Today I went to Dundas Square, one of the busiest intersections in Toronto to join Rhytms of Resistance-Toronto,“a political samba-inspired band that plays for environmental and social justice.” The band was raising awareness about some of the tar sands pipelines that will threaten forests, waterways, fish habitat, and communities along and near the pipelines. What a way to spend Earth Day, eh?

They were also letting people know how to plug into the resistance against the pipelines! The band’s groupies, who I gladly joined, were letting people know about a rally happening at the Enbridge Annual General Meeting in Toronto on May 9th. I learned about the Yinka Dene Alliance, one of the leading groups of First Nations opposing the Enbridge Northern Gateway oil pipeline, who will be in Toronto on May 8th and 9th to say “No” to the proposed pipeline.

Members of the YDA are traveling from BC to Toronto for the Enbridge AGM and they will be stopping in Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg along the way. Once I am done writing this diary entry, I am going to invite all my friends in those cities. It is Earth Day after all—great excuse to spread the word on how to resist environmentally destructive projects.

I am so glad that so many people are piping up (pun intended) about these pipelines. These pipelines would contaminate water, fish sources, and human health. Communities would be put at risk for the profit of a few greedy oil and gas corporations. Diary, that just isn’t fair!

I mentioned the Northern Gateway Pipeline, which would bring dirty tar sands to the west coast of British Columbia for export; but I still haven’t mentioned the tankers that would come to collect that oil. They would have to travel through ecologically sensitive areas and through waters which are known to be rough because of the high winds and waves. Do we really want to repeat some of the horrible oil spills which have destroyed fishing communities and continue to impact human health and livelihoods? This sounds just too risky!

There is also another pipeline which would bring liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Kitimat as well: the Pacific Trails Pipeline. This LNG would be primarily from shale gas development in northeastern BC. This type of gas development involves injecting water and unidentified chemicals into underground shale rock formations at very high pressures in order to extract natural gas below the surface. This process uses up tons of water, while also contaminating groundwater and local drinking water.

But those aren’t the only pipelines blazing through British Columbia. Kinder Morgan is trying to increase the amount of tar sands crude that would be transported through the Trans Mountain Pipeline, a pipeline which brings tar sands to southwestern BC.  There has been local opposition to the pipeline expansion which would require twinning the pipeline and putting communities at significant risk.

Looking east, there is the Trailbreaker project which would bring tar sands across the Prairies, Great Lakes, Ontario, Quebec, and finally to the coast of Maine, USA. The pipeline has faced growing opposition from communities across the route. And rightfully so. In 2010, an Enbridge pipeline leak put over a million gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River which flows into the Great Lakes. Enbridge may be okay with polluting the largest group of freshwater lakes on the planet, but I won’t sit by and just watch it happen.

And I am not the only one!

This Earth Day, there were over 10 communities that took action specifically against pipelines, tankers, and tar sands expansion. In Montreal, Quebec there was a march so huge that “more than two hours after it began, a large crowd was still waiting to begin at the starting point.” Right on!

Diary, I am so inspired that I am going to explore more ways to take collective action against environmentally destructive operations.

Happy Earth Day, -maryam

The premise is that supporting “conflict oil” from Saudi Arabia would prop up a regime that is oppressive to women. The underlying motive, however, is not to talk about women’s rights, but rather to deflect negative attention from the tar sands.

If women’s rights were ever of genuine concern to EthicalOil.org (and all the individuals that make it possible such as Ezra Levant, Alykhan Velshi, Kathryn Marshall, and their corporate oil profiteers) then there would be conversation about the impacts that all oil, even oil that some may call “ethical” (while most call dirty), extraction has on women.

Women working in the Alberta oil industry have reported sexual harrassment, gender discrimination, and unequal pay; and the tar sands boom has been coupled with increased rates of sexual violence whether they work in the industry or not. This gender-based discrimination makes the highest paying jobs less accessible to women and, with skyrocketing housing costs, makes affordable housing less accessible as well.

