The Trondek Hwechin First Nation says documents indicating that the Yukon government is pursuing a draft strategy for hydraulic fracturing represent a serious breach of trust.
A presentation by the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources that was intended for caucus recommends the government focus on fracking — notably in the Eagle Plain basin in northern Yukon, and the Liard basin in the southeast corner of the territory.
Several tanker cars caught fire after a Canadian National Railway train carrying crude oil derailed in Northern Ontario, prompting officials to advise nearby residents to stay indoors and avoid consuming water from local sources.
CN said its crew reported the derailment to emergency services at about 2:45 a.m. ET Saturday. Police said the train was 30 to 40 cars in length and 10 cars went off the track four kilometres northwest of Gogama, Ont. There were no reports of injuries.
Some of the rail cars that caught fire entered the Mattagami River System, CN and police said.
The Harper government is trying to win support for its pipelines and resource agenda by pushing First Nations to sideline their aboriginal rights in exchange for business opportunities, documents reveal.
The news that Canada’s Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs is working to this end by collaborating with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is sparking strong criticism from grassroots Indigenous people.
A scientist, or any knowledgeable person, will tell you climate change is a serious threat for Canada and the world. But the RCMP has a different take. A secret report by the national police force, obtained by Greenpeace, both minimizes the threat of global warming and conjures a spectre of threats posed by people who rightly call for sanity in dealing with problems caused by burning fossil fuels.
Four years ago, if you had asked Stephanie Merrill of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick(CCNB) and Jennifer West of the Ecology Action Centre (EAC) in Nova Scotia the odds of success in their respective efforts to enact fracking bans in their provinces, they would have likely replied: pretty low. After all, they were going up against a powerful industry, lax government oversight, and a largely uninformed public.
Yet last fall, the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick joined Quebec in halting the practice of hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.
The Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) is the latest to speak out against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's proposed Anti-Terrorism Act.
Harper's Bill C-51 is meant to increase the power of RCMP and other bodies to combat terrorism and includes giving more power to security personnel, letting authorities detain possible terrorists for longer periods, and allowing authorities to remove terrorist propaganda from any Canadian-based website. However, critics have said that the bill will restrict Canadians' freedom.
But a newly disclosed intelligence assessment from the RCMP looking at the "anti-Canada petroleum movement" suggests the same might not always be true about their facts.
First reported in La Presse, and again Monday in the Globe and Mail, the RCMP report dated January 2014 warns of "a growing, highly organized and well-financed anti-Canada petroleum movement that consists of peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society's reliance on fossil fuels."
The RCMP has labelled the “anti-petroleum” movement as a growing and violent threat to Canada’s security, raising fears among environmentalists that they face increased surveillance, and possibly worse, under the Harper government’s new terrorism legislation.
In highly charged language that reflects the government’s hostility toward environmental activists, an RCMP intelligence assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are bent on blocking oil sands expansion and pipeline construction, and that the extremists in the movement are willing to resort to violence.
