Sierra Club Canada, SOSS Stand in Solidarity with Innu, Maliseet, and Mi’gmaq First Nations Calling for Protection of the Gulf of St. Lawrence

July 16, 2014

The Sierra Club Canada Foundation and Save Our Seas and Shores Coalition (SOSS) are offering their support for the Innu, Maliseet, and Mi’gmaq First Nations of  Eastern Canada in their call for a moratorium on oil and gas exploration and development in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

As with many oil and gas projects across the country, what we are seeing here is a government willing to run roughshod over rights of indigenous peoples to get to fossil fuels,” according to John Bennett, National Programs Director of Sierra Club. 

“We are proud to stand in solidarity with the Innu, Maliseet, and Mi’gmaq First Nations in calling for a moratorium on oil and gas in the Gulf.”

The Sierra Club Canada Foundation and many other environmental groups, scientists, fishermen, and tourism operators around the Gulf have been harshly critical about the adequacy of consultations and environmental assessment performed regarding oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

“Lack of adequate consultation with First Nations around the Gulf has been a glaring injustice in what is already a deeply flawed process,” according to Mary Gorman of the Save Our Seas and Shores Coalition, “As a Canadian citizen, I am appalled and ashamed of how our government has treated the people who safeguarded the Gulf for millennia.”

“Respecting the rights of our First People’s over the Gulf of St. Lawrence is key to our shared obligation to protect this precious place” according to Sierra Club’s Atlantic Campaigns Director, Gretchen Fitzgerald. “We are so grateful to the leaders of these First Nations for their collective call for a moratorium and are looking for leadership from non-indigenous leaders.”

Members and supporters of Sierra Club Canada Foundation and SOSS will be attending the press conference announcing the First Nation’s call for a moratorium and following the progress of boats traveling to Old Harry, the oil and gas prospect in the Gulf currently under review for exploratory drilling.

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