Category Archives: Energy and Resources

Rafe’s Welcome Letter to New Sun & Province Publisher

February 2, 2013Hydropower, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Salmon Farming and Aquaculture, Western CanadaRafe Mair

In the Postmedia press this past week we learned that Gordon Fisher has become publisher of The Vancouver Sun and The Province. Here is my welcome.

Dear Mr. Fisher,

My congratulations on your new posting. These two papers need all the help they can get.

I’m an octogenarian now – I love that word because it’s more descriptive than “senior citizen” and because no one I knew in my 40s would have bet a plug nickel I’d ever get this far.

As a lifetime British Columbian I go back a long way. As a youngster I was a Tillicum mostly because The Province gave you a neat faked silver totem pole as a badge. The magic words were “Klahowya , Tillicum”, which my cousin said came from Indians saying to Hudson’s Bay employees, “Clerk how you?”

I doubt that but have never heard of a better answer

I didn’t join The Sun’s Uncle Ben club because my Dad hated The Sun – in those days there was real rivalry!

I remember some of the great writers of that day – Eric Nichol, Jack Scott, Harold Weir (a rabid royalist) and I even read Sir Michael Bruce, whose taffy-nosed columns used to get under everyone’s skin.

I would like to talk about more modern times.

Back in the 70s I ran for the BC Legislature and as I awaited the election I couldn’t wait to read Marjorie Nichols in The Sunas night after night she kicked the crap out of the NDP government, especially Dave Barrett.

When I was elected it seemed as if Marjorie had had a brain transplant as now she was hammering the hell out of the Socreds and Bill Bennett!

I asked myself how Marjorie had changed so dramatically until the light went on – it wasn’t Marjorie who had changed, it was the government!

As the days passed I noticed that Jack Webster, Pat Burns, Jack Wasserman, Denny Boyd, Garry Bannerman, Ed Murphy, Jim Hume, Barbara McClintock – indeed the entire political press were “unfairly” beating up on us.

After I left the government I realized that they were “holding our feet to the fire” and it made for a better, more responsive government. It was that obligation I adopted when in 1981 I went into radio.

In the nineties you will remember the NDP under Mike Harcourt took over for the next decade.

The print media, especially Mike Smyth of The Province and Vaughn Palmer of the Sun were merciless in their pursuit of at least a close proximity to the truth. There were two areas that stick in my mind – the fast ferries issue and Glen Clark’s dealing with a man trying to get a gambling licence, who did some work on the premier’s house.

These two and Les Leyne and Jim Hume, both of the Times-Colonist, were relentless in their pursuit of the facts and highly critical of the premier and other members of the government.

In 2001 it all changed as the Liberals under Gordon Campbell took power. The media suddenly started to avoid issues or give them a once-and-for-all treatment.

Let me be specific.

For the first time in my life, the environment has become an issue, perhaps the #1 in the province. In no special order, here are the main issues: loss of agricultural land due to the Gateway Project, fish farms, private river power, pipelines and tankers, and most recently “fracking”.

Mr. Fisher, I ask you to look at your columnists and determine for yourself whether any of these questions have been canvassed – not well canvassed but canvassed at all.

Let’s start with fish farms. These have not been covered at all in spite of the terrible consequences of them including ruination of wild salmon! I invite you to find a critical word – indeed any word at all – in Smyth or Palmer’s columns in the last 12 years. You will note that your former editor of the Sun editorial pages, a “fellow” of the Fraser Institute, freely gave op-ed opportunities to the fish farmers’ lobby, yet you’ll search in vain to see anything from, say, Alexandra Morton.

The so-called “run of river” policy has desecrated 75 rivers and proposes to do the same to hundreds more. These projects build a dam (they prefer to call them “weirs” but they are dams) which kill migrating salmon and resident trout and, in effect, permanently decimate the ecosystems that depend upon the river. You see, Mr. Fisher, these plants not only impact the fish directly but the entire ecology as they require roads and clear-cutting for transmission lines.

Let’s leave aside the environment and look at the economics.

BC Hydro is compelled by the provincial government to sign agreements with Independent Power Producers (IPPS) on a “take or pay” basis meaning that when IPPs are going all out during run-offs, BC Hydro, which has full reservoirs, must buy this power even though they don’t need it, at double to ten times the export price and many times more expensive than it can generate it themselves. BC Hydro owes IPPs for future power over $50 Billion!

This all means, of course, that Hydro can no longer pay a dividend to the government of the customary hundreds of millions of dollars and is, in fact, bankrupt by private, corporate standards.

I invite you to look at your columnists’ work over the past 5 years and try to find a discouraging word about private power. There have been the occasional, very occasional, news story but your political columnists are and have been silent.

Let me pause and tell you that after I had raised hell on this subject, Province editor Wayne Moriarty phoned me and whined, “Rafe, do you think I tell my columnists what they must not write about?” to which I replied ,“You don’t have to, Wayne, you don’t have to.”

Let’s move on to the pipelines issue, especially the Enbridge proposal and the proposed new Kinder Morgan line. At the same time, let’s glance at the tanker traffic these two pipelines will need.

These are both huge issues. The issue isn’t the risk of spills, Mr. Fisher, but the certainty of them. Even the Federal Environment Ministry (scarcely known to be tree-huggers) says that these spills are inevitable.

But, you may well ask, surely these spills can be cleaned up?

First let’s deal with the proposed Enbridge line, which is more than 1,000 Kilometers long and passes through the Rockies, the Rocky Mountain Trench, through the Coast Range then through The Great Bear Rainforest. When a spill occurs, how the devil will Enbridge get men and machines in to the spill area?

Mr. Fisher, it’s even worse. It doesn’t matter.

Enbridge had a huge spill into the Kalamazoo River in July 2010 and it hasn’t been cleaned up yet and never will be. Access to the spill site posed no difficulties but cleanup certainly did.

The cargo is what they call dilbit or diluted bitumen, product of the Tar Sands, which in itself is the world’s largest polluter. With ordinary bulk oil one can get to a lot of it by “rafting” which, as you would imagine, is surrounding it, localizing it then scooping it up.

Unfortunately, within a very short time after a dilbit spill, the bitumen separates from the diluent and sinks like a stone. Not only will Enbridge be unable to get to the spill, even if it could they would be helpless to do anything of consequence.

The problem scarcely ends there. The tanker traffic poses huge problems.

Again, Mr. Fisher, it’s not a matter of “if” but “when”. The consequences of a spill are too awful to even contemplate. Whether down Douglas Channel from Kitimat or through Vancouver Harbour from Burnaby the consequences of a spill will be horrendous.

Yes, with double hulling there will be fewer accidents, the operative word being fewer. As we know from the BC Ferry Queen of the North calamity, where there is a possibility of human error, tragedies will happen.

I’m sorry to have been so long-winded, Mr. Fisher, but my point is that Postmedia’s coverage of the matters mentioned has been pathetic and journalistic critique, let alone criticism, has been nonexistent.

I ask you, are you content to let this continue?

Yours very truly,
Rafe Mair

Oil, China and why David Emerson wants Alberta to start paying taxes

January 30, 2013Canada, Economics, Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Politics, Tar SandsKevin Logan

Alberta Premier Alison Redford recently took the unprecedented step of holding a “State of the Province” Address. This hauntingly American-style public relations stunt came about as a result of the longstanding work of behind-the-scenes chief architect of Canada as an Energy Superpower, David Emerson.

