Last week, Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow visited Saskatchewan and Alberta.
On Monday May 30, Barlow spoke against the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) to more than 200 people in Saskatoon. She was joined at this public forum by CUPE national president Paul Moist, National Farmers Union president Terry Boehm, and Nettie Wiebe. More on that event and the CUPE-Council of Canadians cross-country tour against CETA at http://canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=8088.
On Tuesday May 31, Barlow and Council of Canadians Prairies organizer Scott Harris drove to a conference centre in a provincial park north of Prince Albert, where she spoke with 70 CUPE summer school activists about CETA. That evening, Barlow also spoke to an audience in Prince Albert about CETA. The Prince Albert Daily Herald reports, “About 125 people gathered Tuesday night in the Cuelenaere Public Library auditorium to hear about a potential trade agreement. …Barlow said very few Canadians know about the agreement and added that very little information about it is being released, which she said is unfair to those it will affect. ‘I consider this a fundamental issue on the right to democracy. This is an issue for all Canadians. We want to know what’s at the table,’ she said.”
On Wednesday June 1, Barlow was in Lethbridge where she spoke at a public forum – organized by Lethbridge chapter activists Sheila Rogers and Knud Peterson – with about 250 people in attendance. At this event, she talked about CETA, fracking, virtual water exports, and water markets. The forum included an opening prayer and welcome by Mike Bruised Head, a local elder from the nearby Blood Reserve, and a strong statement from Blood Reserve members Lois Frank, who along with her husband Harley are fighting fracking on the Reserve. For more on that issue, please go to http://canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=7444. There will also be a report on this in the Lethbridge Herald that we will be able to link to soon.
On Thursday June 2, Harley Frank took Barlow and Rogers for a visit to the Blood Reserve. Reports have noted that in late 2010, Kainaiwa Resources Inc., a company that’s solely owned by the Blood Tribe, signed a deal with the Calgary-based junior mining company Bowood Energy and the US company Murphy Oil. According to Protect Blood Land, an on-reserve group opposed to this deal, no one from the reserve was consulted before the agreement was finalized. In the deal, Bowood Energy and Murphy Oil gained a five-year, $50 million lease to roughly 129,280 acres, almost half of the Blood Reserve, for oil and gas exploration and to use hydro fracking on no fewer than 16 drill sites on the reserve. Barlow will soon be writing an op-ed about the dangers of fracking and what she saw at the Blood Reserve during her visit.
And on Friday June 3, Barlow received an honorary degree from the University of Lethbridge. In her speech at the convocation, Barlow stated, “I had the honour of spending the day on the Blood Reserve yesterday, and while I was amazed at the beauty I saw, I was very distressed at the poverty and environmental degradation present there as well. I want to declare my strong support for those members of the Blood community who are resisting a massive new natural gas refracturing or ‘fracking’ operation planned for the Reserve. Fracking requires the injection of tons of sand, millions of litres of water and a cocktail of hundreds of dangerous chemicals at high pressure into shale rock where it shatters the rock like a stone cracking a windshield, releasing the gas. Fracking on the Blood Reserve will poison the community’s water supplies and endanger the Oldman River, the water supply for the City of Lethbridge. The University of Lethbridge has a world class water department and it is my hope that it will use its resources to support the struggle for water justice on the Blood Reserve and across Alberta.”
