Great Lakes Need Great Friends- Once bitten twice shy

Great Lakes may need great friends, but with such as these who needs enemies… this tour is clearly a membership drive using freshwater issues as a vehicle. If the Council of Canadians is going to organize a “forum” for you, such as the meeting in Thunder Bay yesterday evening, count on it to follow a set pattern of speakers using the environmental crise du jour or the old anti-nuclear standby to stir “passion” (If emotion is politically correct it is passion/good if not it is anger/bad), followed by an abbreviated Q&A.

Thursday’s event was adjourned on schedule ostensibly to avoid conflict with a comedy show also in town for the night. A similar meeting in Sault Ste. Marie was curtailed by a dinner engagement… perhaps a coincidence. The practice of staging public participation so that panelists (in this case 3), do not directly respond to questions is no happenstance. Initially only three members of the audience moved to the centrally located microphone, nonetheless panelists took notes and responded to those as they chose, not to the individuals, each in turn at the mic.

A young First Nations man’s question, though deceptively simple was intricately phrased to make a point. This may have been completely missed or deliberately side-stepped and there was no opportunity to clarify given the set-up. Unfortunately Josephine Mandamin, First Nations water walker who had been scheduled to speak, was not in attendance.

The question, loaded, in the context of First Nations culture, “When did the pollution start?”
The answer which is congruent with that world view is, “When the invaders/Europeans/settlers/visitors came.”

A more ecologically accurate and relevant response might be, “When humans exceeded the local carrying capacity of the ecosystem”. The answer as given by the Environment North panelist completely discounted the cultural origins of the question and dealt only with recent history and the group’s involvement in clean-up of pollution hot spots identified in the past 50 yrs.

A protracted harangue of the Federal Government’s “gutting” of environmental legislation under the latest budget by Maude Barlow, of the allegedly non-partisan registered charity Council of Canadians, prompted an attending lsarc member to ask why the other enormous omnibus in the room was being ignored and what the hopes were for McGuinty to respond to their current spam attack requesting follow-through on the pre-election millions promised for the water issue, considering the now desperate economic state of the Province after the billions wasted on the Green Energy/Economy Act, which the Auditor reported had not even been based on a proper cost benefit analysis.

The eventual response was a strange understatement that there had been a “misinterpretation” of the Green Energy Act and a return to bashing Harper as more “enjoying” and “gleeful” in his destruction of environmental protections, even managing to drag in a derogatory reference to Mike Harris… Hardly convincing evidence of non-partisan scrutiny considering the growing importance of Provincial oversight in energy, which is after all a Provincial issue.

Ms Barlow, setting the bar so low for McGuinty and his cronies, does not inspire confidence in those who wonder at her willingness to accept the anti-democratic GEA. What is there to misinterpret about the removal of the municipal decision-making on renewable energy developments? This was just the precursor to the foreseeable elimination of the public’s right to meaningful input on environmental matters. We have been supplanted by the green lobby groups which have or had the Premier’s ear.

While there are those who may hope that a grandiose Biosphere Reserve will save our Great Lakes from various threats, many will quail at the thought of yet another UN crisis foisted on us with promises of public consultation every step of the way. Maude seems to have forgotten that she publicly admitted in Sault Ste. Marie that many climate scientists feel land-use has as strong an influence as CO2… actually the effects of the sun seem to be top choice on influencing climate as opposed to weather and few, bar the TEAM, consider Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming to be anything but silly.

Equally idiotic has been the knee-jerk reaction to industrialize even previously protected wilderness and wetland with industrial-scale wind and solar developments. Hopefully the public can commandeer the next “forum” and take back their human right to environmental decision-making, before giving away rights to our water.

For the truth about model Germany, see NoTricksZone here and here

Here is the schedule of stops on the Great Lakes need Great Friends Tour. Please consider actions in conjunction with these stops in your community. Have some members who are well versed on the issues and good public speakers attend the talks to provide the proper balance and to challenge the panel, especially Maude Barlow and the Council of Canadians, on its support for Industrial Wind Turbines. Have other members outside, as many as possible, with signs protesting the Council of Canadians' support for Ontario's destructive renewable energy policies. Any organization which publicly states its belief that the GEA is a good Act that has simply been misinterpreted needs to be educated about reality and Democracy.

May 22 - Kingston
7:00 p.m. Queens university, Dupuis Auditorium
Speakers:
– Bob Lovelace
– Mark Mattson, Lake Ontario Waterkeepers
– Maude Barlow, The Council of Canadians

May 24 - Sarnia
7:00 p.m. Lambton Inn Ballroom Lambton College, 1457 London Road
Speakers:
– Maude Barlow, The Council of Canadians

May 28 - Township of Tiny
7:00 p.m. Tiny Community Centre, 91 Concession 8 East, Perkinsfield
Speakers:
– Maude Barlow, The Council of Canadians

May 29 - Owen Sound
7:00 p.m. Harry Lumley Bayshore Community Centre, 1900 3rd Avenue East
Speakers:
– Maude Barlow, The Council of Canadians

May 30 – London
7:00 p.m. Aeolian Hall, 795 Dundas St.
Speakers:
– Maude Barlow, The Council of Canadians