Thank you sister Willi Nolan and friends: - prairiemessenger.ca/07_16_2014/NBlawsuit_07_16_14.html [image: LAWSUITS LAUNCHED — Dallas McQuarrie (kneeling) and his wife, Susan (sitting at right), were arrested last year during a demonstration against the shale gas industry at Kent County in New Brunswick. Protesters have now taken their fight to the courts. (Photo by Caroline Lube-DArcy) prairiemessenger.ca/07_16_2014/McQuarrie%20protest.jpg] Epic battle to take place in New Brunswick courtroom By Dallas McQuarrie ST. IGNACE, N.B. — A life and death struggle will begin in New Brunswick courtrooms this fall with the launch of two lawsuits. On one side stands the Government of Canada, the Province of New Brunswick and their shale gas and oil industry allies. Challenging them are two volunteer groups represented by Regina lawyer Larry Kowalchuck. After slowing to a crawl the province’s and industry’s activities for three years, the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA), a coalition of more than 20 community groups, filed what is known as the Science Suit against the Province of New Brunswick in St. John Court of Queen’s Bench June 23. Three days later, another group of 18 citizens filed another lawsuit against the Government of Canada, the Province of New Brunswick and SWN Resources Canada, a shale gas company operating here. Developing shale gas in New Brunswick is controversial. Upon election in 2010, the governing Conservatives angered many by reversing their previous opposition to the industry. Protests grew steadily for the next three years as scientific research revealing the dangers to human health associated with shale gas became widely known. A provincial decision last year to use force against peaceful protesters was severely criticized by Amnesty International. NBASGA’s lawsuit is about science. Armed with more than 150 independent scientific studies and a growing body of industry horror stories from communities elsewhere, the Alliance says it can prove the threat to the health and lives of New Brunswickers from unconventional shale gas and oil is so great that it violates the right to life, liberty and the security of the person guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. NBASGA also says it will prove that shale gas “contributes to climate change and threatens the very existence” of both people today and future generations. “The scientific research to date on shale gas and the experience of communities elsewhere with it is very alarming,” NBASGA President Roy Reis said. That documentation includes a recent Colorado School of Public Health/Brown University study that concluded, “as the number and nearness of wells to pregnant women’s homes went up, so did the likelihood that their babies would develop congenital heart defects.” A similar study in Pennsylvania found that “close exposure to fracking increased the likelihood of low birth weight by more than 50 per cent.” “We have the science — the government doesn’t,” NBASGA spokesperson Jim Emberger said in challenging provincial Energy Minister Craig Leonard to produce the studies his government claims show industry safety. “Court action is necessary because the province has ignored the many dire warnings about shale gas from both independent scientists and doctors, including the recent report from The Council of Canadian Academies,” he said. New Brunswick’s College of Family Physicians, Nurses Union, and Lung Association, along with doctors and medical staff at several hospitals, have joined NBASGA’s call for a moratorium on shale gas. Yet all these concerns and much more have been summarily dismissed by the government as “misinformed” at the same time as it refuses to make public the studies it claims justify such development. While NBASGA’s lawsuit is about using science to defend life, the second lawsuit, filed 72 hours later, casts a broader net. The 18 plaintiffs in what is known as the Peoples Lawsuit are asking the courts to stop shale gas, order the damage already done repaired, and to uphold the rights of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples, including those enshrined in the Peace and Friendship Treaties signed with the Europeans when they arrived. Conceived by local activist Wilhelmina “Willi” Nolan, the group includes an organic farmer, a sound technician, a family of six, Aboriginal people from Elsipogtog Reserve, a Maliseet Elder and leader in the Wabanaki Confederacy, and a young woman from Halifax who says she was a victim of a hit-and-run by a gas company contractor but was refused assistance by the police. Organic farmer Marcel White moved back to New Brunswick from Alberta to do everything he could to stop shale gas here. White says he doesn’t want to see what happened to people there happen here. He talks about school children in Alberta’s natural gas “flaring areas” whose academic scores on provincial tests consistently lag behind school children in areas where there is no flaring. Sound technician Marc Bernard says people are realizing that climate change threatens us all. He’s insistent that the province “start investing in sustainable and renewable energy sources.” The Peoples Lawsuit will highlight damage already done to an aquifer near Rogersville in Kent County. Lorraine Clair knows about that damage, yet to be repaired. For this 47-year-old grandmother, “enough is enough.” Clair said she is angry that this aquifer, damaged when a “shot hole” drilled there went horribly wrong, has been bleeding on to the ground for almost a year. Both lawsuits are about protecting lives and putting an end to what NBASGA spokesperson Denise Melanson says is using people in shale gas development areas as “human guinea pigs.” Melanson notes that there are more than 600 chemicals used by the industry, and 90 per cent of those chemicals are known to harm human health. “People near unconventional oil and gas wells are exposed to toxic and cancer-causing chemicals at various times and in unknown quantities on an ongoing basis,” she said. “Purposefully exposing people to hundreds of toxins and cancer-causing chemicals through the water they drink, the air they breathe, and the food they eat without their knowledge or informed consent is unconscionable.” “Exposing people to hundreds of chemicals without their informed consent violates the ethical standards governing both scientific and medical testing.” The two lawsuits promise to be landmarks in Canadian jurisprudence. NBASGA’s lawsuit is believed to be the first time a government in Canada has been taken to court on the issue of climate change. Further, NBASGA asks for a moratorium on shale gas until long-term, population-based scientific studies show that it can be done safely. The People’s Suit was launched the same day as the historic June 26 Supreme Court of Canada decision declaring that Aboriginal people who did not sell or cede their land by treaty remain its rightful owners. That decision looks like a “game changer” in New Brunswick because no Aboriginal territory here was ever ceded.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 03:42:09 +0000