result in another important victory in the struggle for liveable cities and a healthy planet.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist based between Montreal and Mexico. This piece was written with support from Stop the Pave and was originally published on the Media Co-op.

Turcot

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

Intimidation, Irregularities Cloud Pinehouse Election

Tim McSorley — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 13:24:54 +0000

Northern Saskatchewan residents report infractions, climate of fear in municipal election process

PINEHOUSE, SK—Something is rotten in the State of Denmark, according to people in the northern village of Pinehouse, Saskatchewan. Residents contacted provincial officials to report irregularities and acts of intimidation at last week's advance poll in an effort to ensure a free and fair municipal election today.

Longtime Pinehouse resident John Smerek sent a letter to provincial government officials reporting irregularities in the advance poll held September 12. In the letter sent Monday via email to Minister of Government Relations Jim Reiter and carbon copied to several other provincial authorities, Smerek highlighted process infractions such as the failure to abide by new voter ID requirements and acts of intimidation.

"I would like to see the people here have a free and democratic opportunity to vote without the fear or intimidation or false promises offered to them by the individuals that are sent out or hired by our leaders to intimidate the democratic process," Smerek told the Media Co-op in an interview in Pinehouse.

One of the individuals in question is Vince Natomagan, who acts as a community liaison to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). He has an office in the village office building and works closely with the Pinehouse council.

Along with two other locations in northern Saskatchewan and more than a dozen in Ontario, Pinehouse is currently part of NWMO's search for a "willing host community" for Canada's high-level radioactive waste. In 2010, Pinehouse Mayor Mike Natomagan sent NWMO an Expression of Interest, initiating the community's inclusion in the site selection process for a deep geological repository for the used nuclear fuel bundles currently stored onsite at nuclear reactors in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick.

Five hundred kilometres north of Saskatoon, the northern village of Pinehouse is a predominantly Cree-speaking Metis community of approximately 1,000 people near the boundary between the Canadian Shield and Boreal Plain regions. It used to be the end of the road. Trucks now travel another 220 kilometres past the turnoff to the community up to the Key Lake uranium mill. Operated by Saskatoon-based uranium mining giant Cameco, the mill processes ore from the McArthur River uranium mine 80 kilometres further north. Open pit uranium mining at Key Lake itself ended in 2002.

Today, tensions in Pinehouse run high with the municipal election taking place. Some residents are concerned that despite secret ballots, there may be negative consequences if they cast a ballot and the councillors who end up elected believe they voted for other candidates—whether they have or not, said Smerek.

"Our current leaders have hired people that work for them that go around making offers and directions that sound like a threat—that they won't be able to service the people if they don't vote for the current leaders. And they'll try to lead them directly to the polls," he said.

In one case identified in Smerek's letter, voters were threatened on their way to cast a ballot in the advance poll last week. According to an account of an incident by another resident who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal, residents walking to the polling station were told by an individual affiliated with the current council not to expect anything at all from the village in the future, after they alluded to their plan to vote for candidates not currently on council.

The Executive Director of Communications for the Ministry of Government Relations, Jeff Welke, responded via email to the Media Co-op's request for comment on the allegations of intimidation contained in Smerek's letter.

"References to attempts to bribe voters and/or otherwise influence for whom voters would cast their ballot are very serious allegations, and pertain to legal matters that are outside the Ministry's authority, as well as outside the authority of election officials, to deal with," Welke wrote to the Media Co-op. "Any person or persons who have experienced an attempted bribery, or who have witnessed such an attempt should consider contacting the nearest detachment of the RCMP as soon as possible. Alternatively, they could also proceed under the provisions of The Controverted Municipal Elections Act by contacting a judge and swearing out a complaint."

Smerek's letter also identifies an infraction in the advance poll process itself. At least some residents were not asked to produce identification, despite reforms to the Local Government Elections Act passed in 2011, requiring all voters provide identification. In an affidavit sworn before a Commissioner of Oaths, a resident who has requested that their name be withheld due to fear of reprisal stated that at no time was he required to produce identification when he voted at the advance poll.

"I pulled out my wallet and asked, 'Don’t you need two pieces of ID' to which [polling clerk] Nancy Misponas replied, 'No, don’t worry about it,'" states the affidavit, according to a copy of the text obtained by the Media Co-op. "None of the people lined up in front of me while I was there were asked to produce their identification.”

