Daily Archives: April 17, 2016

Cultural Genocide, Ecocide, Fascism/Corporatism, Politics, solutions

Premier Notley on collision course with support for Energy East

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Opposition to pipelines is not anti-Alberta

Premier Rachel Notley and AUMA president Lisa Holmes pose in front of hundreds of mayors and reeves showing support for the Energy East Pipeline. (Rachel Notley/Twitter )

by Andrea Harden Donahue, Melina Laboucan-Massim, reposted from Ricochet, Apr 15, 2016

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, to her credit, has made important strides, particularly with her promise to phase out the burning of coal for power. But her speech at the recent NDP convention, as well as her press conference on Monday, shows a disconnect between her words and actions.

The premier’s promises to respect Indigenous rights and cut climate pollution are undercut by her support for TransCanada’s controversial 1.1 million barrel-per-day Energy East pipeline, which would run from Alberta to a new export port in Saint John, New Brunswick.

We suspect many within the environmental and social justice movements have held back from putting pressure on the new government, but TransCanada clearly has not. Look no further than the corporation’s Energy East project website to see a picture of the premier proudly holding a “Go East” sign.Premier Notley is wrong on Energy East, and she’s wrong on the need to get oil to tidewater.

Here’s why.

Respect for Indigenous rights includes communities along the pipeline path

Premier Notley promised to re-establish the critical relationship with Albertan First Nation peoples. Implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is central to this commitment. At the centre of UNDRIP is the principle of free, prior and informed consent. Simply put, this means accepting an informed yes or no to projects on Indigenous lands.

Premier Notley’s cheerleading for Energy East and her promise to respect UNDRIP are on a collision course

While Energy East is still in the initial stages of review, Indigenous resistance appears to be following the same trajectory as it has with the Enbridge Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan pipelines.

Several Indigenous communities along Energy East’s 4,400-kilometre pipeline path are already raising red flags with the project itself, as well as failures to adequately consult. This includes Treaty 3, the Iroquois caucus and the Wolastoq Grand Council.

Premier Notley’s cheerleading for Energy East and her promise to respect UNDRIP are on a collision course.

Energy East won’t save Alberta’s economy

The pipeline would further bind the Albertan economy to the volatile booms and busts of the global oil markets and the high risks of stranded heavy carbon assets in an era when these investments represent the past, not the future. This reality is recognized in the Leap Manifesto.

Energy East would be the largest tar sands pipeline yet. Filling the massive pipeline threatens to facilitate a nearly 40 per cent increase in tar sands production, generating up to 32 million tonnes of climate pollution every year.

The problem is that more of the same is not the best medicine.

Energy East infrastructure will lock us into production of 1.1 million barrels per day for at least 40 years. This is past the 2050 deadline referenced in the Paris agreement for weaning our economies and societies off of fossil fuels in order to limit temperature rise to 1.5 C.

This is not a pipe dream. The core challenge lies not in our collective ability to achieve it technologically, but in political will.

Meanwhile, Energy East puts the drinking water sources of over 5 million Canadians at risk from a diluted bitumen pipeline spill.

There are solutions: being anti-Energy East isn’t anti-Albertan

We aren’t saying the choices that Notley faces are easy. The pressures on her government are clear.

Workers and their families, even whole communities, are hurting in Alberta. No one wants this. We don’t want this.

The problem is that more of the same is not the best medicine.

A new poll asking Albertans how they would like revenue raised by a proposed carbon tax spent indicates that by more than a two-to-one margin, people favour spending it on green energy projects, transit and energy efficiencies.

Alberta has the immediate potential to generate over 100,000 jobs in renewables, energy efficiency and sustainable transportation. Electricians, machinists, welding and engineering jobs — these can be green jobs. Iron and Earth, an organization led by tar sands workers, is setting an important example in its call for training and programs that support renewable energy and job creation.

While we commend the Alberta government on the renewable and efficiency portions in the new budget, we believe a just transition means not only supporting workers, but also First Nation and Métis communities that have suffered the brunt of environmental devastation happening in their homelands due to immense resource extraction.

