| Health care rally
Calgary activists have organized a rally in support of public health care, which is being billed as the "last chance to show your opposition to the government’s third way agenda."
The rally will be held on Friday, March 31 at 5:30 p.m. at Olympic Plaza. Speakers will include NDP leader Brian Mason, Green Party leader George Read, United Church minister Bill Phipps, Liberal MLA David Swann, NDP MLA David Eggen and Avalon Roberts, Calgary chair of Friends of Medicare.
Grant Neufeld, one of the organizers, says a variety of groups have been working together on the rally, including churches, unions, political parties and activist groups.
"It’s pretty clear that the so-called ‘third way’ is basically privatization couched in convoluted terms to try and make people think they’re trying to keep public health care functioning when it’s pretty clear that’s not where they’re going," says Neufeld. "I think there’s an actual chance to stop this part of the privatization campaign. We’ve already seen an erosion of our public system and deliberate damage to the public health care system by the provincial government."
Neufeld says he expects a large turnout. "This is looking to be one of the bigger protests we’ve had in Calgary."
EnCana fined for water well pollution
EnCana Corporation has been fined $99,400 for polluting a water well in Colorado.
The Colorado Oil and Gas Commission (COGC) fined the Calgary-based energy company after an investigation revealed that a gas well owned by EnCana had contaminated a water well on adjacent property with natural gas, including its components (methane, ethane, propane, butane, pentane and hexane).
EnCana has been ordered to continue to provide the owners of the water well with clean drinking water.
In the COGC ruling, the commission writes that EnCana disagrees with the commission’s ruling, but has agreed to pay the fine "to avoid an extended and contested hearing in this matter."
Some rural landowners in Alberta have raised concerns about their water wells being contaminated by methane gas from EnCana’s coalbed methane wells, which the company has denied. The Colorado well was not a coalbed methane well.
Alberta forest rapidly disappearing
A recent report by Global Forest Watch Canada has found that only four per cent of Alberta’s forest has intact sections larger than 10,000 hectares and 42 per cent of that is in protected areas. The environmental organization points to wide-scale forestry and oil and gas activity as being responsible for the fragmentation.
The report points out that nine of 13 woodland caribou herds in Alberta are decreasing in population and there’s a "strong correlation" between disappearing caribou herds and decreasing amounts of forest. The report also notes that only 26 per cent of grizzly habitat is in intact forest.
Alberta has the lowest percentage of intact forest of any province except those in the Maritimes.
The Alberta Wilderness Association is calling for more protection of Alberta’s threatened forests in order to protect threatened species such as the caribou and the grizzly.
Alberta government should develop new well-being indicator
The Pembina Institute, an environmental think-tank, is urging the Alberta government to adopt a new indicator other than the GDP to measure Alberta’s success.
Pembina Institute economist Amy Taylor says that the GDP only looks at the economics, not social or environmental costs such as depletion of natural resources and damage to the environment.
The Pembina Institute advocates using a system called the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) to measure Albertans’ well-being. The GPI tracks social, environmental and economic indicators such as poverty levels, suicide rates and the health of the environment. |
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