Canadians for Emergency Action on Climate Change

http://www.climatesoscanada.org/

"Government’s key role is to serve as the trustee of the commonwealth and the common health for this and future generations. Yet …
Canada now stands out as one of the leading major industrialized countries opposed to targets for deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and one of the biggest blockers of climate change negotiations.

Canadians for Action on Climate Change is a non-profit organization of activists, academia, physicians and citizens focused on climate change mitigation, a true cost economy and relocalization. Our organization seeks to provide news, reports and analysis to inform, educate and develop environmental policies for all levels of government in Canada and Internationally. We are committed to being part of a global movement against the capitalist destruction of our shared environment. Our current economy is unsustainable and an unethical catalyst to ever increasing global warming. This model assumes endless growth and limitless potential wealth, that completely disregards the fact that the earth’s life support capacity is finite. We respect the integrity, resilience, and beauty of the common wealth of all life as the foundation for a new sustainable economic model for our finite planet that will benefit generations to come.

We are a member of the Climate Justice Now network.

Climate Justice Now! is a network of organizations and movements from across the globe committed to the fight for social, ecological and gender justice."

You can contact us at canadiansforactiononclimatechange@bell.net

From Cory Morningstar

ACTION ALERT! Show City Councillors we DON'T want bottled water!

Monday, February 28 · 5:00pm - 6:00pm, City Hall, Council Chambers (3rd Floor)
300 Dufferin

Come on down to city hall and show that you support the ban currently in place on the sale of bottled water in municipal buildings

A bunch of people went down Feb 15th to let a subcommittee know that we did not want the bottled water ban rescinded. It was fun to be there and hear the debate on the issue, none of it even really covered any of the underlying issues...

WATER is a basic HUMAN RIGHT!
...RECYCLING should not be used as a replacement for REDUCING..

Bring your refillable water bottles, signs, etc and come meet some people!

Sophs, let your frosh know about this event, it's a good chance to see what actually goes on in the City of London's council meetings!

New Health Findings since the original decision in 2008:

Since the original decision in 2008 there have been findings in the scientific research that show bottled water is contaminated with estrogenic compounds that leach from the plastic into the water. Now that is a real health issue. One of the researchers from the Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany is quoted:

"We must have identified just the tip of the iceberg in that plastic packaging may be a major source of xenohormone -- man-made substance that has a hormone-like effect -- the researchers said in a statement. "Our findings provide an insight into the potential exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals -- low-dose exposure to chemicals that interact with hormone receptors that may interfere with reproduction, development and other hormonally mediated processes -- due to unexpected sources of contamination."

The study adds to growing concerns about products that span the plastic spectrum, says Shanna Swan, an epidemiologist at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in New York. "I used to say: '4, 5, 1, and 2. All the rest are bad for you,'" she says, referring to the recycling codes on plastic products. "Now, I'm not saying that anymore. We don't know about 4, 5, 1, or 2. This raises questions about all plastic bottles."
One endocrine disruptor is pthalates:

Pthalates are mainly used as plasticizers (substances added to plastics to increase their flexibility, transparency, durability, and longevity) and have been found in bottled water. They are of potential health concern because they are known as endocrine disruptors of animals, and some research has implicated them in the rise of birth defects of the male reproductive system.[33][102][103] Endocrine disruptors interfere with natural hormones in the body that are responsible for the maintenance of normal cell metabolism, reproduction, development, and/or behavior."[1]

These findings indicate a huge health issue that points to the need to eliminate bottled water.

Bottled water is a convenience not a necessity. Our own health and the health of the environment is a necessity not a convenience.

1. voice your concerns in writing to the Mayor and all Councillors. If they don't hear from you they will assume that Nestle's request is reasonable and there are few objections. I believe it is better to send a letter in your own words however in case you don't have a lot of extra time to create a letter here is an online form that you can attach your information to and it will be automatically sent to the entire council. http://www.insidethebottle.org/stop-nestles-bottled-water-push-london
2. voice your concerns in the media - send a letter to the editor of the London Free Press and the Londoner
3. join me in the gallery at the February 28th Council meeting to see your elected representatives in action and to listen to the discussion and the decision. Your presence will be a visual indicator of your concern and of your support for keeping the original decision. Council meeting begins at 5:00 pm

From Maryanne MacDonald

Gina Barber's blog on the bottled water meeting

http://ginabarber.blogspot.com/2011/02/waterlogged.html#more

Another bottled water poll! TODAY!

