Clinton Asked to Keep Canada Sands Oil Out of US

Published on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 by Reuters

by Tom Doggett

WASHINGTON – An environmental group on Wednesday asked U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to deny permits for pipelines that would bring oil from Canada’s tar sands to the United States.

 

(Image ForestEthics/SierraClub)

ForestEthics said production from Canadian tar sands generates up to fives times more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil, which it said conflicts with the Obama administration’s pledge to tackle global warming. 

 “Oil from the tar sands is one of the world’s dirtiest,” the group’s executive director, Todd Paglia, said in a letter to Clinton. “For the U.S., continued dependence on tar sands oil would impair plans to reduce our carbon footprint in the short and long term.”

Canada is the biggest foreign oil supplier to the United States and Canada’s oil sands are the largest crude deposits outside the Middle East.

Nonetheless, the group urged Clinton to deny permits for pipelines that would move the oil to U.S. refineries, particularly the Alberta Clipper pipeline. The State Department has the authority to approve pipelines that would cross the U.S. border.

Enbridge Energy Partners LP’s 1,000-mile (1,610-kilometre) pipeline would be able to carry 450,000 barrels of tar sands crude oil a day from Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin. The oil would then be sent to U.S. refineries to be processed into petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel fuel.

The U.S. portion would be 326 miles long and cost $1.2 billion, and if approved, would be operational in mid 2010.

Enbridge spokeswoman Denise Hamsher said the State Department’s decision is based on a pipeline, not on oil production that occurs in Canada where it does not have jurisdiction.

“What would the Midwest do without that supply?” asked Hamsher, who pointed out that 1 million barrels a day in Canadian sands oil is already exported to the United States.

State Department officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said earlier this month that technology will help solve the environmental problems connected with Canada’s oil sands production.

However, ForestEthics said technology won’t be able to overcome the human health hazards associated with oil sands production.

“In Alberta, where most of the Canadian tar sands operations are currently located, there are elevated rates of cancer in downstream communities,” the group said.

The group protested outside the State Department on Wednesday by giving passersby the chance to smell glass vials of the tar sands that are labeled “dirty oil by any other name would be as risky.”

ForestEthics joined with the Sierra Club to raise their concerns about Canadian tar sands to U.S. lawmakers by taking out a full-page ad in a prominent Capitol Hill newspaper.

The political-based cartoon shows a young girl worried about a huge pipeline, labeled “World’s Dirtiest Oil” at the U.S.-Canadian border, and asking Secretary Clinton: “Is this my clean energy future?” The ad can be seen at the group’s website http://www.ForestEthics.org.

“Secretary Clinton now has an opportunity to show that America is a global leader in the clean energy economy. It’s simply not in our national interest to allow this project to move forward,” said Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope.

(Reporting by Tom Doggett; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

© 2009 Reuters

Canada Oil Sands Seen Threatening Millions of Birds

Published on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 by Reuters

CALGARY, Alberta – A coalition of North American environmental groups says the development of Canada’s oil sands region threatens to kill as many as 166 million birds over the next five decades and is calling for a moratorium on new projects in the region.

 

A worker goes into Syncrude’s expansion mine, north of Fort McMurray, Alberta May 24, 2006. A coalition of North American environmental groups says the development of Canada’s oil sands region threatens to kill as many as 166 million birds over the next five decades and is calling for a moratorium on new projects in the region. (REUTERS/Todd Korol)

The coalition’s groups, which include the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Boreal Songbirds Initiative and the Pembina Institute, say petroleum-extraction projects in the oil-rich region of northern Alberta are a threat to migratory birds and the boreal forest they rely on. 

Their study concluded that development of the oil sands, would be fatal for 6 million to 166 million birds because of habitat loss, shrinking wetlands, accumulation of toxins and other causes.

The solution, the groups say, is to halt new projects in the oil sands and to clean up existing facilities. They are also calling for strengthened regulations to protect Canada’s vast boreal, or northern, forest and for Alberta, whose government has backed oil sands developments, to prove the resource can be exploited without serious environmental harm.

“People need to take a hard look at whether this can be mitigated or if tar sands development is just incompatible with conservation of bird habitat,” said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The report estimates about half of North America’s migratory birds nest in the boreal forest and between 22 million and 170 million birds breed in areas that could be subject to oil sands development.

