Escalating Crisis in Ontario 's Boreal Forest – Where’s McGuinty? (Grassy Narrows) : Thunderbay IMC

Press Release:

Escalating Crisis in Ontario's Boreal Forest – Where’s McGuinty?

"We have reached a crucial moment in Ontario where political leadership is grossly overdue"

Toronto – Environmentalists, human rights groups and First Nations from Northern Ontario brought a unified message to Queens Park today, asking for no more logging and mining in the Northern boreal forest without the prior informed consent of Aboriginal communities and without the identification and protection of ecological and cultural values through credible land use planning before logging and mining goes forward.

The environmental group ForestEthics also released a map (http://www.wheresmcguinty.ca) showing a number of controversy areas across Ontario, and illustrated a growing trend of escalating First Nation and environmental concerns due to government mismanagement and irresponsible corporate behavior.

“There is a crisis in Ontario’s Boreal Forest. This government is mismanaging the last of our great northern forests and ignoring First Nations rights and title. To add insult to injury, they are sitting back and watching the last caribou habitat disappear,” said Tzeporah Berman, program director of ForestEthics. “We have reached a crucial moment in Ontario where political leadership is grossly overdue.”

She added the premier’s very own provincial forestry committee encouraged the government to issue a moratorium on any further resource development in the northern boreal until land use planning was implemented. Not only did McGuinty ignore the recommendation, he has since approved a diamond mine that has an ecological footprint four times the size of Toronto, and plans to extend industrial logging further north than ever before into the Valhalla Forest, an unlogged, intact area that is critical caribou habitat.

At the same time, the requests for a moratorium on logging and rights and title of Grassy Narrows have not been honoured as logging continues at Grassy Narrows despite a peaceful three-year logging blockade by the Grassy Narrows First Nation and an independent assessments that wood supply and logging in their traditional territory is unsustainable.

“We have watched Abitibi Consolidated and Weyerhaeuser clearcut our land, destroy our traditional ways of life, and had our trap lines are disappear,” said Steve Fobister, Band Council Member of the Grassy Narrows First Nation. “The Ontario government just looks the other way and refuses to address our concerns.”

This month, Amnesty International reported on the situation in Ontario to the United Nations. The report can be found here - http://www.amnesty.ca/resource_centre/news/view.php?load=arcview&article=3456&c=Resource+Centre+News.

“Amnesty International is increasingly concerned that the right of Indigenous peoples, such as the Grassy Narrows First Nations, to hunt, trap and gather food and medicinal plants on their territories is not adequately recognized or protected in Ontario,” stated Craig Benjamin of Amnesty International Canada.

For more information, please visit http://www.wheresmcguinty.ca