In his response to the Media Co-op, Welke explained that "province's role in the municipal election process is to provide for and maintain the legislative framework under which the elections are run and to provide training, resources and advice to local election officials." Conducting elections in keeping with legislation is a municipal responsibility with no direct provincial oversight. However, he stated that local officials have been made well aware of elections procedures, including the new voter ID regulations.

"Prior to any round of municipal elections the Ministry holds workshops around the province for election officials...Pinehouse attended the May 9 session in Prince Albert. As well, the Ministry took extra measures to try and ensure that local election officials were aware of the new requirements including articles in 'Municipalities Today', guides and resources on the Ministry's website and the production of promotional materials that could be downloaded and used at the local level to help citizens become familiar with the voter ID requirement," wrote Welke.

"Ministry officials have also been in direct contact with local election officials in Pinehouse to reinforce the need to abide by all election procedural rules, including the new voter ID requirements," he wrote.

This year's municipal election is not the first time a resident has voiced concern about local governance and requested the intervention of the provincial government. In 2011, Fred Pederson wrote to Municipal Affairs officials requesting an investigation into the actions of mayor and council. He highlighted the alleged misuse of village funds, the appropriation of a youth centre, housing issues and intimidation.

"People feel threatened about losing their jobs because council sit on every board in town. So it influences people from feeling free to speak out or even votes during an election," wrote Pederson in his undated letter. "[The village] office is being used for their own benefit [and] every rule has been broken...all of them have [quit] their jobs to live off of the Village."

Pederson received a response from Colleen Digness, Manager of the Northern Municipal Administration, based in La Ronge. Her letter, dated November 30, 2011, outlines and includes the relevant sections of The Northern Municipalities Act, 2010, including section 128: "No member of council is eligible to be appointed as an employee of the municipality or of any committee or controlled corporation of the municipality in which he or she serves as a member of council."

After last week's advance poll, Pederson again contacted Municipal Affairs officials—this time by telephone—to report irregularities and request intervention. The response from the central office in Regina indicated that the issue was a matter for the La Ronge office. When Pederson contacted the Northern Municipal Administration in La Ronge, he was informed that his concerns should be raised with the local village council implementing the elections process.

Pederson is running as a candidate in today's election, on a platform based on honesty. He has been an outspoken critic of the potential selection of northern Saskatchewan for a nuclear waste storage site and of the process the council and the industry-led Nuclear Waste Management Organization have been pursuing during the site selection phase. They meet behind closed doors and the community is not informed of the meeting dates, Pederson told the Media Co-op in an interview last month.

Pinehouse is not the only place in NWMO's site selection process where a council has come under fire for undisclosed meetings with NWMO. Shannon Quesnel reported in the Elliot Lake Standard that a meeting between NWMO and the city council of Elliot Lake was the subject of a complaint to and ruling by Ontario's ombudsman. In her September 5, 2012 article, Quesnel cites Elliot Lake City Clerk Lesley Sprague: "The mayor and five members of this city’s council attended [the NWMO meeting]. The ombudsman stated despite the fact the meeting was arranged and hosted by a third party, this does not relieve the municipality from giving notice of the meeting. And despite the fact the meeting was not closed to the public it is still considered to be a closed meeting because of the lack of public notice."

Back in Pinehouse, Smerek is an outspoken opponent of Pinehouse and northern Saskatchewan being considered for the site of a nuclear waste repository. "Say No To Nuclear Waste" reads a sign on the front of his house, a stone's throw from the shore of Pinehouse Lake.

For now, though, Pinehouse residents are focused on today's election. Smerek hopes his letter will result in the presence of an outside election monitor to ensure due process—including the chain of custody of the ballots—is respected. He has also requested the presence of an RCMP officer to ensure no intimidation or threats take place at the polling station.

"I'm trying to get free and fair voting opportunities for our community," said Smerek.

Sandra Cuffe is a freelance journalist and a member of the Vancouver Media Co-op. She is currently in northern Saskatchewan. This article was originally posted on the Media Co-op.

Pinehouse Map

Reporting as Resistance

Sandra — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 10:18:46 +0000

Prisoners shed light on conditions by blogging from the inside

TORONTO—Across Canada people with mundane, everyday risk factors for police repression—poverty, race, being Indigenous, working as a sex worker—face criminalization as part of their daily lives.

