And what a week it was.  Major political assumptions were turned upside down – chief among them “nothing happens in politics in the dog days of summer.”

For a quick review, on Monday, the Minister of Finance Bill Morneau stepped down and also announced he was resigning his Toronto Centre seat.

The next morning, we learned the new Minister of Finance is Chrystia Freeland who remains Deputy Prime Minister. Also present at Rideau Hall for the swearing in was Dominic Leblanc with an increase of duties. In addition to President of the Queen’s Privy Council and responsibilities for democratic reforms, he takes over Freeland’s duties as Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs.

Later Tuesday we learned that earlier that same day, Justin Trudeau had met with the Governor General and she approved shutting down parliament until September 23!

Also this week, on Monday, the Premier of New Brunswick called an election for that province on September 14.  And on Wednesday, Andrew Furey, the new premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, was sworn in.

That is a lot of news to unpack. So, let’s get started!

Starting at what most Canadians noticed least – the new premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. Andrew Furey is by any measure an extraordinary person.  He is an orthopedic surgeon, married to a doctor, and has been active in humanitarian relief work. Politics is a very recent thing. In fact, he had never been elected to anything until the N-L Liberals elected him leader, thus making him premier. He does not have a seat in the provincial legislature. His father, George Furey, is Speaker of the Canadian Senate.  George and I were in the same year at Dalhousie Law School. I have always wondered how he survived as well as he has growing up in the infamous Mount Cashel orphanage. His son has taken on a job few would crave.

For one thing, Newfoundland and Labrador is teetering near bankruptcy.  And here is where British Columbians should take note. The boondoggle that has the province swimming in a sea of red ink is a lot like Site C.  The N-L disastrous dam is Muskrat Falls in Labrador. It is now two years late and $6 billion over budget. And just as the BC government wants to do here, N-L is forbidding any competition from less expensive solar and wind so there can be some market for the super-expensive electricity from violating indigenous rights and flooding important caribou habitat in Labrador. Nova Scotia has contracted to buy Muskrat Falls hydro through an undersea cable, but the GE software to run that does not seem to work. COVID has shut down the project, now described as 98% complete, for at least another year.

Provincial finances are also cratering as oil revenues plunged and COVID related emergency costs soared.  All of us across Canada need to be prepared to help Newfoundland and Labrador.  First step, and a very brave thing to do, would be to decide the sunk costs of the Muskrat Falls fiasco must just be written off.  Pull the plug. And invest in wind and solar. Use the underground cable to export far cheaper power. Next is to diversify the economy to survive without the off-shore oil. Hibernia oil is a better bet than oil sands bitumen because it is conventional crude. It could last more than a decade or so, but not for the long term.

It has been a building story all summer that Site C’s geological reality is also teetering.  On top of all the other reasons we should pull the plug on Site C, the risk of catastrophic failure is real.  In case you missed it, Saturday’s Globe had an excellent opinion piece from former premier Mike Harcourt, chair of the federal-provincial review panel into Site C, Harry Swain and an old hand on World Bank mega-project financing, Mauro Chiesa. They make the case it is not too late to pull the plug.  “BC Hydro’s Site C dam has become an albatross.”

Back to the dizzying events of this week in Ottawa. Applying a climate lens to recent events, there were significant improvements in the cards we have been dealt.

Of all Cabinet ministers, I think it is safe to say Bill Morneau needed a lot more convincing to actually move off fossil fuels. He did get persuaded not to bail out Big Oil in the pandemic, by focusing on workers and cleaning up abandoned oil wells. But he drove the insane project of buying the Kinder Morgan pipeline for much more than it was worth. Getting it shut down should be easier now.

As well, the prime minister has tapped former Governor of the Bank of Canada- as well more recently – Governor of the Bank of England – Mark Carney as an advisor. Carney is the UN Secretary General’s personal envoy on climate finance based on an impressive record of calling out the folly of investments in “unburnable carbon and stranded assets.”  Fortunately, he and Freeland have a long-time friendship. Another person with whom Freeland has a close relationship is Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.  Greens have been loudly trumpeting a great study by Stiglitz, and a stellar list of co-authors, including Sir Nicholas Stern who authored a major climate report for Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer (apologies for slip up in last week’s GSM. Stern wrote for the Chancellor. He was never in politics himself).

