Latest / The Environment in Canada Podcast / Rachel Gilmore & Ole Hendrickson: Build Canada, De-Regulation, Nuclear, Data Centres, & Water

Transcript

Rachel Gilmore & Ole Hendrickson: Build Canada, De-Regulation, Nuclear, Data Centres, & Water · The Environment in Canada Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to another edition of the Environment in Canada Podcast, a podcast about the Environment in Canada by Sierra Club Canada.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Connor Curtis.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: And today I've got a conversation for you between Rachel Gilmore, independent journalist, doing a lot of great coverage of some of the environmental deregulation that we are seeing in Canada, and Olley Hendrickson, who's our National Conservation Committee chair, has been doing a ton of work on nuclear waste and water rights and just so much other environmental work.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's great to get them together to chat about water, about environmental deregulation, and about the problems of nuclear waste and nuclear energy.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: And this is a great conversation.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: It took place at the Sony Popolo Music Festival in Montreal.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: You can go check them out at the link in the description.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it was hosted thanks to CKUT Radio in Montreal 90.3 FM and unrighteous.ca and the Hobbit Media Network.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so a big thank you to them for coming together to help make this happen.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: It was a live radio broadcast.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: We had a few issues with the video, but uh we were able to get, I think, most of the important parts for you for this podcast, uh, which you can watch in video format as well.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: But before we begin today, just a reminder that you can take action on environmental issues by visiting SierraClub.ca.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: We have tons of petitions, other actions and events, and regular news updates you can sign up for on the homepage.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: You can also find Sierra Club Canada on social media, and you can listen to the Environment in Canada podcast on our Harbager Media Network, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, and YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: This podcast also is on CKUT Broadcast Radio in Montreal, 90.3 FM, bi-weekly on Tuesdays at 11 a.m.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: Eastern Time.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Don't forget to click follow or subscribe to get the latest episodes from us.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Just to set the stage one more time, we're in the Casa del Pablo backyard.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful afternoon.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's very chill, very low-key.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm excited to be passing off to our next guest, Rachel Gilmore, Ol Hendrickson, and your host, Connor Curtis from Sierra Club Canada.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much, Andre.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Really appreciate it.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: And really uh a big thank you to everybody who's been organizing this and the chance to be here in Unwigged and Suwoni.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm very grateful to be joined by Rachel Gilmore and Ol Hendrickson, uh, two people who I know separately, who but who, as far as I know, you've never met.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Nice to meet you.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Rachel.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Nice to meet you.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: And when I got the opportunity to put you both in a room and have you talk to each other, I think one of the most exciting things for me about this was that you both deal with similar things in terms of deregulation, uh risk to the environment, what we're seeing happening at the federal level right now.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: But you've come at it from really different perspectives and places.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and again, no overlap in terms of uh, you know, your content or anything.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think you know a lot more than I do.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: We'll see.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like a shallow pond that's really wide, and you're like a deep ocean.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a jack of all trades and master of none.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: Same.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, maybe we're more similar than we thought.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was gonna say I think that's gonna be the the theme that comes out of today is you're more similar than you think.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: But just quickly for people who are tuning in, you know, who are you, what do you do?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: And Sony has sort of a theme of water this year.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so a lot of what we're gonna be talking about is around water and the environment.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd just love to know, even quickly in a couple of sentences, why do you care about water?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like why does why do these topics matter to you?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm a very selfish person, and I am in large part made up of water.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it matters to me that it uh that the water makes it so I can make it.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: But seriously, um, you know, I'm deeply concerned about uh climate change, the crisis, the climate crisis, and uh the moves that we're seeing from our government that are infuriating, and I guess I'll introduce myself after I do this rant.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the uh infuriating moves from our government in the context of, you know, we saw Mark Carney head to Ireland recently, and he spoke on this international stage about how uh, you know, climate change isn't a future thing.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's here now, and we have to, you know, acknowledge that reality.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: While he's simultaneously rolling back environmental protections and speaking of water, one of the main things he's doing is making it easier for corporations for you know major projects to avoid being subject to the Navigable Waters Act, which is a huge red flag because it basically means we're not gonna assess whether you're going to suck an entire lake dry or pollute water before we approve your project.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And this was something actually that the liberals in 2015 pushed back on.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was a huge point because Stephen Harper had come under such ire fire, both, uh, for his attacks on the Navigable Waters Act.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so as a result, um, you know, seeing Mark Carney do this now is just yet another reason why I think so many people are deeply concerned about the impacts on our water from this government that, you know, I think a lot of people uh looked at Kearney's UN-related climate bona fides, allegedly.