The Canadian Press is reporting Friday, November 14th (in the Toronto Star) that, "Newly minted Environment Minister Jim Prentice is already at public loggerheads with a senior bureaucrat who said a Canada-led UN program on water quality is not a priority. Prentice says he, and only he, will rank top issues – and they include the system to track dwindling water supplies in more than 70 countries. 'We'll continue to fund the program at the level it has been funded. I made that very clear to the department and no one has my authority to disagree with that. It's one that we've exercised international leadership on.'"

Originally planned to be released with fanfare and a cross-country tour, a Health Canada report on climate change will instead be quietly ‘made available’ to Canadians who request copies. At a July 3 conference, scientists who worked on Human Health in a Changing Climate learned long-delayed launch plans had been scrubbed. Instead, on July 31 Health Canada quietly announced hard copies of the report could be ordered by emailing or phoning Health Canada. Health Canada spokesperson Paul Spendlove later told the media the ground-breaking research document itself was “too big” to post on the government’s website.     

Meanwhile, Milan Ilnyckyj, an Oxford scholar living in Ottawa, experienced no such difficulty posting the scientific report to his blog, A Sibilant Intake of Breath. He has broken it into downloadable chapters, as well posted the full 500-page document as a single file, at this link. A handful of others around the country have done the same, while various alternative media outlets have begun spreading the word that the report is now available on the web, thanks to some alert and resourceful citizens.

Entertainers The Weakerthans rock band, Boots Riley and Silk-E of the Coup, Theresa Sokyrka, Tom Jackson, Fred Penner, the Deep Dark Woods, Joseph Naytowhow, and novelists Yann Martel and Guy Vanderhaeghe are among celebrities who will headline the We Are Many (WAM) environmental and arts festival to be held August 22nd-24th at Diefenbaker Park in Saskatoon.

“We’re delighted with the outpouring of support we’ve received from leading Canadian entertainers and citizens of Saskatoon who want to help us show that people can make simple changes in their lives that will collectively have a big impact on the environment,” says WAM organizer Jon Henderson.