Word has leaked out that Greenpeace Canada Executive Director Peter Tabuns, at the helm for little more than a year, is already frustrated with his job.
At the heart of his frustration is the proclivity of Greenpeace Amsterdam for insisting on running the Greenpeace Toronto office from afar, and for gobbling the lion's share of any money collected through the work of local Greenpeace campaigns.
Greenpeace Amsterdam is reported to keep all of its satellite organizations on a short leash.
Tabuns has been spending his time of late sparring with Kellogg's well known 'Tony the Tiger' icon. Appearing at protests with 'Franken Toy' in tow, the former city councillor has accused the cereal giant of selling products 'which may put at risk the health of its consumers including children.' 'Franken Toy' symbolizes Greenpeaces' opposition to genetically modified, or GM, foods.
The Greenpeace head honcho has also recently teamed up with former Toronto council colleague and one-time boss Coun. Jack Layton in his fight to save Toronto's first wind power project.
The project calls for giant windmills with two turbines, of $1.2-million each, which would power up to 600 homes and reduce reliance on the Lakeview coal-fired generating station.
The Ashbridges Bay Yacht Club is challenging the project at the Ontario Municipal Board, raising fears of injury if a rotor blade on the giant windmills were to break free.
The wind power project, which calls for two turbines up to 93 metres high behind the sewage treatment plant at Ashbridges Bay, is a little too close for comfort for nearby yacht club members.
'Wind turbines supply 10 per cent of Denmark's power needs, and plans are to raise that to 50 percent by 2030, says Tabuns. 'It's the energy technology of the 21st century. It's where a lot of countries are going.'
As far as down-to-earth members of the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization are concerned: If only a salmon looked more like a panda bear.
Groups attending the annual conference of the organization complained how readily people sink big bucks into saving 'cuddly' animals while overlooking less-appealing but important aquatic species.
'We spend more money as Canadians on saving panda bears and tigers in foreign countries than we do on fish conservation in our own waters,' Bill Taylor of the Atlantic Salmon Federation said, bottom lining it.
Money is one of the most critical factors in saving the endangered wild Atlantic salmon. People like Taylor worry that if intervention measures aren't taken quickly, The Maritime's 'King of the Fish' will go the way of the great auk and the passenger pigeon.
'If any fish can capture the hearts and imaginations of Eastern Canadians, it has got to be the salmon,' said Taylor. 'And if we can't save the salmon, that's a sign that everything else is going to go down the tubes.'
Where are People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) when they're really needed?
'It didn’t take long for political and environmental vultures to descend on the Walkerton tragedy. Stepping over the corpses and the sick, they moved in for a gruesome round of political gamesmanship.
'...Last month the environment club at a Walkerton secondary school, stirred up by environmentalists and politicians, launched an awareness campaign about lawn pesticides as a threat to the environment and the water system. Lawn chemicals are a phony health scare; E coli is not.
'Too often we are led to believe that man is the killer and the natural environment is the victim. That's what we teach in our schools every day. In the wake of Walkerton, we are reminded that nature has its own killer instincts, and that it is man who must seek protection and take precautions.
'In the case of water, the very chemicals that politicians and activists spend so much time warning us about are the ones that save our lives. Chlorine kills the bacteria that is now killing innocent people in Walkerton. Failure to properly apply that toxic chemical to the water, for whatever reason, caused the Walkerton tragedy. Chlorine, the evil chemical that Greenpeace and other activists are trying to remove from use, is the lifesaver that will again make Walkerton water safe against nature's killers. We have not heard much from Greenpeace's anti-chlorine campaigners over the past few days.
'We know little yet of the state of Walkerton's water system, whether it was underfunded or in need of repair or replacement. Across Canada, however, water and sewer systems have been in decline for decades and need billions in new capital investment. The Canadian Water and Wastewater Association estimated that Canada needs $27-billion for water treatment and distribution infrastructure, another $61-billion for sewage treatment reconstruction. Ottawa and the provinces used to fund the systems, but they stopped.
'While the water and sewer systems deteriorated over the past decade, bureaucrats and politicians at all levels spent billions on recycling programs and facilities, billions more on PCB destruction programs and regulations.'
'Whatever caused Walkerton's tragedy, the least the vultures can do is stick to the real issues surrounding our continuing battle against nature's killer diseases.'
When The Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference met earlier this month in Toronto for the first time, they were interrupted by master gate crashers from Greenpeace.
Delegates met at the conference to hear about great futures and strong growth in the world of genetically modified, or GM foods.
Booking a room down the hall, Greenpeace activists decided to release a study on GM food testing, indicating that tests used to approve GM foods were so poorly designed that they virtually ensured no adverse affects would be found.
Gord Surgeoner, chairman of the biotech industry conference, dismissed the Greenpeace report as 'old news', saying he has complete confidence in the regulatory system.
'You can get two people anywhere in the world to say anything you want,' said Surgeoner, who is president of Ontario Agri-Food Technologies, an industry group.
Although campaigners behind the 'Frankenfood' scare sometimes claim otherwise, the only GM foods now on the market have been modified to resist herbicides (letting farmers spray chemicals without killing crops) or kill bugs.
Toronto Free Press staffers could take a few lessons from master of disruption Greenpeace activists.
When the world biotechnology industry gathered in Toronto for The Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference at a downtown hotel, TFP staffers were denied access.
Without telling meeting organizers where they had managed to obtain an original delegate pass for copying, bare-breasted women protesters only owned up to using a colour printer to make up fake passes.
During an address on communicating with the public about GM foods, the protesters stood up, set off preset rape alarms and unfurled a banner as three women in the group removed their dresses.
Conference organizers made no attempt to stop the protesters from speaking to the meeting, but they were escorted from the room once Denise Stapleton finished her statement.
Male protesters, who had tried to disrupt the meeting earlier, did not fare so well. When one stood up to declare the meeting closed and urged everyone to go home, a delegate shouted back, 'It's closed to you, get the hell out.'
The folks working on bringing us meat and milk from Dolly-style genetically modified cattle-slated for as soon as only six years away-are determined not to make the same mistakes as the people who brought us genetically modified plants.
James Robl, who produces cloned cattle at the University of Massachusetts, is ready for the coming controversy.
Robl said researchers like him are very much aware of protesters and the success they enjoyed from getting genetically modified, or GM, foods off the shelves in Europe and elsewhere.
While it may sound like something that only happens in a science fiction novel, Robl expects the first animals to be brought to market will be genetically modified to produce better milk or meat- and may one day even contain vaccines or other medicines that consumers want.
One of the main criticisms of GM foods has been that it allows scientists to cross the species barrier to mix plant genes with animals or bugs. The most accepted modified crops contain bacteria genes.
According to Robl, most researchers being aware of how consumers have responded to mixing plant and animals genes, prefer to work only with cattle genes.
'We'll produce green cows,' he quipped.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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