Environmental crisis? We have a democratic crisis
Bill C-38 is now law. After a marathon (22 hour plus) parliamentary session and quashing the more than 800 proposed amendments, sleepy MPs passed the 425-page omnibus budget bill.
Every proposed amendment was defeated, rendering weeks of committee hearings, parliamentary debate and expert witnesses as useless exercises in faux democratic policy making.
Bill C-38 is an oil baron’s dream come true. It’s the largest environmental bill ever adopted in Canada and it does not strengthen any aspect of environmental protection. It radically weakens the laws used to protect our natural environment, including exempting projects from environmental assessment, limiting the time provided for public and expert input into environmentally sensitive projects and removing habitat protection from the Fisheries Act. That prompted even two former Conservative fisheries ministers to publicly oppose the bill.
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Canada's PM Stephen Harper faces revolt by scientists: Scientists to march through Ottawa in white lab coats in protest at cuts to research and environmental damage
“The Harper government is the most environmentally hostile one we have ever had in Canada. Harper pulled Canada out of the Kyoto protocol, gutted the Fisheries Act (our strongest freshwater protection law), and hollowed out our environmental assessment legislation, making it easier for extractive industries to get licences to exploit,” said Maude Barlow, a former UN advisor on water and chair of the Council of Canadians. “It is heartlessly shutting down a programme that costs very little to run given the incredible benefits it brings, in order to silence the voices who speak for water.”
The 59 Cents Campaign
This week the Harper Government’s Immigration Minister Jason Kenny announced that Canada would no longer be paying for the health care of refugees.
A group of students from the Canadian School of Peacebuilding at the Canadian Mennonite University have started a 59 cents campaign, which they say is the cost to every Canadian to restore health care benefits to refugees every year.
All you have to do to take part in the campaign is send 59 cents to the following address:
Send your mail (postage is free) to:
The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada, Office of P.M.
80 Wellington St.
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A2
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