LETTER

Trudeau gov’t OK’s drilling in St Lawrence basin

 

The Department of Fisheries & Oceans just released a backwards plan that threatens blue whales, leatherback turtles, and thousands of other marine life. It wants to allow oil and gas exploration in 80% of a proposed marine protected area in the Laurentian Channel.

The Laurentian Channel is a huge swath of ocean where the Gulf of St. Lawrence meets the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a rich, biodiverse area that tens of thousands of marine species rely on, and is a critical migration and feeding route for endangered species.

Oil and gas exploration, which includes drilling, is a huge threat to marine life and should be banned entirely from any protected ocean area. What makes this proposal even more ridiculous is that Natural Resources Canada says there’s not much to be found there, which means Big Oil who lobbied hard for the rights wants to throw the area into jeopardy for scraps.

Fisheries & Oceans Minister Dominic LeBlanc buried the controversial proposal in a Friday media release, hoping no one would notice.

Companies are banned from drilling and exploring in national parks on land — it should be a no-brainer to ban the same activities in our vulnerable ocean areas.

Big oil wants access to the Laurentian Channel because it thinks there’s oil and wants to cash in. They’ll try to convince Minister LeBlanc to keep the exploration rights, which could happen unless there’s a huge public outcry.

Let’s flood LeBlanc’s inbox calling on him to ban all oil and gas activities in the proposed protected ocean area.

Brittany, Logan, and Kate -- Leadnow
Ottawa