Canada, It's Time To SPEAK OUT

Defend Canada's Core Values From Bill C-38

This is what you will find on the websites of many Canadian organizations tomorrow. The reason behind this is the fight against Canada's Budget Implementation Act, Bill C-38. Included in what should have been a standard federal budget are sweeping changes to Canada's environmental laws, which would effectively gut most of the protections Canada currently enjoys against environmental devastation.

Why is this a problem? Ecojustice has provided an analysis of what Bill C-38 means for the environment. Here is their report:

The 2012 budget bill (Bill C-38) will weaken Canada’s most important environmental laws and silence Canadians who want to defend them. Instead of using the usual process for sweeping changes, which allows for thorough debate, these changes are being shoehorned into a 452- page budget bill.  

The changes amount to: 

• weakened protection for fish and species at risk; 

• an entirely new — and less comprehensive — environmental assessment law;  

• broad decision making powers for Cabinet and Ministers; and  

• less accountability and fewer opportunities for public participation.  

What follows is a list of the TOP 10 items of environmental concern in the budget bill.

1.  Changes to the Fisheries Act mean that the law may no longer protect all fish and the waters where they live.  The new protection framework could exclude many fish and watercourses. Generally, habitat protection will only include permanent alteration or destruction of “commercial, recreational or aboriginal fisher(ies)” habitat and some activities will be exempt from the law regardless of how much damage they cause. The federal government will also be able to hand over the power to authorize destruction of fish habitat to provincial governments or other entities, which is worrisome.  

2.  No maximum time limits on permits allowing impacts on species at risk. This means that there will no longer be any guaranteed review to evaluate ongoing impacts to endangered species. These potential ‘perpetual’ permits could continue even where there is a drastic decline in the population of a species affected by the permitted activity.  

3.  The National Energy Board (NEB) will be exempted from species at risk protections. The NEB will no longer have to ensure that measures have been taken to minimize impacts on the critical habitat of at-risk species before the NEB approves a pipeline or other major infrastructure. For example, there is no guarantee that an environmental assessment will consider the impacts of a proposed pipeline project and related oil tanker traffic on the habitat of endangered orca whales before the NEB issues a certificate approving that pipeline. Prepared by West Coast Environmental Law and Ecojustice Published May 2012.

4.  The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act is being replaced with a new Act that will significantly narrow the number of projects that will be assessed for their environmental, social and economic impacts. Assessments, when they happen, will be less rigorous and subject to time limits that will place further constraints on public and First Nations’ participation. The new Act will apply only to “designated projects,” but we don’t yet know what those will be. The new Act gives the Environment Minister and government officials broad decision-making power: The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency would be able to exempt a designated project from even going through the assessment process. 

5.  The federal government is offloading responsibilities to the provinces. This is troubling because the patchwork of environmental laws and policies at the provincial level leave doubt as to whether they can act as a sufficient or legally defensible substitute for federal oversight. Prime examples of this offloading include shifting responsibility for implementation or enforcement of the Fisheries Act to provinces and eliminating many federal environmental assessments. 

6.  Cabinet is now granted authority to override a “no” decision of the National Energy Board. This may allow politics of the day to trump an independent, objective process and undermine the NEB’s expertise. 

7.  No more joint review panels. Where a major energy project will be subject to an NEB hearing, a Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency-enabled review panel is prohibited, so there will be no more joint review panels. Thus, the environmental implications of major energy projects will now be evaluated only by the energy regulator.  

8.  Broad decision-making powers are being shifted from the public realm and given to Cabinet and individual Ministers. This means decisions related to fish habitat protection and environmental assessments will be allowed to be made behind closed doors with minimal public scrutiny. 

9.  Significant narrowing of public engagement in resource review panel hearings, particularly for major oil projects, pipelines and mines. In order to participate, people will have to prove they will be directly affected or have relevant information or expertise. In some cases, their contributions may still be ignored.  

10. Repeal of two important environmental laws. The repeal of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, means no more domestic accountability measures on climate change and the repeal of the National Round Table on Environment and Economy Act will phase out this valuable advisory body completely.

Help stop this devastating bill by signing the petition below, writing a letter to your MP, writing a letter to the editor of your favourite national and local newspapers, speaking out on Facebook and Twitter, and spreading the word in any other way you can! We can't let Canada's core values go down without a fight!

Dreamland

Sometimes I have dreams that completely crush me. 


Sometimes I wake up thinking that a dream I just had would make an excellent film or novel plot, launching a super successful career and awesome life for myself. Then I can't remember anything more about the dream than the specific decor of the protagonist's bedroom and I spend the entire day mourning my screenplay/manuscript/successful career that will now never be.