Prisoners' Justice Day is annually held in August, but the struggle for solidarity with prisoners is every day. On the inside, Prisoners' Justice Day was recognized by one-day hunger strikes by prisoners themselves, and 150 prisoners from Joyceville Institution, a federal prison in Kingston, have since filed suit for the right to wear Prisoners' Justice Day t-shirts.

On August 10, 2012 in Toronto, about 100 people gathered outside The Don Jail(formally The Toronto Jail, a provincial prison) to read a statement that had been written by prisoners themselves. Many in the crowd were directly affected by the prison system through their own personal encounters or through the imprisonment of those they cared about. Last Friday in Hamilton 50 protesters marched against lockdowns and poor conditions at the Barton Street Jail (formally the Hamilton Wentworth Detention Centre) as a result of a work-to-rule action on the part of the guards. Just this week, early the morning of Wednesday September 12, only hours after correctional officers returned to work, a 42-year-old inmate was found dead.

In such conditions, simply communicating about conditions on the inside to people on the outside becomes a form or resistance.

If the Conservative government has their way, conditions in prison will get much worse. US style mega-prisons are coming to Canada. The Conservative government's recent omnibus crime bill introduced mandatory minimums for pot growing and other drugs and is widely expected to increase the number of prisoners in Canada. Twenty-two new provincial and territorial prisons and 17 prison expansions are being built across the country. Federal prisons are expected to absorb cuts while adding more people—a situation that will increase crowding and make prisons even more dangerous.

This is all part of an austerity agenda that was protested in Toronto during the G20, when over a thousand people were suddenly acquainted with some of the realities of imprisonment. Some of those who are currently doing time related for G20 protest organizing or participation have been keeping blogs—serving as a connection between inside and outside of the prison system in order to demystify the prison experience. Mandy Hiscocks has been writing from inside the Vanier Centre for Women; Alex Hundert was writing from Toronto West Detention Centre and now the Central North Correctional Centre in Penetanguishene and Kelly Pflug-Back, also at Vanier, has recently started her prison blog.

Prisons are total institutions and they control not only the minute details of daily life but also communication inside and out. Combined with social stigma, the marginal social position of prisoners and fantastical television portrayals, many people who are not directly affected by the prison system have no idea what goes on inside. Together, these blogs have been helping make prison life seem less obscure.

Hundert has been writing on conditions inside jail, as well as recounting untold older stories fellow prisoners have shared with him, such as what is now known as the "Ramadan Riot" of 2010 at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex. During the Ramadan fast, meals are supposed to be served before sunrise and again following sunset. Evening meals to break fast were being served cold or late and were not providing enough food to fasting prisoners. Many of the inmates complained to the guards that they were being starved and their official complaint forms were ignored. A peaceful protest was planned where prisoners would refuse to go back to their cells but on one of the blocks a riot started as prisoners there said that they were too upset to protest peacefully. Non-Muslim prisoners also joined in a show of solidarity. Hundert writes, "One of the things that stands out for me [was that] it was not just Muslims who were rioting...guards were beating people who weren’t themselves actually participating, as well as those who were. When I ask [my fellow prisoner] about this further, he tells me that 'people were rioting because jail is bullshit; people understood that Muslims were getting mistreated.'"

From women's prison, Mandy Hiscocks writes that for many women prisoners, being separated from their families, even newborn babies, is one of the most painful parts of their incarceration. "While they're here they can't hug, hold or kiss them because the visits are 'secure.' Prisoners and visitors are divided by glass and speak through the phone...I've been told by people who've experienced it that labour is induced on a pre-determined day and the women are not allowed to refuse this. During labour she's handcuffed to the bed."

She also has written about the fate of those in immigration detention. One woman applied for political asylum at the airport, thinking she would be able to buy a ticket back if necessary and instead found herself in handcuffs. Mandy wrote: "I once asked her if she'd be in danger if she went back. 'Yes. But danger is better than jail.' So what will she do? 'I'm looking for another country now. Because I can't stay in Latvia.'"

