Category Archives: Canada

Vaughn Palmer on Christy Clark’s Secret Discussions with Alberta Premier on Enbridge

July 23, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Tar Sands, Western CanadaAlberta Tar Sands, BC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, Oil and gas, PoliticsCommon Sense Canadian

Read this column from Vaughn Palmer, suggesting the revelation of a secret visit BC Premier Christy Clark paid to her Alberta counterpart Alison Redford on the Enbridge pipeline reinforces her reputation for indecisiveness. Clark’s “fence-sitting” on the proposed Enbridge pipeline has been “incredibly frustrating”, says Redford. (July 20, 2012)

VICTORIA – For a premier who promised that openness would be one of the watchwords of her administration, Christy Clark cannot have been happy with the front-page story in the Edmonton Journal Friday.

“Why the need for secrecy?” asked the headline atop a piece by columnist Graham Thomson on Clark’s unannounced visit to Alberta Premier Alison Redford to discuss the running controversy over the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway oil pipeline.

The details were embarrassing enough. Clark’s office asking Redford to keep the visit secret. The B.C. premier ducking in and out of a side door to avoid the cameras. The bait-and-switch ruse with two SUVs to throw reporters off the track.

But while Clark was avoiding the media Thursday, Redford volunteered an account of the meeting that was far from flattering to her visitor from B.C. The Alberta premier professed a reluctance to put words into Clark’s mouth even as she proceeded to do just that.

“She feels right now … a fair amount of pressure to be making comment with respect to this,” said Redford, referencing the pipeline. “A lot of what I think she wanted to chat about today was her ongoing concern as the premier of B.C. with respect to what’s going on with Enbridge and what her thinking is about that. She wants to make sure that she’s holding them to some pretty strict environmental standards.”

Not content to provide a summary of her B.C. counterpart’s concerns — consultations with first nations and making sure there were stringent protocols to deal with spills — Redford then proceeded to offer some “if I were in her shoes” advice.

“I would be trying to set in place a set of conditions that from my perspective would allow the project to go ahead but that would work with industry, not just Enbridge but other companies that are looking at pipelines in B.C., to try to come up with a framework that makes sense to let that investment come into the province. And I think she’s sorting that out.”

Redford framed her disappointment with Clark — “it’s incredibly frustrating to me” — as having arisen out of the B.C. government’s continued fence-sitting on the pipeline. But I have to think those frustrations were also conditioned by Clark’s recent critical comments about Enbridge.

For Clark is sounding increasingly hostile to the proposal, a point that she reinforced in an interview this week with Jason Fekete of Postmedia News: “Based on what we know now, I don’t think British Columbians think the balance of risks and benefits is an acceptable one.”

Read column: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Palmer+Premier+secret+visit+reinforces+reputation+being+indecisive/6967687/story.html

CTV Video: Harper’s Environment Minister Says Support for Enbridge Unchanged in Wake of Scathing US Report

July 23, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Western CanadaBC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, Oil and gas, Politics, Stephen HarperCommon Sense Canadian

Check out this video news story from CTV on the Harper Government’s decision to ignore the damning report out of the US on Enbridge’s poor pipeline safety record. Environment Minister Peter Kent maintains his government’s support for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline is unchanged as the company is roundly criticized for is disastrous spill into the Kalamazoo River in 2012 – even though he acknowledges he hasn’t read the report in question. (July 18)

VANCOUVER — A scathing report out of the United States that criticized just about every aspect of Enbridge Inc.’s response to a pipeline spill in Michigan won’t change the Canadian government’s support for the company’s proposed Northern Gateway project, the federal environment minister said.

A report by U.S. investigators released last week concluded Enbridge (TSX:ENB) bungled its response when millions of litres of oil began to pour in and around the Kalamazoo River in July 2010, comparing the company’s handling of the spill to the “Keystone Kops.”