So, if our new Minister of Finance is looking at issues of building back better and how to ensure economic recovery is aligned with climate, she is already well associated with two of the best brains on the topic. Which brings me to another aspect of the appointment: Freeland herself and her brain. She is the first woman to ever hold the post.  And typically, the press has wondered if she has the qualifications. She is very, very smart. And as a business reporter and author, she has a full grasp of the topic.  Likely much better than many men who have been finance minister.

Now to the very big surprise of prorogation. I am distressed that the prorogation hit immediately. It has the effect of stopping all work by parliamentary committees. While I worked with the Finance committee on the WE charity scandal (which is, of course, the real reason Morneau stepped down), I was far more interested in the good work we were doing on the fisheries committee on the future of Pacific salmon. I will do all I can to get that work back on track after September 23^rd, once committees are set up once again.  We literally have no committees now. No chairs, no committee members.

This prorogation is not anything like the 2008 prorogation when Harper shuttered parliament to avoid a confidence vote he knew he would lose- blocking a waiting coalition government. This prorogation actually creates a confidence vote which Trudeau may lose. Prorogations are legitimate when the government’s agenda is completed, or, as is the case now, when the agenda has been overtaken by events. The December 5, 2019 Speech from the Throne seems a lifetime ago.  Pre-pandemic. Pre-ballooning deficits. Pre- the world turning upside down. I can accept the legitimacy of a re-set.

While we could be in a federal election in the fall, I doubt it.  More than likely the NDP will prop up the Liberals. The Conservatives will emote loudly, while quietly breathing a sigh of relief. Their new leader (and we will know later today who it is) will not want to be in an election so soon.

I really hope the week of August 24^th will be quiet.  I would like the option of “boring” if such were available.  I may be off to New Brunswick to help Greens there for the September 14 election. That will require being in isolation for two weeks in order to campaign for two days.  I sure would love to see my dear friends  Jenica Atwin, MP for Fredericton and MLA David Coon, leader of New Brunswick Greens and all their colleagues…. But is it worth the scary trip to get there?

Back to hoping life can be boring for a while.

Love,

Elizabeth

This weekly newsletter is published by Elizabeth’s EDA in Saanich-Gulf Islands. You can sign up for it here.

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“Taking on another mega energy-generating project is a political decision that should be carefully made, with all economic and environmental data in mind. In the case of the Muskrat Falls project, Stephen Harper’s rationale is unknown,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May, Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.

“According to the C.D. Howe Institute, small-scale hydro, wind and other renewables should more than suffice to replace the NL Holyrood power station. A move to seasonal and peak prices that rise and fall with demand conditions would make better use of resources we already have and allow Newfoundland & Labrador to meet all their energy needs,” said May.

“How was the decision made? Where is the cost-benefit analysis for Canadians? Could Newfoundlanders and Labradorians get more for $7-billion?” asked May.

“We don’t know if there is coordination with Nova Scotia to use this new energy to phase out coal. The imbalance in competition with Quebec created by the federal subsidy has not been discussed with the concerned provinces. The Greens are advocating for a National Energy Strategy and these examples show we urgently need a real conversation,” concluded May.

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“Under NAFTA, we gave US and Mexican corporations the right to sue us if they felt our laws hurt their ‘expectation of profits’,” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, MP Saanich-Gulf Islands. “We’ve lost half of those suits and it has cost us in both arbitration battles and awards. Now Stephen Harper is about to give powerful Chinese State-Owned Enterprises similar rights.”

Since NAFTA came into effect in 1994, taxpayers have had to pay about $157 million to US corporations disagreeing with Canadian laws and regulations – and there are awards pending.

Canada is already the sixth most sued country under the investor-state dispute settlement regime, according to a recent UN Conference on Trade and Development report. At the same time, Canadian investors have sued other countries, usually the US, 16 times and lost every case – involving softwood lumber, cattle, gold mining, and more.

There is every reason to expect Chinese enterprises and investors to make use of their new right, especially in the resource sector. The Canada-China Investment Treaty does contain exemptions that were not in NAFTA. However, it is not clear these exemptions will be effective as China can still make claims for damages if it believes an environmental or health measure is “arbitrary” or a “disguised trade barrier.”