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: But if you actually listen to the announcements he was making, there wasn't a whole lot there for the climate.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm Rachel.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I rant a lot.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Rachel Gilmore, I'm an independent journalist.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I primarily report on uh kind of social media.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have a Substack and a Patreon.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's how I make my living and a YouTube.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I do sort of short-ish, they've been getting longer as because I can't shut up, um, videos just kind of covering politics, a lot of neo-Nazi stuff.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if that's your beg, I do a lot of talking about those negatively, to be clear.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Anti-neo Nazis.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anti-neo-Nazis.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's an important distinction to make.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh yeah, I used to work in traditional media.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was uh I worked for CTV and Global News.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the parliamentary press gallery on Parliament Hill for a little over seven years.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, now I make my living as an indie journalist.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, water is life.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: And where does our water come from here in Montreal?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it either comes from the St.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: Lawrence or the Ottawa River.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I have a cottage on the Ottawa River, quite a ways upstream from here, and I'd love to go paddling in my kayak or in my canoe.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm also downstream from the Chalk River Laboratories, which releases radioactive pollution into the water, and it comes all the way down the Ottawa River down to Montreal.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of um municipalities are really concerned about proposals to put more radioactive pollution in the Ottawa River with a uh a proposed radioactive waste dump one kilometer from the river that would discharge through a pipeline radioactive partly treated water from a giant nuclear waste dump into the river.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: So uh water is so important for uh us, and um you know, you can't live more than a couple days without it, and all life depends on water, and and we're 80% 60, whatever.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And a big chunk of us, yeah, we're just big sacks of water flowing around.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: And it just goes into the air, and and if there's water vapor, clouds, and so forth.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's so important.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: I love to talk about it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's a connecting thing, right?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like I was recently by some big bodies of water, and I've always loved that when I was a kid, and even now because it feels there's a sense of connection, and I think you know, there's the immediate sense of you're looking out at the ocean and you know it goes somewhere else, but also water circulates throughout the entire planet.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, there's always been this sense of connection with it.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: But it seems to be under threat from kind of three things, and you both touch on these again in different ways.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: One, the sort of general deregulation that we're seeing at the federal level around and provincial levels, uh, around water protections, around environmental protections in general.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then at the other side of things, you've both dealt with two separate issues.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in your case, Rachel, you've talked about data centers and the water usage and not having environmental assessments for that.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: And we know from the states, like this is a huge issue.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and all, you're dealing, as you mentioned, with radioactive waste, and they're almost two different ends of the spectrum in the sense of polluting the water we have and then using that water in in uneffective ways.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, all we had a good chat just before this about how nuclear power plants also use a ton of water.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I'm curious, just on that subject thrown out there, you know, what was about those two issues maybe that really struck you, and and what is it people should know about the the risks that we're facing as a country and and locally in terms of these deregulations?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's pretty obvious that um we cannot go down the road we're going.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh government and regulation is is super important, and we build up a whole um uh system of environmental legislation, of public interest legislation over decades now, and and it served us well.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: And what we need is to strengthen it and to and and anytime we want to make changes, we've got to um engage uh ourselves, engage the public.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: And and and what's happening right now is is just the opposite of that.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's lobbyists going in and meeting with elected officials and and getting changes that that are not in the benefit of of all of us.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think um one thing that I'm really concerned about, you know, related to those topics is the sort of um a desensitization from the Canadian public to increased environmental deregulation.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and maybe I um, you know, was too idealistic before.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe to a certain degree, this is just a personal journey of realizing how little people care about the environment.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I genuinely think there was a time when we were rallying together and recognized, you know, Al Gore was running around the world, you know, and but just like there were these conversations happening, and it was sort of um the climate deniers were mocked, and now we basically have climate deniers in the form of these corporations and the government that's cow like caving to them, because there's no way to enact the policies that they're enacting without having either um a degree of climate denialism or climate apathy.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, it's just sort of um the thing that I'm finding concerning is I think that Mark Carney's enacting a sort of shock doctrine.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if anyone's familiar with uh Naomi Klein's very famous book, so if you probably all are familiar, um, but basically it's like in these moments of shock, we see a push for pro-corporate policies that the public would otherwise push back against.