YOUR SPECKLED TROUT WANT YOU!

Great Lakes machine guns raise ire in Canada (Margaret Philp, The Globe and Mail, September 28th, 2006)

The United States Coast Guard has started to patrol the Great Lakes with machine guns mounted on their vessels and is conducting live-ammunition training drills on the U.S. side to prepare officers to combat terrorists flooding across the border from Canada by boat.

The automatic-weapon drills started earlier this year but came to light only in the past two weeks after information about the Coast Guard's move to create 34 permanent live-fire training zones in the Great Lakes was published in the U.S. federal register.[...]

The high-powered drills have, however, stunned environmentalists, boaters and mayors in cities dotting the lakes in both countries who are outraged that the U.S. government would jeopardize the safety of pleasure boaters and commercial fishermen who could stray into the line of fire. Just as infuriating, they say, is the risk of lead exposure to fish and the more than 40 million people who draw drinking water from the Great Lakes.[...]

Others are raising alarms about the impact of tens of thousands of bullets made from lead, which has been linked to brain-development and behaviour problems in children. In recent years there have been efforts to reduce lead in the lakes, including the banning of lead paint and a more recent campaign asking fishermen to replace lead sinkers.

“We've spent years removing lead from the Great Lakes,” said Mary Muter, a long-time cottager and vice-president of the Georgian Bay Association, a coalition of cottage owners and boaters. “As a Canadian, these are binational waters and this is just offensive.”

These modern Canadian nationalists are just so embarrassing. You hand them slam dunk proof that the Rapacious Yankee Trader is plotting a secret invasion and the twits just prattle on about ADHD and mineral levels in fish.