While it's generally assumed that jail is a good time to catch up on reading, Hundert and Hiscocks have both written about issues with access to books and newspapers. Currently in some men’s jails books are almost impossible to access, cannot be mailed to prisoners (officially they can but most are censored) and library programs are either inadequate or non-existent. Three of Hundert's blogs entitled "No books in prisons" have resulted in media attention that has led to some attempts to rectify the situation, but the situation with access to books in many men's prisons is still abysmal. The provincial women’s jail has a limited selection of books and highly gendered magazine choices. Although the quality of the books has improved since 2010, when only romance novels were available, books can't be mailed to inmates unless they are for specific educational courses.

For many, Prisoners' Justice Day is a reminder that for people pushed to the margins of society, simply living and surviving can be an illegal act. As Kelly Plug-Back reminds us, "Every prisoner is a political prisoner."

To read more about life in Canadian prisons visit Alex Hundert's blog at alexhundert.wordpress.com, Mandy Hiscocks’ blog at boredbutnotbroken.tao.ca and Kelly Pflug-Back's blog at supportkellypfl.wordpress.com.

A version of this article was first published in the Ryerson Free Press.

Megan Kinch is writer and editor with the Toronto Media Co-op. follow her on twitter @meganysta

Don Jail vigil

A Dead Man’s Prints

Tim McSorley — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 02:03:34 +0000

RCMP request to fingerprint Wiebo Ludwig's corpse refused

HYTHE, AB—The day after controversial eco-activist Wiebo Ludwig died, the RCMP wanted to open his coffin and take his fingerprints one final time. His family refused.

The media-savvy reverend was seen as an "eco-warrior" by his supporters; to his foes he was an "eco-terrorist." He was best known for his run-ins with the oil and gas industry—and the police—because of his objection to poisonous leaks.

The Dutch-born preacher died from cancer of the esophagus on April 9 at his log cabin near Hythe, in northwestern Alberta. Ludwig was 70. The ink had barely dried on his death certificate when his casket was carried to a small cemetery in woods nearby and placed in an above ground concrete crypt. The previous fall I’d walked with Wiebo on a path that curves through the graveyard. At one point he stopped and, pointing with his cane, said, “This is where I’m going.”

The graveyard is a short walk from Trickle Creek, the small Christian community Ludwig founded 26 years ago. Today it’s home to nearly 60 people, a sprawling complex of chalet-type homes, machine shops, greenhouses, barns, woodsheds and a dental office.

Richard Boonstra, Ludwig’s long-time friend and a resident at Trickle Creek, called the RCMP’s request to fingerprint his corpse “odd,” “invasive” and “a terrible disrespect and interference” with human remains. Boonstra suspects the Mounties wanted to see for themselves that Wiebo Ludwig was actually dead. The request showed authorities’ discomfort with Ludwig, according to Boonstra, because, he said, Ludwig had embarrassed the "establishment."

Doris Stapleton of RCMP Media Relations says “a fingerprint is the best way to positively identify someone, and if that person has a criminal record the fingerprints are sent to Ottawa so they’re able to take the record off CPIC.” CPIC is the Canadian Police Information Center where criminal history files are kept.

The family’s attorney, Paul Moreau of Edmonton, informed the RCMP “that wouldn’t be happening.” The Mounties dropped the matter, and the heavy top covering the crypt was never raised. Moreau, a veteran criminal defence lawyer, says it was the first time he’s heard of police lifting prints off convicted criminals to close a file.

The request to fingerprint a dead and buried man came as news to recently retired correctional officer Rick Dyhm. In his 34 years as a guard at federal prisons—where numerous inmates have died—Dyhm says police never showed up to take prints off a dead inmate.

In 2001, an Edmonton judge handed Ludwig a 28-month prison sentence after finding him guilty of oilfield vandalism. He was found guilty of attempting to possess explosives and “public mischief” over $5,000 after two gas well-heads nearby Trickle Creek were damaged. One had been dynamited; the other encased in concrete. Ludwig was released after serving two-thirds of his sentence. What precipitated the vandalism was a series of sour gas leaks that poisoned people and animals at Trickle Creek. The Ludwigs say when they complained to the authorities, nothing was done. The leaks continued and the people of Trickle Creek put duct tape around their doors and windows to try and keep the toxic gas at bay.

Two years prior to his conviction, tensions reached a boiling point when a local girl, 16-year-old Karman Willis, was shot and killed at Ludwig’s farm. Willis had been riding in one of three pick-ups that tore around Trickle Creek in the dead of night. Drivers did doughnuts and tossed empty beer cans, with one truck coming to within a metre of plowing down four children sleeping in a tent. A bullet hit the radiator of one truck and ricocheted off the frame, striking Willis. No one was charged with the shooting; neither were any of the intruders charged with trespassing at night, or impaired or dangerous driving.

