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The
following article, written by one of the lawyers acting
on behalf of Mohawk citizen Larry Green, was published in
the internet news service Straight Goods. Go to http://www.straightgoods.com
to subscribe to Straight Goods.
BATTLE
TO DEFEND RED HILL VALLEY
The Liberal government seems determined to pave paradise
Dateline:
February 01, 2004
by
Andrew Orkin
Few
Canadian environmental battles are as significant, or unfortunately,
so little known outside local confines, as the struggle
to save Hamilton's Red Hill Valley. This stretech of urban
parkland, the largest in Canada, is threatened by an expressway
which would pave over much of its six mile length from the
brow of the Niagara Escarpment to Lake Ontario.
The
Red Hill Valley is the only remaining intact green corridor
from the Niagara Escarpment to Lake Ontario, making it an
important route for bird migration. Some 177 migratory bird
species have been recorded here. It is the last refuge for
25 bird species which are rare in Hamilton.
The
1,600 acres of largely forested parkland in the Red Hill
Creek valley is the only significant natural area in eastern
Hamilton. The park is big enough to support fox, beaver,
mink, numerous deer and a significant population of an endangered
species - the Southern Flying Squirrel.
Unfortunately
the scheme for an expressway in the Red Hill Valley, dating
back to the 1950s, was able to survive the eruption of environmental
protests that killed other such schemes across the world,
notably Toronto's Spadina expressway, in the 1970s. In other
parts of the world, although expressways continue to be
built, they have been located away from highly populated
urban areas. Schemes to plough them through city parks and
low income neighbours have died everywhere but in Hamilton.
The
cancellation of provincial funding for the Red Hill Creek
expressway, after only three months in office in December
1999, was a major achievement for Ontario's first New Democratic
Party (NDP) government. In response, the City of Hamilton
attempted to compel the NDP provincial government to extend
funding through court ligitation, but was defeated. The
partial restoration of provincial funding to the Red Hill
Creek expressway by the newly elected Progressive Conservative
(PC) provincial government of Mike Harris in November 1995,
was one of the worst examples of the anitenvironmental dementia
of the "common sense" revolution.
Attempts
to begin construction of the Red Hill Creek expressway after
Harris' blessings were delayed for five years through attempts
to impose a federal environmental assessement on the project.
The federal government of Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien
ultimately, however, gave up this battle after the City
of Hamilton won two lower court battles. These victories
were won by Hamilton's spending $4.5 million in legal bills.
The
City of Hamilton's victory in the lower courts (the federal
government did not pursue the case all the way to the Supreme
Court of Canada), forced it to make major changes in the
Canadian Environmental Assessement Act. This was becasue
the judges placed a heavy emphasis on the need to prevent
what they termed "irrevocable actions" by a proponent
before a environmental review could begin. Through such
interpretations, an environmental review of a project could
be prevented by an advocate simply spending considerable
money on it before a review could be authorized.
The
effort by the federal government to impose an environmental
review on the Red Hill Creek expressway, exposed major rift's
in Hamilton's Liberal party politics. Supporters of the
expressway accused then federal cabinent minister, Sheila
Copps, as being the mastermind behind efforts to impose
a review. This charge was made on the long history of opposition
to the expressway by her parents, including the former Mayor
of Hamilton, Victor Copps.
During
the federal environmental review, the Chretien government
was attacked by two of its Hamilton back benchers, Stan
Keyes and Tony Valeri, for holding up the Red Hill Creek
expressway project. They were recently elevated to the federal
cabinet by the new Liberal Prime Minister, Paul Martin,
while Copps was shunted to the back benches.
Martin's
cabinet shuffle was lauded by the regional corporate media
establishment through editorials in the two biggest circulation
dailies, the Hamilton Spectator and the St. Catharines Standard.
At the same these papers also lauded the new Transportation
Minister Toni Valeri, for his support of another expressway
scheme-the mid (Niagara) peninsula corridor. This scheme
is backed by developers bent on paving over a wide stretch
of Niagara south of the Niagara Escarpment from Hamilton's
current borders to the borders of the Short Hills Provincial
Park in St. Catharines.
Fortunately,
the Ontario NDP government in its efforts to kill the Red
Hill Creek expressway, took a number of steps to empower
native communities to stop urban sprawl. Following a court
decision in 1990, which upheld Iroquois hunting rights in
southern Ontario based on the 1701 Nanfan Treaty, the NDP
provincial government entered into a land claims negotiations
process with the traditional Confederacy. Although these
talks which attempted to give the Confederacy a role in
ecological protection and restoration were killed by the
Harris government, they stimulated more determination by
native environmentalists to use the Nanfan Treaty as a tool
to defend their traditional honmelands from expressways
and sprawl.
In
August 2000, following the federal government's abandonment
of efforts to impose an environmental assessement on the
Red Hill Creek expressway, Iroquois elder Norm Jacobs, explained
to Hamilton City Council how the proposed highway was a
violation of the Nanfan Treaty. For two years, Hamilton
respected his treaty interpretation, but in the spring of
2003, went on a collision course by annoucing a determination
to procded with expressway construction.
Although
blocked initally by blockades, construction began when the
newly elected Liberal government of Dalton McGinty, demolished
a sacred Longhouse with a show of force of 100 police officers,
that dragged away nonviolent demonstrators. Much of the
actual construction in the valley was subsequently delayed
by the announcement of sacred burial mounds in it by native
activists.
A
law suit is underway to block construction of the Red Hill
Creek expressway as a violation of the Nanfan Treaty. Cheques
should be made payable to "Red Hill Valley Defence
Fund" and may be mailed or delivered to:
Andrew
Orkin Barrister and Solicitor
103 Glenfern Avenue
Hamilton, Ontario L8P-2T9
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