NEB fails Ontario with Line 9B Approval | Unpublished
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Mike Schreiner
Toronto, Ontario
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A leading advocate for independent businesses, local food and sustainable communities, Mike Schreiner is well known for his leadership in co-founding the award-winning Local Food Plus organization. He brings a proven track record in business and non-profit leadership roles to the Ontario political scene. Schreiner was elected leader of the Green Party of Ontario (GPO) on November 14, 2009. Schreiner, a 43-year old father of two, started his career in the Guelph region as an entrepreneur and advocate in the local food movement. As co-founder of WOW Foods, an award winning local organic food distribution company, Schreiner worked for over 10 years to connect local farmers with consumers in the GTA and Guelph. His business was awarded the Citizen’s Bank of Canada Ethics in Action Award for socially responsible business and the Toronto Food Policy Council’s Local Food Hero Award. He is also co-founder of Earthdance Organics, a Guelph-based food production business that supplied area health foods stores and farmer’s markets in the early 2000s. Building on that success, he helped establish Local Food Plus (LFP), a non-profit that brings farmers and consumers together to promote financially, socially and environmentally sustainable local food systems. While at LFP, the organization won the Canadian Environment Award for Sustainable Living, a Green Toronto Award of Excellence--Health Category, a Green Toronto Award of Excellence--Market Transformation Category and NOW Magazine’s Best of Toronto Award for best new environmental initiative. Family and community are important to Mike. His wife Sandy and their two daughters are active, spending their free time gardening, hiking, fishing, cycling and volunteering in community activities.

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NEB fails Ontario with Line 9B Approval

March 10, 2014

As leader of the Green Party of Ontario I am issuing the following comment in response to National Energy Board’s conditional approval of Enbridge’s Line 9B proposal:

The National Energy Board has failed the people of Ontario by approving Enbridge’s Line 9B. The health and well being of people and communities should be the government’s top priority, not the interests of big oil.
 
Pumping dirty oil through an aging pipeline not designed to handle such corrosive material is not in the public interest. It is dangerously irresponsible that the NEB did not at the very least require a hydrostatic test for leaks in the 38-year old pipeline or even require Enbridge to carry sufficient insurance.
 
The province of Ontario should have demanded an Environmental Assessment.
 
This decision is especially outrageous given Enbridge's poor spills and safety record. Enbridge is still trying to clean up its 2010 dirty oil spill that dumped 3 million litres of dilbit into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. The clean up costs exceed $1 billion.
 
Now the NEB will allow Enbridge to pump 300,000 barrels of dirty oil through Ontario everyday. This decision threatens our water, farmland, economy and communities.
 
I’m deeply disappointed that Premier Wynne did not speak out forcefully against Line 9. Her October 2013 visit to Alberta, where she essentially endorsed the flow of dirty oil through Ontario, made it more difficult to raise serious objections to this risky project.
 
She failed to put the people of Ontario first. We should expect better from government leaders.

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