The oil sands contain the biggest oil reserves outside the Middle East but the crude is expensive and difficult to extract. Mining projects strip large areas of land to access the oil-laden soils below the surface.

While the report has not yet been made public, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which represents the country’s big oil firms, said the oil sands industry complies with environmental regulations and dismissed calls for a moratorium.

“We need a balanced conversation, supported like a stool with three legs, environment, economy and energy,” David Collyer, the association’s president, said in a statement. “Calls for a moratorium that consider only one leg of the stool, in a vacuum, are not constructive.”

Developments in the region have been criticized for pumping large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, using too much water and being harmful to wildlife.

Indeed, the death of about 500 ducks earlier this year after they landed on a toxic tailings pond operated by Syncrude Canada Ltd, the biggest oil sands producer, brought international attention to the region.

The environmental groups’ forecast is based on a big expansion of oil production from the region. The oil sands currently produce more than 1 million barrels a day, but the report is based on an eventual output of 5 million barrels a day, in line with industry forecasts of production in two decades or more.

Reporting by Scott Haggett; editing by Rob Wilson

© 2008 Reuters

Stop Canada’s 2009 Commercial Seal Hunt

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/553233753?z00m=17975835

Target: The Right Honourable, Stephen Harper – Prime Minister
Sponsored by: International Fund for Animal Welfare

Canada’s annual commercial seal hunt is a cruel and unethical practice that produces a product nobody needs. 98 percent of the animals killed in the past two years have been baby seals between 2 weeks to 3 months old. And despite the potentially devastating effects of global warming to harp seal breeding grounds, the Canadian government has raised the annual seal hunt quotas to the highest levels in history.

US Deserter Feared Torture Orders

Published on Sunday, September 7, 2008 by The Toronto Star

US Deserter Feared Torture Orders

Arabic-speaking soldier may prompt Canada to wade into legal debate

by Michelle Shephard

Peter Jemley is unique among the growing ranks of war resisters who have sought refuge in Canada.

Peter Jemley fled the U.S. military after concluding his training was leading him to a possible torture role. Sept. 3, 2008. (ASHLEY HUTCHESON/TORONTO STAR)For one thing, he’s old by military standards. The only reason the army considered the 38-year-old recruit three years ago was because the age cap had been raised to fill the U.S. military’s growing void.

The Tacoma, Wash., father of two young children also bucks the soldier stereotype. Jemley is a college history major, both quiet and fervently independent. If describing a bad situation he’s likely to say it “sucked,” then apologize for his profanity.

Now Jemley’s reasons for deserting set him apart too, and make his case a historic first.

He wants Canada to accept him as a refugee because he’s opposed to torture.

Jemley argues that as one of only a small number of Arabic linguists with top security clearance, he could be forced to violate international law by participating in the interrogations of terrorism suspects. It was something he hadn’t considered when he enlisted in 2005 and was handpicked to undergo two years of intense training due to his adeptness with languages.

Only last February did he discover that his government had sanctioned new rules on how terrorism suspects could be interrogated. He believes it’s torture and when he realized he might be asked to be a part of it, he fled.

“It’s a soldier’s obligation to say `no’ if their commander is doing things that are criminally complicit,” Jemley, now 42, said in a recent interview in Toronto. “I think everyone is agreeing now that torture is really what has been going on … I have every reason to believe that from my small pool that I belong to, with my credentials, that I’d be ordered to do such things.”

`Torture’ has become a much-debated word with profound legal implications since the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. administration’s decision to re-write the laws of war.

Detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and the undisclosed CIA prisons around the world have claimed widespread abuse. The CIA has admitted to using `coercive techniques’ during interrogations, such as waterboarding, a process whereby agents simulate drownings.

Much of the legal community considers this treatment torture and point to international laws such as the Geneva Conventions, which were established after WWII to impose legal restrictions on the barbarity of war.

Canada so far has largely been able to sidestep the debate about torture and the Bush administration’s post-9/11 policies. Other cases of deserters in Canada have focused on the larger question of the legality of the Iraq war. About a dozen cases are working their way through the refugee board and courts with varying legal arguments and one deserter has already been deported back to face a court martial.

The issue of Guantanamo’s legality arose earlier this year in the Supreme Court case concerning Canadian detainee Omar Khadr. The high court justices ruled that Canadian agents had acted illegally by interrogating the Toronto teenager in 2003 and 2004. But the high court relied on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that deemed Guantanamo illegal, rather than debating issues of torture and indefinite detention specifically.