The climate crisis means that things have to change, but Alberta can lead the way on what that change looks like so we can all weather the storms ahead together.

Rather than push for Energy East, Premier Notley can fully embrace the needed just transition to a green economy in Alberta.

SOURCE

innovation, Politics, solutions, Sustainability, Transportation

Netherlands looks to ban all non-electric cars by 2025

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The Netherlands may not be a model of energy efficiency today, but some bold proposals may help the country become one.

Visitors look at various Saab car models on display at the former Valkenburg Airbase, near the Hague, Netherlands, in this January 15, 2012 file photo.

By Story Hinckley, reposted from the Christian Science Monitor, Apr 14, 2016

By 2025, the Netherlands may only allow electric vehicles on the road.

A majority of elected officials in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Parliament, supported a motion proposed by the Labor Party (PvdA) to ban all diesel and petroleum cars from the Dutch market starting in 2025. If enacted, this proposal would allow existing fossil fuel-powered cars to stay on the road until they died, but when it comes to new sales, only electric cars would be permitted.

“We are ambitious, perhaps other parties are less so,” PvdA leader Diederik Samsom told the local NL Times.

While it is still unclear whether or not the motion will pass, some electric enthusiasts see the proposal as progress all the same. This law would not only affect Dutch drivers, but would also require more electric vehicle output from car manufacturers, and potentially destigmatize electric vehicles as a niche purchase.

“One big thing that’s preventing more people from buying [electric cars] is awareness – people just don’t know about them,” Joel Levin, executive director of Plug In America, tells The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview Thursday. “It is a pretty big shift for how you think about your car.”

But this proposal doesn’t mean that the Netherlands is a model of energy efficiency – yet. Rather, it’s one of the most carbon-intensive countries in the European Union, according to a 2015 study by Deloitte. Natural gas and petroleum make up the majority of the Netherland’s energy resources at 41 and 42 percent respectively, with solid fuels coming in third at 10 percent and finally renewable energies making up five percent of the overall energy mix.

In 2012, the transportation sector consumed the most energy of all sources, constituting 29 percent of all consumption in the Netherlands. In the United States, by comparison, transportation represents 27 percent of the country’s consumption, according to a 2015 report from the Energy Information Administration.

This isn’t the first time that the Netherlands has announced an ambitious energy-saving goal in transportation technology.

The Dutch energy company Eneco, partnering with VIVENS rail companies, announced a plan in 2015 to make a fleet of trains powered entirely by wind energy within the next three years. And for almost a year now, the Netherlands has boasted the world’s first solar road, a bike path made of solar panels that generates enough electricity to power a small home for a year. The Netherlands has also announced plans to pave roads with recycled plastic, which they market as durable and low maintenance, with a smaller environmental impact than asphalt production.

And while these proposals may be more experimental, advocates say electric vehicles have real potential.

“For people who are aware [of electric cars], there are a few myths,” Mr. Levin says. Primarily, many people have the misconception that electric vehicles are expensive, slow, unsafe, and inconvenient.

“They are not fancy cars for rich people – there are many affordable ones. And if you compare apples to apples, the total coast of ownership is very competitive,” he explains.

Along with these myths, there are also a lot of positives that gas or diesel-powered cars don’t experience. “Apart from any environmental benefits, they are a pleasure to drive, there is tremendous power,” he says. “And maintenance is low – there is no engine, so if you change the brakes and batteries, nothing really could go wrong.”

Charging is easy, he adds; it can be done at home overnight. “People worry about running out of power, but the [drivers] that run out of power are the same ones that run out of gas.” SOURCE

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Fascism/Corporatism, Politics, Preventing Ecocide

Dear Leap Manifesto critics: there will be no jobs on a dead planet

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Stephen Lewis photo by CP

By Gary Engler, reposted from the National Observer, Apr 14, 2016

What is it with union and political ‘leaders’ who treat their members as if they were children not old enough to deal with reality?

