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Not environmental groups or Indigenous people or Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry

A cabal of Niagara politicians and the developers pushing the project have few to blame but themselves.

Stay tune to Niagara At Large this Thursday, July 27th for a commentary by NAL publisher and veteran journalist and environment writer Doug Draper that responds to a contentious article published in this April 26^th’s Globe and Mail that seems to place the blame for holding up residential and commercial development proposed for natural heritage lands in Niagara Falls, Ontario’s Thundering Waters Forest on almost everyone but those pushing the project. Continue reading →

‘A home to a teeming array of marine wildlife, including the endangered leatherback turtle and blue whale’

A Message from Daniel Green, Deputy Leader of Canada’s Green Party

Posted July 26^th, 2017 on Niagara At Large

My patience with Prime Minister Trudeau is starting to wear thin. His cabinet recently proposed that the Laurentian Channel in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence — home to a teeming array of marine wildlife, including the endangered leatherback turtle and blue whale — be designated as a Marine Protection Area (MPA).

Endangered blue whales just below the surface of a Gulf of Saint Lawrence that should be more of a marine sanctuary than an offshore oil drilling field

That sounds great. But there’s a catch.

The Liberals’ proposed regulations allow for oil and gas exploration in 80% of this area. Continue reading →

Engaging with Economic Leaders Will Expand Partnerships and Trade Opportunities

“This business mission will build on our productive partnerships with China”    – Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne

News from the Office of Premier Kathleen Wynne

Posted July 26^th, 2017 on Niagara At Large

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne heading to China – again

Premier Kathleen Wynne will lead a delegation to China and Vietnam this fall to strengthen trade partnerships and promote Ontario as a key centre for investment and innovation. Premier Wynne made the announcement in Toronto at the headquarters of green technology company Nanoleaf.

This is the first-ever Ontario Premier’s mission to Vietnam, and Premier Wynne’s third mission to China. Continue reading →

Trump and his anti-EPA lap dog – Scott Pruitt – would gut a ‘Superfund’ program that helped bring the Niagara River and Lake Ontario back from the brink

An Introductory Message from NAL publisher Doug Draper, followed by a Call to Action from veteran U.S. environmentalist Lois Gibbs

Posted July 24th, 2017 on Niagara At Large

To fully understand the outrage of Trump and his anti-Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt moving to gut programs key to keeping hazardous chemicals out of our Great Lakes, it is important to recall a little history from the not-to-distant past.

Lois Gibbs during a Christmas at Love Canal during the late 1970s, where buried chemicals destroyed her Niagara Falls, N.Y. nieghbourhood and spread onward to the waters of the Niagara River and Lake Ontario.

That history stretches back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when citizens on both sides of the Niagara River learned, to their horror, that some of the most lethal chemicals created by modern science – chemicals like dioxin (an ingredient in the Vietnam War-era defoliant Agent Orange), mirex and a witch’s brew of cancer-causing chlorinated benzenes – were bleeding their way into the waters of the river and Lake Ontario from industrial waste dumps dotting the American side of the river.

 Most of the attention focused, and quite understandably given the monster size of the dumps and the lethality of the tens of thousands of chemicals buried in them, on four sites in Niagara County, New York – Love Canal, Hyde Park, S-Area and the 102^nd Street dumps, all sitting on highly fractured bedrock and located within a short walking of the Niagara River or creeks flowing into it. Continue reading →

 The Trudeau government is under no requirement under Canadian law to make public its negotiating objectives on trade agreement. This is both wrong and unacceptable.

A Column from Brent Patterson, Council of Canadians

Posted July 25^th, 2017 on Niagara At Large

This past July 17th , the Trump administration released its objectives for the upcoming renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),

It did so because under the so-called ‘fast-track’ legislation in the U.S., it must give 30-days notice of its negotiating objectives to give Congress time to provide feedback. Fast-track also means that Congress will only be able to vote on the whole NAFTA text once negotiations are completed, it won’t be able to reopen or vote down specific provisions. Continue reading →