ACTION ALERT! Take the poll down on the right hand side of the LFP website: "Should London scrap its ban on bottled water sales at city-owned sites?" VOTE NO!
http://lfpress.com

ACTION ALERT! Participate in radio poll!

Please get the word out. AM980 is running a poll TODAY on whether the City should lift the ban on sales of bottled water at city facilities. http://www.am980.ca/
about half way down the right side of the page.

London Bottled Water Ban Under Threat

From: maryanne.macd@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:51:48 -0500
Subject: Bottled Water on City Hall Community and Neighbourhoods Committee agenda for Tuesday February 15th
To: wastefreeworld@gmail.com

Nestle has written a letter that is included on the agenda of the Community and Neighbourhoods Committee Meeting on Tuesday February 15th. Please read it and write to your councillor to let them know your feelings on this. We have been through all of the rationale for this and the previous City Council voted in favour of banning the sale of bottled water in city owned facilities where there was access to safe, clean, municipal water. They didn't ban the bringing in of your own purchased bottled water. It is a question of City Council showing leadership. As pointed out in the letter from Nestle this not about quantity....yet they insist on pursuing it because they know it is about optics and the trend that London has set.

It was as a result of what was done in London that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities recommended that other municipalities take the same action. Thus far this has occurred in over 80 municipalities and numerous universities and colleges across Canada because it is the right thing to do. These cities and educational institutions recognize that water should be a basic human right not a commodity sold to the highest bidder. London has made a difference.

Go to the following link to see the resolution that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities adopted.

http://www.insidethebottle.org/files/FCM%20-%20Bottled%20Water%20Resolution.pdf

The bottled water item is slated to be on the agenda at 4:15 with Nestle presenting as a delegation. Anyone can attend these meetings and it would be showing the new C&N Committee that there is interest in the community about this topic if you were able to attend. You won't be allowed to speak.

http://council.london.ca/meetings/CNC%20Agendas/2011-02-15%20Agenda/Community%20and%20Neighnourhoods%20Committee%20Agenda.pdf

http://council.london.ca/meetings/CNC%20Agendas/2011-02-15%20Agenda/Item%2016.pdf

To learn more about water issues go to http://www.canadians.org/water/index.html
or to http://www.insidethebottle.org/

Please forward this e-mail to your own list of contacts.

Maryanne

Alone we are one drop....together we are a mighty river that can carve a new course to the future.

Welcome to the blog site of the London Chapter!

This blog site, formerly the blog site of the Victoria Chapter of the Council of Canadians, is now the blog site of the London Chapter. Previous blogs from the Victoria Chapter have been left in place as a courtesy.

Moving post

No, I'm not going to make you cry, but we have a new fledgling website which is ready to grow a bit, please check back to http://www.victoriacouncilofcanadians.ca.

Thanks, and peace.

Join us for a people's assembly for climate justice

Tired of the political system failing you repeatedly on climate change?

Done with Canada’s intransigence on climate change?

Upset with having your voice ignored while the voices of polluters destroying our planet get magnified?

Had it with yet another round of Climate Talks, this time in Cancun, lots of talk, hot air and no action?

Do you reduce, reuse, recycle, ride the bus, ride your bike, do you consider yourself part of the solution? Where do you think you can contribute next?

Are you eager to talk to like minded people about grassroots ground up action on climate change?

An event co-organized by the Council of Canadians, Victoria Chapter, KAIROS, (and more)

December 8th, Evening, 6:30 PM

First Metropolitan United Church, 932 Balmoral Road, Victoria BC, Coast Salish Territory

Join us for a world café style set of citizen discussions on climate change. Connect with your fellow citizens, get engaged in grassroots discussions, and talk about how to create change despite government, media and societal barriers. For more information, stay tuned to this blog, or use any of the following options! Hope to see you there.

info@victoriacouncilofcanadians.ca http://victoriacouncilofcanadians.blogspot.com http://www.twitter.com/cocvic http://www.canadians.org/assemblies

Picnic for Public Education

Come and join us in support of a dialogue toward excellence in education

Thursday, August 12 - 12:30 - 2:30 pm Legislature Lawn, Victoria BC Coast Salish Territory

Welcome guest speaker Tulani Ackerman as she completes her cycling trip from Prince Rupert to Victoria in effort to encourage all people in BC to become involved in our public education dialogue.