Across Canada for the past three days the right wing media has been attacking the NDP for passing a resolution agreeing to “discuss” over the next two years the Leap Manifesto, a common sense document that calls for taking global warming seriously, actually doing what is necessary to prevent our planet from being cooked and trying to create a better world while we attempt to ensure our collective survival.

Of course condemnations from the Tyrannosaurus Rex Murphys (a right wing commentator who likes to use big words) of the media were to be expected, but the surprise has been the animated defence of the status quo by supposedly social democratic union leaders and politicians.

“The government of Alberta repudiates the sections of that document that address energy infrastructure,” said Rachel Notley, the NDP Premier of a province that has been hard hit by the fall in the price of oil. “These ideas will never form any part of policy. They are naive. They are ill-informed. They are tone deaf.”

Notley particularly objected to the lines in the Manifesto that oppose any new oil pipelines.

“You can’t just come out with a statement that says we are going to eliminate all the use of fossil fuels, there is going to be a major reduction by this date and we’re going to be fossil fuel-free in 2050,” Jerry Dias, the president of Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union was quoted as saying by Huffington Post. “All I know is that when I left the [NDP] convention, I hopped in a taxi, then I hopped on a plane, and then I hopped in a taxi to get home. And I would suggest so did pretty well everybody else. I don’t believe that there is going to be solar panels propelling 747s anytime in the future.”

As well as justifying his carbon-heavy lifestyle, Dias seemed particularly incensed by the notion that anyone would tell his auto plant or refinery members that their jobs are at risk because of global warming.

Duh?

Do you understand the threat our planet faces or not? Are you in favour of doing what is necessary to save the lives of our grandchildren or not? (‘Yes, but not if it means I must get a new job or give up my car,’ is a chickensh*t answer.)

As a retired Unifor member and someone who first worked on an Alberta NDP election campaign in 1971, I am embarrassed by what Dias and Notley are quoted as saying.

There will be no jobs if our planet is cooked. In fact, I heard Dias say almost those exact words at a union meeting not long ago. The people who live in both Calgary and Edmonton will be at serious risk if all the glaciers in the Rockies disappear. Notley understands this. So, why are they pandering to the climate change deniers and the media pundits who have always hated the NDP and unions?

Because the Leap Manifesto states the obvious: To prevent our planet from being cooked we need to stop burning carbon, which means stop building pipelines, which means abandoning car-dominated transport, which means refineries and auto plants will be shut down. And that scares people, especially the ones who work in these industries.

But real leadership means confronting the right-wing media attacks head on, not scurrying around talking out of both sides of your mouth.

Real leadership means saying: Corporate capitalism burned too much carbon, causing global warming and threatening our planet’s future. We need to stop it. Significant change will be required. Some people will be forced to get new jobs, but we will advocate for retraining and other support.

As a former leader of a union local that represents newspaper workers I know how hard it is to tell members their jobs are disappearing. But real leadership requires telling the truth, discussing that reality with members and coming up with collective solutions.

Ignoring the truth will never set you free.

SOURCE

Cultural Genocide, Fascism/Corporatism, Politics

How a $900-million lawsuit is shaping the future of Canada’s natural resource landscape

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Ore is sorted before being shipped from Sept-Îles's deep water port
Ore is sorted before being shipped from Sept-Îles’s deep water port Damon Van der Linde / National Post

By Damon van der Linde, reposted from the Financial Post, Apr 15, 2016

SEPT-ÎLES, QUE. — Flying in a helicopter over the Bay of Sept-Îles, Alexandre Pinette points to the mouth of the Moisie River where it empties from the north into the St. Lawrence River. Members of his Innu community used to live by the river every summer to fish salmon and trap, but he said they were moved by the government in 1949 to the permanent Uashat and Maliotenam reservations.

“When the Innu came back in spring, their houses were destroyed. They had disappeared,” said Pinette, his voice crackling over the helicopter intercom. He adds that Innu were also displaced between 1948 and 1950 from what is now the Iron Ore Co. of Canada’s port, where huge mounds of the sparkling mineral are sorted and then loaded into waiting cargo ships.