Unlike lawsuits under NAFTA and other treaties signed by Canada, the Chinese suits must be kept secret; the arbitration hearings and all documents, except the actual award, can be kept confidential at the discretion of the country being sued. We might not know if Canada has been ordered to change government decisions.

“If Chinese companies like CNOOC – the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation – make crucial inroads into Canada with the Nexen deal, for example, we will be even more vulnerable. Even the provinces, which will have no say in the process, might be asked to pay up,” said May.

“It is interesting that the Conservatives are pushing us into a secretive, potentially treacherous deal as countries like Australia, India, and South Africa are pulling away from investor-state provisions.”

The Canada-China Investment Treaty was tabled quietly in the House of Commons on September 26. The Conservatives do not plan any debate or vote. Once it is ratified, it will bind Canada for a minimum of 15 years and could apply for 31 years.

Suits under NAFTA have included:

1997 – Ethyl Corporation sued Canada for $250 million after it banned MMT, a neurotoxin gasoline additive. The Canadian government repealed the ban and settled for $13 million.

1998 – S.D. Meyers Inc., a US waste-disposal firm, challenged a ban on the export of PCB wastes and sued for $20 million. Canada paid $5 million, plus interest

2007 – Mobil Investments Canada Inc. & Murphy Oil Corporation claimed Canadian guidelines supporting local research and development were anti-NAFTA and sued Canada for $65 million The tribunal process continues.

2009 – After AbitibiBowater Inc. closed its last pulp and paper mill, Newfoundland enacted legislation for the return of certain land and assets. The company sued for $467.5 million. Canada paid $130 million to settle claim.

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Green Party leader Elizabeth May, MP Saanich-Gulf Islands, Mary Gorman, Save Our Seas and Shores Coalition, Dr. Lindy Weilgart, Research Associate in Biology at Dalhousie University and an expert in seismic impacts on marine life, and Dr. Thomas Duck, Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, also called on Canadians and regional provincial governments to join them in stopping the Harper Conservatives’ aggressive extraction agenda in the Gulf.

“We need as many concerned Canadians as possible and their provincial representatives to join us in our call for an exploration moratorium in the Gulf of St. Lawrence” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, MP Saanich-Gulf Islands. “Prime Minister Stephen Harper has just spent the past few months pushing through his pro-oil budget and omnibus Bill C-38, and now he thinks nothing can stop him. We have to demonstrate that’s just not the case.”

The elimination of federal regulations for offshore development are likely to have dire consequences for the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a highly sensitive ecosystem with over 2,000 marine species that spawn, nurse, and migrate year around, including lobster, herring, snow crab, mackerel, tuna, endangered blue and right whales, leatherback turtle, and harlequin ducks.

Environmental assessments for exploratory drilling, which can be as dangerous as production drilling, were eliminated in the new Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012 (CEAA 2012) introduced in Bill C-38. It should be recognized that the largest oil spill in American history, the BP Macondo Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, was an exploratory well.

Environmental assessments of seismic blasting were also eliminated. “Marine mammals and fish are highly impacted by seismic surveys. Whales can strand and die, often bleeding from their eyes; dolphins can go rigid, catatonic, and drown, and the hearing cells in fish can be ripped apart. To carry out this destruction in as productive and biologically rich an area as the Gulf is madness,” Dr. Lindy Weilgart warned.

The Harper Conservatives are eliminating environmental regulations and protections to fast-track offshore drilling in spite of the fact that the Gulf provides a renewable global and regional food source, generating a thriving fishery – including Mi’kmaq and Acadian fishers – which, together with the tourism industry, is worth one billion dollars and creates approximately 50,000 related jobs. At the same time, the Harper Conservatives have not amended the current industry liability limit which now stands at 40 million – nothing compared to the billions BP has spent in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Gulf has unique characteristics making exploration and extraction particularly risky. It is a partially landlocked, inland sea with strong, counter-clockwise, tidal currents that only empty into the Atlantic once a year. There is no feasible way to clean up an oil spill because the Gulf is one of the windiest regions in North America. Due to the currents, one oil spill could damage five provincial coastlines (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and Newfoundland).

“As coastal landowners, we feel betrayed and abandoned by our governments who are gambling recklessly with everything we have worked for our entire lives – our property values and net worth along with our Gulf’s pristine beauty, recreational pleasures and unique maritime culture,” stated Mary Gorman.

