Greenpeace dresses Mount Royal cross with banners

Six Greenpeace activists unfurled two banners on the foremost icon in Montreal's skyline, the Mount Royal cross, early Tuesday morning.

The action stems from Greenpeace's concerns with pulpand paper manufacturer Resolute Forest Products over its operations in theBorealForest. Resolute has its headquarters in Montreal.

Greenpeace's Quebec director NicolasMainvillesaid the banners were meant to appear as "scales of justice."

"We want to re-establish the balance between the logging practices and the protection of our public forests,"Mainvillesaid.

SethKursman, Resolute's vice-president of communications, says the battle between the company and Greenpeace has continued for some time. He called today's protest just another step in Greenpeace'soutrageous, inaccurate and deceptive allegations against Resolute.

He said theBorealForest has plenty of protected areas that are off-limits to the forestry industry.

Mainvillesaid Resolute's activities in theBorealForest in Quebec and Ontario were threatening caribou habitats and indigenous populations, and that the company had lost an important environmental certification recently.

Internationally recognized

Kursmansaid it was true the company had three of its forest management certificates temporarily suspended, and said a dispute between theInnuand Cree in Quebec was currently being handled by the province, but he maintained Resolute was environmentally and socially responsible.

One-hundred per centof our lands that we manage are certified to one or more internationally recognized certification regimes, he said.

In November, a group ofGreenpeace activists scaled theBiosphrein Montreal, affixing a banner to it demanding the release of theArctic 30.

The Arctic 30 was a group of Greenpeace activists arrested in Russia after some members scaled an oil drilling platform in the Pechora Sea, in the Arctic Ocean.