A 578-kilometre railway stretches north from Sept-Îles’ deep-water port to where the mineral is dug from the ground. Here, the Innu claim the mines and other facilities have ruined the environment, displaced members from their territory and prevented them from practising their traditional way of life, while not giving much back to the community.

Phil Carpenter / Postmedia
Phil Carpenter / Postmedia The view from Sept-Îles, and the Innu community of Uashat For the band councils of the Innu of Uashat-Maliotenam and Matimekush-Lac John, the almost 60 years of alleged damage is worth suing IOC for $900 million.

Although the allegations have yet to be proven in court, this case has already changed Canada’s natural resource landscape by clearing the way for Aboriginal communities to directly sue companies for damages instead of only being allowed to seek compensation from the government. The end result could be tens of billions’ worth of new lawsuits against Canadian companies.

The Innu have Impact Benefit Agreements with other companies in the area, including ArcelorMittal SA, which owns an iron ore mining operation just a few kilometers from IOC that started in the late 1950s.

Documents obtained by Radio-Canada show that the Uashat-Maliotenam band council receives between $12 and $15 million a year from these agreements, depending on the companies’ production.

But the Innu do not have one with IOC or its parent companies, global mining giant Rio Tinto, which acquired a 58.7-per-cent sake in 2000, Mitsubishi and Labrador Iron Ore Royalty Corp.

The Innu say IOC has sold nearly a billion tonnes of iron ore from its mines (at varying prices) in Schefferville, Que., and Labrador City, NL.

Damon Van der Linde / National Post
Damon Van der Linde / National Post Railway cars stretch down a track into Sept-Îles where the iron ore arrives from just over 300 km away in Labrador City.

Negotiations broke down with Rio Tinto without a settlement in 2012 and the Innu got word the company was looking to sell its IOC assets. In March 2013, the Innu band councils sued.

“We sent a strong message to the company and all of their investors that would like to buy this company: before thinking to buy something, you should look at what is behind it,” said Jean-Claude Pinette, director of the Uashat mak Maliotenam land and protection office.

IOC was founded in 1949 and the success of its iron exports allowed the town to grow from 2,000 inhabitants in 1951, when the first ship carried ore from the port, to 14,000 in 1961 and a peak of 31,000 in 1981.

The court case alleges IOC has long discriminated against First Nations. The most common complaint is that Innu workers were not given proper safety equipment, and were laid off after 59 days, just one shift short of the 60-day requirement for joining the union.

At the Uashat community centre, Bruno Jourdain, 84, said he worked for IOC in 1959 and wasn’t given a respirator when working around the iron dust.

Damon Van der Linde / National Post
Damon Van der Linde / National Post Bruno Jourdain, 84, says he and other First Nations employees faced discrimination while working with the Iron Ore Company of Canada more than 50 years ago.

“It was a deplorable situation, because everyone at that time wanted to work to support their family,” he said.

Although IOC declined to comment on the litigation, Arlène Beaudin, the company’s public affairs director in Sept-Îles, said its mining activities benefit everyone in the community.

“We share all the activities in town. We get together in schools, our kids and the Innu kids are all over the town and every time we invest in an activity in Sept-Îles, it’s good for everybody,” she said. “It’s not them or us, we are in Sept-Îles all together.”

The Innu say their complaint is with the company that has made profits, not the people who make their living directly or indirectly from it.

Florent Vollant, who was born in Labrador City near the Quebec border, said before the mine, his parents were trappers, hunters and fishers who traded furs with Hudson’s Bay Co. His parents also worked as guides when the prospectors came, helping them navigate the difficult terrain. But he said his family was displaced by iron mining operations close to to the Wabush mines.

“My parents believed in the mining companies,” he said. “But after a few years, the land became inhospitable and we left.”

