HARDING: OPEN LETTER TO PREMIER MCGUINTY

[Oscar]

Open Letter to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty

March 22, 2008

Dear Dalton McGuinty:

Fourteen Ontario municipalities, including the country’s capital, Ottawa, which contains the constituency you represent, have already passed resolutions calling for a moratorium on uranium mining in your province. These municipalities are rightly concerned about radioactive contamination of the watersheds that millions depend upon, as well as the end uses of this nuclear fuel and its long-lived wastes. Why wouldn’t they be concerned, as medical groups in various places are also calling for bans on uranium mining to protect human health. Just last week legislation was introduced prohibiting uranium mining across 1 million acres of public lands in watersheds surrounding the Grand Canyon.

Thirty non-government organizations, including Amnesty International, the Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace and Mine Watch Canada, and citizen-based coalitions forming around the Mississippi water basin, have also called on your government to undertake a fundamental review of the Ontario Mining Act, which permits uranium exploration activities that breach citizen’s property and environmental health rights and Aboriginal land rights. The miner’s labour union, the CAW, has now joined this call, and a variety of Churches are expressing their opposition to the use of the heavy hand of the state.

Retired Chief Bob Lovelace of the Ardoch Algonguin First Nations (AAFN) is now serving 6 months in a Kingston jail for contempt of court because he declared Algonguin law to be more fundamental than the authority of Ontario’s Mining Act. Lovelace is a “political prisoner.” It is the Mining Act, not First Nations’ respect for natural law and protecting the land, that fundamentally contradicts the spirit of Aboriginal Rights in our Charter, of growing international law on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; and, I might add, of the prerequisites of sustainability. Would your courts throw me into jail for stating that I, too, an immigrant with Celtic background, consider natural, ecological laws to trump your Mining Act?

Now, six leaders from the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nations (KIFN) in northern Ontario have also been sentenced to 6 months in jail in Thunder Bay for contempt of court, for also protesting similar arbitrary actions by Platinex Mining in its search for platinum. Chief Donny Morris, Deputy Chief Jack McKay, Head Councillor Celia Begg, Councillors Samuel McKay and Darryl Sainawap, and Bruce Sakakeep are going to jail because your Mining Act contradicts the principles of Aboriginal Rights and international law. Their community now considers them “leaders in exile.” In the compelling words of the Anglican Church officials who wrote you to protest the latest jailing of Indigenous people for peacefully protecting their land: “This relationship is regarded as a fundamental, moral and legal right by the United Nations and every religion and ethical system known to humankind.” It is an added crime against justice that the huge fines being levied on these First Nations threaten to bankrupt their vulnerable communities.

Just what is your intent? Do you plan to put all Indigenous people in Canada who are willing to protect the land for future generations, and those who support them, behind bars? International peace and security is presently threatened by oil-dependent, industrial countries (particularly the U.S.) using military force to maintain colonial control of foreign resources. I truly hope your government isn’t planning to use police and courts to accomplish this within Canada’s borders.

This dispute began last summer when Ardoch Algonguin and Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nations protested Frontenac Ventures clearing trees and blasting in preparation for uranium exploration drilling, in an area near Sharbot Lake that includes land claims outstanding for 25 years. First Nations occupied this land to stop these infringements. I would do the same thing if a uranium company started clearing my organic farmland.

Allowing this dispute to go to the courts is no answer to what is an issue of fundamental justice rather than provincial law. The Supreme Court has called on Canadian governments to have meaningful consultation with First Nations prior to any resource extraction on unceded land. Such consultation is also called for by international law on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In the aftermath of the dispute at Ipperwash that led to the death of Dudly George, your government made many statements that you intended to ensure such consultations, and that you would be doing things differently than the previous Conservative Harris government. What happened?

We know that the federal Harper Conservative government has not supported Indigenous Rights at the United Nations, but we expect you to uphold these important principles of justice. So, why are you letting this happen?

As Greenpeace so well put it in their letter to you, this dispute is “fuelled by your governments planned $40 billion expansion of nuclear generation.” With an unprecedented uranium bull market resulting from a projected short fall of nuclear fuel with your planned expansion, “greed is motivating aggressive uranium exploration.” This shortfall, however, isn’t because of a lack of uranium in Canada, but because 85% of it is exported. As a result of the signing of the FTA and NAFTA, and the security of energy supply this gave the U.S., the Reagan administration of the time allowed its own uranium industry to shut down. Saskatchewan is presently the world’s largest producer of uranium, but most of this goes straight south to the U.S., or to France, to fuel their highly integrated military-industrial nuclear systems.

This raises vital questions about Canada’s energy security, which are also raised by Alberta’s tar sands, which pipe heavy oil to U.S. refineries while parts of Eastern Canada depend upon imported OPEC oil. Isn’t it time to work for changes in pan-Canadian energy policy rather than perpetuating the neo-colonial policies that require you to lock up Indigenous people? Your government needs to give leadership on this. The Canadian people craving some sign that politicians actually care about the future of the planet will support you.

Your decision to refurbish aging Candu plants and to build two new plants to bring nuclear-generated electricity up to 70% of Ontario’s supply is ill-advised because it threatens Ontario’s watersheds and undermines Aboriginal Rights. And it will also leave all the safer, more cost-effective and carbon neutral conservation and renewable energy options, as Greenpeace put it, “fighting over the scraps”. True energy security will be rooted in sustainable approaches that don’t threaten environmental health or Aboriginal Rights, or continue with practices that keep Canada a non-renewable resource hinterland.

The repression of those who defend the land, water and air from degradation is not wise government or a step in the direction of sustainability. I encourage you and your colleagues to reconsider your policies, declare a uranium moratorium, and review the Ontario Mining Act so that it becomes a template for creating a just and sustainable society.

Regards, Jim Harding, Ph.D.,
retired Professor of Justice Studies, University of Regina
306-332-4492