Environmental review a white wash

Page 4

The current level of militarization in the Canadian North, and in particular the Innu's traditional hunting, trapping and fishing lands in the Labrador-Quebec peninsula, should not be continued without a complete and impartial review of the environmental impact of the practice of low level flying on the inhabitants of these lands.

Yet in response to the concerns raised about the practise of low level flying (fighter jets flowing at below 300 metres), the Canadian military releases an Environmental Impact Statement that not only ignores the hue and cry to halt these training flights, it suggests it plans an expanded program that would see up to 15,000 flights undertaken in a nine month period beginning 1996.

How ironic, that the training by the Allied air forces in Canada is undertaken to enhance the skills needed to protect our rights and freedoms from tyranny, yet those same forces ignore the rights and freedoms they hope to protect by imposing their unwelcome presence in tyrannical fashion.

The Canadian military has lost sight of the purpose for its existence. It is not mandated to sell out a few hundred Innu and the environment for a blank cheque from foreign governments. It is engaged to protect us from infringements of this kind.

The mandate of the Environmental Impact Statement was to determine how military flying training can continue to be best carried out to meet the needs of the people, the environment and the flying program. The bottom line is it can't, not without the proper environmental assurances. This is not only the moral obligation of those who would use our northern lands, but the responsibility.