==> Opening night reception disrupted

==> No Smooth Sailing for PNWER Elites: Marina Entrance Blocked by Activists

A group of activists blocked access to the Westin Bayshore marina on Wednesday July 23 to protest the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (PNWER) summit. In doing so, they prevented PNWER delegates from boarding a 190-person luxury boat tour of the Vancouver harbour. Approximately 10 people stood with a banner reading People Not Profit! and prevented access to the luxury yacht though the public boardwalk.

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CONFRONT THEIR ECONOMIC REGION: Demonstration Opposing the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (PNWER)

Sunday July 20th 5 pm. Westin Bayshore Hotel. 1601 Bayshore Drive (two blocks east of Denman and one block north of West Georgia)

From Sunday July 20th to Friday July 25th, the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (PNWER) Summit will be meeting in Vancouver. (check out www.pnwer.org) The PNWER is a northwest US-Canada forum to  encourage global economic competitiveness” and like other current regional and national free trade frameworks like NAFTA, SPP, and TILMA, it is all about furthering an agenda of corporate free trade, border militarization, privatization and theft of indigenous land and resources, ecological destruction, repression in the name of national security, impoverishment and displacement, and cooperation in war and occupation.

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Saturday June 21. By TAMAS VIRAG, SUN MEDIA

KELLY LAKE, B.C. — This tiny northeastern B.C. community is garnering attention throughout Western Canada after its members set up a blockade at the junction of two highways just outside the community. “We’re conducting a community Kelly Lake Cree Nation exercise mock disaster drill,” said Clayton Anderson, spokesman for Kelly Lake Cree Nation. “It’s to bring about attention and awareness to health and safety concerns, traffic, and … uncontrolled gas leaks.”

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The giant corporations that are determined to exploit the Alberta tar sands face a major problem – a serious shortage of local labour to do the actual work. So the Canadian and Albertan governments have a plan, ideal in their eyes, to solve the crunch. Currently, employers desperate to find needed hands, backs and minds for the vast production targets of the “Gigaproject” are flying workers from the Maritimes from their homes for shift stretches and then back again, but that effort faces limits in terms of workers available. Nary a day goes without a business page article somewhere in Alberta bemoaning the lack of workers. Many of the Newfoundlanders who would have come out this way in the past will now work in Newfoundland premier Dany Williams’ new off shore oil and gas ventures, using skills learned in Fort McMurray, Alberta.

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David Pugliese. The Ottawa Citizen. Saturday, May 10, 2008

The North American Aerospace Defence Command is already planning how it will protect the 2010 Olympics with potentially everything from fighter aircraft to sophisticated surveillance planes. Canadian Lt.-Gen. Charlie Bouchard, deputy commander of the joint U.S.- Canada military organization Norad, says work is under way on how to best provide air protection for the Games in Vancouver and Whistler.

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