Here at the Common Sense Canadian we have tracked in some detail the efforts of former Harper Government Trade Minister David Emerson and his role as Chair of the Energy Policy Institute of Canada (EPIC). We have noted that while Mr. Emerson garners little coverage in mainstream media, his fingerprints can be found on every aspect of Canada’s evolution into a petro state. The corporate-driven policy “think tank” EPIC is the instrument of Emerson’s work.

This, we demonstrated, was evident when premiers took centre stage in Nova Scotia last summer to talk up Canada’s “National Energy Strategy”, while exploring “what was in it for every Canadian.” A central talking point dictated by Emerson and his EPIC communications shop in the exhaustive National Energy Strategy package he provided to all of the nation’s premiers, energy ministers and the PMO/PCO.

We underscored how this was just the tip of the iceberg in a longstanding trend where Emerson and EPIC drafted, promoted and delivered every recent development we have seen on the energy file. From the National Energy Strategy, through the raft of legislative changes we have seen since Harper came to power, including the paradigm shift in environmental policies dictating resource exploitation contained in the recent Omnibus Bills.

We undertook an exhaustive campaign, which grew exponentially in response to the secretive processes surrounding the establishment of the FIPA treaty, and we pointed to Emerson’s time in office as Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Pacific Gateway (before returning to the private sector in 2008 to work for the China Investment Corporation) where he claimed that establishing the Chinese FIPA was his “ultimate goal.” And we did our best to stop it.

Today we are going to explore Emerson’s role in what is being billed as a “once in a generation” restructuring of the Province of Alberta,establishing a New Normal, while the Province prepares to ratchet up Tar Sands production to meet the five-fold increase the Harper government and industry outlined as their shared goal early in the Conservative mandate.

For decades the Alberta Advantage defined that Province as the apparent envy of the nation. No Provincial sales tax, capital tax, payroll tax or health premiums was the “advantage” Albertan’s enjoyed as a result of their oil bounty. This was the foundation of a mountain of oily rhetoric that promoted self-reliance, hard work, small government, no taxes, cheap fuel and lots of toys – all of which defined “freedom” in the public psyche of Alberta.

Enter David Emerson.

Albertans have come to accept that oil wealth does not translate into cheap gasoline for their huge trucks. They have come to understand that small government means less service, but are proud to dig deep for the services they want, because they are “self-reliant”. They know first hand the environmental impact of a massive exploitation agenda and are aware of the “myth” of climate change. But, can they accept that much like death, provincial taxes are inevitable?

Can they accept that not even a massive escalation in oil production can balance budgets?

Massive escalation of Tar Sands production is the undercurrent that drives the entire Albertan frame of mind. You can feel it in the streets, at the coffee shops and on the “highway of death” that leads to the EPIC undertaking of the internationally-renowned Tar Sands, the largest industrial activity known to man.

It is therefore widely known that much of the Alberta advantage is oil-driven cultural myth, however the one thing no one can deny is there are no provincial taxes. This is evident in every purchase Albertans make, and apparently this daily reminder is enough to perpetuate the advantage myth and condition the average Albertan to accept foreign interests infiltrating their natural resource bounty, running off with the profits and leaving them to hold the environmental and fiscal bag.

Clearly the real Alberta Advantage falls in favour of foreign investment and almost entirely at the expense of average Albertans. Redford’s whole “State of the Province Address”, while predicated on myth, does forecast a 6 Billion dollar deficit in the March budget. Yes, thats right, oil rich Alberta, at a time when production rates have never been as high, is filing a SIX BILLION dollar shortfall in oil royalties.

So what does David Emerson have to do with all of this? We have established that Emerson and his shop are the architects of the real Alberta Advantage, steeped largely in favour of foreign interests – and now Albertans are experiencing first hand how he operates.

But what might come as a surprise to even Albertans is Emerson’s role in “reshaping” their future.

As appointed chair of the Alberta Premier’s Council for Economic Strategy (thanks to former premier Ed Stelmach who leaned hard on Emerson to get him through the battle over Royalties), Emerson has skillfully guided the policy fix – once again from the behind the scenes and on behalf of the largest most powerful companies on earth – and the Chinese Government.

His intention? The end of the Alberta “no taxes” advantage with a “broad based long term approach,” for which they have been priming the pump for years.

The reason? The corporate fabricated Bank-Backed Bitumen Bubble.

Former ICBC CEO and respected independent economist Robyn Allan skillfully analyzes this most current myth-making that EPIC puppet Premier Redford has put at the centre of her “once in a generation” restructuring. In a recent piece, Allan bursts the Bitumen Bubble the EPIC-affiliated propagandists have blown way out of proportion, which sets out Alberta’s “New Normal.”

Industry and government talking heads are singing from the Bitumen Bubble song sheet, and Allan rips it to shreds in her in-depth, rock-solid analysis, proving that much of the current fearmongering surrounding the finances of oil exports is indeed a bubble of hot air. “The narrative goes like this,” she writes. “Resistance to oil pipelines like Keystone XL, Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain’s twinning means an ever increasing supply glut in the U.S. Midwest, forcing the price of Western Canadian crude oil downwards as compared to the North American crude oil benchmark West Texas Intermediate — WTI.”

The implication is that oil sands operators would get more value if they could just access new markets via new supply routes. Allan demonstrates this is hogwash, built on some very fuzzy math and ignoring the fact that Alberta bitumen is a low-quality, expensive-to-process product which has and always will fetch bottom dollar compared with more favourable alternatives.

The bottom line of Allan’s analysis, is that we are being misled and that lack of access to new markets is not the real problem contributing to Alberta’s gargantuan debt, nor will access to new markets via BC fix it. Only reasonable, responsible royalty rates can balance Alberta’s budgets, protect and secure the Alberta Advantage and avoid a complete restructuring of the province.

Here is the hot air EPIC’s propagandists are using to restructure the Alberta Advantage. By blowing up the Bitumen Bubble and handing the advantages of oil to his corporate colleagues, Emerson’s fix is to dump the disadvantages onto average Albertans.

Instead of simply fixing budget shortfalls by establishing responsible royalty rates on massively escalating production rates, Albertans will be treated to a sleight of hand, by funnelling puny royalties into a new fund called “Shaping Alberta’s Future”. A two year-old Emerson recommendation now topped off with his shafting of Albertans by exploring the “expenditure side of the ledger.” I.e. deep cuts and reduced services. But the kicker, of course, the end of “no taxes.”

How does Emerson think he is going to strip Albertans of the last modicum of the Alberta Advantage that has long been the pride of Alberta? Can his propagandists shift the public psyche and alter the longstanding reality Albertans have clung to as their one distinguishing factor?

Here is Emerson in his own words:

The culture of Alberta has been built around low or no taxes for many decades. It’s not going to be an overnight psychological shift for the people of the province. My own view is you have to start first on the expenditure side and be fairly broad-based and multi-year in your approach.

In other words, start by cutting services, then phase in taxes over several years so people don’t get quite so hopping mad.

Redford parrots Emerson’s view. “It’s about this being a new reality and us having to face that,” she said in a recent interview.

