Bringing biodiversity - home: COP15 expectations for Canada

The tailings “ponds” remove carbon-sequestering peatland and biodiversity-rich Boreal forest, and leach chemicals into the Peace- Athabasca delta, the second largest freshwater delta in the world. [...] The tailings “ponds” jeopardize biodiversity protection efforts in the area and contribute to the displacement of local First Nations and Métis communities from their territories, thereby preventing access to land and water central to their traditional practices and identities. [...] Commit to protecting the Great Lakes and putting freshwater protection and the climate ahead of the fossil fuel economy and the Line 5 pipeline Over 4000 plants, fish and wildlife call the Great Lakes home, and these vast freshwater bodies contain over 80 per cent of North America’s freshwater. [...] The Government of Canada must stop putting the fossil fuel economy ahead of protecting the Great Lakes – the world’s largest freshwater body – and ahead of inherent Indigenous rights and treaty rights. [...] The Government of Canada has been actively fighting the closure of the pipeline and supporting Enbridge by invoking the 1977 pipeline treaty.