Furthermore, the premise is based on a problematic and delusional sense of Canadian nationalism and superiority in which Canada is socially advanced and civilized.

EthicalOil.org says that “every barrel of Ethical Oil that replaces a barrel of conflict oil is a good thing,” saying that getting oil from Saudi Arabia props up a regime that oppresses women. Simultaneously, EthicalOil.org avoids recognizing that purchasing “ethical oil” props up the Harper government which also oppresses women.

The premise of ‘ethical oil’ is that because Canada’s political regime is more ‘ethical’ than that of other oil producing states, then canada’s oil must therefore be “ethical” in comparison to oil from countries such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

Oil from these places is, by contrast, “conflict oil.” To read more, please read this previous blog post.

EthicalOil.org’s new spokesperson, Kathryn Marshall, authored an insulting piece this week on the Huffington Post titled “Care About Women’s Rights? Support Ethical Oil”. Marshall’s piece is a response to the October 11 article by Maryam Adrangi at It’s Getting Hot In Here.  Adrangi argues that the underlying motive of the “ethical oil” campaign is to deflect negative attention from the tar sands, not to actually engage in a conversation about women’s liberation.

“If women’s rights were of genuine concern to EthicalOil.org” writes Adrangi, “then there would be a conversation about the impacts that tar sands extraction has on women”.

You’ll notice that Marshall’s attempted rebuttal fails to actually address the substantive criticisms made in Adrangi’s piece – Marshall never mentions the impacts of Alberta’s tar sands development on women, but instead repeats the same arguments and general hand-waving that sparked Adrangi’s criticism of EthicalOil.org’s conservative pundits in the first place.

Marshall’s promotion of tar sands oil is framed around a central argument that if we care about women’s rights then we must support tar sands expansion, and by extension the Keystone XL pipeline, because Canadian women fare far better than women in petrocracies, such as Saudi Arabia.  But Marshall’s argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny for three major reasons.

The first is that increasing tar sands output will not hurt the Saudi sheiks’ coffers. TransCanada’s own research proves that the Keystone XL pipeline was never meant to decrease our reliance on foreign oil, just to keep Gulf Coast refineries at capacity. As global demand for oil keeps going up, a marginal shift in Canadian and US consumption will be offset by growing demand from other countries, keeping prices high and continuing to enrich the oppressive Saudi regime. Expanding the tar sands just buys Saudi Arabia a bit more time to profit before we are compelled to shift away from oil addiction towards a clean energy future – the real ‘ethical’ choice.

This leads to the second major flaw in Ethicaloil.org’s argument: it presents the reader with a false choice. Marshall’s bait-and-switch suggests that we must make a choice between “conflict oil” and “ethical oil”. On the contrary, you can simultaneously support women’s rights and oppose Alberta’s tar sands. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, to say the least. If we really want to hurt the regimes of oppressive petrocracies, then the wise choice is to end our addiction to fossil fuels and move rapidly towards a clean energy economy, setting a model that the rest of the world can follow. EthicalOil.org’s entire line of reasoning is a diversionary tactic designed to obscure this hard reality. It’s a red herring, and a dangerous one at that.

Third, Marshall’s emotional appeal tells readers that because women’s rights are worse in petrocracries, then we needn’t concern ourselves with what’s happening in Canada. In Canada, we have female mayors and premiers. We are a liberal democratic nation that respects human rights. I agree that the plight of women in many petrocracies is grave, but that does not mean that the plight of many women in Canada deserves less consideration from Canadians.

We can and should engage in critical discussions on women’s rights in Canada. And tar sands expansion forces us to explore some of these issues head-on.

In Alberta’s tar sands region in particular, rates of sexual violence towards women have increased and women working in the industry have reported sexual harassment and gender discrimination. With expansion of the tar sands industry, instances of domestic violence in Fort McMurray have spiralled upwards, and few women have safe places to go, forcing many to return home to their abusers.

Instead of pretending that expanding the tar sands will somehow help women in Saudi Arabia, let’s talk about how we can help Canadian women impacted right here at home by tar sands expansion.

