Update from our Annual Report

Environment Task Force Report in PIA's 2010-2011 Annual Report

Click here for the Environment Task Force Report in PDF

Click here to access our full annual reports

Plain text of the Environment Task Force Report:

While the environment remains one of the top priorities and concerns for most Albertans, the provincial government’s policies are more about public relations and pleasing our energy industry, than about protecting the public interest.

PIA is one of the core members of the advocacy campaign, “Our Water is Not for Sale”, that was launched last June to raise awareness and stop the government from establishing a market for water allocations throughout Alberta. The campaign has strong support from many municipal decision-makers, first nations communities, rural land-owners and the general public and currently has over 60 organizations and 1500 people who have signed on to the campaign. Our partner organizations and our two environment interns, Russell Charlton and Julia Dalman have put on many presentations, spoken in the media and distributed our campaign literature at many events. We also raised the awareness of this issue during the October municipal elections by getting over 140 candidates to fill out our on-line survey on water markets. We hosted a major event in the fall featuring Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow and also hosted a series of events during world water week in March.

The task force continues to support environmental action by promoting advocacy campaigns to our broader membership. We have hosted and spoken at many events, including sponsoring the screening of the film “Dirty Oil” at the Global Visions Festival and many other events coordinated by Task Force chairperson Gerald Wheatley from the Arusha Centre in Calgary. Russell Charlton, our environment intern helped promote climate justice issues and attended the climate change negotiations in Cancun where he video blogged and made presentations about his experiences.

The PIA advocacy conference also featured an excellent presentation from Rob Hopkins, the co-founder of the Transition Towns movement in the UK. The task force will be looking at further ways to promote community solutions to transition away from reliance on fossil fuels towards a green, sustainable economy.

Also available: Last year's (2009-2010) Task Force Report in PDF