In a conference call Monday with more than 5,000 members of her Conservative Party, Redford confirmed the province will borrow to pay for new infrastructure, such as roads and schools, and did not rule out the possibility that Albertans will one day be subject to a provincial sales tax.

So Alberta, looks like you have won! The race to the bottom that is, and with EPIC’s Emerson as your jockey. And you all thought it was Alberta telling British Columbians what to do!

But don’t worry, he has been “shaping the future” of BC for decades, as onetime chair of the BC Progress Board – not to mention CEO of Canfor, the BC Transmission Corporation, the Western Bank of Canada, the BC Trade Development Corp and a directorship at BC Gas…to mention just a few significant BC-specific posts Emerson has held.

Just look at the shape we are in! Our oil and gas deficits are merely a third of what you are looking at. Relax and enjoy the ride. It will be EPIC.

Environment still an afterthought to BC media in election run-up

January 21, 2013Energy and Resources, Fracking, LNG, Media, Oceans, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Salmon Farming and AquacultureRafe Mair

Mike Smyth gave us a full page story of his interview with Adrian Dix in the Sunday Province without a word on the environment!

What’s with these guys at Postmedia? Are the thousands upon thousands of hits that organizations like the Wilderness Committee, and yes, the Common Sense Canadian, garner meaningless? Can it be that a handful of NDP supporters visit our websites 1000’s of times a day?

For reasons that escape me, Dix is getting a free ride in the capitalist press.

At least Fazil Mihlar, when he was editor of the Sun’s editorial pages up until recently, kept the faith with the far right, as this Fellow of the Fraser Institute flooded the op-ed pages with articles by anyone who’d kiss the ass of the fish farmers, coal miners, pipeline companies, the tanker people and so on. And we’ve long given up on star Suncolumnist Vaughn Palmer’s ability to ask a tough question of anyone or say something that even barely qualifies as controversial – but Mike was beginning to draw some blood in both major political camps.

There is, evidently, a strong aversion in the mainstream media to talk about the environment and I can only guess why. Was the Kalamazoo spill by Enbridge too complicated to deal with? And the 800+ other spills by this wretched despoiler of the outdoors?

Is the question of the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline too difficult to analyze, the issues being the same as the proposed Enbridge line?

Are we having trouble dealing with dilbit, the chemical-laced bitumen that it is proposed to be piped through our mountains and valleys into tankers to ply the waters of the Great Bear Rainforest? Is it too time consuming to let readers know of the disastrous difference between bitumen spills and the stuff with which the Exxon Valdez polluted our waters and killed our fish and birds?

What about LNG? (Liquified Natural Gas) Is it beyond the abilities of the Sun and the Province to deal with the environmental issues surrounding fracking, which, by drilling first vertically, then horizontally, pumps out gas from between layers of shale? Where do the enormous volumes of water required for this process come from? After it’s laced with poisonous chemicals and the result pumped underground to crack open the shale, where does it go? Into the water table? Are there potential consequences of stability to the earth’s crust – such as this recentreport from the BC Oil and Gas Commission suggests?

What about fish farms? The Province and Sun have avoided this issue like the plague, with the notable exception of Mihlar, who seems to have given a free pass to the fish farms when they wanted the op-ed page.

What of the desecration of farmland, especially in the Delta area?

Adrian Dix has taken stands on these issues – sort of. He’s against Enbridge but silent on Kinder Morgan. If Kinder Morgan proceeds there will be unbelievable risks from tankers in Vancouver Harbour right out until the open ocean is reached.

The NDP have approved of LNG plants for the northern coast. Does this mean that they are unconcerned about the threat pipelines pose to the fauna and flora they pass through? Does this mean they have satisfied themselves that fracking poses no environmental concerns?

And with the same concerns applying to Kinder Morgan as with Enbridge, how can Mr. Dix condemn the latter while being undecided about the former?

Mr. Dix seems to be concerned about fish farms, but what would he do about them?

And what about the private power catastrophe which has ruined or will soon ruin some 75 rivers while bankrupting BC Hydro? Mr. Dix seems to be against them but what would he do about them? Hydro is presently on the hook for $50 BILLION dollars from these thieves in three piece suits.

Meanwhile, another multi-billion-dollar Hydro boondoggle and environmental calamity awaits us with the proposed Site C Dam – which wouldflood over 12,000 acres of farmland and wilderness to provide subsidized electricity to new mines and gas operations. The NDP has been on the fence at best with this massive project.

Mr. Dix seems to believe that a clean fight is on its way. Is this because he doesn’t want the Liberals to deal with the little matter of outright forgery he committed to save Glen Clark’s scalp in the Pilarinos scandal?

Politics is a blood sport in BC and will be in spite of the hypocrisy of Mr Dix.

The Common Sense Canadian, being devoted to environmental issues. will likely support the NDP in the May election but this doesn’t mean we support handling Mr. Dix or anyone else with kid gloves.

All we really ask is for an informed public, something apparently anathema to the Postmedia and David Black papers.

Get with it you guys – the environment is a huge issue and you have a duty to get it in all aspects on the table.

Fractured Land crowd funding campaign hits target!

January 19, 2013Energy and Resources, First Nations, Fracking, Media, Oil&GasDamien Gillis

Following a last-minute outpouring of support from around the world, the crowd funding drive for Fractured Land achieved and surpassed its target late yesterday. The campaign surged past its $50,000 goal around 6 pm January 18, finishing with $52,520 by the midnight deadline. Remarkably, close to two thirds of those funds came within the final 3 days of the campaign.

Fractured Land, a feature documentary film-in-production, co-directed by Vancouver filmmaker Fiona Rayher and myself, examines our key energy challenges through the eyes of a compelling, young First Nations law student from northeast BC. In a recent Globe and Mail story, reporter Mark Hume described Caleb Behn as “one of B.C.’s bright, emerging native political leaders”, working to “move the debate over oil and gas development away from the confrontational front lines and into the living rooms of the nation.”

At a time when conventional funding sources for documentary films are drying up, crowd funding has become an important new tool filmmakers can leverage to make their projects happen. As we learned through this process, running a successful campaign is a team effort – and demands a significant commitment of time and resources. Our team included talented designers, organizers, and hardworking volunteers, led by our digital media strategist Hilary Henegar.

Crowd funding is not only a valuable fundraising tool, but an ideal way to build an audience for a forthcoming film, as well as a strong social media presence. Our campaign was successful in both regards – the weekly reach of our relatively new facebook page climbed to a quarter of a million people (a thousand-fold increase from just a few months ago!) and garnered close to 2,500 page “likes”, mostly in the past few weeks. We’ve received hundreds of questions about when the film will be finished and how people can see it (answer: likely early Fall, via film festivals, public screenings and broadcast television).

The campaign undoubtedly benefited from all the tweets we received from eco-celebrities – actor and fracking critic Mark Ruffalo, Gasland director Josh Fox, author and activist Naomi Klein, 350.org founder Bill McKibben, and socially-engaged Canadian pop star Bif Naked. We were also helped by Occupy Wall Street’s twitter feed and the official Idle No More facebook page. National Geographic explorer-in-residence Wade Davis, who appears in the film along with a number of the above people, donated 40 copies of his Sacred Headwaters book to the cause, which crowd funding donors snapped up.