Marshall boldly demands to know where Canadian women’s groups have been in speaking out against Saudi women’s oppression. Did she ever think to ask these groups? I did. For one, Jan Slakov, the National Secretary for Canadian Voices of Women for Peace, the organization that Marshall attacks in her piece, told me,

“The Canadian Voice of Women for Peace has worked to support women’s rights and well-being, not just in Canada, but around the world. Groups have raised funds to support programs in countires where women face systematic human rights abuses. We also work at the international level to support women’s rights through the UN.”

As a Women’s Studies graduate, Marshall should know that Canadian women’s rights groups are engaged in this fight directly. Instead, Marshall, while claiming to be an advocate of women’s rights, erases the history of the women’s rights movement in Canada and its work in global solidarity with women living under oppressive regimes. I can’t speak for women’s groups, but I think it’s telling that we haven’t heard any credible organizations supporting EthicalOil.org’s message. I suspect they see right through EthicalOil.org’s insincere issue hijacking.

The premise is that supporting “conflict oil” from Saudi Arabia would prop up a regime that is oppressive to women. The underlying motive, however, is not to talk about women’s liberation, but rather to deflect negative attention from the tar sands.

If women’s rights were of genuine concern to EthicalOil.org (and all the individuals that make it possible such as Ezra Levant, Alykhan Velshi, Kathryn Marshall, and their corporate oil buddies) then there would be conversation about the impacts that tar sands extraction has on women.

The tar sands boom has created dangerous jobs with long hours, fostering a culture of alcohol and substance abuse in the off hours. As a result, rates of sexual violence towards women have increased and women working in the industry have reported sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and unequal pay. Gender-based discrimination have also resulted in unequal access to higher paying jobs in communities in the region, and with skyrocketing housing prices and costs of living, there is also unequal access to housing.  Increases in female homelessness exacerbate the challenges faced by women in the area.

But EthicalOil.org ignores the problems that women in tar sands impacted communities face. In fact, the site’s main idea of “ethics” is based on a sense of Canadian superiority as a country which demands women’s rights.  This idea hides some of the blatant facts:

“Since 2006, Harper has cut funding for women’s advocacy by 43 per cent, shut 12 out of 16 Status of Women offices in Canada, and eliminated funding of legal voices for women and minority groups, including the National Association of Women and the Law and the Courts Challenges Program,” writes Emma Pullman, campaigner with Leadnow.ca. Pullman continues to describe the parts of Harper’s agenda that specifically ignore the systemic violence faced by Indigenous women.

Tar Sands mining operations, pipelines, and refineries disproportionately impact Indigenous peoples by violating Treaty Rights, their right to say no  (free, prior, and informed consent or FPIC, which is outlined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) to industrial activity taking place on their lands. Tar sands projects have affected Indigenous peoples ability to hunt, trap, and continue traditional practices.

Furthermore, while environmental pollution and contamination associated with tar sands projects affects all people, the health impacts on women’s bodies are destructive to the future wellbeing of entire communities as women bear children. Given that the vast majority of communities living downstream from tar sands and most impacted by the pollution are First Nations communities, the tar sands have been called an “environmental genocide” by indigenous peoples.

So if these facts about “Ethical” oil’s impacts on women are so clear, why is EthicalOil.org implicitly calling for a boycott of Saudi oil?

Maybe they are trying to distract us; so, instead of planning how to make housing in Northern Alberta more affordable to women, I am writing a blog to counter EthicalOil.org’s insincere interest in advancing Saudi women’s struggles. Or maybe they are trying to dictate the conversation; so, instead of talking about alternative forms of energy that do not centralize power in large multinational oil companies, I am reacting to EthicalOil.org’s insincere interest in advancing Saudi women’s struggles. Or maybe they have just run out of good ideas, and are now pretending to care about Saudi women’s struggles.

Maybe tar sands opponents have simply done a good job at making right-wing pundits find any ludicrous argument to convince the general public that tar sands oil is “ethical.”

