Activists block construction at controversial Enbridge Line 9 pumping station

Reprinted from the Media co-op

Contact: Sarah Allen, (289)244-8651, hamiltonline9@hushmail.com,
Action Website: http://swampline9.tumblr.com/
Group Website: http://hamiltonline9.wordpress.com/
Twitter: #SwampLine9 #NoLine9 #TarSands

(Hamilton, ON) Earlier today, a group of individuals concerned about Enbridge’s pipeline expansion project stopped construction at the North Westover pumping station in Flamborough. Line 9B is an existing pipeline that currently runs east to west, however Enbridge has applied to reverse the direction of the pipeline in order to ship tar sands oil from Alberta to the East Coast. The North Westover pumping station needs to undergo construction in order for the reversal to take place.

Early this morning, approximately 60 people walked onto the North Westover site, interrupting construction but allowing workers to close and lock the facility before leaving. The protesters insist that their intention is not to damage any equipment or the pipeline, but they are adamant that construction on this project must stop. They say they intend to stay until the Line 9 expansion project is cancelled.

In addition to major environmental concerns, protesters have identified that Enbridge's lack of consultation with Indigenous nations and other impacted communities has driven them to take a stand against the construction.

“Line 9 is going through our territory, and yet Enbridge hasn't consulted with us or talked to us at all," says Missy Elliot of Six Nations.

“The construction at Westover and along Line 9B is happening as if Line 9B has already been approved. It hasn’t -- in fact public hearings are scheduled for later in August,” says Sarah Allen, one of the group’s media liaisons at the pumping station protest. “What’s worse is that the admissions criteria to be part of these hearings were impossible to meet, shutting out most community voices.”

Activists point out that approximately ninety percent of all pipeline spills happen near terminals and pumping stations, which puts Hamilton at significant risk.

“These decisions have been made with a mind for profit -- not safety, sustainability or the environment. How many lives must be put at risk so that a few people can get richer?” asks spokesperson Elysia Petrone.

“What's best for the land is what's best for our people. We have to protect the land -- this isn't just a side project for us -- we have to protect our future. It's our responsibility." Elliot insists.

Line 9 was designed to carry light sweet crude but Enbridge intends to ship diluted bitumen (Dilbit) through the pipes.

“Dilbit is a product with the consistency of peanut butter mixed with sand, which is then mixed with carcinogens and other poisons, and then pumped through pipelines with added pressure,” activist Elysia Petrone clarifies. “As a result, it is absolutely more corrosive and likely to spill – especially when it’s being put through antiquated pipes not designed to carry the product.”

Line 9 is nearly 40 years old; it is the same age and construction as the pipeline that spilled diluted bitumen two years ago in Kalamazoo, MI. The old pipes are only a quarter of an inch thick, at most, whereas newer guidelines require pipes to be at least three-quarters of an inch thick.

The cleanup for the Michigan spill is still ongoing.

Activists insist that the current public hearing process that Enbridge is ignoring is already stacked. Under the new Economic Action Plan Act, the federal government recently granted themselves the authority to override National Energy Board decisions on pipeline projects. They also removed the requirement that changes to existing pipeline infrastructure be subject to environmental assessments, even if they are undergoing significant changes like those happening for the proposed Line 9.

“Our point is simple: this project is dangerous. It presents outrageous risks to our global environment, to our local ecosystems, and to our individual health. It disregards the health of Indigenous communities and restricts their input, putting their culture and very survival at risk,” Trish Mills argues. “We don’t want this pipeline, and we don’t want the expansion of the Tar Sands. We’ve decided to speak out – for ourselves and for the people who aren’t even aware of the risks yet. That’s why we’re here today, and that's why we have stopped construction.”

Toronto students and labour unions build unity

Report from the Toronto and York Regional Labour Council:

Last week more than 70 representatives of student unions, campus labour unions and the Labour Council met to dialogue about their common goals of tackling austerity. The symposium called "Students and Workers Unite" was hosted by Labour Community Services, the Labour Council and the Canadian Federation of Students - Ontario office.

Workers and students discussed the many challenges faced in the post-secondary arena with added pressures of declining government support and increased privatization on university and college campuses. The common consensus build was that a united front of both students and workers must be presented in order to protect public education.  Campus labour unions and student unions committed to building a framework of ongoing communication and mutual solidarity in each of Toronto’s three universities.

Rumbo al Festival Mundial!!

This really tiny and really sweet video announces the 2nd International Preparatory Meeting for the World Festival of Youth and Students, to be held in Madrid, Spain from 27 to 29 June 2013, and features a speech by Hugo Chavez. ''Rumbo al 18º Festival Mundial de la Juventud y los Estudiantes'' means Towards the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students. You can visit the website of the All-Canada committee here: www.18wfys.tumblr.com

The affordable housing crisis

Read the full report here.

With statistics from the Wellesley Institute: 

In 2009 the federal government announced $2.1 billion in new funding for affordable housing over a two-year period, plus another $5.7 billion for homeowners in middle- and upper-income brackets.

By 2011, these short-term measures were terminated, and there was a 39 percent reduction in affordable-housing funding compared with the previous year.

Since most federal dollars were matched by provinces, territories, municipalities, non-profit and private housing organizations, the combined loss added up to more than $3.5 billion in one year.

Included in the federal cuts:

97% cut in Affordable Housing Initiative (new affordable homes) from $452 million to $16 million;

94% cut in national low-income housing repair program from $674 to $37 million;

27% cut in on-reserve Aboriginal housing from $215 to $156 million;

5% cut in assisted housing from $1.7 to $1.6 billion.