We’re beyond the era of slaving away behind the scenes for a few years and coming out with a completed documentary. Our team is actively building a “transmedia” project around the film. That means that our social media tools, website, youtube channel, etc. become a forum to engage the public in a discussion about our energy future and how Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples can work together to heal historical fractures and confront our key challenges going forward.

So you don’t need to wait until the Fall to be a part of Fractured Land. Building on the social media presence and audience we’ve built for the project during the crowd funding campaign, we’re now very well positioned to continue growing this dialogue, starting immediately.

The campaign also provided the media a reason to discuss the project and issues it deals with. We had a number of good stories in the Globe and Mail, Huffington Post Canada, Vancouver Observer and Yukon News – each of which spotlighted fracking and larger, inter-related energy and Indigenous issues. Interestingly, we were able to do what we did largely through online media – with the exception of Mark Hume’s Globe and Mail story (which has a significant online presence beyond its traditional print reach), the coverage and traction we received derived almost entirely from the Internet.

While our team certainly believed in what we were doing and very much so in the film, it’s fair to say we were all pleasantly surprised and deeply humbled to exceed our target. This past week required a full court press and it was very rewarding to see everything click into place on the final day.

Sometime Friday afternoon we began to realize that we just might pull it off. There was a genuine excitement amongst our supporters, rooting us on, demonstrating how invested they felt in our success and in helping to share Caleb’s story with the world. In the end, that’s probably the mark of a good crowd funding campaign – when your supporters become a part of your team.

There are a number of possible reasons for this last-minute rally. It could be interest in fracking, the ramp up to the BC election, Idle No More and indigenous politics stoking the national interest in these matters. We also released a new trailer this week, which we would have and should have done sooner, but for the fact we’re also busy trying to shoot this film and document all the events and people and stories going on right now that pertain to it.

Our eventual success was likely a combination of all these factors gelling together at the right moment.

Besides being incredibly heartened by this vital support for our film – and knowing that we now have what we need to finish it well – I’m happy to see that these issues are becoming interesting to a broader public. I’m pleased to know this film has the possibility of being commercially successful and seen by a lot of people. I’m also thrilled to see how this crowd funding medium can really work.

It’s been a huge learning curve and a lot of work – more then we were honestly able to commit while being full throttle chasing our story and finishing shooting the film. So to see it all come together is a very nice feeling.

I also believe it’s a testament to Caleb and the fact that he is such an inspiring, young leader, to whom so many people can clearly relate.

Our whole team is incredibly thankful to everyone who has supported our campaign. We are building a platform to engage these issues on a much larger stage and we hope you will join us there – and come see the film when it’s finished. Stay tuned!

New Fractured Land Trailer, Crowd Funding Campaign Enters Final Stretch

January 17, 2013Energy and Resources, First Nations, Fracking, UncategorizedCommon Sense Canadian

In addition to my work documenting resource issues at the Common Sense Canadian, for the past two years I’ve been privileged to co-direct a forthcoming documentary film, Fractured Land, which examines our key energy challenges through the eyes of a compelling, young First Nations law student from northeast BC. In a recent Globe and Mail story, reporter Mark Hume described Caleb Behn as “one of B.C.’s bright, emerging native political leaders”, working to “move the debate over oil and gas development away from the confrontational front lines and into the living rooms of the nation.”

For the past month our team has been running a crowd funding campaign, offering the public an opportunity to support the film, in exchange for some great rewards. Now, in the final stretch of this funding drive, we’re proud to unveil our new trailer for Fractured Land – featuring Naomi Klein, Wade Davis, Bill McKibben, Josh Fox, Maude Barlow, Tom Mulcair, Oscar Dennis and Chief Sharleen Wildeman. We hope you’ll consider supporting our film and help share Caleb’s inspiring story with the world.

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The business of a Cortes forest

January 17, 2013Economics, Energy and Resources, Logging and ForestsRay Grigg

The Business of a Cortes Forest — The old growth forest of Cortes Island. Photo by TJ Watt of the Ancient Forest Alliance

In a world of global business connections, faraway is as close as next door. In this case, next door is Cortes Island, a remnant of rural paradise at the northern edge of the Salish Sea — a pocket of ocean in the Pacific Northwest that a mere century ago teemed with an estimated 500 resident whales and unimaginable quantities of fish and wildlife. Little remains of that original marine bounty. And the surrounding majestic forests of Douglas fir, technically designated as CDFmm (Coastal Douglas-fir,Moist Maritime), have been obliterated to less than 1% of their original area. Cortes Island happens to contain one of the last sparse pockets of this once spectacular forest ecology.

But the business connections that link Cortes Island to the rest of the world are healthy and flourishing. They stretch along the edge of the Salish Sea and beyond. The offices of Island Timberlands (IT), which owns the patch of Douglas fir forest on Cortes Island, are situated in Nanaimo. The headquarters of the BC Investment Management Corporation (bcIMC), which have financial interests in IT, are located in Victoria. Wall Street in New York is the home of Brookfield Asset Management Incorporated, the majority shareholder in Island Timberlands. And Beijing may soon be connected to Cortes Island as the China Investment Corporation (CIC) attempts to use a $100 million sliver of its $200 billion capital to buy a 12.5% stake in Island Timberlands, a purchase that would give it influence over the Vancouver and Cortes Island forests that are now owned by Brookfield.

These are the business forces allied against Cortes and the people of Wildstands Alliance who are trying to mitigate the impact of logging in one of their island’s rare and cherished forests — a forest now “owned” and “managed” by a network of business connections so far removed from the ecological reality of trees and the local community that loves them, that the investors might as well come from another planet.

The proportions must be dismaying to the 1,000 rural folks who live on Cortes. Brookfield is one of the largest investment corporations in the world. It owns 51% of Island Timberlands. bcIMC, which owns a 25% share in IT, manages $92.1 billion in pension funds. Island Timberlands, the corporation that intends to log the remnant coastal Douglas fir forest that Cortes Islanders want to protect, is committed to return profits to bcIMC and Brookfield. The corporate expectations are about lucrative returns on investments, not about trees, ecologies or aesthetics. The logging project, if not stopped or moderated, will contribute to the healthy returns paid to investors by bcIMC and Brookfield. And, in a sad irony, most or all of the logs will likely go offshore for milling and processing.

The next chapter in the dismaying saga of the big-and-international vs. the little-and-local is the intention of the Chinese Investment Corporation to buy a portion of Island Timberlands. Under the terms of the federal government’s pending Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, known as FIPA, the fate of this rare stand of Douglas fir on Cortes and 258,000 hectares of forest on Vancouver Island could be decided in secret by a three-person panel appointed by FIPA, if the CIC believes its investment is being unfairly handicapped by federal, provincial or local regulations. This is not an auspicious prospect for Canadians, British Columbians or the stalwart conservation efforts of the Cortes Islanders trying to mitigate the damaging effects of logging on a little remnant of coastal Douglas fir forest.

Their heroic efforts are not supported by the supposedly stringent logging principles of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), the guide Island Timberlands uses for its cutting practices. The purported high standards of SFI have been widely debunked by environmental critics as hollow, nothing more than an “initiative” devised and funded by the lumber and paper industry to give the impression of careful ecological management. If credible standards were being used, such as representative ecosystems in protected provincial reserves or the more stringent standards of the Forest Stewardship Council, logging would not be taking place in a maritime forest ecology that has been “managed” to the verge of extinction.

