Sign the Petition and stand in solidarity with others who oppose the Enbridge pipeline/tanker project including:

Over 100 First Nations who have banned tar sands pipelines and tankers using their own Indigenous law

Over 130 First Nations who oppose the Enbridge pipeline/tanker project

Over 100,000 people that signed a petition supporting a ban on oil tanker on the North Coast of BC

http://freedomtrain2012.nationbuilder.com/

The Yinka Dene Alliance is sending 30 people on the Freedom Train ranging in age from youths of 16 to elders up to age 67. The Yinka Dene delegation will be joined on the train by representatives of other First Nations who are also deeply involved in the fight to keep their territories and waters free from Enbridge’s proposed tar sands oil pipelines and supertankers.

The federal government announced on April 17, 2012 its plan for “Responsible Resource Development” which contains a number of proposals to reform key aspects of the review process for federal environmental assessments.

Simplified and Set Timelines for Environmental Assessments

The government’s plan proposes to simplify the current structure of environmental assessments and replace it with two kinds of reviews:

1) a standard environmental assessment, or

2) a review panel.

Though details on this proposal are currently lacking, it appears this reform is meant to allow appropriate projects to proceed in a more streamlined fashion through a standard environmental assessment.

http://www.actionplan.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?category=1&featureId=27&id=5283

The wisdom of messy, democratic assessments

BY JAY RITCHLIN, SPECIAL TO THE SUN MAY 2, 2012

Making development decisions democratically can be a
ponderous exercise, but it?s the best way.

Northern Gateway, Prosperity Mine, Jumbo Glacier: Balancing
environmental protection against economic and social benefits of big
projects is seldom easy. It?s often ponderous, complex and messy. And
that?s if the assessment is done properly.

The new environmental regime outlined in the federal budget on March 29
will likely expedite and tidy up assessments. But if history is correct,
it will ultimately lead to greater conflict and lower standards of
environmental protection.

Under the new ?streamlined? federal process, only one environmental
assessment would be conducted, by the federal or provincial government.
The new regulations also limit the length of time for reviews and
restrict who can speak at them. Add to this the weakening of fish
habitat protection, by limiting Fisheries Act protection to major bodies
of water used for commercial, recreational or aboriginal fisheries, and
strengthening of the hand of the federal cabinet and environment
minister in decision-making, and you have an unravelled environmental
assessment process.”

“As people of the First Nations of Canada we have a vision of the sort of country we want to live in & to build in collaboration with other Canadians. It is certainly not the sort of country we have now… To do so we have to go back to the agreement made in the Two-Row Wampum Treaty signed between First Nations & the newly arrived Europeans in 1664. All across North America today First Nations share a common perception of what was then agreed: we would allow Europeans to stay among us & use a certain amount of our land, while in our own lands we would continue to exercise our own laws & maintain our ouw institutions & systems of government. We all believe that that vision is still very possible today, that as FN we should have our own governments with jurisdiction over our own lands & people. WE SHOULD DECIDE ABOUT AND BENEFIT FROM THE TYPE OF DEVELOPMENT WE WANT IN OUR OWN TERRITORIES, NOT HAVE SUCH DEVELOPMENT FORCED ON US TO SERVE OUTSIDE INTERESTS.””

* 60 years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights did not include water explicitly. This has created the opportunity for some governments to deny that such a right exists despite …

http://www.blueplanetproject.net/RightToWater/7days-points.html
http://www.canadians.org/campaignblog/wp-content/uploads/barlow-afn-speech-1210.pdf