Sierra Club Blog Posts
This page shows a collection of all of Sierra Club Canada's blog posts, shown in chronological order. To view the full post, click on its title.
#BlackOutSpeakOut - A response to Harper's war on nature & democracy
Submitted by John Bennett on Sun, 2012-05-06 18:32
The federal government’s war on nature and democracy means “Silence is no longer an option” for Canadians. So I’m urging you to join with Sierra Club Canada and the country’s leading environmental organizations in a national campaign to force the government to restore the environmental protection and democratic participation. The campaign aims to force the Harper government to retreat and restore the environmental protection and democratic participation it recently gutted.... Read more »
Peter Kent is a big fat liar! Response to “money laundering” allegations
Submitted by John Bennett on Sun, 2012-05-06 01:40
This week Federal Environment Minister Peter Kent has made repeated allegations that environmental groups are “laundering money”. This is a serious charge because according to the federal government’s own website: Money laundering is the process used to disguise the source of money or assets derived from criminal activity.
This is beyond anything in my experience and is absolutely irresponsible. A cabinet minister is going around spouting serious allegations without proof and the media is repeating them without doing anything to investigate the validity of his statements.... Read more »
Bike Rage
Submitted by John Bennett on Fri, 2012-04-13 16:02
This blog was going to be about “bike rage”. I witnessed an incident yesterday walking to work. I heard an angry yell and an expletive from a woman on bike enraged with the rider in front of her who was dawdling along in the bike lane chatting on his cell phone. The yell was so powerful and heartfelt you could feel the rage across the street. Yet, the dawdler didn’t seem to notice.
Before I could start typing however, I participated in a news conference on Parliament Hill. Yes, if I wear a tie and jacket they still let in the building (for how long?).... Read more »
Who's Next?
Submitted by John Bennett on Wed, 2012-04-04 18:53
Sometimes you just don’t want to be right.
In the Sierra Club Canada national office we are busy preparing our 2011 annual report. As I go through my files from last year (wow – we certainly were busy) I came across an email that rattled me. It was the last email I sent to supporters in December. In it I outlined the disturbing developments we saw in 2011 and what I thought it all meant.
Much like watching troop movements across the frontier, I could see an impending invasion. The email, in fact, documented the beginnings of an all-out assault on environmental protection in Canada - and the protectors. We could see signs of it coming a couple of months earlier (I mused about it in my blog).... Read more »
Government spokesman should apologize for derogatory and inacurate comments
Submitted by John Bennett on Thu, 2012-03-22 16:43
Dear Friends,
Below find a letter that I sent yesterday to Patricia Best of Natural Resources Canada.
It pertains to remarks she made to Canadian Press about Sierra Club Canada, which we feel are inaccurate and derogatory.
Sincerely,
John Bennett, Executive Director
Sierra Club Canada
jb@sierraclub.ca
Patricia Best, Director of Communications
Natural Resources Canada
21st Floor, Room C2-2
580 Booth Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0E4Wednesday, March 21, 2012M
Re: Apology
Growing a Forest of Support!
Submitted by Gretchen Fitzgerald on Mon, 2012-03-19 17:31
We want to continue be a Voice for the Earth, implementing innovative and effective environmental education programs like our Wild Child Nature Immersion Project.
We want to keep on addressing key concerns from an Atlantic Canadian perspective, on issues like fracking, local solutions to climate change, and stopping oil an gas development in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
We need local donors to help us continue to be here when members, media, and the general public call with concerns, asking for expert advice and action! But we can't do so without your help.
Please help us achieve our goal of $40,000 by making your contribution to the campaign here.
Thanks to our generous supporters, we are growing a forest of support! ... Read more »
First Nations the real target of government’s war on environment
Submitted by John Bennett on Wed, 2012-03-14 13:23
I may be a little more preoccupied with the government campaign to marginalize environmental groups (more than most) so apologies to those who feel I’ve been harping on this too much.
Speaking of harping … it’s Harp Seal hunt season and there is no ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence for to the seals to give birth (yet the government has given hunters a quota to kill 400,000 pups). Climate change is putting the seals and seal hunters out of business. A sensible government, one might think, would be putting the fossil fuel industry out of business in response. Instead, of course, it is trying to put people like me out of business.
Or is it?... Read more »
What worries me …
Submitted by John Bennett on Wed, 2012-03-07 19:45
If the twentieth century taught us anything, it taught us that concentrating too much power in the hands of a few is a very dangerous thing. In fact, the recognition of the necessity of keeping competing interests apart goes back a lot further.
Democratic countries have long upheld the importance of the separation of church and state. There are too many examples of excesses that can result from state enforcement of religious belief. Look no further than Iran for a real-time reason why.
We don’t, however, question the marriage of state and ideology - more specifically, government and big business - despite the havoc this union has caused over the past century. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, no? Even in the face of the (most recent) global economic meltdown – clearly caused by the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism - government and industry continue to grow closer.
UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIP... Read more »
"Mean Girls"
Submitted by John Bennett on Tue, 2012-02-28 20:11
Do we have a principal to set things right?
It struck me the other day: Canada is stuck in a “Mean Girls” high school movie plot. Then the Robo-Call scandal broke and confirmed it.
Twenty years ago a new kid showed up in the parliamentary cafeteria. He was a big deal in Alberta. The son of Premier, but in Ottawa he was just an upstart from the country who needed to be put in his place. The in-crowd had nothing but scorn. They made fun of the way he talked, the clothes he wore, his nerdy glasses, even how he combed his hair. It wasn’t long before his dream of improving democracy was dashed and he was headed home. But he brought a few young buddies to Ottawa who stayed, vowing to teach those eastern kids a thing or two. They chose a new leader who, like Lindsay Lohan, was very talented - but with a flawed personality.... Read more »
Dec. 5-9: Features of Creatures
Submitted by Heidi Verheul on Wed, 2012-02-22 14:25
Creatures have features. These specific adaptations make them what they are and not something else. A living critter may have feathers, fur, flippers, feet, or fins (and those are just the ones that I can think of that start with the letter “f”). Scientists like to classify and name living things based on the features that living things have.
A great game to get children up and running about, while at the same time using their imaginations to think of the characteristics of different critters is “Ranger Ranger”. To get the group thinking about features before getting into the game, I’ll lead a short discussion about what makes a reptile different from a mammal or a bird from a tree.
Ranger, Ranger Running Game
When you get out to the grounds start off by making a rectangular field. Have all the children line up on one end of the rectangle facing the opposite end.... Read more »
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