McNAMARA: Premier Wall Destroying Northern Communities

[Oscar]

McNAMARA: Premier Wall Destroying Northern Communities

----- Original Message -----
From: Ent Work
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 8:57 AM
Subject: FW: Premier Wall Destroying Northern Communities

Please distribute widely.

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From: entwork@hotmail.com
To: premier@gov.sk.ca
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Subject: Premier Wall Destroying Northern Communities

Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:51:53 -0400


OPEN LETTER TO PREMIER BRAD WALL

Subject: The nuclear industry is sowing the seeds of division in northern Saskatchewan

Dear Mr. Premier:

“A friend in need is a friend indeed,” or so goes the old adage. But what if your new friend decides to dig up your backyard and leave a mess that you can’t clean up for a few millennia? Or what if your new friend not only decides to do that, but wants to haul in the garbage created by his buddies in another part of the country? And what if your new friend’s objectionable behavior starts to create serious divisions in your family? This in a sense is the situation that northern communities are facing since the uranium industry and their buddies, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, have decided to befriend them.

Over the decades our so-called friends in the uranium industry and governments of all political stripes have failed the people of northern Saskatchewan. They have swooped into the north with their ravenous resource-extraction agenda, provided a multitude of short-term, good-paying jobs (mainly to easterners and southerners), and left behind toxic wastes as their legacy for countless future generations. The profits and royalties from those mining activities have not remained in the north, nor have they been reinvested to clean up the mess they left behind. What is more, those profits and royalties have not been invested in diversifying economic opportunities that can sustainably co-exist with the traditional livelihood and way of life enjoyed by northerners for countless generations before.

In fact, our provincial government has abandoned northerners to the free-market rapacity of the nuclear industry by refusing to acknowledge any responsibility for reinvesting royalty revenues into community-based development. Instead, the government has cut back on social programs like public housing and incentives for small business endeavours. In their place, government has encouraged First Nation band/village councils, and local economic development corporations, to churn scarce financial resources into enterprises that favour enhancement of the uranium/nuclear development agenda. In effect, the government is starving northern local governments of adequate resources, thus making them even more dependent on the largesse of the nuclear industry. So now we see small communities, which are desperate for jobs and resources, being lobbied by Cameco and Areva (Big Uranium) to accept more mining expansion and by the industry-driven Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) to host a radioactive waste dump in their backyards.

Most of the Big Uranium’s tactics to advance its agenda in northern Saskatchewan have been conducted behind closed doors. NWMO has quietly added many key local leaders to their payroll through contracts and stipends, providing them with fully paid excursions to eastern Canada to “educate” them on the benefits of hosting a nuclear waste dump in their home communities. Most often, the people in the communities they represent, had no idea that their band/village officials were being courted and paid off. But slowly the word has gotten out and these citizens are appalled at the duplicity of their elected officials and administrators. They are also fearful of the consequences to the health and safety of their communities should NWMO’s agenda ultimately be implemented.

The underhanded dealings of Big Uranium and NWMO are completely contrary to the open and transparent decision-making process expected among the indigenous peoples of the north. Broad consultation and respect for everyone’s point of view are traditional values that have conscientiously been upheld. Especially important are the spiritual insights offered by community elders. With that context in mind, northerners realize that decisions on a vital issue like siting a nuclear waste dump in the north is not just a local issue -- it is a regional issue, it is a provincial issue as well. They find it hard to understand why NWMO has refused to deal with ALL northern communities openly and collectively when bringing forward their nuclear waste proposals. Journalist Sandra Cuffe recently reported Ile-a-la-Crosse Mayor Duane Favel as saying,

"Our proposal was, as Northwest municipalities, that we try and get NWMO to deal with us as a region, as the Northwest municipalities. We drafted up a letter [and] we tried to get the signature of every mayor - I believe there's 17 municipalities on the northwest side - [so] that NWMO would have to deal with us collectively, if they were, you know, to talk about nuclear waste within their region."

NWMO ignored that request, preferring to deal one-on-one with individual local governments. Obviously, they realized that the divide-and-conquer strategy will work better for their purposes. Regional consensus is not their priority – enticing just one “willing host community” is all they are interested in. NWMO doesn’t have to be a “friend in need” to everyone – just find the most vulnerable potential partner and move in on him.

Demonstrating the incredibly insensitive and disrespectful tactics employed by the nuclear industry, in another news report filed by Sandra Cuffe, locals spoke about how just last year two NWMO operatives completely hijacked a healing circle meant to discuss the high suicide rate among northern youth and the impact of a recent tragic car accident in which several young people had been killed. The healing circle had been suggested by Elders from four communities and was sponsored by “Reclaiming Our Community,” an interagency forum. However the event was entirely subverted in order to introduce the idea of establishing a nuclear waste dump in the community as a solution to its economic and social problems.

"Halfway through the talking circle, one of the facilitators wrote 'NWMO' on the chart and 'Duty To Consult' right under it. And this was shortly after Vince Natomagan had joined the talking circle. He had come in with a briefcase and with some paperwork that he spread out on the table," said [Max] Morin. "The red flags went up right away."

Ten elders from Pinehouse left immediately, he said.

Another example of this corporate attitude creeping into public discourse in the north: When a 17-year-old Pinehouse youth respectfully questioned the nuclear waste site proposal at a northern forum attended by 200 people, Jim Sinclair, a prominent NWMO henchman berated him in the most belligerent language, “You’ll be in jail before you even graduate, so you might as well go hang yourself with your Métis sash.” Considering the emblematic significance of the sash to Métis culture and identity, this derogatory statement was a gross insult to the entire audience.

All this is important background to the Pinehouse village election on September 19, in which several election contraventions were witnessed. The warning signs for voter intimidation and voting irregularities were already in evidence at the advance poll on September 12. Concerns were immediately raised with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Government Relations, and a request was made to send in someone from the Ministry to monitor the poll on the actual election day. None of the concerns were taken seriously, and no monitor was sent. In fact Ministry officials stuck to the letter of the law – they told local voters if irregularities were noted (and they were), then it was up to one or more individuals to launch court action at their own expense to seek redress. In an intimidated, impoverished community such wanton disinterest, if not actual neglect, on the part of the Ministry is unfathomable and inexcusable.

Ordinary citizens in Saskatchewan’s north can come to only one conclusion in the face of these circumstances: The provincial government, Big Uranium and the Nuclear Waste Management Organization are all in bed together. When the 7000 Generations Wanska Walkers made the long trek of 800+ kilometers from Beauval to Regina in August 2011, to register their opposition to dumping nuclear waste in their region, not ONE Saskatchewan government representative met them on the steps of the Legislature to acknowledge their concerns and mark their dedication and achievement. There could be no more telling statement of your disregard and your disrespect, Mr. Premier, and that of your cabinet colleagues, towards northern residents. Curiously enough, neither the Minister of the day responsible for First Nations and Métis Relations, Hon. Ken Cheveldayoff, nor the present-day Minister responsible, Hon. Jim Reiter, have a single First Nations community in their constituencies. It would appear that both ministers are singularly lacking in awareness and expertise to deal with indigenous issues such as these. Perhaps that explains why they have been largely invisible when it comes to addressing these matters proactively.

Democratic rights, environmental sustainability, public health and safety are the least of your considerations. The Uranium Development Partnership agenda, despite being soundly rejected by the people of Saskatchewan in 2009, is alive and well in the north – conveniently out of mind and out of view for most Saskatchewanians. And that is entirely the way you and your industry backers want it. Put bluntly: instead of community building in the north, you and your nuclear partners are tearing communities apart.


Pat McNamara et al
entwork@hotmail.com