Sponsored by StEps for Students
and co-sponsored by VPEC (Victoria Public Education Coalition)

Bring your own picnic.

Water Watch Coalition CALL TO ACTION

YOUR ACTION WILL HELP

The Provincial Government has said it will fund one-third of the cost of the CRD's sewage treatment system. They have given every indication that they will want more than one-third of the say in how the project is procured and governed.

1) The Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee is meeting this Wednesday, July 28th, in the Board Room at 625 Fisgard Street, 6th Floor, at 10:30 a.m. You could learn a lot about these issues at this meeting which you are free to attend. We urge you to promote the "Committee" model of governance as described in the report below:
http://www.crd.bc.ca/reports/corearealiquidwastem_/2010_/07july28_/2010july14agendaitem/2010July14AgendaItem06EWW10-55ProjectGovernanceModelCAWTP.pdf
The issues of governance and procurement are not necessarily separate. Please write to your Municipal representative on CALWMC (some addresses are listed below) stating your preference for the Committee model of governance and the Public model of procurement.

2) You now have opportunity to greet the new Minister of Community and Rural Development through whose Ministry provincial funding will be channeled. Please refer to the attached brochure to see how you can get in touch with Minister Ben Stewart to let him know your feelings on this.

denise.blackwell@shaw.ca
council@saanich.ca
jbrownof@telus.net
vicderman@shaw.ca
barb.desjardins@esquimalt.ca
mayor@victoria.ca
ghill@viewroyal.ca
plucas@victoria.ca
mayor@colwood.ca
gyoung@victoria.ca

Greater Victoria Water Watch Coalition

Lantern Ceremony

Friday, August 6th 7:30 pm
Hiroshima-Nagasaki remembered:

The annual lantern ceremony, marking the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan
Craigflower Park / Kosapsom
at Admiral’s Road and Gorge Road West, Saanich

Lantern making starts at 7:30 pm, with words and songs of peace at 8:00 pm, followed by floating the lanterns in the Gorge.

All welcome.
Free – (Bring a blanket &/or chair to sit on.)

Sponsored by the Victoria Raging Grannies, Victoria Peace Coalition, Physicians for Global Survival, Victoria Nikkei Cultural Society. Council of Canadians Victoria chapter

Call Rosa 250-665-7788

Issues of the Council of Canadians

The document with this title, a link to which is given in the right hand column of this blog, will eventually need to be revised as the Council of Canadians changes direction with changing times. For now, it needs to be mentioned that two issues currently of great importance in the work of the Council of Canadians, particularly in Western Canada, are the tar sands and run-of-the-river projects. The tar sands development in Alberta and Saskatchewan is one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in history. It ties in with almost every active issue of the CoC. Run of the river hydro projects, prominent in BC, tie in mainly with trade, energy and water.

Climate Change & G8/G20: Not Business as Usual

Monday, June 14, 2010
7:00pm - 9:30pm. Displays open at 6:30.
St. John the Divine Anglican Church, 1611 Quadra St. Victoria BC

Speakers: Francois Pihaatae (Pacific Conference of Churches),
Tria Donaldson (youth representative to Copenhagen climate meetings),
Harjap Grewal (Council of Canadians), local Indigenous leadership

"By now, you may have read about ‘Climate Justice: Take Action for People and the Planet,’ a new development in the energy campaign. Myself, along with Maude Barlow and other Council political staff, were present at the UN Copenhagen climate negotiations last December and just last month at the climate conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia. These high-level climate talks have been key to advancing our climate justice work, including: building the international campaign against the tar sands, call the Canadian government accountable for failing to take meaningful action on climate change and ensuring energy security for Canadians, and contributing to real solutions to the climate crisis grounded in the principles of social justice and ecological sustainability.

We are continuing to work with our chapters in Canada on these issues, including with this important and timely tour. The event is free and open to all – so bring along a friend and feel free to forward this invitation broadly!"

If you can’t attend, take this opportunity to send the Harper government a message that climate action is needed by using our joint action alert with the Indigenous Environmental Network, Harper’s emission reduction is off target!, at: http://canadians.org/action/2010/emission-target-Jan-09.html
Contact: Susan Draper, graceful@shaw.ca, 250-370-0121
Sponsored by the Council of Canadians, KAIROS (Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives) and the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition (CYCC) on a cross-Canada tour for climate justice: Climate Change and the G8/G20: Not Business as Usual.

