Saskatchewan’s New Democratic Party will choose a new leader at their annual convention in Regina on June 6. All the political pundits are predicting that Dwain Lingenfelter will win on the first ballot. Polling done for the Saskatchewan Party suggests that he has the support of around 64% of NDP members.
Link is well known to the people of Saskatchewan, as he was first elected an MLA in 1978, served in the government of Allan Blakeney, and was very prominent in Roy Romanow’s government as a cabinet minister and Deputy Leader. With the recent endorsement of Sandra Morin, he now has the open support of the majority of the NDP caucus in the legislature.
Saskatchewan’s labour movement is strongly behind Lingenfelter. He has the endorsement of the Steelworkers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, as well as Tom Graham, president of CUPE Saskatchewan. The building trades unions have made significant financial contributions to his campaign. None of the other three contenders have official trade union support. Write Comment (0 Comments)
(Ottawa, May 21,
09) – The Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) strongly urges our supporters in
Canada to sign online for the
release of Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and more than 2000
political prisoners in Burma.
A month-long
campaign launched by Thai-based two organizations - Assistance Association for
Political Prisoners (AAPP) and Forum for Democracy in Burma (FDB) with the
support of dozens of campaigns groups around the world - is scheduled to
finalize on May 27, 2009, the date the house arrest of Burmese democracy leader
is set to expire.
The campaign has
already collected 457,588 signatures; however, it is still half of the
target - 888,888. Therefore, we urge our supporters to take a minute to support
this campaign. The petition signature will be sent to UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon.
The debate around nuclear energy in the Peace River area is no longer peaceful. Pro nuclear vandals attacked a 40 foot trailer used by nuclear opponents to get their message out, according to a May 22 press release. The vandals painted swastikas and profanity on the side of the trailer and then threw molotov cocktails to try to further destroy the sign.
Further, they cut the farmer's fence along Highway 743 to get at the trailer. The horses in the field could have easily gotten onto the highway and been involved in a collision with a vehicle.
The damage to the sign was not bad enough but the molotov cocktails could easily have started the grass on fire and with farm buildings within 200 feet of the trailer the effects could have been easily worse.
This attack on their message came a day after two nuclear opponents received death threats because of the letters that they wrote to the newspapers voicing their concerns about the potential nuclear reactor in their area and its impacts on their farms. The RCMP are investigating both occurrences.
Peace River residents are being asked to be the nuclear sacrifice zone for Alberta yet the local, provincial and national media have provided scant coverage of our concerns. This week, it was vandalism and death threats. Will someone have to be hurt or killed before our struggle becomes newsworthy?
In an announcement today, the Asia Pulp & Paper Company, at the request of a supplier, will be accepting pulp from a company that is cutting down 50,000 hectares of tropical rainforest on the island of Sumatra. This clearcut is right beside the Bukit Tigapuluh National Park, a local release location for the orangutans.
In recent times, this area has had 100 rehabilitated orphan orangutans released there. The rehabilitated orphans had their mothers killed illegally by local workers on nearby rice plantations.
"It took scientists decades to discover how to successfully reintroduce critically endangered orangutans from captivity into the wild," said Peter Pratje of the Frankfurt Zoological Society. "It could take APP just months to destroy an important part of their new habitat."
A new crisis is brewing in Burma as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's trial
begins today. Streets around Insein Prison are in a state of
lockdown, according to The
Irrawaddy. Nonetheless, several hundred National League for
Democracy supporters gathered outside the Rangoon-area prison, where
her latest trial is taking place.
The pro-democracy leader was taken to Insein on Thursday, charged
with violating the terms of her house arrest. She faces a maximum of
five years imprisonment if she is convicted of harboring John William
Yetta, an American tourist who allegedly swam two kilometers across
Inya Lake to meet the 63-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Before the incident, Suu Kyi had been scheduled for release from
house arrest on May 27, a prospect that now seems very unlikely. The
prosecution has 22 witnesses lined up to speak against her.
Meanwhile, the lawyer who applied to defend Aung San Suu Kyi was
dismissed from the bar on Friday. An appeal to allow the public to
witness the trial was also dismissed.
We are at a critical point in time, not
only in Saskatchewan, but as global citizens to become politically
active to ensure a saner path for the future with respect to our
planet.
The Uranium Development Partnership
(UPD), which is largely a coalition of nuclear industry stakeholders,
came out with a glowing report to further develop uranium, build a
refinery, build a nuclear reactor, and accept wastes from the U.S.
There is also an unstated negotiation with the U.S. to do research on
nuclear weapons technologies in Sasktchewan. They make outrageous
claims in their report, particularly with respect to building a
nuclear power plant here.
NDP Leadership Hopefuls: "We Need a Move to the Left"
Contributed by John W. Warnock
Friday, 24 April 2009
The four candidates to succeed Lorne Calvert as leader of the Saskatchewan NDP faced off last night at Western Christian College. Around 200 party members and others listened as the four responded to written questions submitted by those in attendance.
The questions covered many important issues, and the general response of all four seemed like a repudiation of the neoliberal Blairite policies followed by the NDP governments of Roy Romanow and Lorne Calvert, who were in power in Saskatchewan between 1991 and 2007.
Government of Canada Acted Unlawfully in Changing Federal Regulations
Contributed by Jim Elliott
Monday, 20 April 2009
Today, the group Ecojustice has launched a lawsuit on behalf of the Sierra Club of Canada claiming that the current federal government has acted unlawfully to make two recent regulations that will gut the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act or CEAA.
The lawsuit claims that the exclusion list regulations will exempt thousands of projects such as highways, bridges, roads and sewer systems from being scrutinized under legally required federal assessments. It further claims that the Minister of the Environment is unlawfully been given powers over funding under the Building Canada Fund.
“These changes to the law are like cutting the brake line to make a car go faster,” said Ecojustice lawyer Justin Duncan. “It is reckless, irresponsible and represents an extremely serious attack on Canada’s environmental assessment laws. None of the US, China or India have gotten rid of environmental assessment oversight in their economic stimulus plans.”
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