The report has provided fuel for critics of Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway project, which would carry crude oil along 1,170 kilometres of pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia’s coast. Even B.C.’s premier has demanded answers.

But the report won’t change the opinion of the federal Conservative government, which has hailed the Northern Gateway pipeline as important for the country, said Environment Minister Peter Kent.

“Pipelines are still, by far, the safest way to transport petrochemicals in any form,” Kent said in an interview Wednesday.

Kent said he had yet to read the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board report.

Watch video: http://bc.ctvnews.ca/scathing-u-s-report-won-t-affect-pipeline-position-kent-1.884499

Rafe: Clark has BC Behaving Like a Prostitute on Enbridge, Only Dickering Over Price

July 22, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Western CanadaBC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Christy Clark, Enbridge, Oil and gas, Politics, rafe mairRafe Mair

I wonder how many of you have come away from making a speech – perhaps the toast to the bride, being presented an award or perhaps just an after dinner speech and said to yourself, “damn … I should have said etc., etc.? I must admit that I’ve often felt that way and, even worse, I suppose, I’ve said to myself, what an idiot I was to say that!

In my recent blog on The Common Sense Canadian, I wrote about Premier Clark’s slow turnaround on the Enbridge pipeline case and in a moment I’ll tell you what I should have added.

The inadequacies of Clark’s leadership are exposed once more; she cannot bring herself to talk about the tanker traffic in the Inside Passage from Kitimat – or the close to 400 tankers a year through Vancouver harbour and the Salish Sea through the Straits of Juan de Fuca that would result from the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion. Clearly the tanker issue must be dealt with at the same time as Enbridge since, as the song says, “You can’t have one without the other.”

Clearly, Premier Clark just doesn’t have the courage to have a position on the issue as a whole.

It is not as if this was a complex issue. We know by Enbridge’s own admission that we will have spills from pipelines and common sense and statistics tell us that there will be tanker spills.

In the face of these certainties, Premier Clark is talking about insufficient financial benefits, on the assumption that money will compensate us for huge, ongoing tragedies over the 1,100 km of the pipeline and tanker spills – in short, our very soul is at stake and Clark is talking money.

Here comes the line I should have used…Premier Clark reminds me of the story where a man asks a lady if she will go to bed with him for $100,000 and she hems and haws, speaks of her needy children and, with apparent reluctance agrees.

The man then asks, “Will you then go to bed with me for $100?”

The lady is outraged and asks, “What do you think I am, a common prostitute?”

“We’ve already established that, ma’am,” says the man. “Now we’re dickering over the price.”

Thus the missing line: Premier Clark has declared British Columbia to be a common prostitute and is now ready to dicker.

Rafe Responds to Liberals’ Shifting Position on Enbridge: Clark Still Missing the Mark

July 21, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Western CanadaBC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Christy Clark, Enbridge, Oil and gas, Politics, rafe mairRafe Mair

I would be delighted to report that Premier Clark’s recent musings about the proposed Enbridge pipeline were a positive step but unfortunately must report that she misses the point – badly.

Her position evidently is that BC is not benefiting sufficiently from the pipeline.

The first and fatal flaw is that she doesn’t include tanker traffic, for if Enbridge goes through it must be accompanied by tanker traffic or the whole exercise is pointless.

The second and also fatal flaw is that the Premier puts the argument in monetary terms. Enbridge itself admits that it will have leaks in the same way an airplane company will have crashes. This is the critical point, for to say we’re not getting enough money from Enbridge says that we’re OK with a spill here and there as long as we’re adequately compensated. This will result in Enbridge, the government of Alberta and Ottawa coming up with a compensation package suitable to the Clark government.

Let’s remember three things: there will be spills, they will be in places no clean-up crew can reach, and there is no way bitumen, freed from the condensate which allows it to be piped, can be cleaned up anyway.