Phil Carpenter / Postmedia
Phil Carpenter / PostmediaKids walk to school along Massen Street in Uashat.
Now a renowned Innu singer, Vollant in October 2014 was among those who hauled two enormous chunks of iron ore that were presented to the Sept-Îles Innu communities by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1970 to mark 100 years since the discovery of deposits in the Schefferville area onto a flatbed truck and dumped them 900 kilometers away in front of Rio-Tinto’s Montreal office. The chunks were dubbed the “Stones of Shame.”
That symbolic protest came one month after the Quebec Superior Court rejected a motion to dismiss the Innu’s lawsuit, which the company said should be between the Innu and the government.

The IOC’s motion was the rejected in October 2015 by the Supreme Court of Canada, creating a precedent in the country’s highest court for native communities to seek compensation directly from companies for alleged violations of Aboriginal title.

On the same day, the Supreme Court also rejected a motion to throw out a case against another Rio Tinto subsidiary, Rio Tinto Alcan, brought by First Nation groups in B.C.

“It was a significant victory for all First Nations and an important legal precedent,” said Montreal-based lawyer James O’Reilly of O’Reiley and Associates, which is representing the Innu. “The result is an immutable right to sue a company.”

Damon Van der Linde / National Post
Damon Van der Linde / National Post Marc Brouillette, president of the Sept-Iles chamber of commerce, gives a speech to local business owners about the region’s challenging economic situation

Lawyers from both sides met on March 21, 2016, at a courthouse in Montreal for a preliminary hearing just days after the three-year anniversary of the lawsuit’s launch.

Norton Rose Fullbright is representing IOC with a team that includes François Fontaine, who has worked on such high-profile cases as defending SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. in its Libya fraud case.

IOC now states that the action brought against it seeks recognition of Aboriginal rights over a large territory that includes land in Newfoundland and Labrador. As a result, it intends to present a motion to strike the Quebec Superior Court ruling, saying the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over land outside the province.

Legal experts say this is the beginning of a long process that could take about seven years to unwind.

IOC has estimated crude iron reserves will last about 27 years at the current production rate, meaning operations will be technically viable long after the case is likely over.

Rio Tinto could, however, still sell the project to another company.

“They will not buy only the installations, they will not buy only claims and mining operations,” Pinette said, “they will have to buy also the problems from this lawsuit.”

Justin Connidis, a professor who teaches mining law and policy at Queen’s University in Kingston, said the government could potentially force a settlement if it believes the lawsuit would cause severe damage to the national or provincial economy. SOURCE

 

Activism, Avi Lewis, Politics, reconciliation, solutions, Sustainability

Sorry, pundits of Canada. The Leap will bring us together

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By Avi Lewis, reposted from the Globe and Mail, Apr 14, 2016

Avi Lewis is a journalist, filmmaker, and one of many people behind the Leap Manifesto

In the past week, I’ve been called a “downtown Toronto political dilettante,” and “a millstone around the neck” of Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley. The Leap Manifesto, which I helped write and launch with dozens of others from across the country, has been called “ungenerous, short-sighted and…a betrayal of the people who voted NDP” in Alberta.

And that was just from people I consider friends.

It’s time to speak some truth about this controversial document. In fact, the Leap Manifesto came out of a meeting (yes, held in Toronto) that brought together dozens of social-movement activists from six provinces: Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, B.C. and Alberta. It is a consensus statement – literally written by committee – that reflects a common vision from across a spectrum of different causes.

That meeting was attended by First Nations living downstream from the tar sands and leaders from some of the biggest trade unions in Canada. There were refugee advocates, anti-poverty activists, and environmentalists of many stripes (yes, there is a huge range.)

While much has been said about the Leap Manifesto’s controversial call for no new fossil-fuel infrastructure, the other 14 demands in the document reflect a strong progressive consensus in Canada. The need for a green energy revolution, massive reinvestment in health, education and child care, big spending on transit and housing and respecting indigenous land rights – these may be framed with urgency in the Leap Manifesto, but they are hardly controversial.

What makes the Leap different is that it connects the dots, showing how all these demands are integral to a fair and ambitious response to climate change. It’s not a list – it’s a story.

