I haven't come across any updates on the Fort McMurray blaze and wild fire and wonder what has happened to all the residents that were forced out and evacuated? Is the fire still burning?
I did come across an interesting bit of information in an unrelated article:
"Canada wants to replace Russia as a source of energy for Europe, but its tar oil is extremely dirty. Its extraction needs a lot of water with chemicals and there are now huge toxic lakes in Canada, while the boreal forests are burning because all the water has been drained from underneath them. If you want more energy like that, you will have more and more of a climate catastrophe," Maude Barlow, the Council of Canadians chairperson said.
CETA: Canada as a Trojan Horse of US Corporations in Europe
http://sputniknews.com/europe/20160517/1039767101/eu-canada-ceta-deal.html
While people across Europe are fighting tooth and nail against the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), which would make them - and their governments - defenseless against the greed of global, mostly US corporations, a much more toxic deal has been quietly negotiated between the European Commission and Canada.
CETA which stands for the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement is a dry run for TTIP.
It represents a 'new generation' of trade treaties on behalf of big business (TISA, TPP) that are set to undermine democracy and destroy basic rights of workers and consumers.
Negotiations on CETA started back in 2009, and concluded with a ceremony in Ottawa in September 2014. A number of EU governments were unhappy with the final text agreed by the negotiators, but it was rushed through regardless.
No MPs or MEPs were allowed to take part in the talks, which were conducted in secret, and no one was given access to the text of the agreement until it was too late. Key elements of Europe's public services have been bargained away without a shred of public debate, says War on Want, who is coordinating the collection of signatures of Europeans against CETA in the UK.
[...] CETA, like TTIP and other such "new" deals, includes the infamous Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which allows companies to sue governments over any new law or policy that might reduce their profits in the future.
In a public consultation held in Europe,
over 97 percent of respondents rejected the introduction of these new powers for business. Yet the EU has gone ahead with it anyway, and CETA will introduce ISDS not only for Canadian companies but also for any US firms with offices in Canada (and that's about 85 percent of all US companies).
Official statistics show that 60 percent of all lawsuits against governments have been won by corporations. In one of the latest examples, Slovakia, not a rich country by any standard, lost 29.5 million Euros to a Dutch health insurance company that challenged the nationalization of Slovakia's health system — an election promise by the national government. And in Canada, a fracking company is suing the government for 250 million for a ban on fracking even though it has not done any fracking yet. This has become possible because the ISDS system allows investors to sue governments for "lost future" profit.
[...] In Canada, tar sands oil producers, having been hit with a ban by the Obama administration on imports of their highly toxic substance, are now looking forward to sending it to Europe once CETA is done and dusted. (Article continues.)
are forced to flee their mansions as huge wildfire.
