There are five basic lessons and challenges that campaigners and strategists can glean from The Bitumen Cliff report for broadening and deepening the resistance to the tar sands juggernaut.

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper sat down with President George W. Bush in their first White House meeting on July 6, one of the “unmentionable” items on their agenda may well have been the question of bulk water exports from Canada. After all, Bush himself raised the issue back in July, 2001, when he talked “off the cuff” to reporters about growing water shortages in his home state of Texas and elsewhere in the country, saying he would like to begin negotiations with Ottawa on water exports from Canada. In Texas, he said, “water is more valuable than oil.” “A lot of people don’t need it, but when you head south and west, we need it,” Bush declared, adding that he “looked forward” to discussing the matter with then-prime minister Jean Chretien.

Tony Clarke and Maude Barlow, joint recipients of the prestigious Right Livelihood Award were honoured at the May Day, 2006 Ottawa Annual Benefit Dinner for Canadian Dimension. Here is the text of Tony’s remarks on that occasion

Six years ago in 1999, at the Battle of Seattle, we heard for the first time the chant, “Hey-hey! Ho-ho! The WTO’s got to go!” It’s a chant we’re likely to be refamilarizing ourselves with when the World Trade Organization hold its fifth ministerial meeting in Hong Kong, China, this coming December.