“I would like to formally welcome Prime Minister Harper to the 21st century and advise him that humans are not the only species on the planet. It is long past time to shuck off this anthropogenic attitude of superiority and mastery and learn a small lesson in humility. It is good for the soul. While the rest of the world is embracing change, our government is clinging to 20th century philosophies and business models. This may have been acceptable in the 1950s, but we have moved on. We urge the Canadian government to do the same,” said John Percy, Leader of the Nova Scotia Green Party.

This aggressive extraction agenda is taking place as the government’s ability to monitor negative impacts has been greatly weakened. Professor Thomas Duck highlighted the ongoing reduction of scientific capacity at Environment Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

“Sound policy is informed by science, yet the Harper Conservatives have dismantled much of our capacity to monitor the impact of fossil fuel exploration and development. The elimination of scientific assessments and oversight — indeed, the whole of Harper’s war on evidence — puts the health and safety of Canadians and their environment at considerable risk.”

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Others in this House might not have been thinking throughout this debate of the famous palindrome: a man, a plan, a canal — Panama. As members know, a palindrome is something that reads the same forward and backward. Unfortunately, I cannot read this trade deal as anything but backward. When the man is the Prime Minister and the plan is this free trade agreement, we do not get anything very progressive. We do not get a canal; we get a ditch.

We have a very small level of trade with Panama. While we see the Conservatives trying their best to gather up as many small trade agreements as possible, such as the one we passed with Jordan and this one with Panama, it is worth bearing in mind the level of trade that is currently at stake.

In 2010, there was just under $214 million in trade in goods between Canada and Panama. We do not expect this to go up very much even with a free trade agreement. If we look at previous free trade agreements with countries like Costa Rica and other small bilateral free trade agreements, we find that in a number of cases our trade has declined after signing the agreements.

We have a global trading framework already which includes the general agreement on tariffs and trade, and under the Uruguay round the creation of the World Trade Organization. We are not labouring any longer as a global society of nations under high tariffs and protectionist measures. They have been mostly slashed.

What would one want in trading and approving a trade agreement with Panama?

We have heard much in this House of the need to improve labour rights within Panama. We have heard that Panama continues to be a nation that traffics heavily in narcotics and drugs, and the rest of the world would like to stem their flow. We also know that Panama is a country that has extensive money laundering problems. This agreement does nothing to address these issues.

When we look at the ways in which Panama has operated as a tax haven, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Panama is one of 26 jurisdictions in the world that have not yet fulfilled their promise as of 2002 to provide tax sharing information. That would provide a greater understanding of when a country is operating unfairly and illegally to harbour revenue and wealth so that the country of origin cannot tax it properly.

The trade agreement with Panama unfortunately does not deal with any of these issues. It does not deal with narcotics trading. It does not deal with the tax haven problem. It does not deal with money laundering. It does have a side agreement to deal with labour, but we can already measure from previous efforts with such side agreements that they have no real effect on improving labour conditions in a country. 

Through the 1990s there was a great increase in trade agreements and a great wave of globalization. Its triumphalism was the creation of the World Trade Organization, but things have slightly stalled since Doha and there is a little less triumphalism. Some people feel that trade, trade liberalization and greater economic activity, particularly greater strength and power to corporations, will raise all boats. Gus Speth, the former head of the United Nations Development Programme, famously said, “This kind of trade raises all yachts”, but it does not do much for the poor. It certainly does nothing to improve labour conditions. If we negotiate a trade agreement while turning a blind eye to the things about our trading partner that worry us, things like drug trafficking, money laundering, human rights abuses, tax havens and places to shelter income that should be taxed under public revenue elsewhere, it is unlikely we would be able to fix them later.

Turning to the text of the agreement, in article 106 there are some carve outs so that the agreement would not unfairly target multilateral environmental agreements. I wish the trade negotiators for Canada had listed all the agreements that are important. They certainly have carved out the ones that were listed in NAFTA, such as, CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the Montreal protocol on the ozone layer, the Basel convention on the transport of hazardous materials, the Rotterdam convention on trade in hazardous goods, and the Stockholm convention on persistent organic pollutants. 