The Leap’s least controversial idea is that we need to wean our economy off fossil fuels as quickly as possible – certainly by mid-century – which means an immediate energy transition. This view has been voiced in recent years now by latte-swilling hipster celebrity activists like former governor of the Bank of Canada Mark Carney, the U.K.’s Sir Nicholas Stern, and principal secretary to the Prime Minister Gerald Butts (before he got his government job).

And yet, the passage of a resolution at the NDP convention merely to debate the Leap Manifesto at the riding level has pierced some underground reservoir of resentment, and toxic sentiment is spurting everywhere.

How do we make sense of this committed misrepresentation of the Leap? Easy: it’s just politics.

For the Alberta NDP government, associating with a document that opposes new fossil fuel infrastructure is clearly seen as political suicide. So it is asserting some distance. Fair enough.

But there are many others with an interest in mischaracterizing the document as a road map to NDP irrelevance. Hence the echo of this message from the front bench of the federal Liberal cabinet to the back bench of the Wildrose Party.

The Very Serious Pundits of Canada agree, and are vigorously stoking the tired narrative of heartless environmentalism threatening beleaguered resource workers.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Workers in carbon-intensive industries are at the very heart of the Leap Manifesto, which calls not only for retraining and resources for them, but also for the transition beyond fossil fuels to be driven by the democratic participation of the workers themselves.

Taken together, the policies in the Leap amount to what my father Stephen Lewis, in his NDP convention keynote address, called a “Marshall Plan for employment.” The Leap’s fiscal agenda would restore federal government spending capacity – now at a 60-year low – so we could embrace this historic moment with a truly unifying project for the country. We could build a cleaner and fairer economy, guided by the best science, and grounded in deep principles of social justice and no worker left behind.

Instead, we’re lapsing into a fossilized conversation that pits us against each other, morphing compassionate Canadians across regions into ugly caricatures painted with a malevolently broad brush.

The Leap Manifesto emerged from a process in which groups with different interests came together across historic divides to articulate a shared agenda. Despite the many competing constituencies in the room, we met on common ground: an ambitious future that we can start building together right now.

Canada could, and should, be doing the same. SOURCE

Cultural Genocide, democracy, Fascism/Corporatism, Politics, racism

If we want to end indigenous suffering, we must end colonization

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By TANYA KAPPO AND HAYDEN KING, reposted from the Globe and Mail, Apr 14, 2016

Tanya Kappo is Cree from the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation, Treaty 8 Territory. She is a lawyer in Alberta. Hayden King is Anishinaabe from Beausoleil First Nation on Gchi’mnissing in Huronia, Ontario. He is an assistant professor of politics at Ryerson University.

Sometimes the absence of death is a month, maybe two. Lately it has been only weeks, and even days. Increasingly, our communities are declaring states of emergency as a response to suicide and suicide attempts. For many of us, the state of emergency simply doesn’t end. For communities like Neskantaga, Pimicikamak, Pangnirtung, and Attiwapiskat, this is the reality.

The response from Canadians to these states of emergency has followed a predictable pattern: Suicides (or suicide attempts) lead to calls for help; there are news headlines; sad prime ministerial tweets; the dispatching of crisis teams; and repeat.

This week, there were 11 suicide attempts in Attawapiskat. And while we may never understand individual motivations, we have evidence of the kinds of conditions that lead to that depth of despair.

Generally, suicides and suicide attempts result from factors such as mental health issues, post-traumatic stress, or substance abuse. In our communities, these factors are magnified by nearly two centuries of colonization: assimilation legislation, rapid cultural loss, dispossession of lands and economies, poor housing, and lack of access to clean water.

These conditions result in life always near death. Communities are constantly treading just above the surface of the water, and trying not to drown.

Explaining the source these crises is relatively straightforward. But communities know the solutions, too: authentic opportunities for the full reclamation of our identities – our languages, our cultures, our traditions and our relationship with the land and waters. This would require restored jurisdiction, honoured treaties, health care and education. This would bring an end to being forced to live in conditions of poverty.

We believe, and are supported by the Indigenous academic and policy research on suicide in First Nation and Inuit communities, that colonization is the problem. The obvious solution, then, is to end the colonization.

