Earth Day

[Toedancer]

Indeed Quebec is heating up all right!
I'm going to attend a community event with David Miller speaking tomorrow night, curious about what people see as the issues  http://www.lampchc.org/sites/default/files/AGMFlyer-BlackandWhite%20Flyer-PFD.pdf  It's at night, but since it is next door no worries being alone. Won't be staying for the 2 hours, have the kids here who I won't see again until mid-summer. Waah!!

[Boom Boom]

Charest is probably following a 'scorched earth' policy that will intensify if the polls continue to show that he might lose the next provincial election here. He'll override all environmental concerns in Quebec in favour of his buddies in the oil and gas sector. He just doesn't care - and Plan Nord is evidence of this.   

[Boom Boom]

My memory is fading quite a bit. Maybe lagatta (or others) could comment on the PQ environmental record? Will they be better or worse than Charest has been? I think Marois has said she supports Plan Nord, but I can't remember the online link to the article.
 
ETA: Not the article I was looking for, but it has this tidbit:
 
  Charest seems intent on using his Plan Nord - the $80-billion, 25-year investment plan to develop mining and other resources of northern Quebec - as his campaign theme. But Forum Research found only 36 per cent support for the Plan Nord vs. 40 per cent opposed and 25 per cent answering "don't know."

[lagatta]

I'm too exhausted after the HUGE demo to make an intelligent analysis of PQ environmental records vs Charest. One could also compare Charest with earlier Liberal governments, just as one could compare Harper with earlier (Progressive) Conservative ones. Charest seems particularly bad, but that could be a lack of perspective.

I remember the PQ favouring measures (something like 200,000 maisons - don't remember the exact name) that would both encourage the construction industry and attendant jobs and the development of car-dependent, single-family-home suburbs on the South Shore, in Laval and on the North Shore (here we are talking about the North Shore of the St-Laurent just north of Mtl and the island of Laval, not where the marchers from Matelionam near Sept-Iles or Boom Boom, farther still, live). Remember polite but pointed discussions with a former trade-unionist feminist who was representing one of those South Shore ridings and calling for a (fucking) new highway. My memories of mega-projects and other evils are not operative right now. I'm eating a quinoa and various crudités salad and sipping cheap red wine.

Estimates of the Earth Day march - incorporating many other issues, including the student struggle of course - are around 300,000. That is stunning. It is certainly the largest demonstration about environmental issues I've ever attended in Québec.

[Boom Boom]

Estimates of the Earth Day march - incorporating many other issues, including the student struggle of course - are around 300,000. That is stunning. It is certainly the largest demonstration about environmental issues I've ever attended in Québec.

 
 
 
I think my MP was there, because he's been emailing photos from the demo.

[Toedancer]

 

[Boom Boom]

  Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair joined the march, remarking on the environmental "debt" the modern world has accumulated in the last generation.
 
excerpt: 
"We are creating the most important ecological, economic and social debt in history that future generations will have to bear," Mulcair said in French, as he signed a symbolic petition supporting the Kyoto Protocol.
 
"We're asking future generations to clean the air, soil and water around tar sands, while we profit."
 
Parti Québécois Leader Pauline Marois stressed the growing importance of public transit in urban settings.
"We believe that we can further reduce our impact on greenhouse gas emissions by favoring electric transit, and transportation that uses renewable resources," she said.
 
My MP (Genest - Jourdain) was there and has been emailing back images of the demo.

[sparqui]

300,000! Very impressive and comforting. 

[lagatta]

So far at least, not a word on the Globe and Mail's website about the huge, historic Montréal Jour de la Terre demo. I guess we have to break stuff to get a report in the "national newspaper"...

You are right, sparqui, it was very comforting. I've been very down of late - after a rush of work, I don't have nearly enough, with all the terror that entails. It was wonderful to see so many people - not just from here in the city but from other centres, smaller towns and villages - some very far away, and who travelled through a late-season snowstorm, often in bumpety school buses - who were saying no to the whole destructive model of "development" favoured by Harper, Charest and their cronies. And affirming life as well. It was really an all-generations demo.

[Boom Boom]

So far at least, not a word on the Globe and Mail's website about the huge, historic Montréal Jour de la Terre demo.

There were demos in Toronto as well, don't see those reported in the G&M either.

[lagatta]

Boom Boom, I was referring to the SIZE of the demo here, not claiming to be the centre of the universe (although of course we are ) I didn't see anything in the online version of the Toronto Star either, about the Toronto demos, but I didn't specifically peruse the GTA rubric. How about Vancouver? Usually they are in the forefront of environmental awareness.

[Boom Boom]

Oh, I think the Montreal march Sunday was the largest ever in Canada, but others may correct me.
 
 
ETA: I guess May Day in Toronto is the next big one. Montreal and Vancouver, too?

[Antonia]

I actually mentioned the march to my editor yesterday -- and she is editor of the weekend papers -- and she knew nothing about it. 

[lagatta]

I hope I'm not being Montreal-centric (jokes aside) but that strikes me as very, very bizarre.

[lagatta]

A friend sent me this piece from the David Suzuki Foundation:

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/panther-lounge/2012/04/quebecers-hear-the-call-and-rise-up-for-the-environment/

Commenters from other cities also saying they heard nothing about the huge march. It was on the front page of the Montreal Gazette, like all the French-language papers; did no other CanWest paper pick it up?