Jemley’s case is the first to deal with the issue directly. The CIA has admitted it uses acts such as waterboarding. There’s evidence that Guantanamo detainees were subjected to programs such as sleep deprivation, intimidation with dogs and sexual humiliation. If these tactics are torture, thereby violating international law, Jemley argues he could be prosecuted for war crimes if he participates.

Canada must decide whether the U.S. administration has sanctioned torture in deciding his case, his lawyer says.

“There are specific rules for soldiers and the basic idea is nobody should participate in torture, ever,” said Jemley’s lawyer Jeffrey House. “Nobody should associate themselves with torture or violations of the Geneva Conventions because if we start to wink at violations of the Geneva Conventions they’re no longer law, they’re just guidelines.”

Calls to Jemley’s commander at the 341st Military Intelligence Battalion at Camp Murray, Tacoma, were not returned this week. But a letter of “unexcused absence” emailed to Jemley from Maj. Brian Bodenman outlined what penalties he could face if he failed to show up to training by yesterday’s deadline.

Punishment includes a court martial with possibility of jail time or a discharge and transfer to “inactive ready reserve.” The latter means Jemley could still be called to duty for a period of five years.

“To me it’s like being an indentured servant. You can’t leave, and you can’t give your skills back,” Jemley said.

Since the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003, there is no accurate account of how many deserters have fled to Canada – best guess is a couple hundred, with many remaining underground having not filed a refugee claim.

Comparisons are often made to the Vietnam War when thousands came to Canada. But during Vietnam there was a draft, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has little sympathy for today’s deserters.

Jemley’s decision to join the army was not one he took lightly, nor one borne of patriotic duty. “It wasn’t a political decision. I didn’t really like the Bush administration any more then, than I do now, but Iraqis are people too and I’m not afraid of doing difficult things. So I thought I could help,” Jemley said.

After scoring extremely high on the army’s Defense Language Aptitude Battery test he was asked if he’d become a linguist and was sent to the Army’s language school in Monterey, Calif., for two years. Upon graduation, he spent a brief stint at the secretive National Security Agency, the U.S. government’s electronic eavesdropping agency, and then sought independent contracts where he could work until his unit was deployed.

In February, he signed a lucrative contract with Washington’s Office of Military Commissions, the legal arm of the Guantanamo trials that is prosecuting a couple dozen detainees, including Khadr. It was when Jemley started doing his own research into the Guantanamo cases that he came up with media reports about the waterboarding of suspects. When he was asked to sign an addendum to his OMC contract, which added that he must be available to be on-call for “other language related assignments,” he refused and was fired.

A second contract offered him work in unspecified locations with “the agency” based in northern Virginia. No one would confirm it was the CIA and when he couldn’t get answers about what he’d be doing he turned down the job.

By then he knew he was trapped. These were positions he could refuse, but if he was ordered to duty he couldn’t say no.

“I did everything I was supposed to. I’m not afraid to be deployed. I’m not afraid to die,” Jemley said.

“(But) I’m ashamed about what’s going on.”

His wife Sarah and children aged 8 and 3 have remained in Tacoma until Sarah can finish her master’s nursing degree. They hate the separation but Jemley says he’s confident in his decision.

“I know it sounds glib but I mean it. If one less person gets tortured then it’ll all be worth it.”

© 2008 The Toronto Star

1st soldier to head north to avoid Iraq war loses refugee bid, mulls plea to Federal Court

Published on Thursday, August 14, 2008 by The Toronto Star

Canada To Evict US Deserter

1st soldier to head north to avoid Iraq war loses refugee bid, mulls plea to Federal Court

by Nick Kyonka
American war resister Jeremy Hinzman has been ordered out of the country after a four-year legal battle to earn a home in Canada.

A U.S. Army deserter, Hinzman was the first post-Vietnam War resister to file for refugee status when he arrived in Canada in January 2004 while fleeing a scheduled deployment to Iraq.

Several bumps in the road later, he received a deportation order yesterday from the Canada Border Services Agency after an immigration officer rejected a pair of his last-ditch attempts to remain in the country.

He and his family have been ordered to leave by Sept. 23.

“I’m tremendously disappointed,” Hinzman said yesterday, apparently fighting back tears following the decision. “(But) life goes on and we’ll make the most of it wherever we end up.”