With two mass actions against the tar sands in September alone and another planned for November, all of which have garnered celebrity support and numerous headlines, it is no surprise that EthicalOil.org is trying anything to promote an industry so widely recognized as destructive.

The lesson? When we get attention, they get defensive. And they look silly.

This means that we do not need to waste our time countering their arguments (I am aware of the irony of this comment, given that I just wrote this blog). We can spend our time doing other, more fruitful things. We can organize creative ways to stop large oil corporations from destroying people and the planet. We can come together to demand that oil companies stop exploiting women through the workplace, their communities, and their bodies.

Oil companies and lobbyists may continue attempts to co-opt women’s movements (or others) as excuses for resource exploitation, but regardless, we  can still come together to build a broad base of people demanding climate and gender justice. Once we are united, we watch them expose their own contradictions and develop more poor attempts to justify their actions.

The densely populated cities of the Atlantic coast of North Americahave been preparing for Hurricane Irene. As someone who just decided that this was the perfect weekend to visit New York City, I find myself helping my brother and NYC resident tape up his windows, search for flashlights and candles, and fill the bathtub with water. We are checking the hurricane watch and evacuation advisories to see if it is necessary that we peace out of the city.

For someone who is typically living in Toronto, an urban setting which hasn’t faced a hurricane since I have lived there, this rapid response to extreme weather events is new. But, I don’t want to act like ALL people in North America are void of dealing with the impacts of climate change. I want to recognize the reality of communities in the Arctic, where unpredictable cracks in the ice can cost people their lives; farmers are faced with unpredictable weather, resulting in poor growing seasons; and we can never forget all the communities (mostly communities of colour and low-income communities) that live merely a few kilometers from logging sites, coal-fired power plants, fracking sites, tar sands projects, and mountain-top removal sites.

But this blog post isn’t for all of y’all. I am writing to those who have chosen not to take action on climate change because they think it does not directly impact them. I write to many of the other Torontonians, New Yorkers, or others who can talk about climate change as if it is something that impacts others.

Climate action advocates often face the difficulty of dealing on somewhat of an invisible issue, in that carbon emitted in the atmosphere is rendered invisible to cause floods and storms in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and small island nation states kilometres away. Floods and monsoons, pfft…I don’t have to deal with that (And sometimes it is pfft…I dont have to deal with that…yet)! The challenge then becomes compelling people to act on issues of climate change because they are acting in solidarity, which may be difficult given the pervasive aura of NIMBY-ism.

But as I bring in some of the chairs off my brother’s balcony to make sure they don’t go blowing off into Manhattan’s Greenwich village, I turn to him and ask: “So, if only our cities were more bike friendly, eh?” (I figure I can ease them into the How about we stop Big Oil, Big Coal, and all the other extractive industries, like logging and mining, from wreaking havoc on the earth-conversation).

I wonder if an abnormally hot and humid summer, followed by a hurricane which has prompted the first planned closure of the NYC subway system, can be a bit of a kick in the shins to climate action activists and our audience to say “If we want to mitigate these extreme weather events from impacting communities, including our own, we need to do something about it.”

Now is an opportunity to appeal to the masses who will only take action if it impacts them directly.

And what better time to be taking action than at a time when there is already so much going on? As I type, hundreds of people are taking part in the Tar Sands Action, willing to face arrest if that is what is needed to tell Obama to stop the Keystone XL pipeline which would facilitate tar sands expansion; and several individuals with Wild Idaho Rising Tide blocked an Exxon/Imperial Oil “megaload” shipment heading for the Alberta Tar Sands. Folks in Canadaare getting ready for a similar action to the Tar Sands Action, taking place in Ottawa on September 26^th.

We can still continue to take those individual actions that reduce our carbon footprint, but we need collective action to reduce the large amounts of carbon that is being pumped into the atmosphere on a larger scale than my taking a cab across town. The amount of carbon emitted by deforesting acres of forest to create oil extraction sites, or by blasting into mountains to burn dirty coal would undo any of the individual actions we try to take.

