On May 2 and 3, Reginans will take to the streets for the third annual Jane’s Walk, a series of free neighbourhood walking tours across the city exploring our collective history, architecture, planning, and personalities. 

Celebrating the legacy of Jane Jacobs, the foremost urban thinker of our times, the Centre for City Ecology created Jane’s Walk to inspire citizens to see how people live, work, and play in their built environment to help shape their communities.

Photo: Tim Weis of the Pembina Institute

Has your rent gone up? We are compiling an online data base of rental increases across Saskatchewan. Follow this link to register the details of your rent increase:

SASKATCHEWAN RENTAL INCREASES

     In March 2009, the Bishops of the Anglican, Evangelical Lutheran, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Catholic churches in Saskatchewan have called on their members and all Saskatchewan citizens to consider with care the issues surrounding the proposed expansion of the uranium industry in Saskatchewan and make their views known to the Government of Saskatchewan.

     The Government of Saskatchewan is exploring "value-added" initiatives to expand the uranium industry in our province, including the possibility of a nuclear power plant being built in Saskatchewan. Bruce Power, the country's only private nuclear generating company, has deemed an area of Saskatchewan (roughly from Lloydminster to Prince Albert) to be a potentially suitable site for such a development. In March 2009 a government-appointed panel is expected to make recommendations regarding such initiatives. It is critical that any recommendations be made only after full and open consultation with the people of this province.

Despite the slumping economy, the so-called “clean tech” sector—including solar photovoltaics, wind power and biofuels—continued to grow by leaps and bounds in 2008. According to the research and consulting firm Clean Edge, revenue sector-wide grew by 53 percent from $75.8 billion in 2007 to $115.9 billion in 2008.

In the second week of March, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established monitoring rules so the federal government can track and inventory emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Congress called for the implementation of such a regulatory framework back in 2007, but the Bush administration dragged its feet, leaving the work to the current administration.

This GHG emission reporting mechanism will cover the entire nation's 13,000 or so largest fossil fuel burning facilities which amounts to close to 90 per cent of all climate change pollution.  With these rules in place, it will be very easy to initiate a national "cap and trade" system as has been called upon by Obama and other U.S. and Canadian leaders.

Sweden's Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren,  which will lead the EU when international climate negotiators meet in December, announced last week it aims to be carbon neutral by mid-century. Under a new energy plan, the Nordic country would increase renewable energy production to 50 percent by 2020, transition the national vehicle fleet to fossil fuel independence by 2030, and reach complete carbon neutrality by 2050.

Kalgar, the model of the country, is a city of 60,000 and it is replacing most of its oil, gas, and electric furnaces for district heat with cogeneration plants, which burn sawdust and timber waste from the surrounding wooded region. Publicly owned cars and buses have switched to burning either biogas made from waste wood and chicken manure, or an 85 percent ethanol blend from Brazil.

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I am sharing with you information about the leaks of radioactive tritium from the Chalk River nuclear reactor recently and the attempts by AECL and other regulators to hide the information. Dr. Gordon Edwards is a physician who has done years of research on the nuclear industry and his letters of concern and information are posted at the end of this article.

As you may know, the current Saskatchewan government is planning to build a nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan. They want to build it on the North Saskatchewan River, near, ironically, a place called Paradise Hill or near Borden. The local people do not want it, and the problem is that there is no safe place to put it.

All of this is of great concern to Canadians. In spite of polyanna propaganda from our government and business leaders, we all know how deeply we are tied to the United States. Under the so-called "free trade agreements," Canada has become the northern colony in Fortress North America, even more dependent on trade with one country. Foreign ownership and control of our largest corporations has increased. We have become more dependent on exporting unprocessed raw commodities. By boosting our reliance on trade, our business and government leaders have made us more vulnerable to global financial and economic shocks.