Energy East is all risk, with few rewards for Canadians

Energy East is a proposal by TransCanada Pipelines to create a network of old and new pipelines stretching over 4,500 km from southern Alberta to New Brunswick. TransCanada wants to use Energy East to ship 1.1 million barrels of tar sands oil a day.

If approved, Energy East would be the largest oil pipeline project in North America. It would even be larger than Keystone XL, another controversial TransCanada proposed pipeline. This mammoth pipeline would put over 125 communities, including 52 First Nations and Métis communities, at direct risk of an oil spill. And, it would put the water of millions of Canadians at risk.

Energy East is not a made in Canada oil solution. Most of the oil would be exported. Energy East is expected to export between 800,000 - 1,000,000 barrels of unrefined oil out of Canada every single day. That’s the equivalent to filling nearly 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools with oil – every day.

TransCanada will try to convince Canadians that this risky project is in Canada's interest. To help provide the public with insight on the truth about this project, Environmental Defence has put together this handy poster to show how Energy East is all risk, with few rewards for Canadians.

Help Environmental Defence spread the word about the risks of Energy East. Share the link to the poster on Facebook and Twitter. Print it out and put it up in your workplace, local businesses and libraries. And if you haven't yet, raise your voice about the risks of Energy East. Take action here.

To learn more about Energy East, and the work of Environmental Defence, visit: www.RejectEnergyEast.ca

Guest Blogger: 

Liza Smithies
Senior Development Officer

116 Spadina Avenue, Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 2K6
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Have you heard the term "Workamping"?

Have you heard the term ‘Workamping’? I had not until reading Jessica Bruder’s article, “The End of Retirement”, published in the August, 2014 edition of Harper’s Magazine. If you just look at the graphic it doesn’t seem to be a bad thing, this working and camping concept.

However, according to Bruder, many Americans in their 60’s and 70’s have had to buy RVs to live in and to use to find work (we used to think that RVs were ‘recreational vehicles’, right?). A new ‘tribe’ of aging RV dwellers is now moving across the U.S. seeking work where they can. They call themselves “workampers, travelers, nomads”. However, Bruder states that, “More bluntly, they are geriatric migrant labor, meeting the needs for seasonal work in an increasingly fragmented and temp-driven marketplace.” 

Why?  Many of these people, with once well-paying jobs, seem to have been the losers from the 2008 economic downturn. As well, people cannot live in retirement based on U.S. Social Security benefits of some $499 a month. These “downwardly mobile Americans” have been dubbed “the Okies of the Great Recession”.

How do they live?  Well they park their RVs in camp grounds often tailored to their needs ... free, or for little cost, and they do create their own ‘communities’. The ‘workampers’ migrate across the U.S. following a “national circuit extending from coast to coast and up into Canada”.

What do they do?  Low paying seasonal jobs. They are the people that work in the Amazon warehouses shelving goods and filling orders during the peak shopping period prior to Christmas. They are the people who staff U.S National Parks, pick berries, staff tourist destinations and harvest sugar beets.

How are they doing? Not well. Aging bodies do not stand up to 12 hour days of physically demanding jobs. According to Bruder, “many of the RVs I entered were stocked like mobile apothecaries”. She went on to say that “Some geriatric migrants I met already seemed one injury or broken axle away from true homelessness.”

What is their future?  Not good. They have few if any benefits or protections. As Bruder questions, “What happens to all these people when they’re too old to scrub campsite toilets or walk ten hours a day in an Amazon warehouse or lift thirty-pound sacks of sugar beets in the cold?”

As mentioned above, Canada is also a destination for these ‘Workampers’. For proof just go to http://roamingrv.com/workamping-opportunities-in-western-canada/ or to http://www.workamper.com/WKN2008_canada/caindex.cfm  .

Reading Bruder’s article was a real ‘wake-up’ call for me. I have retired with a good ‘defined benefit pension plan’. How awful for those who do not have such a plan and for the future generations who may never even be able to dream about such a possibility! So I ask, “How can we, as a society, ensure that ‘Workamping’, like food-banks before, do not become a common, accepted part of our Canadian social fabric?

Ann Steadman, Associate

Mingling Our Tears Together

The National Day of Vigils to Remember Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Women on October 4th, began with the research that was conducted by Amnesty International. The researcher was an LLM, Bevery Jacobs, a Faithkeeper in the Seneca Longhouse on the Six Nations Reserve, in 2001. She travelled across the country to gather stories of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. She worked with Elders to compile the Stolen Sisters Report which ended up as two Reports for Amnesty International in 2002.

