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December 20th, 2011

War on bananas is nothing but Conservative hypocrisy: NDP

OTTAWA – New Democrat Environment Critic Megan Leslie (Halifax) is slamming the Conservatives’ hypocritical war against the Chiquita banana company, pointing out that this government’s inaction on climate change is the root of the problem here.

“Instead of taking action on climate change, Conservatives just repeating the phrase ethical oil over and over trying to rebrand oil sands bitumen,” said Leslie. “It comes as no surprise that Conservative Cabinet Ministers are quick to slam Chiquita’s campaign to reduce its dependency on the oil sands, given former ethicaloil.org lobbyist Alykhan Velshi now works as a senior advisor in the PMO.”

Leslie pointed out that the decision by Chiquita comes on the heels of the U.S. delaying the Keystone pipeline and European nations threatening sanctions because of Stephen Harper’s refusal to take action on climate change.

“Conservatives are making decisions that are killing Canadian jobs,” said Leslie. “Conservatives will need a lot more than Ethical Oil talking points to deal with the real environmental and ethical concerns our international partners have about oil sands production.”

New Democrats pointed out that the Conservatives are also ignoring fair trade issues and don’t seem to care about workers’ living conditions in banana fields, let alone their wages or rights, when negotiating new trade deals with countries such as Honduras.