Environmentalists concerned about Tory victory
Posted May 3, 2011 1:50 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
“This is going to be a very challenging four years for people who want to see action on climate change,” says John Bennett, Executive Director of the Sierra Club Canada, in reaction to Monday night’s majority government victory by the Harper Conservatives. (For those who) “want to see action on toxic clean-up, want to see action on environmental protection and environmental assessment.”
Environment groups aren’t happy with the outcome of the federal vote and Bennett predicts environmental issues will be ignored for the foreseeable future.
“We’re going to have to be sitting down with a reassessment of what the role we can play in the next five years,” Bennett tells 660News, “because we know what the last five years have been like and we’re not an influential group whatsoever. They’re going to be dismantling our ability to actually environmentally assess projects and determine whether they’re environmentally acceptable or socially acceptable, because government believes all that kind of thing is just red tape.”
Bennett says over the next four years, only public pressure will force Canada’s new majority goverment to take action on environmental issues and the Tories are only interested in harvesting Canada’s resource riches.