Twenty years ago, Canada published the findings of The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP). It was the most comprehensive study on our collective relationship in all areas of life, and offered progressive and hopeful suggestions for improvement. Included in RCAP was a stand-alone report on suicide called “Choosing Life.” Reflecting the problems and solutions we have outlined above, it also charted an implementation plan, costs, timelines, etc. Governments with the power to heed that advice have come and gone. And conditions in our communities have worsened.

How can the inertia be explained? Why, today, with all our knowledge of the dynamics of Indigenous suicide (and especially in the supposed era of truth and reconciliation) are there no authentic efforts being undertaken to address the structural causes of suicide?

First, all those suffering communities are simply not worth helping. The undeniable fact is that to really deal with these challenges, significant resources are required. This is true for any of the inter-related issues: child welfare, food security or mouldy schools. But to date, sharing some of the land and resources that make Canada rich (and which comes from the very people attempting suicide en masse) has not been considered. Indeed this form of restitution would require sacrifice, something Canadians have been unwilling to do from the first settlers through to the latest budget.

Second, and related, the systemic changes required to raise the quality of life for communities is contrary to the preferred policy prescriptions of provincial and federal governments. Despite the so-called nation-to-nation relationship, First Nations increasingly resemble municipalities, with few discernible powers or rights. When an emergency arises, instead of acting, the federal and provincial governments debate who has “responsibility.” It seems to us that Canadians would prefer that First Nations disappear altogether.

These are not new conclusions. In his 1969 book The Unjust Society, Harold Cardinal observed that “the Native people of Canada look back on generations of accumulated frustration under conditions which can only be described as colonial, brutal and tyrannical, and look to the future with the gravest of doubts.” Nearly 50 years later, those grave doubts remain.

We are tired of this reality. Tired of Canadian politicians offering only sympathy. Tired of uninformed pundits calling for irresponsible relocation experiments. And tired of pointing to incremental progress when the state of emergency is a fact of life for many Indigenous peoples in contemporary Canada.

Our people have already started the work for our next generation. There must be hope for them, and they must be protected from the brutal and tyrannical consequences of colonization.

Listen to us, to our communities: We know the answer, we are the answer. SOURCE

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The Canadian First Nation suicide epidemic has been generations in the making

Activism, Politics, Preventing Ecocide, solutions, Sustainability

The Leap Manifesto opens horizon for bold new politics in Canada

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The panel sits during a news conference to launch the “Leap Manifesto: A Call for a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another “ in Toronto, September 15, 2015. The Leap Manifesto is a group consisting of activists, artists, and celebrities that call for strong environmental policy changes and initiatives. Photograph: Mark Blinch/Reuters

By Martin Lukas, reposted from The Guardian, Apr 15, 2016

From the headlines screaming outrage on the front pages of Canada’s newspapers, you’d think the New Democratic Party had shuttered their convention doors, armed themselves and made for Edmonton’s solitary hills.

“A hard left turn to nowhere,” blasted the National Post, after NDP members voted to debate the Leap Manifesto in local ridings. “How to Kill the NDP,” Maclean’s exclaimed. Captured by the “loony left,” added the Toronto Star.

Was it passionate concern speaking for the future of Canada’s social democratic party? Hardly. If the NDP’s membership had supported Thomas Mulcair instead of unseating him, if convention debates had proceeded spiritlessly instead of firing up over a bold roadmap, the media and political establishment would have quietly celebrated. Their hysteria is calculated to snuff out what they saw on display: sparks of rebirth in Canada’s political left.

Here’s what they would prefer: a NDP shackled to a political consensus that has gripped countries like Canada for decades. This consensus tells us that we should leave our fate to the market. That millions of us should get up every morning and be satisfied to earn our poverty, to subsidize giant corporations with our tax dollars, and to watch powerlessly while inequalities widen, our debts deepen, and the planet’s climate cooks.

