Green Party renews call for uranium mining ban

OTTAWA – Green Party leader Elizabeth May today underscored the urgent need for an immediate moratorium on uranium mining in Canada. She joined the Community Coalition Against Mining Uranium (CCAMU) in alerting Ontario’s provincial government to the severe environmental and health threats posed by a potential uranium mine in eastern Ontario. Frontenac Ventures is currently prospecting for uranium on Algonquin territory in North Frontenac. “Canada must stop mining and refining uranium,” said Ms. May. “The uranium extraction process is extremely hazardous to the environment and to the health of mine workers and the public. “The government already recognizes cancers of the respiratory system as occupational diseases common in mine workers. Radioactive particles carried downwind and downstream have the potential to poison thousands of eastern Ontarians through the air they breathe and the water they drink.” Ms. May added that uranium mining is energy intensive and releases massive amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Noting that the nuclear energy industry would not exist without huge government subsidies, Ms. May took aim at Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s not-so-hidden nuclear agenda. “Mr. Harper’s plans to expand global nuclear capacity are a new threat to Canada and global security,” she said. “Uranium mining and nuclear power are the greatest obstacles to the goal of global nuclear disarmament,” she added. “Mined uranium inevitably ends up as plutonium, radioactive waste or worse – nuclear weapons. “As former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament Senator Douglas Roche has said, ‘Every effort should be made to reduce the growing dependence on nuclear power. The same reactors that produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes also can give bombs their destructive force of many thousands of tons of high explosive.’ The Green Party rejects nuclear power as environmentally damaging, economically unsound and inextricably linked to nuclear weapons proliferation.”

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