Memorial University graduate student Paula Graham’s submission to the review panel.
The Council of Canadians St. John’s chapter is holding fracking review panel submission parties.
That’s because the government of Newfoundland and Labrador has launched a panel review on fracking in the province.
The Independent News reports, “Being heard doesn’t have to mean writing a letter, say anti-fracking activists. People danced, sang and recited poetry at a recent NL fracking review panel video submission party in St. John’s. …Over the past few weeks people have been coming together in St. John’s to experiment with other ways of communicating ideas and concerns over fracking, at what they’re calling ‘fracking review panel submission parties’. These events, organized by the St. John’s chapter of the Council of Canadians, are a way to ‘get as many people plugged into the process of submitting to the panel by the [June 1] deadline’, said Erika Steeves, an anti-fracking activist and member of the Council.”
The article adds, “’The idea of the submission parties is to have it be a fun, social event that encourages a lot of different types of submissions — not necessarily the traditional letter-writing and reports and technical side of things’, she explained at a video submission party in the community room at the Sobeys on Merrymeeting Road in St. John’s last Friday. ‘We want to encourage people to be creative and artistic.’ The submission parties also ‘help balance the discourse on emotion versus reason, or technical versus the [desires of the] general public. We think that everyone can be involved, and art and activism go together.'”
And notably, “Steeves and a few others organized the first NL fracking review panel creative submission party on April 30, out of which came a handful of submissions [resulting in the review panel creating] a new section for—’Artistic & Creative Submissions’—on its official website.”
The panel is accepting written and artistic comments through to June 1. Public consultations in Corner Brook and Stephenville are expected sometime after July 15. The panel’s final report is expected by October.
For campaign blogs on the fracking issue in Newfoundland and Labrador, please click here.
Further reading
St. John’s chapter hosts ‘submission writing party’ against fracking (April 2015 blog)
