When asked if her party would support a moratorium on transporting radioactive nuclear fuel waste through Manitoba, Progressive Conservative candidate Heather Stephanson equivocated, saying she would not answer a “hypothetical question.”
By contrast, Green Party Leader James Beddome answered with a thunderous denunciation of allowing nuclear waste on Manitoba soil and declared the possibility of a Conservative government being elected Oct. 4 to be “hypothetical.”
Judging from the applause for Beddome and the lack of it for Stephanson, it was clear where the audience stood on this issue.
This is not a hypothetical issue. A movement has sprung up in Saskatchewan to prevent the establishment of a nuclear waste dump. A respected aboriginal elder, Emil Bell, is on a hunger strike against storing nuclear waste in Saskatchewan.
Kudos to Beddome for clearly stating his party’s anti-nuke position.
Manitoba citizens will elect a new provincial government Oct. 4, 2011 and environmental issues will play an important role in determining which political party forms that government.
Where should Manitoba Hydro construct its planned Bipole 3 transmission line – or should it be built at all?
How should we save Lake Winnipeg from choking to death on toxic algae?
How best can Manitobans respond to rising energy costs and climate change?
These are only some of the issues that representatives of four political parties debated in this two-and-a-half hour public forum held Sept. 14., 2011 in Winnipeg. Naturally, I brought my video camera.
I’m half-way through “Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the road to economic, social and ecological decay” by Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler and I’m already regretting my decision, a year ago, to replace my aging Mazda with a brand new Kia Soul. I would have been better off with a bus pass and the world would have been one infinitesimally tiny step closer to sanity.
By every conceivable measure, private automobile ownership is an irrational choice that drains our health, destroys our environment and locks us in a downward spiral of indebtedness. In a discussion hosted by the Manitoba Eco-Network on July 7, 2011 in Winnipeg, Yves Engler explains why.
“What if the Gulf could sue BP?” asks Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians. “What if the ocean around Japan could sue the owners of the nuclear facility? What if the Athabasca River could sue everybody? What if Lake Winnipeg could sue for the nitrates we dump into it everyday?”
April 20, 2011: Dennis Lewycky (NDP), Ilona Niemczyk (Liberal) and Jacqueline Romanow (Green) at a Federal Election Forum on the Environment at the First Universalist Unitarian Church in Winnipeg. Photo: Paul S. Graham
If the state of our environment is a defining issue for you in this Canadian federal election, you must be disappointed at the scant, superficial mainstream media coverage to date. Despair no more.
I attended an “all-candidates” forum on the environment in Winnipeg last night (April 20, 2011), and posted a two hour video on YouTube to redress this portion of our democratic deficit. (For other insightful creations, go to http://youtube.com/redriverpete – but I digress.)
The phrase “all candidates” sits between inverted commas because the Conservative Party, true to form, chose not to participate. The Bloc Quebecois was not invited, understandably, because it is not running in Winnipeg (or elsewhere outside of Quebec). Other parties were excluded because they are not running candidates in all ridings.
Nonetheless, representatives of the Greens, the NDP and the Liberals were there. All gave good accounts of their respective parties’ positions. The questions put by the organizers were challenging in substance and comprehensive in scope. Panelists and audience members addressed each other intelligently, thoughtfully and respectfully. In short, it was an informative, educational evening, refreshingly free of the rhetorical bombast that passes for political discourse in this era of spin doctors and attack ads.
Grab some non-GM popcorn if you can find some, kick back and enjoy. And don’t forget to share this with friends and family, because it may be one of the few opportunities they will have to compare the environmental positions of three of the four main parties running across Canada. As for the Tories, the silent empty chair on the stage pretty much illustrates their environmental platform.