A startling omission, since both Panama and Canada are parties to the framework convention on climate change, is that the framework convention on climate change is not listed as an agreement that would be protected against any incidental accidental implications from this trade agreement to climate policies. As we speak, both Canada and Panama remain parties to the Kyoto protocol, although we know that Canada has signalled its intention, quite shamefully I may add, to withdraw from its legal commitments there. I would not expect to see the Kyoto protocol in this agreement, but I certainly expected to see the United Nations framework convention on climate change, to which both countries are currently committed.

More concerning are the sections that appear in chapter 9 of the Canada-Panama free trade agreement. Chapter 9 deals with the quite devastating investor state provisions.

It sounds like the most boring of topics, an investor state provision. What could it be and why do we care? I want all Canadians to care. This provision is our innovation. We were the first anywhere on the planet to create this provision. It was done in NAFTA. In NAFTA, it is chapter 11. In the Canada-Panama agreement it is chapter 9, but it has the same effect.

There was an effort to make this kind of provision global. Some may remember the efforts were negotiated within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. It started within the World Trade Organization, but it stalled there. At the WTO they were called multilateral investor agreements. They regrouped and went to the OECD and called them the multilateral agreement on investment, the MAI instead of the MIA. It stalled and failed there. Thank goodness. It was the result of widespread grassroots opposition.

It is the first truly global campaign I have ever seen where grassroots groups using the Internet reached out to each other. I remember one parliamentarian saying to me at the time, “I can’t imagine that any Canadian citizen is really worried about something called the multilateral agreement on investment”. He came back to me a few days later, after he had been on an MPs’ study tour and said that while he was paying for gas at a station in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, he saw on a clipboard a petition to stop the MAI. It contained several pages of signatures.

Why do Canadians at the grassroots and people globally not want more investor state provisions? I should say that once it failed at the OECD, largely thanks to France, but other countries ran to catch up, once it failed there, they abandoned it. By they I am referring to the corporate entities that are pursuing the notion that corporations should have powers superior to those of elected legislatures. The essence of an investor state provision is that multilateral corporations should be able to trump decisions made by democratically elected parliaments and legislatures around the world and they should be able to sue a country if that country passes legislation that a corporation does not like. That is the essence of it. It is not in any traditional way an expropriation.

They have taken it from global to doing it BIT by BIT, literally the acronym BIT, bilateral investment treaty, such as this one. They are collecting up by BITs to replace what they could not do directly, a global agreement that allows corporations to sue governments when governments take action, even when that action is not in any way designed to inhibit trade. It is as such when Canada banned a toxic gasoline additive, or when Canada took steps to ban the export of PCB contaminated waste pursuant to the Basel convention I mentioned earlier, or in the very sad and tragic case of Metalclad, a U.S. corporation. Metalclad wanted to put a toxic waste site next to a little community in Mexico called San Luis Potosi. The people of San Luis Potosi said no, that it was too close to their water source and they would not let that giant U.S. corporation, Metalclad, put its toxic waste disposal facility there. Under chapter 11 of NAFTA, Metalclad sued the federal state of Mexico. 

This agreement means that any corporation with a mailbox in Panama can claim to be an investor and sue Canada at the municipal, provincial or federal levels for any decision it does not like, that it feels impedes its expectation of profits.

In the case of poor little San Luis Potosi, Mexico ended up owing Metalclad just under $17 million.

I fear that my time to speak to this agreement may be coming to a close. I want to conclude by saying firmly and clearly that we must learn from what has gone wrong with chapter 11 of NAFTA and stop including investor-state provisions as an automatic, unthinking addition to every single trade agreement we negotiate.

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The Green Party has criticized the federal government subsidization of the commercial seal hunt in the past, suggesting that sealing licenses be bought out and investments made in sustainable alternative livelihoods, including ecotourism.

“With multiple bans on seal product imports, the market is shrinking while fuel prices continue to rise.  It may be more beneficial to provide enough compensation to help sealers get out of the business and into one that will be better in the longer term,” said May.  “This would also help the entire ecosystem to come back into balance,” added May.

Cleary, MP for St. John’s South-Mount Pearl in Newfoundland, has called for examining an end to the commercial seal hunt, pointing out that the demand for seal products has declined precipitously.  Last fall, he introduced a private member’s bill to create a commission of inquiry into the collapse of the cod stocks.