Sometimes I wake up after a nightmare and I'm disturbed by it for the rest of the day, and I dwell over whether something in the nightmare could ever actually happen. This is how recurring nightmares start, I know that, yet I dwell anyway.


Sometimes I wake up from a wonderful and extremely vivid dream and I am crushed by the fact that it wasn't reality. Then I go back to sleep and try to go back to where I left off, but it's never as awesome because now I'm aware that it's just a dream. I am left feeling unfulfilled for the rest of the day.


And I won't even discuss my anxiety dreams... usually work related, usually an exaggeration of a real life situation, and also extremely vivid.


Instead of sleeping can I just watch films from my childhood all night? The Neverending Story, The Little Mermaid, Labyrinth, All Dogs Go To Heaven, The Land Before Time, Little Monsters, The Nightmare Before Christmas... I know they're not real, I know there's a happy ending, and they're inspirational! They will remind me about the importance of: self esteem and imagination, loving yourself for who you are, family and the awesomeness that is David Bowie, being a good person (or dog), adventure and friendship, something about monsters, don't fuck with Christmas. No sleep, just movies. I think I'll try that out...

Actually, on second thought, no. No.... noo no no no. No. If I fall asleep at the wrong point in any of those movies I'll have even more messed up dreams! I can see it now, it would look like this...

Artax sinks into the swamp of darkness, then I cry uncontrollably forever.

If I ever need to scream or yell in a dream, I always lose my voice. So if Ursula takes my voice, I will clearly get murdered or something next.

I get groped and dropped. "She said down?? She said down!!!"

I have to run away from these dudes because they're trying to take off my head.

The junk lady roots through my all my stuff (which I actually DO have nightmares about).

I help Charlie and Itchy win bets...

..but then find out Charlie is using me...

...and never trust again.

I get chased by Sharptooth.

Just about anything from Little Monsters could happen at this point, because that movie is actually quite scary (what were my parents thinking!?!)

And finally, I save Christmas, because, let's be honest, The Nightmare Before Christmas isn't very scary and is completely awesome, therefore dreams about it would be just pure awesomeness. 

  

 The end.

Friday the 13th I'm in Love

Don't be scared...

This one scares me silly. My heart literally sank when I saw it. EEEEEIK!!

Not black cats... but spooky nonetheless

Anyone else think we need two Halloweens every year? Just me?

Friday I'm in Love

Happy weekend!

I'm a little late on my "Friday" post... but I'm still awake so it's still Friday to me! I was struggling to think of a topic for today's post, but it came to me this afternoon while I was developing a headache in the library at the Brooklin Community Centre as a seniors drum circle did their thing across the hall. Nothing against seniors, drums, circles, or the combination of any of those things, but I'm not enjoying the addition of the fourth element: library. I LOVE libraries. My frustration today got me thinking about libraries and what I love about them. I don't like that this library doesn't have a quiet study area or study rooms, because between drum circles and children it's pretty noisy here. But I have an iPod, I study better with music, and every once in awhile the drumming oddly synced up with my music, so it was fine. Despite our little tiff today, I still very much love libraries, so here's my celebration of these wonderful book shrines/learning castles:

Circa 1915. This building is now a law office. Jim Flaherty's law office, to be exact.

This is the new Whitby Public Library main branch, and I LOVE it.

I can't find any pictures online of the building that acted as the main branch from the 70s- early 2000s. That building is where I fell in love with libraries. It was unabashedly 70s, and awesome. The new building was necessary, but I wish I could find some pictures of the old building, which was torn down to build the new building.

This is Mills Memorial Library at McMaster University on a snow day. It's the humanities and social sciences library on campus, so I spent a lot of my undergrad time here. I always loved the unique style of the building, and I have fond memories of script writing and procrastinating within its walls.

Mills and the Museum at night.

This is from inside the Health Sciences Library at McMaster University. I studied for many exams  in that room. It was great for winter exams, but this window taunted me with nice weather during April exams.

The Boston Public Library, the first municipal library in the U.S, and the first library to loan out books to the public! 

I have no idea where this is, I found it on Tumblr, but it's beyond awesome. My future house will have a room with floor to ceiling bookshelves on every wall, and one of those sliding library ladders. I hope it looks something like this:

Post-apocalyptic heaven
♥

The Parliamentary Library in Ottawa.

A visitor at the Edinburgh Public Library in Scotland.

Have I just reached a new level of nerddom? Oh well, I can't fight it anymore!