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: But because they're experiencing a shock, they don't um, you know, recognize the danger of those pro-corporate policies in the same way.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's I think what Carney is doing.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Every time he gets pushback on, you know, pipeline deals, MOUs, like all of this stuff.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he often will find a way to talk about Trump and talk about the threat of Trump and how this is, you know, a unique time where we have to build at speeds never thought possible or whatever.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, no, there's nothing unique about what you're explaining.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: What you're explaining is a playbook that's been used for decades, wherein you're taking advantage of a shock to push for stuff that will make rich people richer at the expense of the rest of us and at the expense of the impact on the climate crisis.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: But Canadians get so wrapped up in that rhetoric of the fear of the Trump threat to the annexation threats, which I would argue pale in comparison to the threat of the climate crisis.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think that I'm I'm concerned about the impact that I'm seeing that is like seriously hindering our ability to um survive the climate crisis.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um yeah, it really I really don't like it.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really worried about how that's impacting sort of the the the thinking of the average person, the uh relentless focus on emphasizing that shock over the pro-corporate policies that it's facilitating.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's interesting too, because and I think there's a good point on this on the nuclear side, all, which is that these pro a lot of these pro-corporate policies and decisions are actually also pro-US policies.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like uh, I don't know all if you want to get into who actually runs Canadian nuclear laboratories and and what it maybe it is, but like who actually runs it?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well um in 2015 at the end of the Harper administration, there was a 10-year contract, which was mostly for U.S.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: companies and a couple British companies and one Canadian company, S and C Lavelin.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: And that um got um expired in 2025, and they brought in all US companies,$24 billion over 20 years, the biggest contract probably the federal government's ever issued, all U.S.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: companies, and they're running um our main energy research laboratory, which is almost completely focused on nuclear power.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: This is crazy.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they're not studying wind or solar or batteries or any of that.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: And um, and the ties to the nuclear weapons industry at Chalk River go back to the Manhattan project.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: So, I mean, this is just back to the future.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: The the Americans uh and the British said we need a place to do research to develop nuclear weapons.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't safe to do it in Britain.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: So all the scientists came first here to Montreal, to the Montreal laboratory, and then they moved up to Chalk River and and built the biggest reactor of its uh at in the world in the 1947, the NRX reactor, which was dedicated to producing plutonium for US nuclear weapons and did so for quite a number of years.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: And and Canada was sort of a passive observer.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: C.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: D.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: Howe, you've probably heard of him, the minister of everything.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, he sat in a room with the Americans and the Brits and he said, okay, let's go.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: And and now Tim Hodgson, the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, is saying he's he's portraying that okay, let's go as meaning, okay, let's let's develop nuclear power as a source of electricity.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: But no, he's he's he's rewriting history, what C.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: D.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: Howe said, okay, let's go make weapons.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: And and the connections are still very strong there.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: The Americans come up and they do research on plutonium, which is a weapons substance, on tritium, which is another weapon substance.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: So we don't and and we're giving this consortium roughly two billion dollars a year right now uh to basically do their research for their own benefit.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: And and people don't know this.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's been very well hidden.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but um we talk about Americans running Canada, it's a prime example.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the LNG project out uh on the coast of EC is another example.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: There is so much US money standing to profit from that project, and it's so like they're framing it as an Indigenous-owned project when really it's you know US ultra-wealthy owned with ties to Jeffrey Epstein, because of course, you know, it's yeah, it long story short, this none of this, these projects that were being sold to us as in the name of national interest, so many of them are actually for the profits and long-term benefit of US money and US uh corporations, US billionaire oligarchs.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I think Dee Smog had a recent piece talking about how the federal government's AI strategy rollout was really about using more gas.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a funny tie-in here with nuclear, which is that like nuclear gets brought up as this oh energy solution, we're gonna power everything with nuclear.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the the issue there is that like, and all you can speak to this better than me, you're like, it is not viable.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: And compared to like battery storage, which solves the base load power problem for renewables and just rolling out renewables, it's way more expensive to go with nuclear.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: So it actually becomes a way to block progress on renewables and keep burning gas.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's this weird tie-in where you've got these US aligned or US tech giants who want to build AI data centers, do want to power with gas because that helps the US oil and gas industry.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, 60% own the top four oil science corporations, right?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm curious, like, how are you both seeing that corporate influence play out in all of this?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: You touched a little bit on the lobbying side, but there's a lot of groups out there.