Sometimes my job requires me to mine some places that are unacceptably dark — and sometimes, unexpectedly dark.
Last week, I had to take a turn through a Facebook group that’s opposed to a plan that is examining setting up new protected areas in the province. The plan, from a volunteer group set up by the government and called the Wilderness and Ecological Reserves Advisory Council (WERAC) was released just over a week ago, and is now in the process of moving through a remarkably short three-week window for comments.
(WERAC has pointed out in its report on proposed areas that, “The release of this document provides the first opportunity for the public to provide input on the plan. The boundaries proposed in this plan are not final.” But not everyone is reading that before launching into high dudgeon.)
Judging by the traffic on the “Fight Back against WERAC” Great Northern Peninsula chapter, there should be plenty of comments in WERAC’s inbox.
Many of the people posting on the group are honestly concerned about the impact that new reserves in their area would have on their ability to live the lives they are living now — whether it would mean they couldn’t bring in wood for winter from areas where they have traditionally cut wood, and whether it would block them from hunting, berrypicking and fishing opportunities that they legitimately need to get through the average year in an area with few employment options.
The group has said a lot about the need for as many people as possible to get active, to launch petitions, contact provincial politicians and generally take the kind of groundswell action that gets results.
There have also been some decidedly ugly threats that serve absolutely no purpose at all in the debate — and that we can really just leave aside for what they are.
But what surprised me was the sheer volume and tone of posters who seem to believe that a volunteer group is actually part of some sort of massive global conspiracy.
Everybody has to stop connecting fanciful dots, and deal with concerns you can prove and that legitimately need to be addressed.
WERAC’s report starts out by outlining the way this province has fallen behind agreed standards for wilderness protection and points out that the federal government had committed to preserving 17 per cent of land in this country by 2020 under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, and that in this province, only about 6.9 per cent of the province is officially protected.
That’s the jumping-off point in the group for conspiracy theories about the United Nations back-door control of the world, plans for Liberal government gun control and the coming subjugation of the population.
Some argue that the plan is an effort to depopulate the Great Northern Peninsula entirely by stopping all industry there; others argue it’s a plan to move people off of their traditional grounds so that the government can then turn around, open them all up again and give the land to foreign multinationals.
For example, “The environment is a vehicle for them. A Trojan horse of sorts to gain full broad neverending power.”
Still others posit it’s a secret attempt by Greenpeace environmentalists to finish off what they started by trying to ban the seal hunt.
Want to have an impact? Everybody has to stop connecting fanciful dots, and deal with concerns you can prove and that legitimately need to be addressed.
We’re in a very bad spot if “proof” has devolved to the point, both for the left and the right, that it’s merely whatever harebrained conspiracy you can throw at the wall today and hope will stick.
Russell Wangersky’s column appears in SaltWire newspapers and websites across Atlantic Canada. He can be reached at [email protected] — Twitter: @wangersky.