Never mind the terrible response by Enbridge to its Kalamazoo spill – the message there is that clean-up, even in a readily accessible location, can never happen. To that gloomy fact, add the admission by Enbridge and remember that there will be many spills over the years and, because cleanup is impossible, we will have more and more of our wilderness destroyed. We’ll be looking at Enbridge, a serial polluter, with the only questions being when and how bad.

I, for one, care about our land and the ecologies it supports, such that to me money doesn’t even enter the discussion.

What Premier Clark is doing is looking for a price for our wilderness and I say that this is irrelevant – no price is enough.

NDP Leader Mulcair Sounding Like Progressive Conservatives on Oil Policy

July 19, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Politics, Tar SandsAlberta Tar Sands, Oil and gas, Politics, Thomas MulcairCommon Sense Canadian

Read this editorial by Don Braid in the Calgary Herald remarking on the similarities between Federal NDP and Official Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair’s position Canadian oil policy and more traditional Progressive Conservatives like former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed. (July 13, 2012)

CALGARY — Watching NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair at work here in Stampede city, you might expect a few similar politicians to spring to mind. (Maybe Lenin? Strictly for the beard, of course, not the ideology.)

The ones who occur to me most readily, though, are Alberta conservatives, because they’ve often sounded so much like the federal NDP leader when he talks about the energy industry.

Peter Lougheed, for instance.

Only last fall the revered ex-premier came out against the Keystone XL Pipeline, saying it would ship jobs out of Alberta.

“We should be refining the bitumen in Alberta and we should make it public policy in the province,” Lougheed said. “That would be a better thing to do than merely send the raw bitumen down the pipeline and they refine it in Texas. That means thousands of new jobs in Texas.”

Mulcair made much the same pitch Thursday, but for the whole country, not just Alberta.

He said he wants more refineries built to create jobs. He favours reversing pipelines to ship oil eastward. He opposed closing a Shell refinery in Montreal because he wants western oil refined there.

Lougheed would surely blow his venerated stack if I push this parallel too far; and to be sure, there are differences.

Lougheed always opposed Ottawa’s efforts to force Alberta to “ship jobs down the pipeline to Sarnia.”

In the days before free trade, the debate over jobs and oil revenues was purely internal. That has faded with new markets and the immense revenues they generate.

But today Thomas Mulcair and Peter Lougheed clearly agree on the folly of sending vast quantities of oil abroad.

Next, Mulcair sounded very much like former Premier Ed Stelmach.

One of Ed’s favourite lines was: “I’ve always said shipping raw bitumen out of our province is comparable to selling the topsoil on a farm.”

Stelmach created the Bitumen Royalty in Kind program, which allows energy companies to pay their royalties to government in black goo rather than cash. Ultimately, the government’s bitumen is used as feedstock to supply new upgraders on favourable terms.

It was a good idea that has not yet been a grand success.

Dix Can Reclaim Control Over Fish, Pipelines and Tankers from Harper

July 16, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Fisheries, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Western CanadaAdrian Dix, BC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, Oil and gas, PoliticsRafe Mair

Dear Adrian Dix,

You and your party have taken a strong stand against the Enbridge Pipeline and tanker issues, for which I applaud you. I think you should broaden this policy, but first some background.

Stephen Hume has a fascinating article in the Saturday July 14 Vancouver Sun in which he quotes a man from Kitimat who, with the assistance of a man with mathematical training, vetted by a Mathematics professor at Thompson Rivers University, assessed the risk of spills, ruptures, etc. from the Enbridge Pipeline and tankers out of Kitimat, using Enbridge’s own figures. The results are scary, to say the least. By all means, read the article, but the bottom line is that over 50 years there is an 87% chance of a major spill on land or sea.

Here, Mr. Dix, are two other major factors – we know that getting any sort of cleanup on land is virtually non-existent due to the terrain and all but impossible at sea, AND, as Kalamazoo teaches us, there’s very little that can be done to clean up these spills. Very quickly after a spill on water, the bitumen is freed from the condensate which permits it to be piped, and it sinks like a rock.