In 1992, the year before Ottawa cancelled funding for new affordable housing, various levels of government contributed 0.57 percent of the gross domestic product to housing.

Fifteen years later, Canada’s GDP had doubled, but housing spending had shrunk to 0.29% of GDP.

Adapted from the Georgia Straight, "Steven Harper lies to world on housing," Nov. 2012

Force and the struggle for a socialist Canada

This article is part of an seven-part series of short quotes Rebel Youth is issuing about class struggle, revolution, civil-war, and parliamentary democracy. See also: Lenin on elections; the Communist Party of Canada on a counter-offensive against capitalism; Engels on voting and street fighting; Lenin on Democracy and Class struggle; Communist and Worker's parties on the struggle for socialism; and Lenin on tactics and guerilla war; the Communist Party of Canada on force, and a peaceful transition to socialism.

A democratic, anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist alliance will have as its objective the democratic restructuring of Canadian society so that the interests of the majority of Canadians come first, and the stranglehold of finance capital on every aspect of life is broken. It will seek to advance the working people’s interests through all available avenues of struggle, based on massive and united extra-parliamentary action.

The alliance will strive to score electoral advances, and the winning of power by a people’s government dedicated to carrying out sweeping measures to democratize society and transform economic relations in the interests of the working class and the Canadian people as a whole.

Such a breakthrough will be difficult to accomplish given the sophisticated means at the disposal of the ruling class to manipulate public opinion, discourage political activism and otherwise influence the outcome of bourgeois elections. A crucial task for the alliance will be to defend and expand democracy and to fight against corporate and governmental attacks on the electoral process.

A democratic, anti-monopoly government, based on a parliamentary majority, and acting in concert with the united and militant extra-parliamentary movements of the people, would signal a qualitative shift in the balance of class forces in Canadian society, and open the door to the revolutionary transformation to socialism. It would involve the people in a truly meaningful way.

The people’s government would be committed to a program of action geared to serve people before profit. That program would arise in the course of the social, economic and political struggles of the working class and its democratic allies, and be subject to the widest discussion and approval among all of the forces of the alliance.

Communists will struggle to win support for the most advanced program of political, economic and social transformation possible in line with the changing conditions. The program must aim: (1) to confront and restrict the power of finance capital (both foreign and domestic), and to extend public ownership of key sectors of the economy; (2) to redistribute wealth and raise the living standards and conditions of life for the vast majority of the people; and (3) to introduce sweeping democratic reforms to enhance popular control and administration of the Canadian state at all levels of government. (...)

Although such measures would not constitute socialism, the victory of a people’s government devoted to carrying out such a broad program would mark a significant step in the struggle for fundamental change and socialist transformation.

To succeed, a people’s government would require the full and conscious mobilization of the working class and its allies outside Parliament. With each meaningful reform enacted, with each democratic measure secured, with each encroachment on the power and privilege of capital, the ruling class and its imperialist international partners would stiffen their resistance by all means at their disposal. But, at the same time, such measures can help to galvanize the masses, and promote working class actions in support of the people’s government.

This would be a period of intensified class struggle on all fronts – political, economic and ideological.

The successful implementation of the people’s program, and the pace with which it is carried out will depend on the unity and militancy of the working class and its revolutionary vanguard, and on the enduring unity of the entire democratic, anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist alliance. Prevailing regional and international conditions will also affect the pace of social transformations.

Throughout this process there will be social and political mobilization of the working class and people’s forces to support and implement the program of the people’s government – through electoral and workplace struggles, street demonstrations and other actions. At the same time, the threatened ruling class will attempt to shake the confidence and unity of the people’s forces and to frustrate their ability to carry out the people’s program.

To preserve its class privileges and re-establish its supremacy, the capitalist class will be inclined to resort to economic blackmail and sabotage, subversion from within those sections of the state apparatus it still influences and controls, political violence and terrorism, and even open rebellion and foreign intervention. The people’s government, with the full support of the working class, will be fully within its rights to counter any such anti-democratic and illegal assaults on people’s power

From Chapter 6 of the Programme of the Communist Party of Canada

Nunavut youth suicide: the legacy of colonialism and genocide

Another major study has revealed the genocidal experience of Aboriginal nations in Canada and especially the Inuit people. Rebel Youth reprints the following directly from the report: 

In Nunavut, the rate of death by suicide among Inuit increased markedly over the last two decades, and it is currently just over 120 per 100,000 people.

56% percent of suicides in Nunavut are committed by men younger than 25, compared to 7% in Canada.

The rise in Nunavut’s rate of death by suicide is almost entirely the result of an increased number of suicides by Inuit younger than 25. The rate of death by suicide among Nunavut Inuit aged 15 to 24 has increased more than six-­‐fold since the early 1980’s.

Beyond actual deaths by suicide, rates of suicide attempts and suicidal ideation (thoughts of committing suicide) appear to be very high in Nunavut. Recent data collected at the Qikiqtani General Hospital indicate that injuries caused by suicide attempts account for almost half of all the injuries among people age 20–29.

Results from the Inuit Health Survey show that 48% of Inuit in Nunavut have thought about committing suicide at some point in their lives, whereas 29% reported having attempted suicide at some point in their lives...

In Nunavut, the rate of death by suicide among Inuit ... is currently just over 120 per 100,000 people, 10 times the Canadian suicide rate.

The 56-page report is called Qaujivallianiq Inuusirijauvalauqtunik, or Learning from Lives that have been Lived. You can download the report in full here in pdf, and view it online below this CBC news here.