My sister, Debbie Sloss-Clarke was one of those women who was murdered in Cabbagetown, Toronto, in the summer of 1997. She was living there and was overcoming her addictions, dependency and Post Traumatic Stress she suffered from a car accident. She was cultivating her identity and her culture and we would take her to Elders Gatherings, ceremonial events and such. So, when she was murdered, the Police did not notify the next of kin because she was (1) Aboriginal; (2) she was a woman; (3) she was known on the 'street;' (4) she was a known drinker and druggie to the Police. So, the police never really investigated her death and continued to dehumanize her, when my sister, Kathy, who lives in Toronto, went to the morgue to identify Debbie's decomposing body. She asked the Toronto Police what happened to her, and the reply was a curt, "She liked to party." This response was an objectification of her life and this "blame the victim mentality" was a further degradation of her representation. So, my husband contacted Bev Jacobs in 2000 to let her know that Debbie's death was a traumatic event in our family, as we weren't able to feel, we were not able to hear, we were emotionally upset at the mention of her memory and name, and we could not talk about her. So, Bev came to see us, she interviewed us, and she helped bring our family together for a healing weekend retreat to be able to grieve her journey home to the SPIRIT world. We released her SPIRIT and we feasted her, and we did a proper condolence and ceremony to help her go home. We thank Bev Jacobs for her tutelage. 

When Bev became the new President of the Native Women's Association of Canada, she knew that the Sisters in SPIRIT campaign had to be initiated by the NWAC, which it was, in 2004, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Bev was elected President in 2003. My niece, Laurie Clarke-LaCrosse and I began to attend the SIS initiatives across the country to bring attention to Debbie's life and humanity. Laurie was Debbie's daughter. There is a brother, Len, as well in Debbie's family. We went to Vancouver, and all the way to New Richmond, a Mi'kmaq community on the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec. My husband and I were at several family gatherings where we helped the families by conducting a traditional "Condolence" Ceremony for the families of these Sisters who were taken from us. We began to help with gatherings on the December 6th Montreal Massacre Anniversary, the February 14 V-Day anti-violence day across the country and International Women's Day on March 8^th.

Our family is healing and we want to thank the Native Women's Association of Canada, the Amnesty International, KAIROS, and other agencies who have helped bring us together to "mingle our tears together." In our family, we have five girls and two boys. We have been pre-deceased by the deaths of two of our sisters, Debbie being one of them, and a brother. Our surviving siblings are our oldest brother John Sloss, myself - Mary Lou Smoke, my sisters Kathy Angus; Roxanne Gibbs, and Sue Contant. We still get together for family occasions to celebrate each other’s lives. Recently our niece, Debbie's daughter, Laurie Clarke-LaCrosse was married on September l9th, in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. Debbie's SPIRIT was with our family on this happy occasion. We sang her favourite song to her. "The Cherokee Morning Song"  

Dan and Mary Lou Smoke 

If not me, who, and if not now, when!

Last week many cities across our country hosted events called “Take Back the Night”, focusing on the need to end violence against women.  Even the need for such rallies once again remind us that Gender Equality is still not a reality in Canada or around the world. Embedded in this blog is a message from Emma Watson, of Harry Potter fame, who addressed the UN General Assembly with a strong message for men and women reminding us that this is not just a women’s issue, but it is also an issue for men as well.  She has launched a “Heforshe” campaign, and although only 24 years old, reminds us that gender bias and gender violence will not change unless we all embrace this issue. “If not me, who, and if not now, when!” 

Joan Atkinson CSJ

We Are the New Hatfields and McCoys

Each week seems to present us with a new humanitarian crisis. Israel’s announcement that it plans to appropriate four hundred more hectares in Gaza barely holds our attention and raises no condemnation from our Government. ISIS moves through Iraq seizing new territory and wreaking horrific violence on all who do not ascribe to their beliefs. Russia moves army troupes, weapons, and equipment into Ukraine amid ineffectual opposition of other nations. Civil wars, oppression, and violent suppression of citizens continue in Syria and other countries. 

In developed countries, mutual entanglement in economic systems, the need for continued access to resources, such as oil, and knowledge of the terrible costs of war deter us from engaging in major warfare. We are well aware that the use of force to overcome force fails to achieve desired outcomes and makes our planet even more unsafe. Consider the fallout of interventions in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Defeated nations harbour hate and desires for revenge. Even some of our own citizens choose to adopt abhorrent creeds and join terrorists at home or in faraway places.

Our world has shrunk. Immigration, refugees, travel, communication, threatening new diseases and weapons mean that we are all neighbours and the effects of our disputes far exceed the damage that resulted from the Hatfield-McCoy feuds. We need to begin as individuals to think differently if we are to live at peace with each other. Governments, financial institutions, and multi-national corporations have to move beyond self-interest to consider the good of all humanity and our environment. This has to start somewhere and that somewhere is with us.  We need to, become reflective thinkers and explore our own beliefs, values, and practices.  As the anthropologist Margaret Mead declared, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has”

Pat McKeon, CSJ