There is one other new factor the BC government must face – almost nil protection of fish and their habitat by The Department of Fisheries and Oceans thanks to Bill C-38.

We have a jurisdictional clash here, for under The Constitution Act, federal power over fisheries is paramount but the Provinces have control over “Property and Civil Rights”.

Now we get into sticky ground here, but there’s no question in my mind that the Province can and should legislate so as to protect all wildlife, which is its clear right. Hunting laws are provincial as are fishing laws over those which do not go to sea. The dangerous ground is that if the “pith and substance” of your laws was to deal in fisheries over which Ottawa has jurisdiction it might be struck down by the courts.

There is absolutely no need to be concerned about that if you proceed properly.

Dealing with the pipeline, there is an unquestionable provincial right to protect all fauna and flora. Properly done, this would not be a ruse or look like a ruse to trample on the Federal jurisdiction over fisheries but a legitimate effort to protect our trees and our wildlife. Moreover, how could the feds be heard to complain that the matters under their jurisdiction are being protected?

The same argument applies to the coast, where birds and bears depend upon a pristine climate within which to live and eat.

Now, what I suggest Mr Dix, is that your legal beagles go to work and prepare draft legislation which could be tabled as a private member’s bill at the next sitting of the legislature – assuming there is one – and made public in the meantime. From a strictly political point of view, I can think of nothing more useful than having the Feds challenge the constitutionality of your position.

You should go one step further – return to the local governments their power to permit development in their bailiwicks as they had before the Campbell/Clark government took it away. They did that for the Ashlu private power plant. We know from the result of that project that the fish died in ponds because too much water was sucked out of the river. The Ashlu River would still be free of impediments to fish had the Squamish-Lilloett Regional District’s jurisdiction been honoured.

You have spoken loud and clear Mr, Dix – it’s time to put it in writing.

Another Open Letter to MP John Weston on Tankers, Salmon – from his Constituent, Rafe Mair

July 13, 2012Canada, Politics, Western CanadaPolitics, Salmon, Stephen HarperRafe Mair

John,

When we met at the meeting at the North Vancouver church last night, on pipelines and tankers, you mentioned that we have known one another for some years ,as we indeed have. Far from having any dislike of you, my feelings are quite the opposite. I often remember the tour you took me on of Boston when I came to address the Harvard Canadian Club, of which you were a member.

I’m going to get right down to cases. You have disappointed me in that I thought that you might just buck the system and stand up for your province but you have manifestly failed.

You said last night that you voted for Bill C-38 because it would enhance “process” around fish habitat. That was a lie, John, and I’m surprised that a good Christian would make such an egregiously false statement. You voted for C-38 because you had to – just as one of your colleagues did after expressing some public concerns. The truth of the matter is this was the Budget and you had no choice. What you could have done and should have done, seeing you are a “process” person, about which more in a moment, is support those MPs irate that the budget process should be abused to contain substantive policy changes (fish habitat, for example) in it.

Let’s get down to what you said last night. I had accused you of knowing nothing about the environmental catastrophe of pipelines and tankers and while I applaud your honesty am stunned to hear a BC MP admit he knew bugger-all about the subject matter of the controversy but relied upon “the process” to see that environmental concerns are addressed.

Your big word was “process” – a nice, lawyerly approach except you miss the entire point, and please pay attention: These hearings, be they over pipelines, tanker traffic, or so-called “run-of-river” projects do not address whether or not the project should be done in the first place.

These are, to all intents and purposes, done deals. While the Joint Review Panel for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project is an independent body, mandated by the Minister of the Environment and the National Energy Board, and is to assess the environmental effects of the proposed project and review the application under both the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the National Energy Board Act, you know and I know that your government is going ahead with the Gateway project, irrespective of the Panel’s findings.

This isn’t so you say? The government has an open mind on the matter?

Don’t you know what your Natural Resources minister has said ad nauseum?

