CPAWS Blog

Not since the jailing of the KI 6, have I seen Ontario get it so wrong. Last week, Ontario announced it had reached an “initial agreement” with an American coal and iron mining giant called Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. to mine chromite (used to make stainless steel) in the Ring of Fire. The two parties separately announced the results of their behind closed doors business deal. Most of the media coverage that followed focused on the selection of Sudbury for the smelter, which was portrayed as Ontario’s prize. What didn’t get nearly enough attention was how much was this going to cost us. Very little attention, for example, was paid to the subsidy that Cliffs secured on power rates for the smelter which could be upwards of $100 million per year (Cliffs should be thanking us for subsidizing their operations, by the way). The commitment to use taxpayers’ money to build a $600 million private, all-weather, north-south road was also largely buried.

My mother loved to take me fishing in a little stream a short distance from Baker Lake called the North Branch (it may have a more official name, but that's what we called it). It was the kind of stream that we would walk through with our fishing poles looking for brook trout that would hide out in the outcroppings of soil and tree roots. It's where I learned to fish from my mother.

Have you ever wondered what you could do with a $200 gift card from Mountain Equipment Co-op? If you’re anything like us, you might say: get outside, get active, start a new adventure – check, check, and check. Oh, and one more thing – help support the creation of 12 new marine protected areas by the end of 2012! This season, anyone signing on to CPAWS’ Dare to be Deep campaign, which aims to increase the number of marine protected areas in Canada, will be entered into the Dare to be Deep contest to win one of three $200 MEC gift certificates or our grand prize of a stand-up paddleboard.

CPAWS prides itself on being a solutions-focused organization. We don’t make the decision to join a protest lightly. The budget implementation bill rolls back the clock on environmental protection, rewrites habitat provisions in the Fisheries Act, replaces the entire Environmental Assessment Act with a much weaker version, excludes interested Canadians from public consultation processes and centralizes more decision-making at the Cabinet level.

For Earth Day, over 250,000 people – an unprecedented number --got together to demand better environmental protection in Quebec.  Despite a late arrival on crowded buses through traffic and streets blocked by the arrival of other protesters, we managed to find and join a few CPAWS volunteers.
Once the Bou costume was donned, he certainly made people’s heads turn! Young and old jostled to get a photo taken with the caribou mascot and over 150 people signed our petition to protect this endangered species.
In the end, we had to ask Sébastien to take off the costume so that we get could away and return home.  What a beautiful day with a festive atmosphere.  I left full of energy! Thanks to our volunteers and to all who contributed to the protection of the woodland caribou!
Marie-Eve Allaire