Anyone with a history in environmentalism should be cautious when foresters profess to be “managing” a forest — forests have been successfully managing themselves for millions of years. And when Island Timberlands uses expressions such as “managing our properties”, the coded meaning is even more ominous. It has financial obligations to its New York owners, Brookfield, and to its Victoria investors, bcIMC. These obligations translate as “profit” and have little to do with the sensibilities of Cortes Islanders or the last of the remnant Douglas fir forests ecologies surrounding the Salish Sea.

So the local logging problem on Cortes Island represents a larger problem. Corporations are getting bigger, more borderless and less personal. Trade agreements and investment connections are eroding national, provincial and community autonomy. Although Island Timberlands has 258,000 hectares of Vancouver Island to log, it insists on taking every ounce of the flesh it purports to own, regardless of how treasured and rare it may be.

In the larger perspective, this can only be viewed as an uncaring obstinacy, a blind greed that violates the very principle of proportion which keeps the ecological structure of the planet intact. Locally, it mocks the caring intentions of Cortes Islanders. If the business of business is only reducible to the cold, heartless and inflexible brutality of profit, then little Cortes Island becomes a symbol for the failed prospects of our future on this small and delicate island lost amid a sea of stars.

2012: The Year of Energy Politics

December 21, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Fracking, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Tar Sands, Western CanadaAlberta Tar Sands, BC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, FIPA, fracking, Oil and gas, Politics, Stephen Harper, Water and EnergyDamien Gillis

CBC’s Power and Politics has chosen “energy politics” as the top Canadian news story for 2012 and we at the Common Sense Canadian couldn’t agree more.

Energy is the current which runs through a diverse array of issues presently reshaping our country – from omnibus budget bills that have slashed environmental regulations, to foreign trade deals, changes to our labour rules and, perhaps most significantly, the growing mobilization of First Nations, supported by non-aboriginal Canadians, to oppose many of these initiatives.

2012 was a year that began with Conservative Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver dismissing opponents of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines as “radicals” and ends with the Idle No More rallies sweeping the nation – with support coming in from as far away as Buckingham Palace (or just outside its gates, anyway).

It was a year when two very different visions for the future of Canada and its place in the world collided headlong with each other. One seeking to curb the Tar Sands and new arteries essential to its growth, the other striving to make Canada into a new Saudi Arabia – provider of oil, gas and coal to emerging Asian markets.

Each policy piece from the Harper Government was part of a bigger puzzle, designed to bring its new vision to fruition.

There was the first omnibus budget bill, C-38, which gutted the Fisheries Act, watered down environmental assessment processes and slashed ministry staff in monitoring and regulation. The Common Sense Canadian published retired senior DFO scientist and manager Otto Langer’s first warning of these intended changes to the Fisheries Act, which unleashed a media firestorm and spate of denials from senior Harperites.

We also published the sad farewell letter from one of the world’s top marine pollution experts, Dr. Peter Ross, who lost his job when the Harper Government essentially canned our entire ocean monitoring program. Even one of the world’s top monitoring stations for climate change and arctic ice melt, PEARL, could not escape this government’s ax (for a savings of a whopping million and a half a year).

Clearly, these changes grew out of and helped to further a “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to climate science that is critical to the Harper Government’s hydrocarbon expansion agenda – which also demanded the smoothing of those pesky regulatory hurdles for resource project development.

But one of the Harper Government’s pet projects, the Northern Gateway pipeline, made defending its agenda more challenging, with an unrivaled string of public embarrassments. There was the damning US report on the company’s 2010 disaster in Michigan, then more spills in Canada, a badly bungled PR campaign, the infamous “missing islands”, and repeated blunders at the National Energy Board hearings into its proposal.

Yet, even with these public blemishes on the star of its new energy vision and with mounting evidence of catastrophic, fossil fuel-driven climate change, the Harper Government’s attitude remained unchanged, especially on the international stage. In 2012, we became the first country to formally pull out of the Kyoto Protocol (not that we ever took our commitments serious in the first place). At the same time, Canada was caught by the Guardian, through a leaked memo, working to block a resolution to end to public subsidies for fossil fuels at the Rio+20 summit.

Back in Ottawa, the latest omnibus budget, C-45, picked up where its predecessor left off, slashing the age-old Navigable Waters Protection Act – one of the main beefs of the Idle No More movement.

Provincially, energy politics have dominated the agenda too – from the well-publicized spat between BC Premier Christy Clark and Alberta Premier Alison Redford over revenue sharing from the proposed Enbridge pipeline, to Redford’s new alliance with Quebec Premier Pauline Marois over alternate plans to move bitumen East.

The media and public discourse in BC was particularly infused with with energy – beginning with the NDP and Liberals jostling for positioning on Enbridge, to the emergence of KinderMorgan’s proposed pipeline and tanker expansion for Vancouver as a major urban issue in the lead-up to next May’s election. Add to that natural gas fracking, proposed pipelines and the plan to build multiple Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) terminals on the coast – all of which are increasingly on the media and public’s radar and sure to be election topics. The movement against the proposed Site C Dam, which would power gas and mining operations, is building momentum too.

The NDP has been all over the map on these issues, initially getting behind fracking, new pipelines and LNG plants with few reservations, then, recently, showing signs of feeling some of the public pressure building around these issues. This was evidenced by an op-ed in the Georgia Straight, co-penned by Energy Critic John Horgan and Environment Critic Rob Flemming, promising “a broad public review of fracking” and “immediate changes to protect B.C.’s water resources”.

The party appears caught between the growing concerns about fracking and LNG and a desire not to appear to be too “anti-business” or ignore an opportunity to reboot the BC industry and close the budget gap with increased royalties and related revenues. It will be very interesting to see where the NDP goes on this file in 2013.

Christy Clark, for her part, has left no doubt about her bullish outlook for natural gas and LNG, comparing BC’s potential with this resource to Alberta’s Tar Sands. Some of the nation’s top independent energy experts have poked big holes in Clark’s plan, though, suggesting that her numbers simply don’t add up.

Federally, the NDP’s selection of Thomas Mulcair shook up the political scene and energy debate. Unlike Harper’s former Liberal Opposition challengers, Mulcair seemed to have a firm grasp of energy and economic issues and was prepared to take on Harper on topics others would shy away from.

Take Mulcair’s rendering of the “Dutch Disease” into a Canadian household term. The concept, supported by the OECD and other highly reputable economic institutions and economists, holds that the downside of a petro-state economy is artificial currency inflation, which leads to the hollowing of a nation’s manufacturing sector. New jobs in Fort MacMurray mean layoffs in Hamilton. The fact Mulcair was able to get the traction he did with this discussion and to lodge it – even a little – in the national consciousness is a testament to his oratory skills, political sensibilities, and willingness to take some risks to differentiate himself from Harper. Mulcair also helped to re-frame pipeline politics, opposing Enbridge but getting behind the notion of shipping bitumen East (the source of another emerging public energy debate).

But the reach of energy politics extended far beyond provincial and national borders this year, as the Harper Government negotiated a new trade deal with China, ostensibly to stimulate investment in Canadian energy resources. The Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act (FIPA) came under great scrutiny – particularly in these pages – for eroding Canadian sovereignty and enshrining much diminished environmental protections as the law of the land for years to come.

