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In the News

by Meera Karunananthan

Thanks to events like the Council of Canadians’ Annual General Meeting, the launch of our Marching Orders report on military integration, a 30-city tour to promote public health care and various other campaign activities, the Council of Canadians attracted a great deal of media attention in recent months.

Can Dion bond with voters on environment?

The Council of Canadians has got it right on water – the bulk export of water must be banned. Period! We must have national standards on clean drinking water. We must invest in new municipal infrastructure.

We must stop selfish communities from dumping raw sewage into our rivers and lakes, or in the case of the City of Victoria, polluting the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Clean air and clean water are staffs of life.

If [Stephane] Dion can make a connection in voters’ minds between sustainability and these two necessities, he will continue to astound.

– Toronto Star, December 17, 2006 (Opinion piece by Tom Axworthy)

‘Canada is freeloading on the UN,’ says report author

Canada’s role as a United Nations peacekeeper has dwindled to nearly nothing, says the author of a new report.

At the end of August 1991, Canada was the No. 1 contributor of UN peacekeeping troops but 15 years later that number sits at 52 in terms of 100 countries that are contributing peacekeepers, [Steven] Staples said.

“Where we used to send hundreds of peacekeepers, we now have 56 in blue helmets,” Staples said. “It’s a huge drop. You can fit all of our peacekeepers on a school bus.”

Staples made the comparison while commenting on a report he prepared for the Council of Canadians entitled Marching Orders: How Canada abandoned peacekeeping and why the UN needs us now more than ever.

– The Daily Gleaner (Fredericton), October 31, 2006

Peace marchers want Canada to end military role in Afghanistan

“Stop the war, stop the killing!” more than 100 people shouted as they began their march down the streets of Charlottetown Saturday.

The peace march, endorsed by the Council of Canadians, was a nationwide effort to bring Canadian troops home from Afghanistan.

Armed with red and white anti-war placards that read Troops Out of Afghanistan NOW!, the crowd, with the assistance of police escorts, started at Rochford Square and marched through the streets down to Province House for a rally.

– The Guardian (Charlottetown), October 30, 2006

Ralph’s pipe dream

In Calgary last week, the National Energy Board held hearings on TransCanada Pipeline’s controversial Keystone pipeline scheme to ship 435,000 barrels a day of raw bitumen to Illinois and Texas.

No Alberta PC rep that I could tell made a presentation against this “giant pipeline” that Klein was raging against in Toronto.

But Council of Canadians organizer Lyn Gorman did.

Gorman asked the NEB panel bluntly: “Is it in the best interests of Canadians to ship raw resources and jobs out of the country?”

– The Edmonton Sun, October 29, 2006

Integration talks kept in the dark

While the media were busy obsessing over rumours of a budding romance between Condoleezza Rice and Peter MacKay last week, a more significant relationship was developing behind closed doors.

Away from the spotlight, from Sept. 12 to 14, at the Banff Springs Hotel, ministers Stockwell Day and Gordon O’Connor met with U.S. and Mexican government officials and business leaders to discuss North American integration at the second North American Forum …

Despite the involvement of senior North American politicians, organizers did not alert the media about the event. To make it worse, our government refuses to release any information about the content of the discussions or the actors involved.

– Calgary Herald, September 21, 2006 (Opinion piece by Maude Barlow)

Meera Karunananthan is the Media Officer for The Council of Canadians.

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updated March 7, 2007