Watch and read his comments such as, “Environmental and other ‘radical groups’ are trying to block trade and undermine Canada’s economy, according to Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, who has also stated, “Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade.”

Prime Minister Harper said in a Q & A, “I think we’ll see significant American interests trying to line up against the Northern Gateway project, precisely because it’s not in the interests of the United States. It’s in the interests of Canada…they’ll funnel money through environmental groups and others in order to try to slow it down but, as I say, we’ll make sure that the best interests of Canada are protected.”

John, read what your leaders have said…take the time I did on the Internet and you will find that to your Prime Minister and the Natural Resources Minister, the Gateway is a done deal and the hearings simply provide a way for environmental groups to delay.

In fact, Oliver deals extensively with timelines and the need to get this project running “expeditiously”.

I have been to enough of government sponsored “hearings” to know that they are a sham. As I’ve said, “Id rather have a root canal without anaesthetic than attend another.”

Surely, John, prisoner of the system though you might be, you must admit that your government is bent on approving Gateway and in fact your leaders admit it. That being so, John, how can you baldly state that there is “process” of any meaning here?

There are some issues that go straight to the heart our social community and how we want to live.

One such issue, 20 years ago, was the Charlottetown Accord which would have dramatically altered the Canadian system of governance. To the people of British Columbia, the pipelines and tanker traffic similarly go to the very root of what we believe in and how we want to live. We’re dealing with the very soul of BC and you would have us believe that we are getting a process within which we can make our feelings known in a meaningful way?

You know that Gateway is a done deal as far as your government is concerned and that the hearings are not designed to discover what the people want to see happen to our province. The plain truth is that no matter what the Panel recommends, your government will approve the projects.

On the questions about the Fisheries Act, to say this will enhance “process” is rather like, “In order to save the village it was necessary to destroy it.”

For habitat to be protected, development must be prohibited, for the moment you open it to “process”, you condemn it to destruction. I tried to make you and others understand that some things by their nature cannot be mediated, nor can impacts be “mitigated”, an awful weasel word. The example the minister gave of a carp pond was puerile and dangerous. It’s not carp ponds you’ve exposed to the front-end loader but the BC salmon about which you know nothing. How can you take away protection from development without knowing what the hell you’re doing?

The DFO was politicized back in the 1980s by Tom Siddon in the federal government’s giveaway to Alcan and its Kemano Completion Project. This is a very sad chapter and you should know that the Mulroney government suppressed a devastating report by DFO scientists which condemned the KCP in no uncertain terms. The scientists (dubbed the “dissident” scientists by Alcan, a sobriquet they bore with honour) were given early retirement, transferred or refused promotion they were rightly expecting). That 1984 Report was released in 1992 by me after I received it in a brown envelope. If you want the inside story on that I will introduce you to Dr. Gordon Hartman, one of those dissident scientists.

The person to talk to about the gutting of the enforcement arm of DFO is Otto Langer, an ex-DFO man to whom I would be happy to introduce you.

John, you are an embodiment of almost child-like naiveté who has been captivated by the elected dictator system we find ourselves in. You have allowed yourself to self-hypnotize into believing untruths because you must – then perpetuating dangerous falsehoods. It’s rather like the Stockholm Syndrome, where you’ve fallen in love with your captors.

I think it was Senator Daniel Moynihan who said, “You’re entitled to make up your own mind but not your own facts.”

Sincerely,

Rafe

Enbridge ‘Jobs’ Argument Rings Hollow as US Vets Recruited to Work in Canadian Oil Industry

July 9, 2012Canada, Economics, Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Tar SandsAlberta Tar Sands, BC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, Oil and gas, Stephen HarperDamien Gillis

The argument we hear most frequently from the Harper Government in favour of bulldozing through the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines is the major job benefits the project would carry for Canadians. But recent talk of importing foreign workers from the United States and China make a mockery of that boast.