Harper seemed caught off guard by the backlash generated by this deal and several concurrent foreign buyouts of Canadian energy companies – which seemed to be the very purpose of FIPA. When he finally approved the $15 Billion purchase of Nexen by Chninese state-owned CNOOC and Canadian gas company Progress Energy by Malaysian giant Petronas, it was late on a Friday afternoon, to avoid the media glare that had been focused on these deals. He promised then, surprisingly, that this marked the “end of a trend and not the beginning of one” with regards to such foreign buyouts of Canadian energy assets (PS we aren’t buying that line here).

Compounding the public and media pressure around FIPA and these energy company buyouts was the controversy that erupted from a coal mine in northeast BC. When it emerged the company, HD Mining, was hiring all imported Chinese workers for its Murray River mine, a heated back-and-forth ensued between the United Steelworkers’ Union and a Chinese worker who has filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission, alleging the union is “creating contempt for Chinese people”.

In the midst of this fracas, an embarrassed Immigration Minister Jason Kenney promised to review the labour rules that allowed this situation to happen. And yet, it was Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, with Kenney’s support,who just recently made the changes to the Canadian labour regulations that enable companies to hire foreign temporary workers for lower wages than they would pay Canadians.

The Harper Government’s labour policy seems designed precisely to encourage situations like the one at Murray River, directly undermining the government’s “jobs” rhetoric around resource development.

Likely as a result of all this scrutiny, Harper has delayed on ratifying the Chinese FIPA. A campaign led by social media-driven public advocacy groups Leadnow.ca and Sumofus.org generated over 80,000 petition signatures and thousands of letters and submissions to government officials protesting the proposed FIPA.

But the biggest story in 2012 has been the unprecedented coming together of aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians to jointly confront these hydrocarbon projects and the Harper Government’s vision for Canada’s future. Even in the waning days of 2012, we saw another victory by First Nations and environmentalists working together to secure a long-term ban on coal bed methane fracking in the Sacred Headwaters. That the Clark Government saw this as politically expedient – or necessary – is interesting in and of itself.

It remains to be seen where the Idle No More movement goes from here. Will its intensity subside in the new year like the Occupy Movement of last year, or will it be forged into a formidable political force, crystallizing the burgeoning sense of discontent amongst many Canadians with the direction our political leaders are taking us?

2013 holds the answers to many other burning energy questions, like how the Enbridge pipeline hearings will conclude or when KinderMorgan will formally file its plans. Will this American company’s experience be smoother than that of Enbridge, or will an unprecedented urban environmental movement rise up to block its path? What role will natural gas will play in BC’s provincial election? Will this new energy alliance between Alberta and Quebec and the vision to pipe the Tar Sands East pan out? Perhaps most interesting, will Harper ratify or abandon FIPA and will he keep his word on nixing future foreign buyouts of Canadian energy assets?

Stay tuned to the Common Sense Canadian in the New Year to find out. Or maybe the evening of December 31st. Knowing the Harper Government, that’s when all the really important changes to our national fabric will be announced.

The Fracking Mess

December 17, 2012Climate Change, Energy and Resources, Fracking, Oil&Gas, Water and Hydrocarbonsclimate change, fracking, Oil and gas, Ray Grigg, Shades of GreenRay Grigg

Since international agreements have been unable to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions — 20 years of negotiations and effort have resulted in emissions going up rather than down — those concerned about global warming had hoped that the anticipated decline in petroleum supplies would force a solution. If the availability of accessible oil and natural gas were to dwindle, nations everywhere would be compelled to find energy sources that were less carbon intensive. But fracking has put an end to that hope.

The relatively new technique of “hydraulic fracturing”, a process of drilling horizontally in shale beds and then breaking the rock by injecting a concoction of water, sand and toxic chemicals under extreme pressure, is releasing huge quantities of oil and natural gas. In addition to polluting a subterranean frontier, the global result is a total reconfiguration of the energy equation.

The economic effects are the most obvious. Natural gas is flooding the energy markets in North America and Europe, and is likely to do so elsewhere. Fracking is releasing massive amounts of natural gas in the US, reducing the price below production costs and undermining the market value of Canadian exports of gas. The economic result for BC and Alberta is a collapse of royalties to governments. And low natural gas prices may threaten the economic viability of gas lines and LNG plants planned for BC’s West Coast.

The same economic dynamic is occurring with oil. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the success of fracking could make an oil-starved America into the world’s largest producer by 2020, and a net exporter by 2030. This reduced dependence on foreign oil questions the Canadian government’s wisdom of relying on the export of petroleum resources as the country’s principal economic plan. It also casts doubt on the viability of the energy-intensive methods used to extract oil from the tar sands.

These new supplies of domestic oil in the US and other countries are likely to change global geopolitics. Saudi Arabia, for example, may lose its privileged position in the global energy equation, and thereby lose the Western support that has been key to its political security. China and India might make moves to replace the West as the strategic friend of existing oil producers. Meanwhile, generous oil supplies will reduce its market price, thereby encouraging world economic activity and further eroding the only effective incentive that has reduced oil consumption, cut carbon dioxide emissions and slowed global climate change.

So the fracking that has become the solution to shortages of gas and oil now presents a host of problems that will ultimately be far more serious than the challenge of slowly weaning our modern civilization from petroleum. “The climate goal of limiting warming to 2°C is becoming more difficult and more costly with each year that passes,” notes the IEA.

The reality is that we are running out of manoeuvring room. “Four-fifths of all carbon emissions that are supposed to be allowed by 2035 to keep warming below two degrees Celsius are already locked into power plants, factories and buildings,” writes Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe and Mail (Nov. 21/12). “If strong action is not taken by 2017, all the emissions necessary to keep warming below that level will be locked in,” he adds. Global consumption of oil, thanks to fracking, is expected to rise a third by 2035, driving “the long-term average global temperature increase to 3.6 degrees Celsius” (Ibid.).

We are already feeling the impact of global temperature increases of 0.8°C. An increase of over four-times this amount would have environmental consequences that we can scarcely imagine. George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian Weekly (Oct 26/12) provides a hint. “A paper this year by the world’s leading climate scientist, James Hansen, shows that the frequency of extremely hot events…has risen by a factor of about 50 in comparison with the decades before 1980. Forty years ago, extreme summer heat typically affected between 0.1% and 0.2% of the globe. Today it scorches some 10%.”

Ocean levels are already rising, causing coastal US cities such as Norfolk, Virginia, to flood regularly from heavy rainfall and small storm surges. Although the disasters that recently befell New Orleans and New York cannot be attributed specifically to global climate change, weather modelling suggests that such events will likely become so commonplace that smashed and flooded coastal cities will appear in lists rather than individually. Severe droughts and storms would become almost too routine to be news. All but the most extreme of the extreme weather events would just be dismissed with generalizations such as “just another bad day on Earth”.

Climatology tells us that during the last 10,000 years we have been living in one of the most benign, stable and accommodating periods in all of human history. Our global civilization is founded upon this predictable comfort. Our cities crowd shorelines because these locations have been safe and convenient. Our food production is based on mild and rhythmical weather. Our renewable resources depend upon a regular climate for regeneration. We alter this normalcy at our peril.

The carbon dioxide we are adding to the atmosphere is now occurring at a rate six times faster than the most rapid natural emissions of any geological epoch of which we know — we are doing in 500 years what nature once did in 3,000 years. This single, traumatic past event caused one of the planet’s most disastrous biological extinctions. Put simply, a future created by excessive carbon dioxide emissions is not going to be comfortable or promising.

