On Monday afternoon, supporters of the Labrador Land Protectors are gathering at environment minister Catherine McKenna’s office to protest the Muskrat Falls project.
They’ll bring with them bottles of “symbolic methylmercury-contaminated water” and ask the minister if she would drink it.
The demonstration is organized by the Ontario-Muskrat Solidarity Coalition.
In a written statement, the group wrote that they are demonstrating to contrast McKenna’s support for the Minamata Convention on Mercury “while the Liberal-supported Muskrat Falls Megadam threatens Indigenous people in Labrador with Methylmercury Poisoning.”
Canada ratified the Minamata Convention – a global treaty to reduce mercury emissions and to protect the environment and human health – in April.
Group spokesperson Matthew Behrens was quoted in the statement saying the group demands that McKenna take the Minamata Convention seriously “and take a stand against the methylmercury poisoning of people downstream of Muskrat Falls.”
"She must put her words into action, and compel her government to withdraw its $9.2 billion investment in Muskrat Falls unless there is 100% proof that no methylmercury poisoning will occur if the dam goes online.”
Monday’s demonstration takes place three weeks after members of Labrador Land Protectors were arrested on Parliament Hill while attempting to go into the House of Commons with pictures of people, mostly children, whose lives they say are at most risk of methylmercury poisoning.