The latest evidence to this effect – a job posting on the American website run by Veterans of Foreign Wars, which helps vets find employment – bears some claims that are so absurd as to beg the question whether it’s a hoax. Some of the figures cited are highly suspect; nevertheless, on the whole, it provides telling window into an alternative narrative emerging around the Tar Sands pipelines issue. The posting reads:

The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. is proud to announce that its partly owned veterans jobs board has secured an exclusive employment initiative with Alberta, Canada, that could see thousands of U.S. veterans heading north to work on their oil pipeline.

“This is a great opportunity for veterans, transitioning military, National Guard and reservists, and their family members,” said Ted Daywalt, founder and CEO of VetJobs (www.vetjobs.com), a recognized industry leader in helping veterans find work.

“Though America’s Keystone Pipeline is delayed, the Canadians are moving forward on their side of the border and have an immediate need for tens of thousands of workers,” said Daywalt, whose website averages more than 55,000 daily job postings by employers strictly interested in hiring veterans. He said the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation anticipates a shortage of 114,000 workers in the Alberta area, and they want to hire American veterans to fill that shortage.

According to the development corporation, the positions being offered are long term, with many paying as much as 30 percent more than similar industry positions in the United States. Some positions will require a move to Canada, but many others will allow veterans to commute — working several weeks in Canada, then one week back home. (emphasis added)

The posting came my way via a BC-based environmental discussion listserv, Land Watch, and has provoked some interesting questions.

For starters – beyond the matter-of-fact assertion that “the Canadians are moving forward on their side of the border” with our highly controversial proposed pipeline projects – there’s the eyebrow-raising jobs claim. Creating 114,000 jobs would essentially mean doubling the current employment of the entire Canadian oil and gas sector, and yet the ad only mentions pipeline construction jobs specifically.

Even Enbridge (whose new ad campaign touting myriad economic benefits sputtered recently over a spoof by Province cartoonist Dan Murphy that went viral) and the project’s looniest boosters acknowledge the pipeline would provide a few thousand temporary jobs at best. Once it’s built, BC would see only several dozen permanent jobs. A recent study by the Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada suggests the workforce of the Alberta Tar Sands – which altogether employs just 20,000 people, constituting 15% of Canada’s total oil and gas jobs – will rise by 73% by 2021, but that pales in comparison with the numbers being thrown around by Veterans of Foreign Wars.

The posting rings true on another front, though – the fact that both BC and Alberta are approaching full employment territory, putting paid to the argument we need new jobs at the expense of our environment. BC and Alberta are both seeing strong job growth today – with unemployment in BC falling by .8% from May to 6.6% in June (though some of BC’s lower unemployment numbers derive from workers heading across the border to Alberta). Alberta lost a handful of jobs in June, but its unemployment rate remains at a paltry 4.6%.

We’re told ad nauseum that we need to accept the certain risk of pipeline leaks and tanker spills because we badly need the jobs that come with these projects, yet the plain fact is we don’t have the workforce to provide tens of thousands of new employees for Tar Sands-related development.

One line in particular stands out in the job ad, namely that “…[the] veterans jobs board has secured an exclusive employment initiative with Alberta, Canada…” Secured? With whom? The Alberta Government? The Government of Canada? Has an American company signed a deal with our government(s) to provide foreign labour to Canada, and if so, why have we heard nothing of it from our elected officials? It could be this is just exaggerated salesmanship on the part of this jobs site, but these are questions that need answering.

Another question the posting raises is why would we pay these workers 30% more in Canada than south of the border? This claim seems to conflict with the other major challenge to the jobs argument – the recent revelation that state-owned energy giant PetroChina wants to build the Enbridge pipeline. The advantage to Enbridge from this proposition is a significant discount on labour, as the Harper Government recently changed our laws to allow companies operating in Canada to pay temporary foreign workers 15% less than the average wage for Canadians. This hardly seems like the policy of a government concerned about creating oil and gas jobs for its citizens.