Next Monthly Board Meeting

Board Meeting: Wed. July 7, 2010, 7-9 pm Commons Room, 1246 Fairfield Rd.
***NOTE UNUSUAL LOCATION***
All members of the Council of Canadians are welcome, as long as they are invited or approved ahead of time as attendees by the board. If you are not a board member, and you wish to attend, and/or if you have items you would like to have added to the agenda, please contact us at least a week in advance of the meeting.

Salmon Protest & March of May 8, 2010

The migration event to Victoria was grassroots awesome. Thousands walked. And walking --they talked in ever changing kaleidoscopic migrating citizen knots pooling in back-eddies to surge across intersections 400 a time --unmarshalled.

Schools of bright painted cardboard salmon on sticks jumping and twirling over the throng seething --dancing with salmon, the drumbeat, the music enjoining onlookers to feel the wild salmon imperative -our migration. Pied-pipered we follow not a street, not a direction but a calling, a need, a compelling attraction towards vitality, towards renewal.

Through the canyon of downtown buildings, we feel a quickening intensify. The salmon inside me feels --destination, attracting, animating, joyfully moving me us blurring and like magnetized marionettes pulled towards not place, but purpose and exhilaration.

Gathering in number, cascading, almost mindful bits of reminiscence, a place resolves itself to become a purpose and then to breathe-in, inspiration to become motivation to see and then to shout we are here --arrived to feed and nurture this place, so that it will remember us too as we remember it.

We have a sense of useful selfless joy being in and with our noble kind. I, we are not supplicants at the legislature. We are mobile thoughtful food sharing its values and inspiration with all who eat of us. Are we not wild salmon migrating now? Are we not returning to our waters our land and our fellow beings with sustenance?

More than four thousand* of us became the wisdom and voice, of wild salmon yesterday. If you hear this voice then you are too.

Upstream,

Michael Major

-----------------------------------

*Security at the Legislature estimated more than 5000.

Historical Background for the AGM on May 17, 2010

As we head toward our panel discussion on “the poverty industry” at our AGM on May 17, we would do well to recall that the Council of Canadians was founded 25 years ago to counter the free trade, deep integration policies of the Reagan and Mulroney administrations.

The crushing poverty and homelessness that we have today are the direct result of the rise of globalization and its underlying economic philosophy of "neoliberal" “trickle down” wealth. The idea is that by the rich accumulating huge fortunes from exploitation of those who are now referred to as the “working poor”, smaller amounts of this money will eventually infuse all of society with a healthy glow. This fundamentally flawed foundation of “neo-conservatism”, which has been parodied as “tinkle down economics”, simply results in an acceleration of what has always been true in capitalist economies: the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

This situation has now become so entrenched that even more progressive governments such as the Obama administration in the U.S. cannot escape its grasp, even though Obama campaigned on the promise of a “renegotiation” of NAFTA.

The Council of Canadians will not rest until the wrongs of free trade and its resulting increase in poverty have been righted.

Robert Cory

Next Monthly Board Meeting

Board Meeting: Tues. June 1, 2010, 7-9 pm Commons Room, 1246 Fairfield Rd.
***NOTE UNUSUAL LOCATION***
All members of the Council of Canadians are welcome, as long as they are invited or approved ahead of time as attendees by the board. If you are not a board member, and you wish to attend, and/or if you have items you would like to have added to the agenda, please contact us at least a week in advance of the meeting.

Call for New Board Members

If you would like to become more active in the Council of Canadians in the Victoria area, we have openings on the Board of Directors. Let us know if you would like to put your name forward for possible nomination to the Board. The new board will be elected at the AGM on May 17. Contact us at:
info(at)victoriacouncilofcanadians(dot)ca

Annual General Meeting/Potluck/Panel Discussion

Victoria Chapter, Council of Canadians

Annual General Meeting

Monday, May 17, 2010

BCGEU Bldg., 2994 Douglas St.

5:45 p.m. Potluck Supper
7:15 p.m. Panel Discussion
8:30-9:30 p.m. AGM

Free admission; open to the public; new members welcome

Panel discussion:

Jody Paterson, Moderator
Exposing the Poverty Industry
Are social services helpful? Solutions will be discussed.
Panelists:
Kym Hines, former frontline worker
Carol Romanow, differently abled frontline worker
Lise Wrigley, former frontline worker, active member, Committee to End Homelessness in Victoria

info(at)victoriacouncilofcanadians(dot)ca