Political organizing is absolutely necessary to stop these projects and to influence decision makers that these environmentally destructive operations cannot take place unregulated. The consequences of these are being felt and people are willing to take action to protect their own communities and those who are most impacted. Individually we may be ignored, together we can make some noise.

If predatory extractive industries and their crony politicians go unchallenged, then they continue contributing to the greenhouse we are trying to mitigate. Some of us may have the opportunity to live off the grid, create zero-waste, and sustain ourselves on our own gardens; but that may not stop some of the most destructive industries from colonizing the atmosphere. It is for that reason, we must couple our individual efforts with those of our allies to do what we can to protect our environment and our communities.

July 8-9-10th: Yellowknife NWT Facebook
July 15-16-17: Camp Meywasin, Wabamun AB (near Edmonton) Facebook 
July 22-23-24: Camp Byng Sunshine Coast, BC (just outside of Vancouver) Facebook

August 12-13-14: Camp Beaverbrook, Halifax NS

August 18-20-21: Unicamp, Oustide of Toronto, ON

*Camps start Friday morning and run until Sunday afternoon (subject to change), and the camp locations are open as of Thursday afternoon.

While it is admirable that 5000 cyclists rode 200km and raised funds for cancer research, I wonder why Enbridge themselves have failed to do their part to stop cancer at its source. Enbridge’s attempt to pose as a socially-conscious engineering firm is hiding the fact that it is expanding the reach of tar sands oil, closely linked to causing cancer.

Enbridge has been finessing its plans to construct the Northern Gateway Pipeline, a pipeline originally proposed about 10 years ago and which is being pushed by the Harper agenda. The twin pipelines, which run from Northern Alberta to BC’s coast, will cross through 60 First Nations communities and over 1,000 streams and rivers. This means that in the event of a pipeline failure it is likely that waterways will be contaminated and the health impacts on local people are soon to follow.

Now let’s take Enbridge’s track record. The company has an average 60 leaks and spills per year between 1999-2008 and the Northern Gateway could add about 5 spills per year. With these statistics, it is not a matter of if there is a spill, but when there is a spill and where will it be. No oil or engineering company has ever been able to fully clean up their mess and recover 100% of oil leaked. One teaspoon of benzene, but one of the many contaminants released, can contaminate 260,660 gallons of water. In the event of a leak, carcinogenic toxins are released both into waterways, land, and the air.

In communities living downstream from tar sands projects, rare cancers are unfortunately not so rare. Bile duct cancer typically affects 1 in every 100,000 people. In Fort Chipeweyan, a community with a population of about 1200 people, there were five diagnosed cases in the span of about 5 years.  Bile duct cancer is among the many other cancers—colon cancer, leukemia, lymphoma to name a few—and diseases on the rise in Fort Chip, a community which draws its water from the Athabasca watershed. The watershed has been increasingly contaminated by tar sands projects.

Rising cancer rates seen in communities living downstream from the tar sands is bound to be replicated in communities living along Enbridge’s proposed pipeline. The associated health costs of the pipeline is only one of the many reasons that several communities have banded together to reject the proposal.

In a previous post written by Dustin Johnson, a Tsimshian from Prince Rupert and Terrace, BC and currently the Energy Campaigner for Sierra Club Prairie he reports:

On May 11th, 2011, on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy in Calgary, Alberta, a historic solidarity statement of opposition to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal was signed by leaders of the Blood Tribe, Alexander First Nation, Lubicon Lake Nation, Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation, Sai’kuz First Nation, Nadleh Whuten, Takla Lake First Nation and the Nakazdli First Nation.

Along with contributing to the increased risk of cancer, Enbridge’s pipeline is passing through unceded Indigenous land and has not respected Indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior, and informed consent as outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

As Enbridge continues to fund cancer research, it can also do its part by stopping its own activities that contribute to cancer. Enbridge and Enbridge subsidiaries have been expanding their pipeline projects and threat to the health of communities across North America.  Merely helping fund cancer research does not absolve Enbridge of its responsibility to respect people living near these pipelines.