Friends and family joined Hinzman yesterday morning outside the Mississauga offices of the border services agency where he received the decision.

His wife, Nga Nguyen, cradled the couple’s three-week-old daughter, Meghan, while their 6-year-old son, Liam, smiled and ran around in circles as his father hugged crying supporters.

A native of Rapid City, S.D., Hinzman joined the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in January 2001.

He fled to Canada in 2004, just weeks after learning of his scheduled deployment to Iraq to fight in a war he says is both illegal and immoral.

After his initial refugee application was denied in March 2005, Hinzman launched a series of court appeals, all of which were rejected. A bid to take his case to the Supreme Court was rejected in November 2007.

Yesterday’s decision slammed the door on two of his remaining options to stave off deportation – a pre-removal risk assessment and a humanitarian and compassionate review.

Either could have seen him granted permanent residency had the officer reviewing the case found he would face persecution, torture or otherwise unfair treatment if returned to the U.S.

If returned, he could face a return to his unit or a court martial for desertion – a felony offence that would come with possible jail time.

Despite his uncertain future, though, Hinzman said had no regrets about deserting his unit in the name of a principled stand.

“(Iraq) was an unjust war based on false pretenses,” he said.

“Every soldier who refused to fight has probably saved a lot of lives.”

He said he would now consider whether to appeal the decision, a path taken by fellow resister Corey Glass, whose deportation order is on hold while the Federal Court decides whether to review his case.

Meanwhile, Lee Zaslofsky, of the War Resisters Support Campaign, said his group would continue to fight for Hinzman and the estimated 200 other resisters living in Canada.

“We’re going to be appealing to all Canadians to let the government know that this kind of thing has got to stop,” he said, noting a non-binding opposition bill passed in Parliament earlier this year that called on the government to allow resisters such as Hinzman to stay.

A nationwide poll conducted in June found two-thirds of Canadians would support a decision to allow the resisters to stay.

“(The government) must implement the will of Parliament and the people of Canada,” Zaslofsky said.

© 2008 The Toronto Star

7-square-mile ice sheet breaks loose in Canada

7-square-mile ice sheet breaks loose in Canada

July 29, 2008

EDMONTON, Alberta –A chunk of ice spreading across seven square miles has broken off a Canadian ice shelf in the Arctic, scientists said Tuesday.

Derek Mueller, a research at Trent University, was careful not to blame global warming, but said it the event was consistent with the theory that the current Arctic climate isn’t rebuilding ice sheets.

“We’re in a different climate now,” he said. “It’s not conducive to regrowing them. It’s a one-way process.”

Mueller said the sheet broke away last week from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada’s far north. He said a crack in the shelf was first spotted in 2002 and a survey this spring found a network of fissures.

The sheet is the biggest piece shed by one of Canada’s six ice shelves since the Ayles shelf broke loose in 2005 from the coast of Ellesmere, about 500 miles from the North Pole.

Formed by accumulating snow and freezing meltwater, ice shelves are large platforms of thick, ancient sea ice that float on the ocean’s surface. Ellesmere Island was once entirely ringed by a single enormous ice shelf that broke up in the early 1900s.

At 170 square miles and 130-feet thick, the Ward Hunt shelf is the largest of those remnants. Mueller said it has been steadily declining since the 1930s.

Gary Stern, co-leader of an international research program on sea ice, said it’s the same story all around the Arctic.

Speaking from the Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen in Canada’s north, Stern said He hadn’t seen any ice in weeks. Plans to set up an ice camp last February had to be abandoned when usually dependable ice didn’t form for the second year in a row, he said.

“Nobody on the ship is surprised anymore,” Stern said. “We’ve been trying to get the word out for the longest time now that things are happening fast and they’re going to continue to happen fast.”

© Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

The Climate Change Denial Industry

The Climate Change Denial Industry

A news station from Canada.

Canada Will Deport US Army Deserter

Published on Tuesday, July 15, 2008 by The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Canada Will Deport US Army Deserter

by Robert Matas

VANCOUVER – U.S. army deserter Robin Long is slated to be deported back to his army base in Fort Knox, Ky., today, which would make him the first resister to the U.S. war effort in Iraq to be sent out of Canada.

