The HUES3 Campaign
Health, Uranium, Environment: Sustainability, Survival and Solidarity
Mission Statement
HUES³ is a volunteer group of ordinary citizens dedicated to protecting our communities and institutions from the effects of the nuclear industry. Our members come from all walks of life and share a common vision: a Saskatchewan where our natural resources will be utilized for the benefit of all society and where we can build an economy that will be sustainable for generations to come. We are committed to a one-year campaign focusing on uranium mining and the nuclear industry, and their impact on human health, environment, sustainability, survival and solidarity with the indigenous peoples in the North.
1. Uranium is a natural resource that belongs to ALL the people of Saskatchewan. Citizens have the right to decide how that resource is utilized, and we recognize that its exploitation has particular relevance to the indigenous peoples who live right where the resource is located. During the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) process Saskatchewan residents told the government unequivocally that they didn't want nuclear development.
2. Our goal is a moratorium on new uranium mining projects in Saskatchewan until a rigorous, unbiased and enforceable environmental and social impact assessment can be completed in a credible review process. Our future health demands knowledge of the present: we need a health survey of Northerners including migration patterns (to act as a baseline for the next 25 years and to provide data for health care planning), and an assessment of effects on wildlife populations (bore holes emit increased radon, lakes have been contaminated.)
3. Northern Saskatchewan is riddled with toxic tailings and other waste products of uranium mining which has continued since the 1950's. Our goal is to obtain a firm commitment from the federal and provincial governments and the industry to environmental safety and a shared willingness to carry out a comprehensive clean-up.
4. The current situation is unethical. Northern people are being seduced by gifts – biased education, sports facilities, housing, jobs – when they need support to develop their community, learn how to manage their own resources, and become educated for a sustainable future. Our goal is a collaborative initiative for Northern development, directed by Northerners, through a process of intensive community consultation and support, not subject to commercial inducements. Both provincial and federal governments need to be involved in this process, due to jurisdictional issues on Treaty lands and communities.
Nuclear reactors produce highly radio-toxic waste that must to be isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands or years. The industry-controlled Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is attempting to site a high level nuclear waste dump in northern Saskatchewan. They are trying to buy their way into communities, to sway the views of residents of Pinehouse, English River First Nation, and Creighton. This is causing deep divisions and animosity between residents and among families. We call on the NWMO to leave Saskatchewan without delay.
6. The federal and provincial governments must stop all research and development of nuclear reactors within Saskatchewan, as demanded by the overwhelming majority of responses to the UDP report.
7. Nuclear science is currently directed by industry. Universities should be adequately funded to carry out independent and transparent research in all aspects of radiation – energy, medical uses, harmful effects, mining, handling of waste, etc.
8. The Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation is relevant to the people of Saskatchewan and Canada only if its terms of reference include research and development that is directed towards the widest public interest, and only if the Centre is truly autonomous and independent of corporate influence.
Summary:
The nuclear industry was born in secrecy in the Second World War and has remained so to this day. Transparency and accountability from this industry are prerequisites to ensuring public confidence in it. Our commitment is to engage in public education about the effects of ionizing radiation and industry tactics.
We face a global problem that is affecting all life and all people, in particular the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Australia and Africa who are being targeted for their lands and who are being asked to take the risks. In other words, they are being treated as expendable, “collateral damage.”
Encroachment upon the northern Saskatchewan environment by uranium mining is pervasive. We expect that people in the industry, and in the federal and provincial governments should be as concerned as we are about our future human and ecological health. We demand a planned response from them to first document the changes occurring in the environment and then act to preserve the health of present and future generations and the natural environment in which they live and on which they depend for survival.
27 July 2012