And again, these direct job-related concerns are on top of the certain environmental and economic calamities of pipeline leaks and tanker spills – which would also be a huge blow to BC’s tourism and natural resource-dependent economy.

Perhaps a larger issue at hand is the matter of Canadian energy security and economic sovereignty.

The picture now emerging is of Chinese and American companies harvesting our bitumen, using Chinese and American labour to extract it, and building the pipelines to transport it back to their own countries to refine it (where the real jobs are), along with the profits from the whole operation. Moreover, we’re only a trade deal away from it being illegal to stop exporting oil to China once we’ve started. We’ve already sacrificed much of our resource and economic sovereignty under NAFTA and the privately controlled American corporation, NERC, which we’ve empowered to regulate our public energy system. Now we’re talking about recently retired American soldiers coming up here to build our oil infrastructure, which is more than a little unsettling.

Finally, in addition to the hollowing out of the “jobs” argument, the macro-economic impacts of expanded pipelines and Tar Sands development have been questioned by the likes of Official Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair, economist and former ICBC CEO Robyn Allan, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Thus, when Stephen Harper and his minions declare the Enbridge pipelines would be good for “the economy”, we must ask the key question: “Whose economy?” US veterans, Chinese migrant workers, China itself and the mostly-foreign shareholders of multinational corporations? Check.

The public of BC and Canada? Not so much.

If I was a BC Tory Under Harper, I’d Resign

July 5, 2012Canada, Energy and Resources, Oceans, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Salmon Farming and Aquaculture, Western CanadaAquaculture, BC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, KinderMorgan, Oil and gas, Politics, SalmonRafe Mair

I have received a lot of feedback on my recent blog on John Weston, MP.

Let me say that this was directed to Weston because he is my MP and it applies with equal force to all Tory MPs from British Columbia.

I’ve been asked if I would resign were I in John’s position and I say YES. Now, I realize that’s easy to say – he who has not sinned has not been tempted. I have no doubt, however. I sat in a cabinet that had half a dozen ministers who would have resigned under these circumstances. Premier Bill Bennett recognized this and it was taken into his consideration, I’m sure.

Now, under our system – such is the measure of its idiocy – all elected members on the government side must often compromise, otherwise the government couldn’t function. There were occasions where cabinet passed policy that I had spoken out against in the past and I told the press that when cabinet makes a decision all must support it. But these were areas of policy, not matters that go to the root of your commitment to your voters and your constituency. They were not matters of conscience. Any who have sat on the board of, say, a golf club will readily get the distinction between matters of business and matters of conscience. Premier Bill Bennett understood the distinction – Stephen Harper, no doubt also understands but he knows his backbenchers well and knows that there is almost nothing that goes to the conscience of his MPS because they have none.

Let’s be clear what issues we’re talking about here.

The environment of BC as a whole is not merely threatened but is on the brink of disaster from policy decisions already taken by the Harper government. I refer, of course, to its support of the Enbridge pipeline and expansion of Kinder Morgan’s pipeline to Vancouver; its open support of tankers loaded with deadly bitumen from the Tar Sands; its ongoing support of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to promote fish farms while their statutory basic raison d’etre is to protect our salmon; and its utter abandonment of protection of fish habitat as demonstrated in its gutting of the DFO in BC.

These, I contend, are not merely matters of policy but go the very root of what British Columbia is and as such simply cannot be supported by any Member of Parliament from our province.

Ask yourself this: if in the past election Tory candidates were asked if they support the above policies, I suggest that not one of them would have answered yes. If they had been and they replied that they were for these policies they would never have been elected and they know that.

I pick on Weston because, as I say, he’s my MP. In fact, the entire BC Conservative caucus ought to resign en masse. That they haven’t and won’t brands them as they are – lickspittles and toadies who put their parliamentary seat before their duty.