Madam Justice Anne Mactavish of the Federal Court of Canada cleared the way for the deportation late yesterday, dismissing a last-ditch attempt to delay the process while the 25-year-old pursued further appeals.

“I was just shocked at some things in [the] ruling,” Bob Ages, a spokesman for an informal group called Vancouver War Resisters Support Campaign, told reporters outside the courtroom. “It just flies in the face of everything that we and every Canadian know about the reality of what is going on.”

Mr. Ages said the court misunderstood the situation facing Mr. Long upon his return.

“I do not think there is any doubt someone being up in Canada, and a vocal opponent to the war, will be treated harshly by the American military … there is no question he will be court-martialed and will receive severe punishment.”

Mr. Long’s deportation would be a “terrible precedent for Canada, especially given our history of providing sanctuary for war resisters, over 100,000 draft dodgers and deserters during the Vietnam era,” he said earlier to reporters.

“This will be the first time Canada played gendarme to the American military,” Mr. Ages said, appealing to Prime Minister Stephen Harper or Immigration Minister Diane Finley to intervene. Members of the support group were to meet at the Peace Arch border crossing this morning to protest the deportation.

The war resisters support group is aware of about 50 deserters in Canada, Mr. Ages said, although the group has been told that “hundreds” are living underground in Canada.

Mr. Long, who fled to Ontario in 2005, had signed up to join the U.S. Army in July, 2003.

He believed at that time that his country was justified in going to war in Iraq, his lawyer Shepherd Moss said at the court hearing to halt the deportation. Mr. Long intended to train as a tank commander. “He wanted to go to defend his country,” Mr. Moss said.

His perspective changed while in training at the army base at Fort Knox. After hearing that weapons of mass destruction had not been found in Iraq, Mr. Long thought the U.S. had no reason for being at war. Also, he was troubled by evidence of abuse of Iraqi detainees that came out in May of 2004, Mr. Moss said.

Mr. Long concluded the abuse was systemic and condoned by the U.S. administration, Mr. Moss said. After some soul-searching, Mr. Long decided he would not go to Iraq and would not participate or be complicit in what he believed were war crimes, the lawyer said.

Mr. Long fled to Ontario, but moved to B.C. last summer. He sought to be accepted as a refugee in September, 2006. His application for refugee status was denied on Feb. 15, 2007. An application for leave to appeal the decision was turned down.

In a final attempt to stay in Canada, Mr. Long applied yesterday for a stay of the removal order in order to allow him further judicial appeals.

Mr. Long was not in court for the hearing yesterday. He was in custody at a location outside Vancouver after failing on two previous occasions to report to authorities when he was required.

Caroline Christiaens, a lawyer with the federal Department of Justice, told the court that Mr. Long voluntarily joined the army, was not deployed to Iraq and did not apply to be recognized as a conscientious objector while in the United States.

No evidence was submitted on what Mr. Long would be required to do in Iraq, whether he could have requested an alternative assignment or what would happen if he was sent back to the United States, she said.

If Mr. Long was returned to the United States and prosecuted as a deserter, he would have access to due process in a military court, she added.

Judge Mactavish said Mr. Long had to provide “clear and non-speculative evidence” that he would suffer irreparable harm if he were not allowed to stay longer in Canada. Mr. Long asserted he would face significant jail time and suffer adverse consequences as a result of a dishonourable discharge from the military.

The vast majority of American deserters have not been prosecuted for desertion, according to evidence before the court, the judge stated in a four-page decision.

Judge Mactavish also stated that Mr. Long did not provide evidence to show he would be singled out for harsh treatment by the U.S. military because of the publicity associated with case.

The United States has a sophisticated military-justice system that respects the rights of service personnel, she said.

The court heard that Mr. Long would likely be returned to his army unit, which would mete out whatever punishment he would receive.

Spokespersons from Citizenship and Immigration Canada did not respond to phone calls late yesterday from The Globe and Mail.

© Copyright 2008 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.

Canadian defence policy changes along with climate in the suddenly accessible Far North

Published on Tuesday, July 8, 2008 by The Toronto Star

The Security Dimensions of Environmental Policy

Canadian defence policy changes along with climate in the suddenly accessible Far North

by Alec Crawford

On April 13, a patrol of Canadian Rangers arrived at Eureka, a remote weather station in the southwest part of Ellesmere Island.

