Regional News

B.C.

The Vancouver Island Peace Group (VIP) has charged government with breaking its own law by refusing to conduct a public environmental review of nuclear warships visiting Canada from the United States and Britain. VIP came to a June 9 hearing with 900 pages of affidavits from physicists, doctors, military experts, and others. They are asking the court to strike down the Cabinet Order per-mission for the visits. Contact VIP 143 St Lawrence St., Victoria B.C., V5V 1X9 tel 604/384 4230.

Earth Action, a Vancouver-based environmental group, have been protesting the planned destruction of 500 wild horses near Suffield base (see Alberta.) They held a press conference which sent the story coast to coast. Contact Earth Action, 2241 East 5th Av., Vancouver B.C.

Alberta

Time is running out for 500 of the last 800 wild horses left on the Canadian Prairie. The horses live on the Canadian Forces Base Suffield, 300 kin east of Calgary, and the military plan to round them up between early November and Christmas. The majority will go to the slaughter house. The military claim that the horses are being rounded up to protect the National Wildlife Area of Middle Sand Hills, where the horses wander to avoid the firing of 300,000 tons of live ammunition a year.

Opposition to the killing of the horses is growing. Cindy Snider, a local rancher, remarked, "If it were up to me, I'd let the horses just run all over the range. There's room for 10 times as many if it weren't for all those tanks. Anyway, the horses were here first."

Groups in Calgary and Edmonton are protesting, but as far as we know the largest effort is being coordinated out of Vancouver (see BC, above).

Ontario

The World Federalist Association met with their American counterparts in Boston to elect Allan Blakeney, the former Premier of Saskatchewan, as their President. He will be making a keynote address at a World Federalist banquet on September 20 in Ottawa. a

Project Ploughshares Niagara has embarked upon a campaign to weed out war toys from the area's department stores. '[he organization is currently confronting store owners to see whether or not they agree "not to carry toys that we feel will promote violence among children but rather [to carry toys] that will promote creativity and harmony." All stores which endorse this objective will receive positive enforcement" from Project Ploughshares through a flyer campaign. Contact Jane Hughes (416) 684-5193.

Rosalie Bertell of Toronto was given the Health Innovator Award by the Ontario Premier's Council in Health, Well-Being and Justice under the Health Strategies Trend to carry out her proposed Health 2000 Participatory Community Health Study. She has been very active in publicizing the environmental consequences of militarism.

The East Timor Alert Network (ETAN) launched several new campaigns at a regional conference in Toronto on August 1. The 31 participants from ten communities agreed to organize a national action and release an open letter to the Canadian government on November 12, the first anniversary of the Santa Cruz massacre (in which Indonesian soldiers opened fire without provocation on a crowd of East Timorese civilians, killing between 100 and 200 people). ETAN will also focus on a speaking tour of universities in September and October. Other actions will include a demonstration during the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Indonesia in September; a petition to Bata Shoes to divest from Indonesia; pressure on universities to consider human rights in their dealings with Indonesia; a project linking community/campus radio shows that cover East Timor; a popular education kit aimed at high schools; and petition drives to collect 5,000 signatures apiece in ten communities in Ontario. Contact ETAN Toronto, P.O. Box 562, Station P, Toronto M55 2T1

On August 21, the Department of National Defence created an advisory committee on the environment to "advise the Department and the Canadian Forces on issues relating to the impact of DND activities and operations on the environment." The advisory committee will consist of nine persons selected to "provide broad knowledge and experience from academia, corporations, and recognized environmental agencies." They do not specify who exactly will serve on this committee.

Newfoundland

The St John's Peace Centre will be promoting the Canadian Peace Alliance's Citizens' Inquiry Report The Newfoundland Teachers Association has agreed to help place the report in all the high schools in Newfoundland and Labrador if the Centre can find funds to provide the copies. Such funds are presently being sought by the Centre.

Please drop us a line or give us a call and let us know that you're doing things. We do-call across the country but not all groups are on our list and many are quite evasive.

Peace Magazine Sep-Oct 1992

Peace Magazine Sep-Oct 1992, page 30. Some rights reserved.

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