As the founder of Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE) and the lead campaigner of HOPE’s Global Emergency Operation (GEO), I am writing on behalf of HOPE-GEO in support of the Beaver Lake Cree’s legal challenge against the governments of Canadian and Alberta for their immoral, unethical and indeed, we contend, illegal, maneuvers to force their fossil-fuels-extraction projects, in particular those pertaining to the tar sands, on the fragile environment of northern Alberta, the First Nations peoples who by right inhabit these region, those Albertans who value the Alberta environment, those Canadian who value the Canadian environment, and those world citizens who value the global environment.

Having worked as an environmental technologist whose job was to monitor the discharges of effluent into the environment by major industries, particularly mines and pulp mills, the former mainly regarding heavy metals and cyanides, and latter regarding organo-chlorines, PCBs, PAHs, dioxins and furans, where even one part per million in excess of the maximum allowable concentrations set by the British Columbian government would be sufficient grounds to close down the operation in question until the problems have been resolved, I can say without hesitation or doubt that most Albertan fossil-fuel projects, and all tar sands projects, even if their discharges were diluted a thousand fold, could not have passed any scientifically valid environmental assessment by any margin.

Until the tar sands raised their ugly heads, there was not a single mine in Canada, nor in the United States for that matter, that could be opened without a rigorous environmental assessment which would often take years to conduct and conclude, nor could they proceed without extensive open community consultations. The tar sands have changed all this. Fully knowing that there is not one hope in a million that these operations could pass any environmental assessment, the Canadian and Albertan governments, in abject obedience to their Big Oil puppet-masters and overlords, have massively violated their own environment-protection laws, health-security measures and their treaty obligations. The ones to massively profit are the oil companies and their unconscionable shareholders.

The ones to lose the most are the First Nations peoples of Alberta , very concept of aboriginal rights, and of course the global environment that we all share. Therefore, we in HOPE-GEO, which is in the process of forming the global Coalition to Abolish the Tar Sands (CATS), offer our full support to the endeavor of the Beaver Lake Cree to take the Canadian and Alberta governments to task, and to any similar legal action undertaken by any other First Nation, now and in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Anthony Marr, founder and president

Heal Our Planet Earth – Global Emergency Operation (HOPE-GEO)

http://www.HOPE-CARE.org

216-386-7362 (until mid-November)

604-222-1169 (mid-November onwards)