Prairie Chapter

Action Alert: Send your questions for Alberta's next premier and join online live discussion!

Alison Redford, Alberta's new designated Premier elect has a, what some people are calling, progressive platform.  Just how progressive is Alison Redford? Alison Redford wants to create an authority to direct the government's efforts in the renewable energy sector. Redford's website says that this initiative will be based on the "success' of the Alberta Oil Sands Development Authority. The long and the short is, this authority would prefer large transnational and international partnerships in the deployment of renewable energy over local community control and community profit.

Redford will be online for a live discussion October 5th 11am - 12pm and accepting questions in advance.  Submit your questions here! Click the link and submit your questions!

"My objective is to hand over a healthy Alberta to future generations. This ideal guides my thinking on energy issues" says Redford's website.  However, her main objective to achieve this around the tar sands is to focus on reclamation rather then a recognizing local Indigenous communities request for a moratorium on new development in the region.   As millions of tar sands dollars transfer from the people from whose land it is plundered from to international energy companies, shareholders, and distant profit margins, so too will this policy on renewable energy mean that local people will be shut out of being able to control, design, consent, and benefit from renewable energy deployment. Once again, we will watch the government prop up and favour large energy companies over small, decentralized, community owned power.

While Redford was the only major candidate who mentioned renewable energy deployment in any kind of detail (Mar said he'd leave it up to industry), this so-called "hands off" approach leaves it up to the greenwashing interests of the very companies that are destroying global and local ecosystems to decide when and where it is convenient for them to put up a wind farm.

The federal Joint Review Panel  on Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project is holding public hearings starting in January 2012, and you can made an oral statement. These Community Hearings are your only chance to speak directly to the Review Panel.  However, the deadline to sign up to present an oral statement is October 6th! Register Now

Sierra Club Prairie recognizes there have been huge problems with the Enbridge JRP process, but engaging at the hearings offers an opportunity to give voice to the opposition within the process.  Imagine if we could sign up thousands of people, to pack the rooms, and show the wide breadth of opposition. 

Hearings will be held in Alberta as well as BC.  However, the actual dates and locations have not yet been set, because the schedule is determined by who signs up. All of us, throughout the province, stand to be impacted by this project through expansion of tar sands development, oil spills and global warming.