Most Asked Questions

Guilbeault is Simply Doing His Job

Date: March 23, 2022
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Most Asked Questions

by Jim Emberger – Letter to the Editor, Telegraph Journal & Daily Gleaner

A recent editorial in Brunswick News accused the Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, of misfeasance, because he isn’t promoting Canadian fossil fuel exports to Europe.  Besides displaying a lack of understanding of the climate crisis, the editorial argument is without merit.

To begin: Guilbeault is the Minister of the Environment. Protecting the environment is his primary mandate.  He doesn’t work for the industry promoters that run the Natural Resources ministry.

Next: the overarching threat to the environment everywhere is the climate crisis, referred to in Guilbeault’s Mandate Letter as an, ‘existential crisis’, the solution to which is to stop using fossil fuels.

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NBASGA Comments on Civilian Review Report on 2013 Kent County RCMP raid

Date: November 13, 2020
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Most Asked Questions, Press Releases

PRESS STATEMENT

Fredericton (Nov. 15, 2020) – After seven years, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP has issued its Final Report on the RCMP raid on indigenous people and shale gas protestors in Rexton, Kent County, in 2013.

It’s appropriate to immediately state that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. Except for those who were there, few may remember much about the event beyond pictures of burning cars.  Many who testified as eyewitnesses may read this report and marvel that some of its conclusions directly contradict their testimony, more often than not simply because there was no video evidence.

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On Declaring a Climate Emergency

Date: January 28, 2020
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Most Asked Questions

By Margo Sheppard – The Daily Gleaner, January 24,2020

Fredericton is under pressure to join the many hundreds of Canadian municipalities and federal government that have declared a climate emergency. A Climate Emergency declaration is “a piece of legislation or directive putting a government or organization on record in support of emergency action to restore a safe climate.” (Climate Mobilization 2020)

With few indications of leadership at the provincial level in this province, local governments are being pushed to take the strongest possible action towards mobilization. So far Bathurst, Saint John, Moncton and Edmundston have done this. Are the declarations of climate emergency symbolic, without teeth? That depends on how much people hold Council members to account to living up to their words.

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The most important vote

Date: October 8, 2019
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, Most Asked Questions

Your vote in this election may be the most influential one you will ever cast.

There are many important issues in every election, but the decisions that the next government will make on facing the climate crisis will determine the future for you, your family, the nation, and the planet for decades to come.

Please find out where your candidates stand on the climate crisis.  Then vote only for a party that you feel accepts and understands the seriousness of the issue, and will go beyond campaign slogans to create solid plans that will actually address it.

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Assembly of First Nations is taking proper climate stance

Date: August 7, 2019
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Most Asked Questions

by Jim Emberger, Telegraph Journal and Daily Gleaner, Aug. 7, 2019

The rapidly unfolding climate crisis, as recently reported in Brunswick News publications has climatologists describing the speed and extent of recent record-shattering climate events as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘insane’. Given this frightening new reality, Canadians can be thankful that at least one governing institution understands the seriousness and immediacy of the climate emergency.

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Climate emergency: health and cost

Date: July 18, 2019
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Most Asked Questions

by Sam Arnold, Daily Gleaner, 18 July 2019

Climate change is now widely recognized as a planetary emergency that is having both health impacts and economic costs caused by extreme weather events. These events, linked to global warming, now include prolonged droughts, increased forest fires, massive rainfalls, floods, polar ice melting, sea level rise, and severe storms around the world. This is an emergency that if not checked, is on track to severely impact human health and economic life. The effects of this emergency are already being felt in New Brunswick.

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Tories are incoherent on ‘regional social license’

Date: September 13, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, Moratoria, Most Asked Questions, Social License

Commentary by Jim Emberger, Telegraph Journal, 13 Sept 2018

The freshly released Progressive Conservatives platform contains only a single sentence on shale gas, and leaves “regional social license” – mooted by leader Blaine Higgs in April – entirely unexplained.

Even without adequate detail in the platform, the very concept is a clear case of putting the cart before the horse.

The shale gas moratorium’s first condition sensibly dictates that, before social license can be granted, citizens must receive “clear and credible information about the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on public health, the environment and water.”

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La tactique de diversion n’efface pas les faits.

Date: July 22, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Most Asked Questions

par Denise Melanson, L’acadie nouvelle, 9 juillet 2018

Récemment, Colleen Mitchell, la présidente du groupe Atlantica Centre for Energy, a uni sa voix à celle de Blaine Higgs le chef du parti Progressiste Conservateur pour réclamer la fin du moratoire sur la fracturation. Elle prétend que le gouvernement libéral ne fait pas le travail nécessaire pour se conformer aux conditions menant à sa levée.  Elle se limite toutefois à ne mentionner que deux des cinq conditions, soit  le renforcement de la règlementation portant sur la fracturation et l’élaboration d’une structure pour les redevances.

Fait étrange, les conditions primordiales portant sur l’impact de la fracturation sur la santé publique et sur l’environnement ainsi que la nécessité d’un traitement acceptable des eaux usées sont passées sous silence.

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