It turns out NDP members may have other ideas: to seize the chance to transform their party into a more grassroots and principled electoral option that full-frontally rejects this status quo. They understand that they missed their chance at power by allowing Trudeau to present himself as a bolder alternative; and they have watched the rise of unapologetic socialists like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn in the US and Britain with growing hope and excitement.

If they can help their party shake loose from this consensus, many Canadians will want to join them—or to listen.

Looking for a vision to kickstart debate about an alternative, many NDP members have found it in the Leap Manifesto. The Leap Manifesto is not a party platform. It is not a comprehensive blueprint. It is a new story about the kind of country we could have, if we treat the crises we face with the urgency they deserve—and with the politics they demand.

Like the crisis of climate change, which the manifesto says is not just an existential threat—it is an opportunity to transform our country for the better. If we act according to deep principles of justice, combatting climate change can simultaneously address many other problems: creating hundreds of thousands of good, clean jobs; implementing the land and treaty rights of Indigenous peoples; reducing racial and gender inequalities; welcoming far more refugees and migrants; and localizing agriculture so that people eat healthy.

The breadth of this vision is reflected in the diversity of hands that wrote it: labour unionists, migrant rights activists, food policy experts and feminists, Indigenous leaders and environmentalists and anti-poverty organizers. Would it be unaffordable? Not if we put our hands on the obscene wealth sloshing around in corporate bank accounts and being siphoned offshore. None of this is politically extreme: but it is a break from the well-guarded parameters of “respectable” politics in Canada.

Such a grand transition would not to be easy, but it is scientifically and technologically possible: we could, by mid-century and in every part of the country, be off fossil fuels and powered fully by renewable energy. The workers who now are drilling for oil wouldn’t be abandoned: they could be drilling for clean geothermal energy, retrofitting homes or building public transit.

The notion that getting speedily off fossil fuels would spell economic armageddon serves a specific function: it pit workers against environmentalists, east against west, Indigenous peoples against everyone else. It has been been carefully cultivated to serve the interests of a single group: the corporate and political establishment. It is the politics of fear and division—which only hope and possibility can defeat.

Those insistent that tar sands pipelines are part of our future have an argument not with the Leap. Their argument is with overwhelming majorities in Quebec and British Columbia and First Nations across whom a pipeline will never pass; with an oil glut that has made the export of tar sands increasingly uneconomical; with a renewable energy boom that is outpacing fossil fuel development across the world; and with the hard realities of atmospheric science. Accepting these realities are not just a matter of planetary survival—they can have electoral payoff.

Just look down south, where Bernie Sanders is running on a platform that calls not only for jobs and a challenge to inequality, but for a national ban on fracking and no new fossil fuel leases of any kind on federal lands—far more radical than anything in the Leap Manifesto.

And with that radical platform, Sanders won the Democratic primary in Alaska—an oil state—by a huge margin, against a rival without these demands in her platform. And last weekend, he won the caucus in Wyoming—a major coal exporter—by another large margin.

If Bernie can do this and win enormous political support, then the NDP should be able to have this discussion across Canada—including in Alberta.

Such a party would have new supporters flock to it, especially among the young. And a party willing to take bold stands and become more open may well find itself fuelled by the energy of social movements: Indigenous rights and Black Lives Matter, a $15 minimum wage, electoral reform and sustainable local food.

As the shine wears off the Liberal party—whose leaders are arming a misogynistic Saudi regime, shilling for tar sands pipelines, cozying up to a tax-dodging corporate class—this country will need a party who can distinguish itself with real vision. Don’t forget that the NDP has played that role before, being the political instrument that helped win social advances that Canadians now cherish: healthcare, pensions, unemployment insurance, our public broadcaster.

It can be that yet again. If the NDP uses the Leap to help renew the party, it could be the start of a far-reaching transformation: cracking open the political system and placing deep solutions to climate change and inequality on centre stage. None of this will be happen without movements outside parliament, many of them signatories to the Leap, continuing to build their own power and pressure.

The attacks from the political and media establishment are sure to be relentless. But their fear signals a change that a majority of Canadians will welcome: the opening of a horizon for bold new politics. SOURCE