Canada

 WRM information sheets on GE tree research First posted: 1 August 2008 Updated: 1 October 2008 (including information provided by the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network) Updated:  August 2014 (including information provided by the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network) Tree species being engineered:

For many years, the pulp and paper industry has been trying to paint itself green. No challenge is too big, it seems, for one of the most polluting industries on the planet. Although paper production is a major consumer of energy and a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions, the latest challenge for the industry is to go "carbon neutral". While reducing greenhouse gas emissions may sound like something that we all welcome, this industry-dominated discussion sidesteps the fact that the pulp and paper industry is expanding rapidly, especially in the global South.

Indigenous Peoples have achieved a major victory at the United Nations level. After more than 20 years of negotiations, on September 13 the United Nations General Assembly finally adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

In July 2006, Pulp and Paper International reported on a conference called World Bioenergy 2006. The conference took place in Sweden, where biofuels provide 25 per cent of Sweden’s energy and the majority of its heating. “Pulp mills with combined heat and power plants sending excess energy to district heating systems are an established part of the country’s infrastructure and a useful source of extra income for its pulp mills,” notes Pulp and Paper International.

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative - launched in 1995 by the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), the most powerful timber trade association in the world - covers an area over 40,485,830 ha in the United States and Canada. It is, in essence, a certification scheme by the forestry industry for the forestry industry. AF&PA member companies, including the largest loggers in the United States and Canada and the largest wholesale distributors of global wood products, account for 82% of the funds of SFI.

Last March –on International Women's Day- the WRM paid homage to women’s struggles in forests and plantations. We then said that, in spite of all the difficulties, “women continue resisting both in the forest and in the tree plantations. They are speaking loud telling the world about their knowledge, their wisdom, their own definition of what development is and how it should be undertaken.” In response, we received the following message from an indigenous woman called Telquaa, which we would like to share with all of you. After thanking us for the statement she said:

GM trees are not a result of evolution. They are the result of decisions taken at institutional and corporate levels for their development and deployment. Companies, research institutions and universities work together closely on this. Companies fund university research departments, and influence what type of research is carried out.

A long way from the tropical rainforests of Amazonia, British Columbia (BC), the western most province in Canada, has been characterized as "Brazil of the North" for its rate of forest liquidation. The British Columbian forests are dominated by large corporate tenures and large scale extraction. But there is a glimmer of change as community forests emerge, and with them, a new way of doing forestry and forest management. One of these community forests belongs to Kaslo, a small town on the shores of Kootenay Lake, in south-east British Columbia.

The month of September has certainly been rich in important events, warranting the active participation of relevant social actors. The ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization in Cancun, Mexico, was doubtlessly the most resounding one, both because of the presence of thousands of people and organizations from all over the world, demonstrating in the streets against the WTO, and because of the firm attitude of some countries from the South, in facing the domineering attitude of certain governments from the North. The world will never be the same after Cancun.

September 2003 is a crucial month for the global environment movement. During September, global trade talks under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation are to be held in Cancun, Mexico. Social and environmental organisations plan sharp protests against the way the Bretton Woods organisations are still pushing the world headlong down a slide towards unregulated markets, international trade without equity and liberalization without restraint.

In August 1996 the Tanzanian government authorities in collaboration with a Canadian-owned company called Kahama Mining Corporation Ltd. (KMCL), forcibly removed over 400,000 artisanal miners, peasant farmers, small traders and their families from their land in an area called Bulyanhulu in Shinyanga Region, central-western Tanzania. KMCL was then a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sutton Resources, based in Vancouver, Canada.

Commissioned by the Global Forest Coalition This report is based on 21 country case studies, including Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech republic, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya,Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Papua New Guinea, Russia, South Africa, Suriname, Uganda, United Kingdom, and Uruguay