Our ingenuity is not an asset if it is used to solve the wrong problems. Indeed, if the biggest threat now confronting us is caused by burning petroleum as our principal energy source, then the more we do to find and use this fuel, the worse our problem becomes. In a future review of our history, we will likely conclude that fracking created a bigger mess than it solved.

Despite PM’s Assurances, Floodgates Open to Chinese Govt as Encana, PetroChina Partner

December 16, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Fracking, International, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Tar Sands, Western CanadaAlberta Tar Sands, BC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, China, FIPA, fracking, Oil and gas, Politics, Stephen HarperKevin Logan

“For the right price, anything is for sale” -Anthony Lambert, President and CEO of a Canadian arm of Chinese state-owned Sinopec, known as Sinopec Daylight Energy

Canadians are seeing red this week after a series of announcements reinforce concerns about the loss of Canadian resources and sovereignty.

The focus has been the Alberta Tar Sands, but natural gas plays are also in the mix. Four days after Stephen Harper boldly stated that the CNOOC/Nexen and Petronas/Progress takeovers marked the “end of a trend and not the beginning of one,” one of Canada’s largest oil and gas companies, Encana, announced a joint venture in a 4-plus billion dollar gas play in which PetroChina will have a 49.9 percent stake. A “minority” position such as this is seemingly an end-run on the “new,” yet unexplained criteria dictating the level of Chinese/foreign investment the Harper government would support.

CNOOC’s Nexen bid was a full takeover of a Canadian-based company with international holdings, however its mainstay is the Alberta oil patch and part of that takeover also includes a percentage of Syncrude. These companies have enjoyed years of Canadian taxpayer subsidies and support to make them profitable. The benefits of that multibillion dollar effort will now accrue to a Chinese “SOE”, or State Owned Enterprise, turning Canada into what the Alberta Federation of Labour’s recent detailed report describes as “China’s Gas Tank”.

Those supportive of foreign SOE investment in Canadian resource plays dismiss the concerns raised as unwarranted paranoia. A sort of “Reds under the bed” fear being mocked by folks like Bob Rae, outgoing liberal leader and supporter of Chinese investment. But this dismissive attitude shared by the supporters of such investment neglects the heart of the matter.

Joseph Stalin once said, “When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use,” which is in keeping with the Sinopec President’s view that “anything is for sale at the right price.” This point is pivotal. Chinese investment by SOE’s seems counter-intuitive to a “free enterprise” approach – a central plank in the ideologically driven agenda of Stephen Harper. So why does he abandon such principles along with his base and run far from the centre over to what many view as the extreme left?

It is largely due to the fact that SOEs have deep pockets and are paying real, serious, above-market premiums to snatch up Canadian oil and gas assets, which is enriching longstanding players in the patch and their investors. And it is true that they are doing so because there is profit to be made, and not simply in owning Canadian resources raw and sending them home to China.

But it’s really about the age-old geopolitical game of control over the world’s resources, exploiting them elsewhere while leaving one’s own in the ground, as United States has historically done (however, now you will note that they too are falling prey to exploitation and export of their “Homeland” resources.) All of which will fuel the growth of China’s economy into what people are proclaiming will be the world’s largest economy in as soon as a decade or two.

China has a stake in many nations around the globe and the forces that historically “nation build” are at work once again in boosting China to the forefront of the world, unfortunately their model has even less trickle down to the Chinese people, as they often live in squalor and cities that could house millions remain empty.

To accommodate this agenda the Harper government has created a very attractive investment “climate” in the Tar Sands. A much-reduced royalty rate, heavy subsidies, a gutted environmental regime, paralyzed environmental assessment processes. All this while accruing decision making to the top. Cabinet (read Chairman Harper) will decide cross-border pipelines, terms of trade and investment deals, criteria for foreign investment, and he has taken measures to lock in the new legislative framework dictating resource development and exploitation for decades to come.

During the minority reign of the Harper administration, he oversaw the single largest divestiture of a “public asset” in our nation’s history when he constructed the offloading and privatization of Petro Canada. The result was a gift to industry, a huge loss to Canadian taxpayers and it closed the public window we had on this industry from well to pump. Which is why Harper was so precise with his language when he approved the CNOOC/Nexen and Petronas/Progress takeovers.

Indeed, the first thing out of his mouth at the press conference announcing the approvals was, “To be blunt, Canadians have not spent years reducing the ownership of sectors of the economy by our own governments, only to see them bought and controlled by foreign governments instead.” However that is precisely what is occurring, no matter how you slice it.

But Harper ignores this reality and doubles down on his bold misrepresentation of the facts, “It is not an outcome any responsible government of Canada could ever allow to happen. We certainly will not.” And they should not, Harper realizes its not what Canadians want, which is why he takes to the mike and says these things. So why does he do the exact opposite?

Foreign investment is already a serious issue in the oil and gas industry in Canada. Forest Ethics recently released a brief explaining how Canada’s major oil and gas players are on average 71% “foreign owned.” In fact, the major players in the patch are almost entirely foreign owned; it is only the Canadian-based companies that bring that percentage down from fully foreign ownership. But even those Canadian-based companies are owned by foreign interests in the majority. All of this equals an exodus of cash from the country, only outdone by the flow of oil, gas and other raw resources.

If Canadian companies cannot find the money to invest in the oil and gas patch, despite outgoing Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney’s criticism that corporate Canada is sitting on over 600 billion dollars of “dead money” and Canadian “SOEs” needed to be sliced, diced, demonized and sold off, why are Chinese SOEs all the rage?

Jim Stanford, a highly respected, independent-minded Canadian economist, suggests the notion that Canada cannot capitalize its own resources and must therefore rely on foreign investment is balderdash. Moreover, the Conservatives still boast that Canada and its banking industry are a pillar of stability in a sea of insecurity and crashing economies. All of which runs counter to the oft-repeated cliché that “we need” this foreign investment, and is instead looking much like a foreign takeover of not only our resources but our sovereignty.

This is where the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act (FIPA) comes in. This government continues to claim that somehow FIPA is good for Canadian investment in China, yet there is no evidence of that. Preeminent Canadian economist Diane Francis, a polar opposite to Jim Stanford, would probably agree with him on this one, as she has suggested the FIPA should be ripped up. Meanwhile, even Canada-US free trade architect Brian Mulroney states that we are still at least a decade away from free trade with China.

So why FIPA? Why now? In corporate parlance this amounts to a “Friendly Takeover”, as both entities agree there are “synergies” with the syncrude and are supportive of the entire notion, therefore it’s not a hostile takeover.

In promoting this deal, the Harperites will tell you that we have dozens of other FIPAs and this one is simply just another one. However that too is very misleading. The others are largely with countries where Canadian-based companies, typically mining companies, are operating.

Once again, these companies maybe Canadian-based, but they are largely foreign-owned, and they base themselves in Canada because our legislative environment is accommodating to their agenda. Canada is to mining what Switzerland is to banking and the FIPAs we negotiated are in most cases as draconian for the less-developed nations as the Chinese FIPA is for us.