In January 2010, about 200 RCMP officers raided Trickle Creek to search for evidence in the bombing of a gas pipeline near Tom’s Lake, BC, about an hour’s drive from Ludwig’s farm. Mounties told reporters they had proof—DNA evidence—that Wiebo Ludwig was connected to the bombings. Ludwig was tricked into thinking he was just meeting with Mounties in nearby Grande Prairie, but was arrested and locked up for 24 hours. He was never charged with the Tom’s Lake bombings.

Boonstra finds it odd the Mounties didn’t get around to meet with Ludwig in his final days. If police believed Ludwig shot Willis—or was behind the BC bombings—Boonstra wonders why investigators wouldn’t want to see him in the hope they might get a deathbed confession.

Ludwig, a carpenter, built his own coffin in February when he realized his battle with cancer was going south.

In his final media interview, published in The Dominion, a weakened Ludwig revealed he was looking forward to what he called crossing over. “[Death] doesn’t bother me,” he offered. “It is apparent to everyone there is an afterlife, even though we repress that in our anxieties. I am eager for redemption, eager to see what’s there. I just hope I die without too much pain.”

He got his wish, thanks to a combination of herbal medicine, oxycontin and morphine. Right up to the day he died, Ludwig went for walks, often arm-in-arm with Maime, his wife of 43 years.

In his last hours, family members made their way to the log cabin where their leader, frail and lying on a couch, blessed them one by one. Wiebo Arienes Ludwig took his final breath at 11:30 am on Easter Monday. On his last day he said “...Think I’m afraid of dying? Hardly.” His last words were a request: that family members not quarrel and that they keep the faith.

No outsiders were permitted at the funeral service, held in the family’s large dining hall. I first learned of Wiebo’s death when Josh, one of his sons, phoned late that afternoon.

Family members wept openly when I played back recordings of the final interviews with Wiebo. I had called Trickle Creek on April 2 for an update on his condition. Ludwig managed to get to the phone. “Why are you calling?” he queried. I joked I was curious to see if he’d died on April Fools Day. Ludwig chuckled. It was the last time we spoke.

What has changed at Trickle Creek since Wiebo Ludwig’s death? Plenty, but much remains the same. Trickle Creek continues to be managed by a council of eight family members, its spiritual core much the way it was when Wiebo was alive.

Trickle Creek remains a strong Christian community, bordering on Old Testament-like values. Meals are followed by readings from the Scriptures. No one is addicted to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, gambling, or television. The adults work every day except Sundays. Food and herbs are home grown, no one in the community suffers from obesity. The children have chores; they pick berries, help with the harvest, feed the chickens and milk the goats and cows. For kicks, they ride bikes, collect cattails, learn pottery and play volleyball, soccer and hop-scotch.

There are no video games at Trickle Creek. Put it this way: the apple products they admire hang on trees and the twitter comes from birds.

But a few changes have taken place. Wiebo’s log cabin was moved closer to the forest; the inside is now being refurbished and a second floor added. Plans are underway to build another multiple-story house, complete with a turret and an aerial walkway; the idea is that in cold weather people can travel between buildings without having to don extra clothes. A huge barn was recently constructed to store five thousand bales of hay and to give livestock shelter on cold winter days.

Before I pulled out of Trickle Creek I chatted with beekeeper Fritz Ludwig. “Sorry if I seem out of place here,” I explained, “I don’t go to church.” Holding a young child in his arms and swaying from side to side, the bearded Fritz smiled and replied, “neither do we.”

Byron Christopher is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Edmonton, Alberta. For more on his career, click here.

Wiebo Ludwig’s last interview was published in The Dominion on March 16, 2012. See Wiebo’s Final Battle.

Wiebo's Crypt

Wiebo Ludwig, November 2011

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

Red Squares in Sudbury

Tim McSorley — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 10:30:37 +0000

New academic year in Sudbury sees new opportunities for change

SUDBURY, ONTARIO—The day after students returned to classes at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, red squares could be seen on the city's streets. Students and supporters donned the red felt badges made famous in the Quebec student strike, picked up pots and pans, and noisily took up space on downtown streets to demand accessible, equitable, public postsecondary education.

