Friends,
Today, I was filled with rage after waking up to the news that Jason Kenney is handing close to $6 billion dollars to the Keystone XL pipeline in the midst of a global pandemic.1 The announcement comes just two days after he laid off 26,000 public education workers on a Saturday afternoon.
Then, a couple of hours later during his daily press conference, Justin Trudeau defended the continued construction of the TransMountain pipeline.2 While telling millions of Canadians to stay at home to stop the spread of COVID-19, he had the nerve to justify cramming thousands of oil workers into man camps on unceded Indigenous lands.
Let’s be clear. There is no way that either of these projects can be built without risking further spread of COVID-19 to workers, rural communities, and the Indigenous nations whose territories they pass through.
To top it all off, these decisions to prop up oil and gas companies are coming not only at a time when oil is worth next to nothing but at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are worried about paying their April 1st rent and while health care workers across the country are struggling to get the equipment they need to protect themselves.
Right now, millions of people across Alberta, Canada, and around the world are stepping up to have each others’ backs, and we expect our governments to do the same. But instead of supporting working people, they’re making the shameful decision to bail out Big Oil billionaires.
In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces, the mountains, rivers, towns, farms you could most readily do without.
This is number four of Wendell Barry's poem: Questionaire
Full Poem
we are doing everything we can to stay active while honouring the global health crisis in which we all find ourselves
Do not change your behaviour to avoid being infected. Assume you are infected and change your behaviour to avoid transmitting.
Misty MacDuffee
Biologist & Program Director, Wild Salmon Program
Misty MacDuffee is a conservation biologist with a focus on fisheries ecology in salmon ecosystems. For the past 15 years she has undertaken various types of field, laboratory, technical and conservation assessments in the salmon-bearing watersheds of the BC coast. She has a particular interest in the role of salmon as critical food sources for wildlife and incorporating their nutritional and energy needs into salmon management decisions.
She is also interested in historic stock assessment and has run reconstructions in salmon watersheds.
A journalist reflects on what weeks of protests mean for the land's Indigenous - and how it goes beyond just a pipeline.
Written by Brandi Morin who is a French/Cree/Iroquois journalist from Treaty 6 in Alberta
The Seventh Generation Principle is based on an ancient Iroquois philosophy that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable
world seven generations into the future.
"When we fight we can win." Let's all keep up the fight!
Coastal GasLink broke B.C. pipeline rules more than 50 times
A message to our supporters: This is not over. We want the RCMP and CGL off our lands.
This proposal from BC and Canada is long overdue, following decades of denial of Wet'suwet'en rights and title after the 1997 Delgamuukw-Gisday'wa court case. Our ancestors proved what we have always known - that these lands belong to the Wet'suwet'en - and thanks to thousands rising up across so-called Canada, the government is forced to acknowledge this.
We need to keep the pressure on.
The proposal will be reviewed by our clans, and decided upon by our nation in our bahtlats (feast hall) in accordance with Anuk nu'at'en (Wet'suwet'en law) in the coming weeks.
Stay strong. #Wetsuwetenstrong
A major gap in government regulation and oversight is allowing giant international cargo ships to anchor as long as they want in the “protected” waters of the Southern Gulf Islands and Cowichan Bay.
Negative Impacts include:
-
Anchor chains scouring the ocean floor, destroying marine habitat
-
Diesel generators run 24/7 causing air, noise and light pollution
-
Acoustic Interference and collision risk to Resident Killer Whales
-
Risk of grounding or collisions causing catastrophic fuel spills
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Local First Nations and coastal community groups are demanding Transport Canada put an end to this harmful spillover of commercial activity from the Port of Vancouver.