A Brief Message from Niagara At Large publisher Doug DraperAs you may know, Canada’s Harper government has decided to pull its funding from the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in the northwestern Ontario district of Kenora – an area that has served for more than four decades as a research site for studying the impacts of a changing environment, including climate change, on the Great Lakes and other vital freshwater resources.
Council of Canadians leader Maude Barlow speaks out for Experimental Lakes Area at Ottawa media conference
What is so tragic and so anger-provoking, quite frankly, is that it only costs about $2 million dollars a year to keep research projects at this cluster of small lakes going. That is hardly a fraction of the billions of dollars the government was moving to spend on over-priced fighter jets before critics forced a review on that venture or the mutli billons of dollars in revenue the government is losing each year to off-shore tax evasion schemes.
Interestingly enough, the Harper government is also walking away from what has long been regarded in the scientific community as a leading-edge research area at a time when it is attempting to convince the U.S. government it is a leader in environmental stewardship in order to win approval for the XL Keystone pipeline that would run from the Alberta tar sands to oil refineries in Texas.
So please read the following appeal from Mark Calzavara, the Council of Canadian’s regional organizer for Ontario, Quebec and Nunavut and consider clicking on and signing the only message to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger to do what they can to save this valuable research area before it is too late.
From Mark Calzavara, Council of Canadians –
That’s me in the photo (included with this note). It was taken last weekend as I stood in the middle of a frozen lake in Northern Ontario – Lake 468 of the world-renowned Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) to be precise.
Mark Calzavara during recent visit to ELA in the northwesten border region of Ontario and Manitoba
With the Northern Lights dancing and the mercury dropping, I set my camera on a patch of crusty snow to capture with my flashlight a simple but urgent message to share with the world: Save the ELA!
I’d travelled up to the ELA on the eve of its scheduled closure to ensure the Harper government’s shameful decision to shut down this world-class freshwater research facility did not pass quietly over the Easter long weekend.
I wasn’t alone. I was joined by dozens of local residents and activists from the Council’s Thunder Bay Chapter who came together in solidarity. You were there, too. I brought with me your voice and those of thousands of fellow Council of Canadians members across the country in demanding government action to save the ELA.
While I was camped out up there, over the weekend more than 3,000 of you engaged in the Council’s online Action Alert calling on Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger to step in with $2 million in funding to keep the ELA and its vital research alive. What an amazing response!
Thank you to everyone who sent your messages to the premiers! If you haven’t yet done so, there’s still time. Click here to send your message to save the ELA. And please forward this on to your friends, family and colleagues.
There’s good reason for the massive public opposition to the ELA’s defunding. It is a true jewel of scientific research; a unique, world-renowned facility where “whole lake” experiments are conducted to show the long-term effects of industrial activities on our fresh water sources.
There is nothing like it on the planet. No other facility in Canada has contributed more to the world’s collective knowledge of lake science! Amazingly, the ELA has done all this on a stunningly frugal $2 million budget. Rather than reward such a productive government operation, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has decided to shut it down. They claim that the ELA is redundant, but not even Conservative voters are convinced by that – in a recent poll more than 60% of them said the federal government should keep funding the ELA.
For 44 years the ELA has kept an uninterrupted record of changes to our environment. With the Great Lakes experiencing the lowest water levels in their recorded history we need the ELA and its impressive discoveries on phosphates, mercury, acid rain and climate change now more than ever. We used to have governments that saw the value in knowing the impacts of our industries – in knowing the truth. Not anymore. Science is just another casualty in the Conservative’s war on anything and anyone that might reduce corporate profits.
There is still a chance to save the ELA, but we must act quickly. If the ELA is reopened in the next few weeks, the data can be saved and the experiments will remain intact. Ontario and Manitoba could easily cover the operating costs of this incredible research centre. That would also ensure that the science stays public and not hidden away like so many other inconvenient truths about industrial pollution.
If you are one of the thousands to have already sent in your message please click here.
Thank you!
To learn more about the Council of Canadians and the advocacy work it does visit http://www.canadians.org/ .
For a video on the ELA issue click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cjmlo8yBS4&feature=player_embedded#! .
(Niagara At Large invites you to join in the conversation by sharing your views on the content of this post below. For reasons of transparency and promoting civil dialogue, NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last name with their views.)
Niagara At Large 
Here’s an open letter to Greg Rickford, MP for Kenora Stony River, from one of his constituents (printed in The Chronicle Herald of the Northwest):
Rickford ‘hiding’ from constituents on ELA
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Open letter to Greg Rickford, MP for Kenora Rainy River:
The Experimental Lakes Area has received and generated extraordinary and passionate local, national and global concern but you have ignored it.
You broke a promise to me and my granddaughter to set up a meeting to discuss the killing of the ELA and the Harper government’s gutting of Canada’s environmental legislation and protections.
You sent out invitations to attend an open house at your Dryden constituency office. My granddaughter and I travelled to Dryden since no open house was scheduled for Sioux Lookout.
When we entered the office you turned us away, refusing to discuss our concerns, saying you had a conflicting event at the office. You told us to book an appointment with your regional operations manager who took my name and phone number and said she would contact me about scheduling a meeting in Sioux Lookout with a delegation to discuss concerns about the ELA.
I pressed for a January meeting; she said it wasn’t possible. I suggested February and was told that I would be contacted with a time and date. Clearly the meeting needed to be scheduled prior to the closing of the ELA but no response was ever received and March 31, the date of the closure, came without any attempt by your office to arrange the promised meeting.
Twice in media interviews you have characterized people in your riding who express their concerns on this issue as “mean spirited.” You have kept yourself inaccessible to constituents on the subject of the ELA and environmental concerns. Many attempts have been made by the ELA coalition and community members to arrange a meeting with you but to no avail.
What you have demonstrated is that your leadership and this government is being fundamentally dishonest and predatory concerning the hope, future and legacy of our grandchildren.
Since you are hiding from your constituents on this matter, we all need to have a public discussion about the direction of your government and the changes we collectively need to make in order to ensure a sustainable future for this country’s children and their children.
Following that, we need to discuss the role that the Canadian people wish to play in the global community, beyond our selfish and privileged needs and disproportionate wealth.
I am raising an alarm bell and ask all parents and grandparents to join this discussion though all forms of media and let the autocracy know what is and is not acceptable to the people of this riding, this country and to the global community.
Gregory Hlady
Sioux Lookout
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Well done, Gregory. It is a predatory government.
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