Though the numbers were modest at between 15 and 20 participants, Brendan Lehman, who is doing a Masters degree in Neuroscience at Laurentian, described himself as "excited" at the turnout. Weekly "casseroles" marches began in Sudbury in the spring, initially with upwards of 40 participants, but attendance had dwindled to a handful during the summer months. Lehman saw the September 5th rally as a good early step in building something bigger.

In addressing the group through a megaphone, fourth year Political Science student Tom Sutton said, "Although we might not be many right now, this is just a humble beginning. The Quebec student strike had humble beginnings too. And guess what? They won!"

Not only was this march being held on the day after the start of classes, but Sutton pointed out that it was also the day after the electoral defeat of Quebec Liberal Premier Jean Charest, after an election campaign shaped in large part by his government's confrontation with Quebec's student movement.

The new premier, Pauline Marois of the Parti Quebecois, has already announced that two central demands of the student movement will be met by her government: the fee and tuition hikes introduced by the Liberals will be rescinded, and Law 12, passed as a repressive measure to the student strike, will be repealed.

Student activists in Sudbury are working hard to learn from the experience in Quebec. Several attended a weekend-long training at the University of Toronto earlier in the summer in which Quebec organizers passed on lessons to students from Ontario universities.

In addition, Sudbury's first "casseroles" march of the new academic year is meant to build towards upcoming speaking events by activists who will be visiting Sudbury from the largest and most radical of the Quebec student unions, CLASSE. They will be speaking at Laurentian on September 21 and in downtown Sudbury on September 22.

A handful of non-students also participated in the march, including Lyse Godard. Though it has been many years since she herself was a student, she can testify to the impact of rising education expenses.

"I basically had to sign my life away for my son, for six years of school, six years of student loans," said Godard.

Godard favours free postsecondary education for students who attend classes and get adequate marks, and thinks more should be done to enable graduates to get jobs in their field of study.

Research has confirmed that rising education costs have widespread impacts beyond students themselves, as in the 2011 study Under Pressure: The Impact of Rising Tuition Fees on Ontario Families. In it, David Macdonald and Erika Shaker of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives write, "Ontario undergraduate tuition fees are now the highest in the country," and the combination of tuition and other compulsory fees have risen, even when inflation is taken into account, by a staggering 244% between 1990 and 2011.

MacDonald and Shaker put this in the context of significant increases in mortgage and consumer debt for Ontario households, and of stagnating incomes for a great many Ontarians and conclude that not only is rising tuition a barrier to students, but that it hurts families as well. They write, "By increasingly downloading onto families and exploiting the parental desire to provide for their children, Ontario is severely hampering its economic and educational potential."

While Godard is eager to support a growing student movement in Ontario, she worries that many of her peers might not be. A lot of the people she associates with are retirees who do not necessarily understand the circumstances that students face today, and many have "no sympathy at all" for student demands. She says they say things like, "We paid our student loans, they can pay theirs."

Fourth year Laurentian English student Heather Harris is worried about the response from her peers, too. For her, a central point of student mobilizations is to demand that governments "take us seriously" and to make sure they "don't underestimate the youth of Canada." She believes passionately that other students "should be here," and that "because [other students] aren't doing anything about it, the government doesn't have to listen."

Some students, she thinks, are "apathetic," while others "think there's other things that could be done" apart from getting into the streets. She thinks that the biggest barrier to the student movement is information – that more students will only get active once they have better information about the realities of postsecondary education today and about what mobilizing has accomplished in Quebec.

Lehman agrees that it will take determined work to build the movement in Sudbury, but he argues that if organizers keep the focus "local" and "personal," and work "to try and hold our own school accountable," there will be a response from students. "We can really connect with students at Laurentian," he said, "because every year, everyone's tuition goes up," and every year there are courses and programs that are cut, "especially francophone ones."

Theatre student Linus Cunningham Closs sees the student victories in Quebec as key to mobilizations close to home: "Because there has actually been change in Quebec," Ontario students can begin to imagine what is possible, and "we can get some change.”

The students involved say they will continue to mount "casseroles" marches in dowtown Sudbury every Wednesday at 8 pm.

Scott Neigh is a writer and activist based in Sudbury, Ontario. For more of his writing, see his personal blog as well as the site about his forthcoming books on Canadian social movement history.

Red Squares in Sudbury