Flupyradifurone is a new neonicotinoid pesticide from Bayer. That’s right, another one!

Here is what Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) has to say about it:

“Flupyradifurone may pose a risk to bees, non-target beneficial arthropods, and freshwater and saltwater invertebrates when used for foliar application. Flupyradifurone may pose a risk to birds and small wild mammals when used for soybean seed treatment.”

Flupyradifurone can enter the environment through a number of different insecticide applications covering a large number of ‘pests’ in a variety of crops. It can also enter groundwater and the aquatic environment through surface run-off.

Our Ontario heroes at the Green Energy Coalition (GEC) have saved Ontario-rate payers billions on their gas and electricity bills over the years.

They did it by convincing the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) to uphold and enforce strong energy efficiency rules.

It is the hard slogging research, legal, and economic work that gets little attention or recognition because it's complicated, boring and absolutely essential.

So I want to give the GEC a shout-out of gratitude.

GEC’s David Poch and Kai Millyard do their work quietly in the background, so when they expressed exasperation the other day, I sat up in my chair.

Important matters the GEC are pursuing need more support, so I thought: “It’s time to lend them a hand”.

Something has gone wrong at the OEB and unless we marshal a lot of support, years of work and billions spent on smart meters and other conservation measures will be lost.

My brother liked to throw things at me shouting “THINK FAST!"

Now I’m doing it to you! August 29th is the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's (CNSC) deadline for comments on its “Hypothetical Severe Nuclear Accident and Effectiveness of Mitigation Measures" report. You can send yours here.

Sorry for giving you so little time.

Back in 2012 we all urged the CNSC to consider what would happen if a Fukushima-scale accident took place in Canada. Would the CNSC's emergency measures have been effective?

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not good at keeping secrets, and I particularly don’t like when governments work in secret. Governments feed us a lot of malarkey about why secrecy is essential, but 9 times out of 10 there’s no justifiable reason.

Here are some government plans developing in secret that everyone should know about.

SECRET #1

At an undisclosed location in Ottawa this week, 400 delegates from Pacific Rim countries are negotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) - the latest ‘free trade’ deal our government says we just have to have.