“We should be learning from past mistakes with the cod and scrutinizing the current system of management, ensuring protection for the recovering stocks,” said May.

A 2010 World Wildlife Fund report found that the Grand Banks population of cod has increased 69% since 2007, though the stock is still only at about 10% of what it was in the 1960s.  The Greens have been encouraging restraint and caution to ensure the stock continues to be replenished, including decreased limits on by-catch and also specific plans for when those limits are near, including avoiding fishing in certain areas.

“Newfoundlanders have been failed by the federal government’s mismanagement. This government now has a responsibility to carefully consider how to do better in the future for this province.  A commission would be a good way to hear from the people who were most affected and hear their opinions and ideas as to how we can move forward,” said May. “As always, I’m always happy to encourage cross-party cooperation and I fully support Mr. Cleary’s initiative.”

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Does the member have any comments on the mistakes made under chapter 11 of NAFTA and why we might want to fix them before going into this agreement with Panama?

Mr. Brian Masse: Mr. Speaker, this is an important question because chapter 11 has made corporate power over public policy power a very significant issue.

It can involve everything: milk, chemicals on property, water quality and a whole series of issues that we should not have to give up.

One of the interesting things about NAFTA is that Canada is the only country in the world that gave up its natural resources control. We gave that up with NAFTA. It is incredible. Not even Mexico gave that up. Mexico kept that protection element on public policy.

We are the only country in the world that has given up that crucial element. That is why we have to go on bended knee to the United States all the time. We have given up our number one tactical advantage to be able to trade with the rest of the world.

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Five years after Confederation in 1954, we handed over responsibility of our fisheries to the Government of Canada. I would describe our fisheries as Confederation’s greatest failure, a national embarrassment, a national shame. A commission of inquiry is not about pointing fingers of blame, but pointing the way forward with a recovery plan, with a blueprint for the future.

Seconded by Elizabeth May October 21, 2011.

Click here for the entire document

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“Old Harry should have a wide ranging environmental impact assessment including economic, social and environmental impacts and allowing for intervenors including non-profits, fishers, the tourism industry and First Nations.  We are extremely disappointed that Minister Kent will do nothing beyond a minimal screening of the project; it is completely inadequate.  Our government is failing the people of Canada by not conducting a thorough review of this proposed project,” said May.

Kent indicated in his letter that the broader issue of oil and gas development in the Gulf of St. Lawrence will be examined through an update of the strategic environmental assessment of the Western Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore area.  The Green Party is calling for this strategic review to be amended into an immediate convening of a Joint Federal-Provincial Review with a role for each of the five provinces involved and full public engagement with funding for First Nations, fishers, tourism organizations and environmental groups, with access to funding for independent science for intervenor groups.

“Kent did not indicate any details of how this process will unfold,” said May. “We must not risk a major oil spill in the Gulf of St. Lawrence; it would be catastrophic.  All development including Old Harry should be put on hold until the broader environmental assessment has been conducted.”

As MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands, May asked a question on June 16th in the House of Commons about oil and gas development in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, pointing out to Environment Minister Peter Kent that this is “a most biologically productive region with over 2,000 marine species including endangered blue whales. It is now threatened by a deep water oil well. This is a region that touches five provinces.”  She asked if Kent would agree to a Joint Panel, the highest level of assessment under CEAA.  He confirmed that he had received a request from the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board to refer the project to a review and promised to consider the facts in his decision.

“The fact is that the Old Harry project is not a good thing for Atlantic Canada,” said Green Fisheries Critic Janice Harvey. “It is putting in jeopardy an incredibly productive and sensitive marine region with important spawning, nursery and migratory areas for lobster, herring, snow crab, mackerel, tuna, ground fish, whales and dolphins. Fragile Atlantic salmon, cod and wolfish, fin whale and humpback whale are listed of special concern. Right whale, piping plover, leatherback turtle and harlequin duck are endangered. In light of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, how can the Canadian government allow this project to be fast-tracked without proper consideration?”

“The development of oil and gas in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is opposed by First Nations in the region as a short-sighted, potentially disastrous project that ignores all that we know about the sensitivity of the region,” said Lorraine Rekmans, Green Aboriginal Affairs Critic.

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