OPINION: In Northern Ontario, governments engage in a two-faced climate change response – by Tanya Talaga (Globe and Mail – December 3, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

As land defenders work to prevent a pipeline from ripping through Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia, cast your eyes to Northern Ontario, where First Nations are also trying to push back against colonial governments looking to plunder the land.

Just a month after Canada talked a good game at the United Nations’ COP26 climate summit – but many years after Indigenous people first sounded alarms about the perils of what Canadians were doing to the land – two potential climate change catastrophes are playing out on Treaty 3, Robinson Superior and Treaty 9 territories. That territory comprises most of the area in Ontario north of Lake Superior.

The first involves the Ring of Fire. Named by a Canadian mining explorer who was a fan of Johnny Cash, the Ring of Fire is 5,120 square kilometres of untouched peat moss, lakes and land located about 500 km north of Thunder Bay.

Inside this area is one of the world’s largest deposits of chromite, which is used to make stainless steel. It’s also one of the last carbon storehouses on the planet. But in an effort to get out of billions in COVID-19 debt, Canada and Ontario have stuck a giant “for sale” sign in the North – and everything is negotiable in the Ring of Fire.

For the rest of this article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-in-northern-ontario-governments-engage-in-a-two-faced-climate-change/