EDITORIAL & OPINION — Roll out the propaganda machine — Lands for Life

To hear some environmentalists tell the tale, the corks are popping in the head offices of logging and mining companies across Ontario. The chainsaws are being revved up from Rainy River to North Bay, as an army of redneck loggers fans out across the province to slash down virgin forests with maniacal abandon. A convoy of mining trucks is heading for Algonquin Park to dig up a huge open-pit mine that will dwarf the Great Lakes in size, while government tax collectors at Queen’s Park rub their hands in glee.

Headlines in Toronto newspapers scream that the Ontario government’s Lands for Life process has “sold out” to developers, that logging and mining are allowed in “almost 92% of northern Ontario.” Cartoons show space aliens flying over lands devastated by logging and despoiled by mining. Environmental groups stage mock funerals for the cuddly animals that will be left homeless because the government caved in to heartless capitalists who are out to make a quick buck from the land.

The inhumanity, the tragedy of it all, we are told. Something must be done. Write letters. Protest. Work the press. Get the message out, on television, in print, on the radio. Wag the finger. Warn the world, quick, before it’s too late. Roll out the propaganda machine. Roll out the junk science, the hysteria, the misinformation.

The fear-mongers have accomplished their goal so effectively that anyone making a living from the land is likely to be seen as a spineless pillager of Mother Nature. Northerners are portrayed as chainsaw-packing rubes lacking any appreciation of trees and wilderness. Geologists and miners care not a whit about wildlife, and developers are the devil incarnate.

Who perpetuates these degrading stereotypes? Special interest groups, that’s who — groups made of up of mostly well-meaning but fear-driven people who use fear to mobilize public and political support for their ill-conceived causes.

The mining and forestry industries must understand these fears, however ill-founded, before they can challenge the assumptions on which they are based. Most of Canada’s population is urban — people who each day see too many cars, too many people, and too much concrete. Their six degrees of separation from nature makes them yearn for solitude, for wide open spaces untouched by the human hand.

Most Northerners, on the other hand, see huge expanses of wilderness teeming with wildlife every day. They are amazed anyone would think they want to despoil their own back yard. The mining industry is amazed that anyone would think that even if the entire province were “opened up” to mining, mines would be popping up everywhere. After all, mineral deposits are few and far between, which means the total land mass disturbed by mining would remain at its current level of less than 0.1%. And please, give us a break, there will be no open-pit mines in Algonquin Park.

Those who live off the land need to drive home the message that they, too, appreciate and respect wilderness spaces and parks. Northerners need to show that they care about wildlife as much, if not more, than environmental activists from downtown Toronto. Developers need to remind the public that they operate within stringent rules and guidelines, that resource development is not, and never will be, a free-for-all, and that land has to be reclaimed after it is used.

Urban Canadians need to understand that their rural cousins, including aboriginals, also want a healthy local economy and vibrant communities. They want jobs and sustainable resource development that will allow their children to work and live at home.

To these people, Lands for Life is not a political buzzword; it is their future.