ONTARIO PROPERTY AND ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS ALLIANCE

Post Office Box 483, Durham, Ontario, NOG 1RO -  Phone: (519) 369-2195  /  Fax: (519) 369-2992
E-Mail: opera@bmts.com  -  Web Page: www.bmts.com/~opera/

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December 4, 2001

Mr. Dave Carr
CFOS AM 560 Radio
270 9th Street, East
Owen Sound, Ontario, N4K 1N7

Dear Dave:

Thanks very much for your time and trouble as official Moderator of the Town Hall Meeting at the Bayshore Community Centre on November 20th last. Given the controversial nature of the proposed federal Species at Risk Act (SARA - Bill C-5) and its potential for some very disturbing consequences for unsuspecting landowners, your proven skill in soliciting and focussing audience participation at that event was essential and much appreciated.

The world is indebted to thousands of dedicated environmentalists who have successfully raised public awareness of resource depletion and ecological pressures. That said, events of the last quarter century suggest their legitimate and commendable concerns have been hi-jacked by the global governance agenda of the United Nations. Further, that pervasive U.N. itinerary is now aided and abetted by the political contacts and flagrant self-interest of innumerable Non Government Organizations accredited to, and validated by, various U.N. agencies. Thus the North American environmental movement has become a growth industry that manipulates government policy, consumes vast sums of public and private funding, disdains representative democracy, intimidates ordinary citizens and flouts due process of law. Some examples:

A provincial Natural Heritage Information Service is now partnered with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, the Federation of Ontario Naturalists and The Nature Conservancy of Canada to monitor, map, catalogue and designate Ontario’s entire land mass. The related Internet address in its entirety is accessible only to environmental bureaucrats, academics and organizations with the requisite password, not to private landowners directly affected by this massive surveillance.

All land, public and private alike, within the Niagara Escarpment and the Long Point Conservation Area have been declared United Nations Biosphere Reserves without public debate. This is an initiative specified, like Species at Risk Bill C-5, by the U.N. Convention for Biological Diversity which was officially ratified, also without public debate, by the Canadian government in 1992. In the just-completed Escarpment Plan Review The Nature Conservancy was one of five Non Government Organizations that lobbied the Ontario government for “public body” status allowing selected NGO’s to acquire, administer, preserve or dispose of Escarpment “conservation land” on which, incidentally, no municipal property taxes will apply.

This principle, never envisioned in Ontario’s Planning Act, is obediently endorsed in the Review Hearing Officer’s Report now filed with MNR Minister Snobelen for 2002 rubber-stamp approval by Cabinet. Needless to say, the Report doesn’t mention that, in 1996, MNR awarded a $600,000.00 outright gift of public money to The Nature Conservancy of Canada to “design a program under which the provincial government might “acquire” more private land for public parks”. In the same year the American head office of TNC recorded a net worth of almost one billion U.S. dollars!  So much for not-for-profit organizations with U.N. credentials whose skilled lobbyists routinely prowl the corridors of our provincial and federal governments.

The taxes of unsuspecting Canadians lubricate this Orwellian slide to centralized state control of their lives and property. A descent, let it be emphasized, in which “classified” sections of publicly funded programs are shared with U.N.-approved NGO’s but not with the majority of ordinary citizens who, in more ways than one, are paying for them.

Does the mailed fist of social re-engineering hide in the velvet glove of “public good”? Do the innovative U.N. buzz words - Natural Heritage, Endangered Spaces, Biosphere Reserves, Global Warming,  Stakeholders, Land Stewardship, Wildlands, Global Governance, Species at Risk - project recognition and respect for private ownership of land?  If so, what’s to be said about the hundreds of interlocking statutes with draconian penalties to match that already discourage, discredit and, one day, will almost certainly deny, human habitation and enterprise across vast sections of North America.

Social and economic extortions being unilaterally imposed on the Canadian public in the guise of environmental necessity would make the Mafia blush. Consequently the long-term purpose, questionable tactics and public financing of much of the multi-national environmental movement cry out for balanced analysis by impartial media observers.

With apologies for its volume and scope, the enclosed material speaks to the extent, tactics and entrenched power of the U.N.-sponsored environmental lobby in Canada. We hope it might encourage CFOS AM to undertake the above-mentioned review as a public service. Many Grey Bruce residents would find it useful and instructive if , in a public broadcast convened for the purpose, a  rural municipal Mayor and one or two rural landowners joined  the local MP and MPP  to exchange opinions on a series of pre-selected local land use issues rooted in, or clearly related to, international protocols and/or powerful NGOs.

Kindest personal regards. And thanks again.

R.A. (Bob) Fowler
Secretary
Encl

If you have any questions or comments, please Mr. R. A. Fowler, Secretary.
or write
O.P.E.R.A. c/o R.A. Fowler, Secretary P.O. Box 483, Durham, Ontario. N0G 1R0