My prediction is that Weston will be rewarded with a cabinet seat in the next major shuffle – after all, he has been faithful to Harper and he’s moved his family back to Ottawa, which move could well have come from a nod or a wink from Harper.

After all, if sacrificing your constituency and your province for personal gain is to mean anything, there must be a reward and in my view it will come.

Harper Wasting No Time Slashing DFO Habitat Jobs as Notices go out to Staff

July 3, 2012Canada, Fisheries, Politics, Western CanadaPolitics, Salmon, Stephen HarperOtto Langer

According to Otto Langer, the former senior DFO scientist and manager who first blew the whistle on Stephen Harper’s plan to gut the Fisheries Act, the job cuts associated with Harper’s program will soon be taking effect in BC. Langer sent out the following warning on June 27.

Today all DFO habitat protection and management staff in Canada are receiving letters that they are now “red-circled” – i.e. they are being affected by Bill C-38 with it’s budget and habitat legislation and program cuts (i.e. DFO downsizing) and many will soon not have a job. Yesterday all staff in the BC-Yukon region were advised of this happening in a telephone call from Pacific Regional Director General Susan Farlinger. Staff were directed to not discuss this with anyone and only DFO Ottawa was allowed to comment on the issue.

132 habitat staff across Canada will be fired (laid off) in the next few months in that many will have to compete for remaining jobs. In the Pacific Region, they now have 92 staff and that is to be reduced to 60 – an approximate 33% cut in staff. Also, all habitat office locations in Pacific Region are to be closed down, with the exception of Whitehorse, Prince Rupert, Kamloops, Vancouver and Nanaimo. That means offices such as those in Mission, Campbell River, Prince George, Nelson, Williams Lake, Smithers, Port Hardy, etc. are to be shut down. If the Enbridge and natural gas pipelines go across northern BC, there will be no habitat staff in Prince George or Smithers, etc. to respond to potential disasters – the closest offices will be Prince Rupert or Kamloops.

The office in Port Hardy has looked after salmon farming issues, which it will be unable to do now.

This puts DFO back where it was in the early 1980s, i.e. 5 offices in BC and even less staff than they had in 1983 with many giant projects such as Enbridge, gas lines, gas liquification plants, New Prosperity Gold Mine, Site C Dam on the Peace River, Panamax tankers of jet fuel up the Fraser River, Roberts Bank Port expansion, etc. now being proposed and pushed along. Never in the past 50 year history of habitat protection have we seen such great cuts in staff the face of upcoming massive industrial development that can and will harm habitat and our fisheries of the future.

Finally, Ottawa has given all DFO habitat staff directions to remove the “Habitat Management Program” title from their organization and from their offices, etc. in that they are now to be called the “Fisheries Protection Program”.

In summary, this puts DFO back to where they were in the late 1970s in terms of habitat staff numbers in the Pacific Region, but with next to no legislation to protect overall habitat and a greatly reduced presence in the field where the habitat damage takes place. Their efforts will of course be distracted over the next year or more in that staff will have to compete for the surviving 60 positions and put their minds to what they can do for a living when laid off and where they move to to get a job to support their families, etc. I am told the already very low morale of the staff was destroyed by Bill C-38 and now it has received its final blow – the willingness and direction to do their jobs can now be measured in negative quantities.

One can now say that the Harper Government has ‘right-sized’ the workload for the reduced number of staff! They will protect less habitat, despite the incredulous claims of DFO Minister Ashfield and many Conservative MPs that DFO will provide the fishery with better, more focused protection. More staff-related budget cuts have been outlined for 2013 and 2014.

All DFO habitat protection offices from Quebec to the BC-Alberta border, i.e. Central and Arctic Region, will also be drastically cut and all offices will be shut down except in Ottawa, Burlington, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Yellowknife. It is indicated that of 63 DFO offices in Canada with habitat staff (now “fisheries protection” staff), most will be closed and the number of offices having habitat-type program staff will be reduced to 14 for a giant geographic area – i.e. Canada.