It’s torture watching this loop play over and over again: Public money filling the already-deep pockets of the corporate elite, while they hypocritically tout the mantra of the free market economy. Last week the feds announced that Ocean Supercluster, a consortium claiming to be Atlantic Canada based—including big names like Emera, Clearwater, Petroleum Research Newfoundland […]
Linda Pannozzo
Posted inNews + Opinion
Sealfall, licence to cull
On October 23, the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans made headlines when it recommended the slaughter of 70,000 grey seals over four years in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. Senator Fabian Manning, chair of the committee, told a news conference the proposed cull was an “experiment” to see if it would help […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Sable Island designated as national park reserve
It’s official: Sable Island will become a national park reserve. Environmentalists are welcoming the decision because it will raise the level of protection for the island’s unique biodiversity and extremely fragile sand-dune ecosystems. Well known for its population of wild horses, Sable is also significant for having the largest dunes in eastern North America, the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Sable Island’s cod killer?
One morning in early April 2003, the villagers of Smith Sound, Newfoundland, awoke to a glimpse of what it might have been like to live there 500 years earlier. The sound was brimming with cod, as far as the eye could see. Villagers rushed out in their boats, scooping the fish up in nets and […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How to kill 220,000 seals on Sable Island: the DFO plan
[image-1] A massive seal slaughter on Sable Island would involve bringing in mobile crematoriums and modified tree-harvesting equipment, and would cost upwards of $35 million, according to a study commissioned by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The 2009 study, obtained through an Access to Information request, examined the costs and logistics associated with “managing” the grey seal population on the fragile island, a whelping ground for the world’s largest grey seal colony. For years, the fishing industry has been lobbying the DFO for a seal cull on the island, arguing that seals, not humans, are to blame for eating too many