For more than two weeks the patrol had been trekking across Canada’s northern archipelago as part of Operation Nunalivut (”this land is ours”), a now-yearly exercise carried out by the Canadian Forces to assert the country’s sovereignty in the High Arctic.

A month later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister of National Defence Peter McKay unveiled the latest iteration of the Canada First Defence Strategy.

The war in Afghanistan remains the focus. But the defence strategy also underlined a commitment to augmenting the Canadian Forces’ capacity to “protect Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and security.”

While this hearkens back to the country’s more traditional security concerns, it has been brought about by a very new security threat: that of climate change.

Arctic temperatures have been rising at almost twice the global average over the past 100 years, reducing sea ice by 2.7 per cent per decade. Under some scenarios, Arctic late-summer sea ice is projected to disappear almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century.

With climate change increasing access to the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, lucrative fisheries will develop as the ice recedes and cold-water fish move north.

The exploitation of the area’s mineral deposits will become more cost-effective, and the region’s vast oil and gas resources — which are believed to account for one-quarter of the world’s undiscovered reserves — will ironically become more accessible due to climate change.

A well-publicized scramble for these resources is already underway, with Canada, Russia, the United States, Denmark and Norway all staking competing claims.

Russia has claimed rights over nearly half of the Arctic, and in August 2007 famously used a submarine to plant its flag on the seabed of the North Pole — a move described by a U.S. state department official as an unacceptable land-grab. Such tensions and disagreements are becoming more commonplace. According to the New York Times, “Claims of expanded territory are being pursued the world over, but the Arctic Ocean is where experts foresee the most conflict.”

Control of the Arctic’s natural resources depends to a large extent on the 1994 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which set out legal controls for marine natural resources and pollution.

The convention established the right to a maritime border that encloses an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles from the coast. Countries can also apply to extend their maritime sovereignty beyond the 200-mile limit if the edge of the continental shelf extends further.

Canada ratified the treaty in 2003, and in 2006 launched an ambitious mapping exercise to define its maritime border as far as possible across the continental shelf.

The scope is enormous; the extended shelf of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans alone is roughly the combined size of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Along with new access to rich natural resources, the Northwest Passage could become a commercially viable navigation channel within the next 20 years.

Successive Canadian governments have argued that the Northwest Passage is Canadian territory, and in the interest of North American security (and the environment) Canada should control traffic in the passage, as opposed to allowing unfettered access.

The government’s position stands in contrast to that of other maritime countries. The United States, for example, believes the Northwest Passage should be open to international traffic, and that vessels need not obtain consent from Canada before travelling through the strait; acceptance of Canadian sovereignty over the strait could set a dangerous precedent for other, equally strategic waterways such as those in the South China Sea.

To back up its stake, the Canadian government is investing heavily in equipment and staff to bolster its presence in the region. It has committed to building six to eight navy patrol ships to guard the Northwest Passage, and in August 2007 the Prime Minister announced plans to build two military bases in the region: an army training centre for 100 troops in Resolute Bay, and a deep-water port at Nanisivik on Baffin Island.

When the patrols of Operation Nunalivut set out in late March for their trek across Canada’s Arctic, the team was not strictly made up of military personnel.

While primarily a display of Canadian military presence in the region, this year’s operation carried with it a scientific team assessing the characteristics and stability of the ice shelves on Northern Ellesmere Island – indicative of the close linkages between security and the environment in the region.

It is clear that the environment and its management can no longer be viewed as a “soft” policy area – it can also have real security implications. The Arctic is changing, and Canadian security policy is changing with it.

To quote Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, “As long as it’s ice, nobody cares except us, because we hunt and fish and travel on that ice. However, the minute it starts to thaw and becomes water, then the whole world is interested.”

Alec Crawford is co-author of Change and the New Security Agenda: Implications for Canada’s security and environment, a report prepared for the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development.

© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2008

Canadian Immigration Blinks on Use of FBI Database for US Peace Activists

Published on Monday, June 9, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

Canadian Immigration Blinks on Use of FBI Database for US Peace Activists

by Ann Wright

On June 1, U.S. peace activist Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Codepink women for Peace and Global Exchange, Diane Wilson, an environmental, jail reform and peace activist and I, a retired US Army Reserves Colonel and diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war, attempted to enter Canada to attend a conference in Vancouver, Canada on women war resisters.