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, Atlas Network, Build Canada.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: How are you finding these things?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, I guess I can speak to the Build Canada element just because that's something that I've um covered pretty closely.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm just I'm deeply concerned about the uh sneaky ways that the ultra-wealthy are finding to be able to uh throw their weight around increasingly, despite us not having the equivalent of a citizens united decision in the States, which is what sort of released the um, it just like swung open the doors of corporate spending.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's the reason why Elon Musk was able to, you know, um fund Trump's campaign to the degree that he did.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't have that level of political spending in Canada through that mechanism, which is why I think we're seeing these projects that are very interestingly um uh structured uh to potentially skirt lobbying rules.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like Build Canada, for example.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is a group that uh they're basically it started as a group chat between a bunch of super rich dudes that think that their opinion on everything matters, because of course they do.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it was a bunch of Shopify guys like Toby Luckkey, who is a multi-billionaire.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they were getting frustrated that they were having all these great ideas in their group chat.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: So they decided to share them with the world by launching this thing called Build Canada, which is basically a website, but it's a group behind the website.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the members of this, they actually don't have the page of their builders anymore, which I find super funny because I actually reported on it when they first came out and found there were more uh men named Michael or Mike than there were women who are builders in this thing.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a feeling that's kind of why they took down the list.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I I don't know, maybe they just got shy.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um basically, like this group publishes memos, and their memos are then endorsed by the other builders who are like a part of this group.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can see the names of the people who endorse various policy positions and they're floating these ideas.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them are absolutely ridiculous.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they vary from idiotic to like villainous, and uh, you know, and some of them are inoffensive, like they have to, they those are peppered in there.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, I uh what I find deeply concerning about this is uh they say that they are entirely uh funded through donations and everyone uh like their staff, their builders, it's all volunteers, is my understanding.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so basically they, because they don't have paid um the the individuals like working with this company aren't paid individuals because it's volunteer-based.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: My understanding is that that allows them to not need to register as lobbyists because it there needs to be that exchange of funds.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: But when you consider they say that they're funded through their uh builder network, their builders are billionaires.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like there's tons of money to give themselves that outsized voice.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're seeing them make these AI slot videos that politicians are sharing.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, there's been some reporting uh on the coziness between Mark Carney and some of the folks involved with this project.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's it's just interesting.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And sorry, that's like a bit of a tangent, maybe, but but this is one of the examples of how we're seeing this increasing corporate influence and uh people using money to buy themselves increasing influence in a system that doesn't have the same like overt uh endorsement of political spending that the United States does.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of praise of Elon Musk as well.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh god, they love Elon Musk.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Toby Lutke initially retweeted uh calls, this is the CEO of Shopify, uh calls to have our own doge here in Canada, and we saw how well that worked out for the state.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, this is what I mean.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: These are great minds who we need to be listening to more.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: What the in Brookfield investments he engineered the buyout of of Westinghouse Electric, which is uh Westinghouse nuclear after it had gone bankrupt, basically.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: So although it's still headquartered in in the US, two Canadian companies, Brookfield owns 51%, and and um Camico, which is a big uranium miner, owns the other 49%.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: And and now, of course, they they make the AP 1000 reactor and and their proposals in Ontario in particular to just spend literally hundreds of billions of dollars on a big nuclear buildup.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's kind of a fantasy, really, because it's completely unaffordable.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: But um, there's a lot of money to be made even before the reactors get built, and even if the reactors don't get built.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's the secret of the nuclear industry.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't really, they don't care if they're really going to generate electricity at any sort of affordable rate.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: But there's all the concrete, the steel, the trucking contracts, so so all that's already happening for this one.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: quote unquote small mod modular reactor at the Darlington site.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: And the government already put um three billion dollars into that of our tax money.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: And and they basically got a a big hole next to Lake Ontario and they dropped a huge base mat of concrete in and celebrated, oh, we've started building our our small modular reactor, the first one in the G7.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's it's just ludicrous.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a project of national interest too.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I call it proof of national insanity.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good one.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: I I think you also uh what was it um does SMR stand for spend money recklessly that's another one of mine yeah yeah yeah exactly don't leave an acronym around this guy hey he'll he'll mess you up all has the best uh yeah the the the best acronym takes um I I find that really interesting because we constantly hear this idea that what the federal government is doing right now on oil and gas on nuclear is they're just letting the market fix problems.