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Making way for Dalton McGuinty's nuclear Ontario

02 May 2008

A uranium mine

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Canada — Nuclear energy needs uranium. In Ontario, uranium exploration is resulting in political prisoners.

Families torn apart to make way for mining companies? Uranium exploration without consultation? Political prisoners? It might be hard to imagine, but this is the situation right now in Ontario, where Premier Dalton McGuinty's expanded nuclear program and the outdated Mining Act are both having devastating consequences on the ground.

It happened like this:

In 2006, the McGuinty government announced it would be expanding nuclear power, refurbishing old reactors and building new ones across the province.
In 2007, a company called Frontenac Ventures began to drill for uranium on 30,000 acres near Sharbot Lake, many of which are part of an outstanding land claim by Algonquin First Nations.
In 2008, Ardoch Algonquin former chief Robert Lovelace, who opposes the drilling, was found in contempt of court for failing to comply with an injunction to leave the exploration site. He is now serving six months in a provincial prison.

Robert Lovelace was jailed for trying to protect his community's land from uranium exploration. Uranium exploration is an explicit policy of our provincial government. Robert Lovelace is a political prisoner, in jail as a result of Ontario's outdated Mining Act and Dalton McGuinty's dirty, dangerous and expensive nuclear policy.