Everyone laughed at him.

Now, I knew Kent’s forte was public relations (with no background in environmental issues); however, I did not know that he wanted to dabble in stand-up comedy. I am also surprised that he decided to test out his humour on the House of Commons when responding to a Member of Parliament from Quebec whose concern was that the Canadian government was “dragging its feet” behind other countries and failing to develop a greenhouse gas reduction plan.

Kent also talked about the largest greenhouse gas emitters in Canada: the transportation sector and the coal-fired electricity sector.

I would like to propose two other sectors that Kent should address: Trade and military operations.

Trade: Canada exports over half its oil to the United States. A proportionality clause in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) prevents Canada from reducing the percentage of oil exports to the United States. In other words—If Canada produces more oil, then Canada must continue to export a certain percentage of that oil to the US (this percentage can only increase). A newly proposed security perimeter (some have said that it is Harper’s attempt to revive the Security and Prosperity Partnership) would give the US even more access to Alberta tar sands. This security perimeter would help make the dirty oil tax-free as it crosses the border, making it more enticing for the US.

If it is cheaper for the US to get the oil, it will want more oil.  So Alberta will extract more oil.

Simple. And terrible.

Furthermore, Harper is trying to push the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), a free trade deal between Canada and the EU. This trade deal would give the EU easy access to the crude, and we may see the same thing as in NAFTA—the EU gets what the EU wants, which means more deforestation, more pollution, and more communities facing the burdens that come with mining operations, precarious jobs, tailings ponds, and pipelines.

The military: Most of Canadian oil goes to the US. Then where? The Pentagon uses 330,000 barrels of oil each day, which is more than countries such as the Philippines, Portugal, and Nigeria. If the Pentagon was a country, it would be the 37th largest consumer of oil. The Pentagon is using this fuel for fighter jets, tankers, you name it.

It is difficult to avoid questioning if Canada is fueling US military occupations and wars abroad. These occupations are creating instability in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan (Canadian military), causing market prices of oil to skyrocket and making tar sands crude profitable. When tar sands are more profitable, industry and right-wing governments want to accelerate expansion.

I know that Minister Kent is neither the Minster of Trade nor the Minster of Defence, and that dabbling in those portfolios is not Kent’s job; but does it really matter when Kent is not doing his job to begin with?

Newly appointed Environment Minister Peter Kent told the Calgary Herald last week that “it’s a secure oil in a world where many of the free world’s oil sources are somewhat less secure.”

A recent Globe and Mail article thanks author and tar sands-advocate Ezra Levant for his recent contribution to this public relations stint:

Mr. Levant has helped popularize the argument that oil-sands petroleum is ethically superior to petroleum produced by countries such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and other regimes with dubious environmental and human rights records. By comparison, he argues, Canada is environmentally responsible, peaceful, offers its workers fair wages and respects human rights.

We now see that the Harper government has adopted Levant’s argument which is based on the entire question “whether we should use oil from the oil sands or oil from the other places in the world that pump it.” –p.7. In Levant’s book Ethical Oil he claims it is THE question. In reality…it is HIS question. And it is not an appropriate question given that it discounts the human rights violations and environmental devastation caused by tar sands operations.

Pointing the finger at violations to human rights and environmental regulation abroad does not mean that Canada is doing okay. Let’s take some of Levant’s key arguments cited above.

Canada is environmentally responsible: Ezra, if Canada was environmentally responsible, please tell me why the Harper government did not pass Bill C-300, a bill that would have regulated Canada’s mining operations abroad. Could you also explain the undemocratic defeat of Bill C-311, the only piece of climate legislation in parliament? And while you are trying to explain why an “environmentally responsible” country would reject environmental policies, could you also guide me to the full impact assessment of the tar sands that has been avoided for so long?