These FIPAs guarantee the exploitation of mineral rights in less developed countries, for Canadian-based mining companies, and ensure the governments are removed from the equation, unable to protect the environment or increase royalty rates. In fact, the governments are reduced to cheerleaders on the “promotion” side of these agreements. Any move to regain sovereignty, charge respectable royalties, protect the environment or impose any restrictions on unbridled exploitation is met with severe financial penalties, meted out by a new corporate judiciary established by these agreements, which works in secret and is entirely profit-motivated.

This is exactly what is happening to Canada with the Chinese FIPA.

However, a huge push back has occurred and Harper seems frozen in his tracks on this one.

After having restructured the very fabric of the nation with two omnibus bills – the largest we have ever seen – he has still not ratified the agreement. Ironically, Omnibus bills have been used very sparingly in history. In 1971 Liberals used the practice to establish the “Department of the Environment,” and then again in 1982 to establish Trudeau’s infamous “National Energy Program.” The Conservatives fought it then and had the bill divided into eight different sections. On the other hand, Conservative governments have used the practice more. They used it once to enact NAFTA, and now twice since Harper obtained his majority – for the opposite purpose of omnibus bills of old, which established our internationally-renowned environmental practices and the nation-building, sovereignty-securing laws of Trudeau’s NEP.

As we pointed out in painstaking detail here at the Common Sense Canadian, the recent Omnibus bills run contrary to the FIPA treaty process and, in our opinion, render it null and void. This could be at the very heart of the delays we are now experiencing. There were many petitions and expressions of outrage, however, the argument we forwarded was indisputable and has put the Harper Cabinet in a box. And now we have an opportunity to follow up and here is why.

If FIPA is ratified, it will mark the end of Canadian sovereignty in the oil and gas patch. It will also ensure that China becomes the major driver of activity in both oil and gas. The terms are so favourable for “Chinese investment” that it will force partnering with them on resource plays as evidenced in the recent PetroChina/Encana joint venture announcement. The FIPA offers such attractive terms that partnering with any other private companies or SOEs would put one at a disadvantage. This essentially makes the draconian FIPA terms the new de facto law of the land and not simply a bilateral investment agreement. Can you imagine the Harper government or any other government making laws – or restoring those recently stripped away – which apply to everyone but Chinese companies?

I raised these points and many others in my submission to the FIPA environmental assessment process and we encouraged you to do the same. The campaign was picked up by savvy internet politicos who run Leadnow and similar organizations. The end result was thousands of submissions to various levels of government on this issue, on top of the 100 thousand-plus petition signatures these groups garnered against FIPA. Others chimed in as well, and the result so far has been positive.

However there is still an opportunity to communicate once again our adamant disapproval of the FIPA agreement. It is important we do so in order to send a message loud and clear that we do not approve locking in subsidies, much-reduced royalty rates, much-diminished environmental processes and reduced protection for over thirty years – an eternity in terms of the timeline required to liquidate our oil and gas resources.

It may have made sense in the beginning to give the resource away and subsidize its growth, in an effort to get a capital-intensive exercise on a solid economic footing, but at a time where balanced budgets elude us, debt is racking up at any amazing pace and our standard of living is eroding, we cannot afford to allow these conditions to persist so long into the future. It will spell our demise.

So take the time and visit this link related to the Chinese FIPA and share these concerns with them. At this point the Minister of Industry has stated uncertainty around the ratification of FIPA, therefore we need to continue to apply pressure in order to at the very least delay, if not entirely avoid, ratification of this treaty. Our future and our kids depend on it.

You can visit this link and copy and paste the letter there, as it is still relevant and they invite more comments to that final FIPA Environmental Assessment, despite the closing of the public window for submissions.

Comments on this report may be sent by email, mail or fax to:

Environmental Assessments of Trade Agreements
Trade Agreements and NAFTA Secretariat
Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
125 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0G2
Fax: (613) 992-9392
E-mail: EAconsultationsEE@international.gc.ca

NDP Op-ed: Party Committed to Review of Fracking, Tougher Regulations

December 14, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Fracking, Oil&Gas, Politics, Water and Hydrocarbons, Western Canadafracking, Oil and gas, PoliticsCommon Sense Canadian

Read this op-ed by the BC NDP’s Energy Critic John Horgan and Environment Critic Rob Flemming, promising a tougher stance on natural gas fracking and related water issues. (Dec 13, 2012)

British Columbia needs to have a strong environmental lens guiding the development of our energy resources. As we transition to a sustainable, low-carbon economy, we must recognize the need for the responsible development of existing energy sources.

While British Columbia has a well-established natural gas industry and an existing network of natural gas pipelines, we must approach further expansion with care.

New Democrats have met with First Nations, local governments, and residents throughout northeast B.C. While there are questions and concerns about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, there is also much agreement that extraction and liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects can be done with greater consideration for environmental protection.

That’s why Adrian Dix and B.C.’s New Democrats have put forward a plan that we believe will ensure long-term sustainability and environmental stewardship, greater public accountability, and best practices in the industry, particularly when it comes to fracking.

The first point of our plan would be to appoint an expert panel to conduct a broad public review of fracking, including public hearings and consultations with First Nations, local communities, industry, environmental groups, and citizens. The panel will ensure British Columbians get B.C.-specific information they can trust.

Second, we would make immediate changes to protect B.C.’s water resources, including consolidating authority for water licensing within one public body; improving water mapping, monitoring and public reporting; and reviewing current water pricing practices.

Many British Columbians are raising valid questions and concerns about water use and the impacts of fracking. Our call for a review of water management stands in stark contrast to the B.C. Liberal government, which has largely failed to put the necessary protections in place.

The B.C. Liberal government has dragged its feet on introducing the Water Sustainability Act which promised to “respond to current and future pressures on water, and position B.C. as a leader in water stewardship.” While draft legislation was promised years ago, it likely won’t see the light of day before the end of the Liberals’ term in office.

A number of B.C. First Nations are in favour of supporting LNG development under the right circumstances. For example, while the Fort Nelson First Nation has criticized the Liberal government for “irresponsible, unsustainable water use” in the shale gas industry, they acknowledge the economic benefits of the natural gas industry and believe “that shale gas development can occur without full-scale damage to our rivers, lakes, and streams”.

Our plan would also include extending funding for the Farmers’ Advocate office to ensure landowners in the natural gas fields have the credible, independent support they need to deal with the gas industry.

And finally, we must find ways to align expansion in gas development and greenhouse gas emissions with the targets set out in the province’s Climate Action Plan. The Liberals have largely failed to take responsibility on this front, opting instead to change the definition of what constitutes “clean” energy rather than tackle the tough issues.

New Democrats can support LNG exports while opposing the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline because LNG is a much safer alternative to oil. While any incident would be a major concern, the safety record of gas pipelines, LNG terminals, and LNG tankers shows there have been very few leaks. And unlike raw bitumen, which would cause a devastating environmental catastrophe in the case of a major spill off B.C.’s north coast, liquefied natural gas would evaporate and dissipate.

A New Democrat government would approach the development of safer, cleaner energy sources in an environmentally-responsible way. By subjecting each project to a rigorous environmental assessment and having the proper protections in place, we would make certain the best interests of our province are represented. This will enhance our economic development and indigenous peoples’ self-determination, and create a sustainable environment for the future.

Read original post: http://www.straight.com/news/rob-fleming-and-john-horgan-fracking