Diane Wilson, mother of five and grandmother of five, author of “An Unreasonable Woman,” which tells about her fight against the petro-chemical companies of the South Texas coast that polluted the bay where she was a shrimper, had not been to Canada since 1970 when she went AWOL from the US Army in opposition to the Vietnam war. She stayed in Toronto, Canada for three months before returning to the United States and turning herself into the Army. She had been an Army medic and had seen the horrors of war while working at an Army hospital in Texas and decided she could not work in any way to support the Vietnam War. For her act of conscience, Diane received an undesirable discharge. Diane has been arrested numerous times for environmental issues and for anti-war actions.

I had been denied entry to Canada twice in 2007 and Medea had been denied once in 2007. Canadian immigration told us that we were ineligible to enter Canada because of our arrests (not convictions, just arrests) for peaceful, non-violent protest Washington, DC in front of the White House and the US Congress, in New York at the US mission to the United Nations and the United Nations itself, in Crawford, Texas and San Francisco, California.

We were protesting President Bush’s policies of the war in Iraq (a war that successive Canadian governments have refused to join), extraordinary rendition and torture (Canadian citizen Maher Arar was kidnapped by US government officials from JFK airport and flown to Syria where he was tortured for 9 months and to whom Canada paid $10 million for Canadian complicity in his kidnapping), illegal prisons and illegal eavesdropping, among many other crimes.

These arrests now appear on the FBI’s National Crime Information Database, a data base that was created for recording serious felonies, parole violations, gang related crimes, sex offenders. Misdemeanor violations for protest political policies are not listed as offenses to be recorded on the NCIC.

Canadian immigration has been using the NCIC data base to determine eligibility to enter Canada and has denied a number of anti-war activists entry to Canada from information contained on the data base .

Many Canadian parliamentarians have been very concerned about their immigration service using the FBI’s politically tainted data base and invited Medea and myself in October, 2007 to attend a parliamentary conference to discuss the database. Canadian Immigration at the Ottawa International Airport refused me entry to Canada despite the letter of invitation from the parliamentarians and despite their presence outside the arrivals hall at the airport. (Medea had been arrested the previous day in the US Congress and was unable to go on the trip.)

On June 1, Canadian parliamentarian Libby Davies, drove to the US side of the border and rode in the same van as Medea and I. Diane went ahead in a different car and was not stopped by immigration despite her numerous arrests. Parliamentarian Davies told the immigration officers that she had knowledge of our peaceful, non-violent protests of Bush administration policies and vouched for our character.

During three hours at the border, immigration officers made phone calls to various offices. At the end of the process, Medea was given a 24 hour visitors permit and I received an exception to my earlier exclusion order, apparently from a high official in the Ministry of Immigration.

The next day, June 2, Veterans for Peace (VFP) national president Elliot Adams and VFP member Will Cover, drove from New York to Ottawa to observe the vote of the Canadian parliament on the non-binding resolution that would allow US war resisters to stay in Canada. After being asked at the border crossing if either had ever been arrested, they both acknowledged that they had been arrested for protesting Bush policies on the war in Iraq. They were further questioned in secondary screening about the character of the protests and arrests, and after two hours, were allowed to continue into Canada. They drove on to Ottawa and attended the 137to 110 Parliamentary non-binding vote to permit US war resisters to remain in Canada.

The border crossing by two groups of high profile anti-war activists with arrest records in a two day period, both dealing with the issue of US war resisters in Canada, may indicate a change in the position of the Canadian immigration service on misdemeanor arrests for political protest in the United States.

We hope so, as we pose no threat to Canadian security and indeed our actions in the United States for which we were arrested seem to reflect the views of most Canadians that the war in Iraq should end and that US war resisters should be able to stay in their country.

The Ottawa-based International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (CLMG) has set up an action-research clearinghouse on border controls and watch lists to investigate and document cases related to the creation of no-fly lists and other watch lists that impact on civil liberties, right to privacy and mobility rights for all travelers, including peace activists.

CLMG would like to hear from anyone who has had trouble entering Canada because of arrests for political protests in the United States. Their website, http://www.travelwatchlist.ca, will be active on June 18, 2008 and will have a toll-free number.

Please contact CLMG if you have had travel problems into Canada based on political activism.

Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/US Army Reserve veteran who retired as a Colonel. She was also a US diplomat for 16 years and served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned in March, 2003 from the US Government in opposition to the Iraq war. She is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”