Recent highlights from the Council of Canadians

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Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00

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Recent highlights from the Council of Canadians r1 Truth and Reconciliation, Citizen Oil, Alternative Federal Budget and more ... r71 | Add us to your address book

(Re)introducing Robin Tress!

Robin is rejoining the Council of Canadians as Director of Campaigns and as Co-executive Director with Ravi Joshi while Christina Warner is on leave. Robin lives in Punamu’kwati’jk, Mi’kma’ki (currently known as Dartmouth, Nova Scotia) and has previously worked with the Council as the Climate and Social Justice Campaigner and as regional organizing assistant in the Atlantic. In 2021 she completed her Master’s in Adult Education, focusing on social movement learning and settler-Indigenous relations, including how settlers like herself learned to be in solidarity with Mi’kmaq-led resistance to Alton Gas. Robin sees building and deepening relationships and capacity with Indigenous-led movements as critically important to the fight for climate and social justice. She thinks that social movement tactics can be both fun and impactful, and she is looking forward to bringing this philosophy and practice to the Council over the next year. Welcome Robin!
StatsCan numbers offer a misleading picture of Indigenous population growth Statistics Canada’s 2021 Indigenous population numbers show population growth nearing 10 per cent, as well as increasing numbers of Indigenous people living above the poverty line. But a closer look at the numbers shows that much of that growth has been among self-identified Indigenous people – and that’s where the income growth has largely been concentrated as well. Eagleclaw Thom breaks down the numbers, revealing the ways in which the Canadian government – despite its moves towards truth and reconciliation – continues to dictate the terms of Indigenous identity, rather than recognizing the rights of Indigenous people to self-determine.
Read the analysis piece Citizen Oil: How Big Oil hides behind the maple leaf

On September 15th we hosted a webinar in collaboration with the environmental advocacy organization Stand.Earth. Tzeporah Berman, Gordon Laxer, and Tim Wood discussed how Big Oil’s political influence reaches all the way down to the grassroots and what that means for the fight for climate justice in Canada. As panelists Gordon Laxer and Tim Wood have extensively documented, the oil and gas industry does much more than just dispatch lobbyists to Parliament Hill. In recent years, major oil corporations have invested heavily in building up pro-oil citizens’ front groups while allying with sympathetic politicians and journalists to attack environmentalists as illegitimate, “foreign-funded,” and “un-Canadian.” One clear takeaway from the panel was that countering Big Oil’s efforts to mobilize support for its climate-destroying policies requires real grassroots organizing.

Watch the webinar Read Gordon Laxer's Report "Posing as Canadian: How Big Foreign Oil Captures Canadian Energy Policy." How the for-profit pharmaceutical industry condemns kids with cancer

In the fight for pharmacare, one weapon Big Pharma and its defenders frequently deploy is the argument that less money for pharmaceutical companies will mean less money for research and development. But pharmaceutical companies have never been more profitable – and they’re still not spending money on research and development for the most vulnerable in our society, including kids with cancer. Cancer is the leading cause of disease-related death in kids under 14, and the second leading cause of death for children overall, but developing new treatments for pediatric cancer patients isn’t profitable, and some pediatric cancers have seen no new treatments for decades.

Read the analysis piece Big Business is hijacking the language of a just transition – but we can still win

Thanks to Council of Canadians members, chapters, and allies, we’ve seen some enormous victories against the fossil fuel industry. From municipalities tabling or implementing Green New Deals to the end of offshore oil and gas projects on Mi’kma’ki, to institutions divesting from fossil fuels and the Supreme Court ruling that provinces can’t duck their obligations to a federal climate plan, we’ve seen big wins for climate justice across the country. But as momentum builds – 48 MPs have already committed to tabling our petition for a just transition – industry is getting wise to the hunger this country has for a just and ethical transition away from an extractive economy.

They’ve actually begun to co-opt the language of a just transition. But what they’re talking about isn’t a just transition for workers and communities – it's a just transition for industry, one that will allow them to maintain their grip on money and power, even as we inevitably move away from fossil fuels and towards a renewable future. A just transition is winnable – you can read more about that here - but in order for us to succeed, we need to make sure industry isn’t allowed to hide behind language that was developed by and for workers, labour unions, and environmental justice organizations.

Take action for a just transition Alternative Federal Budget 2023

As the impacts of the climate crisis become increasingly more urgent, with extreme weather events occurring with such startling frequency that even the most ambitious mitigation and adaptation plans may fail to ensure communities remain viable, it has also become clear that decades of neoliberal policies have undermined natural and built water infrastructure to the point of emergency. In the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ 2023 Alternative Federal Budget, the Council of Canadians contributed a chapter on water, providing analysis about the impacts of privatization and climate change on water infrastructure, and offering a vision for a future in which natural and built water infrastructure is protected and maintained and access to clean, usable water is guaranteed.

The AFB water chapter clearly outlines the resources and actions necessary to reverse the damage done by privatization and environmental degradation and to ensure that water infrastructure is resilient and dependable in the face of climate change.

Read the AFB water chapter Read the entire Alternative Federal Budget Edmonton chapter fights the release of toxic tailings water into Athabasca River

Despite their many promises to clean up the tar sands, industry – and government – have failed to do the work necessary to clean up the toxic tailing ponds that collect water, sediment, and the poisonous by-products of extraction. Despite pledges from the Alberta government in 2009 and 2013 that they would clean up the tailing ponds, and despite strong evidence that the pollution from the tailings ponds is already seeping into the groundwater, causing rare cancers in Indigenous communities and violating the Fisheries Act, tailings ponds have only grown in size, occupying an area 2.6 times the size of Vancouver. And now the federal and Alberta governments are in talks to allow industry to dump partially treated tailings into the Athabasca River.

In response, the Edmonton chapter of the Council of Canadians has teamed up with Keepers of the Water for a three-part public outreach/public education symposium series on the subject of tailings, Indigenous rights and knowledge, and a just transition.

Register for the webinar Save our swamps!

Wetlands are critical ecosystems that host an astonishing variety of life and are crucial carbon sinks, necessary for defending the planet against the climate crisis. They’re also at extreme risk from development. In Nova Scotia, where as much as 18 per cent of the Halifax Peninsula alone was once wetlands, only one substantial wetland remains, at Eisner Cove. The area is under threat after being sold – without public consultation – to make way for a housing development. Members of the Defend Eisner Cove Wetlands Society and their allies have maintained a presence at the site since mid-August in an attempt to halt development, and earlier this month four land defenders were arrested while peacefully protesting on the site. We cannot fight the climate crisis if we continue to drain and develop wetlands, nor is any kind of reconciliation possible if land continues to be sold as a commodity without the consent of Indigenous people. Eisner Cove is a site of struggle, not only for the community directly impacted by its development, but for everyone fighting for a just and democratic society on a livable planet.

Learn more about the fight the fight to protect this precious ecosystem

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