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't actually agree with that because one, I mean that would be super lazy if that was the way that we were actually fixing climate change was just let the market do it.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: But second of all, that's not what's happening.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: We see these interventions with taxpayer money to prop up oil and gas, to prop up nuclear, to actually support the things that are holding back climate action.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: So that's not letting the market do anything.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's actually using public funds to back up things that aren't competitive.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know not that I'm a huge free market fan.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: I agree with interfering in the market just to be clear.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: But I I just think it's very hypocritical to say that it's the market when that's not actually what's happening.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: What I'd love to end us on a somewhat positive note.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: I know we it it's hard to do nowadays.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think all you recently had a big win on the legal side.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'd love to just touch on that.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah um and CR Club is one of the co-applicants in a judicial review of the permit to build the giant nuclear waste dump that I talked about on the Ottawa River upstream from here.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: But that permit was to allow the proponent the Canadian nuclear laboratories to destroy habitat for species at risk.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: So they needed a permit from Environment Canada a species at risk permit.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: So we challenged that in court and we said you you pick the worst possible site because they're they're landing turtles their three endangered bat species their four threatened bird species and we just thanks to cable at First Nation discovered that eastern wolves which is a really interesting endemic species pretty much unique to uh Quebec and Ontario um are using that area for denning and feeding so um so we challenged it and we won in lower court the um along with we we partnered um CR Cloud with Concerned Citizens of Ranford County a little local group up up the valley with uh Cable Wack First Nation and they really kind of took the lead on this and with uh uh the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility Canadian nuclear laboratories appealed and we think the appeal court decision which we just won a few weeks ago is even stronger than the lower court decision and congratulations so we're we're congratulating the integrity of biodiversity you know like like we really care about about life and about yeah about these animals and plants which is why it's super cool sorry to be depressing you know the that in the uh you know they put out the the government put out those um discussion papers uh with proposed uh changes that they'd be putting in place to facilitate the progression of major projects and one of the things on that is basically ministerial discretion for exemptions from Species at Risk Act um uh which is horrifying and uh would allow for them to just say actually you know they're exempted from the Species at Risk Act and so all of that doesn't matter and then we get to enjoy the biodiversity crisis which is truly if you want to do scroll and just give yourself nightmares read about that one.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: That one is spooky because you know it's like if the bees all die all that happens.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah the the God squad you know doing away with the Jeopardy test for I and yeah there's still opportunity to comment even on just that one thing until July 22nd.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know whether uh people think it's useful to they weren't even going to let people comment on that that darn discussion paper that came out on a May 8th.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: One of the smartest things was Althea Raj assigning a specific species and just like putting that uh I guess humanization isn't the right word but like um you know putting a face on the species at risk act pointing out that like there's a specific you know um orcas in this one area that would be um likely a candidate for being offed through this major project's um you know exemptions for the Species at Risk Act and that created an outcry because people saw the animal that we'd be losing and I just kind of wish that we could somehow transcend that and recognize that the value of every like there's disgusting bugs that we unfortunately need for biodiversity and it sucks because they're gross but we need to care about them.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's just really it's really horrifying genuinely that our government is it is really genuinely horrifying almost as horrifying as me almost knocking over that table.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: And but the hope is that there's people who give a shit.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yep who are pushing back and who want to save not only the orcas but the super gross bugs so that we don't all die.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: And at some point we have to have another I I know we're out of time basically but at some point we do have to have another chat about the rights of nature which is your yeah the rights and responsibilities um law that cable first nation and and there's some BC First nations that are developing their own laws because they feel that they have responsibilities to all life stewardship responsibilities and and we need to make alliances with with First Nations.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much all Rachel for joining me today uh I know Rachel Blue Sky lots of YouTube friggin' everywhere Google me um if you want to give me money you can do that on Patreon and Substack.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Also it's free to subscribe on YouTube but that's where I get paid for views.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's also super helpful if you don't have the means to support my work.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: And all and anywhere people can find you that other than obviously Sierra Club Canada column every week so I give a little shout out to rabble.ca they're they're struggling little independent journalism but uh I love that well that's that's why we're here and uh thank you both so much for for joining me today.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: I really really appreciate it.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: Before we end today just a reminder that you can take action on environmental issues by visiting Sierra Club.ca we have tons of petitions other actions events and regular news updates you can sign up from the homepage.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: You can also find Sierra Club Canada on social media and you can listen to the Environment in Canada podcast on the Harbor Media Network, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, IR Radio and YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: This podcast also is on CKUT Broadcast Radio in Montreal 90.3fm biweekly on Tuesdays at 11am Eastern Time don't forget to click follow or subscribe so get the latest episodes from us