Canada is peaceful: Ezra, what is your definition of peaceful? Does it explain Canada’s involvement in military occupations abroad? Does it include the Conservative government’s investment in fighter jets? Does it include the increased funding to the prison system when crime rates are in decline? Does it include increases to military operations and domestic policing in a country where there are also cuts to the shelter system, affordable housing, childcare, public transit, and other social services? What does your definition of peaceful include?

Offers its workers fair wages: The tar sand employs a significant amount of migrant workers from all over the world—Mexico, China, Guatemala, Indonesia—you name it. Now Ezra, can you tell me the migrant workers in the tar sands are not subject to the same exploitation as the workers in other sectors such as agriculture and live-in caregiver programs? Can you prove that migrant workers are not forced to live in small housing conditions with many others, work precarious jobs without proper safety equipment, nor are denied access to health care? Can you prove to me that migrant workers in the tar sands are not threatened with deportation (or are deported) when they speak out about these workers’ rights violations?

Respects Human Rights: Now Ezra, I do not even think I am going to ASK about this one, but instead I am going to say “HELLO! One of the main reasons people are opposed to Canada’s tar sands projects is because they violate human rights!” The tar sands have destroyed people’s water sources, food sources, and increased asthma, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases in many communities. It is contributing to global warming pollution, causing increases in extreme weather events, droughts, and floods. First Nations communities in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC have sued both provincial and federal governments because they are approving projects that violate their constitutional rights as Aboriginal people. Well done to a country that respects human rights! (insert eye-rolling here)

Now, moving past the silliness of Ezra Levant and his arguments, I am still concerned that there is an environment minister who fails to see the environmental pitfalls of a water- and energy-intensive project like the tar sands. A project that has caused the deforestation of large swaths of the Canadian boreal forest, and a project that requires chemical inputs while also releasing them back into the environment. I think that Harper is faced with the same problem he has every time he needs to shuffle around his cabinet, a problem that Rick Mercer says simply as just not having enough qualified applicants.

OPEN LETTER TO THE PARLIAMENT OF CANADA
FROM THE SIERRA YOUTH COALITION
RE: BILL C-49: Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act

The Sierra Youth Coalition is deeply concerned about the new immigration and refugee legislation—Bill C-49, Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act—as it will unfairly punish those seeking asylum in Canada. Bill C-49 would allow for any group of migrants claiming refugee status to be jailed for a period of at least one year and denied basic social services such as health care. This bill also gives arbitrary power to deport migrants after they have been granted refugee status and bars them from applying for permanent residence for five years. This legislation is both unjust and unacceptable and should be withdrawn immediately.

Forced migration and displacement due to loss of lands, clean water and clean air is an issue of increasing importance in the world today. We are seeing clear human impacts of climate change, which will continue to increase in the years ahead. The Government of Canada has refused to take ambitious action on climate change, which has been made apparent through its lack of support for transformative change at international forums such as the UN Climate Change Negotiations and G8/G20 meetings.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The Government of Canada has refused to take responsibility for the effects of its extractive practices, with the continued expansion of the tar sands in Canada and the recent defeat of Bill C-300, which would have ensured that Canadian mining, oil and gas companies continue to follow human rights and environmental best practices, even when operating outside our own borders. The results of inaction on climate change will lead to more displaced persons worldwide. As a prosperous nation and home to many corporations that profit off natural resources, Canada must accept its responsibility to those hit first and worst by social and environmental injustices and political persecution. As such, we insist that Bill C-49 be scrapped. At the same time we demand the continued targeting of migrants and refugees be stopped, and that individuals who are subject to forced migration and displacement have their rights upheld.

The Sierra Youth Coalition embraces the ideals of social justice and anti-oppression as part of the framework which guides our work. As a Canadian coalition of young people concerned about global environmental justice, we feel that it is imperative that this bill not pass. Social and environmental sustainability is incredibly important, and it is ours and future generations that will be faced with the decisions made today. Environmental justice is not possible without addressing inequities and issues of social injustice within our society so we can create a better world together.