by Carol Linnitt – Originally posted on DeSmog Canada

The hotel rental for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s September visit to New York City cost Canadian taxpayers a total of $56,582.91, according to documents recently released by CTV News.

“Canada and the U.S. are making important progress on enhancing trade, travel and investment flows between our two countries, including securing our borders, speeding up trade and travel, modernizing infrastructure in integrated sectors of the North American economy, and harmonizing regulations,” Harper said at the event. “But there is much more that can be done, and must be done, to make our economic relationship more productive and seamless.”

The event, organized by the Canadian American Business Council, gave Harper the opportunity to tell an audience of American business executives that he wouldn’t “take no for an answer” on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, planned to carry tar sands crude from Alberta to oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hotel bill mistakenly sent to CTV

The hotel bill for the luxurious New York Palace Hotel, which was mistakenly sent to CTV’s Washington bureau, suggests Harper’s speaking engagement was a staged promotional gathering for the Keystone XL, rather that a typical guest speaker event which are usually paid for by the host.

The hotel charges include coffee services for $6,650.00, room rental for $33,500.00 and audio visual services of $14,709.15. An overall service charge for the room and coffee came to $9,234.50.

According to CTV, the event was co-hosted with the Canadian American Business Council, which claimed to ‘share’ the costs for the event with the Harper Government.

Maryscott Greenwood, senior advisor for the Council said, “the costs were shared…we paid for pieces of it.”

The “Voice of Business”

On their website the Canadian American Business Council claims to be “the voice of business in the world’s most prosperous relationship. Established in 1987 in Washington, D.C., the Council is a non-profit, non-partisan, issues-oriented organization dedicated to elevating the private sector perspective on issues that affect our two nations, Canada and the United States.”

Membership to the Council requires a $5,500 annual fee, with conference sponsorships running up to $25,000 per event. Members of the Council include the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Embassy, the Government of Alberta and TransCanada among many other major oil and gas companies.

In 2012, the Council listed “Approval of the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring Canadian crude oil to the U.S. gulf refineries” in its top ten ‘list of issues.’

Andrew Shaw, who works for the Council, is also a registered lobbyist for the Keystone XL pipeline with KcKenna, Long & Aldridge. Shaw was hired by TransCanada to lobby on the topic of “permitting issues regarding the Keystone XL pipeline,” lobbying disclosure documents show.

According to further lobbyist documents, Shaw was also hired by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Canada’s largest oil and gas lobby firm, to speak with members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives about American environmental legislation or policies that might have implications on the development of Canada’s tar sands.

TransCanada spends millions on US lobbying

A recent white paper report released by DeSmog Canada shows TransCanada has spent $2.78 million on in-company lobbyists and $1.26 million on U.S. based lobby firms, including McKenna, Long & Aldridge, since 2010.

The white paper also shows that since 2010-2011 the Harper Government’s spending of taxpayer funds to promote the tar sands and Canada’s environmental performance has increased by 7000 percent with plans to further increase in the 2013-2014 year.

For more information on lobbying for the Keystone XL, see this backgrounder put together by Friends of the Earth or read about the pipeline on DeSmogblog.com.

OTTAWA – An anti-Keystone XL pipeline crusader has written to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, suggesting Canada’s aggressive lobbying for the project played a part in the ongoing government shutdown south of the border.

Tom Steyer, a San Francisco billionaire who’s also a major Democratic party fundraiser, chastises Harper for saying he would not “take ‘no’ for an answer” from U.S. President Barack Obama on TransCanada’s Keystone XL.

In a question-and-answer session with the Canadian American Business Council last week in New York, Harper took a hard line on how Canada would respond if the Keystone XL project is rejected by the White House.

“My view is you don’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Harper said. “This won’t be final until it’s approved and we will keep pushing forward.”

Steyer took issue with those comments in his letter to the prime minister Friday, asking:

[quote]Have your government, your government’s lobbyist and/or agents representing TransCanada communicated with House Republicans about including Keystone in the original litany of demands put to President Obama?[/quote]

Steyer says in the dispatch that TransCanada is launching a new advertising campaign aimed at stakeholders in Washington, D.C.

“News of this advertising campaign comes in the context of House Republicans having closed down the U.S. government as well as threatening to oppose the extension of the country’s debt limit unless certain demands were met,” Steyer writes.

“Included in the original list of House Republican demands was that the Obama administration grant approval for the building of the Keystone XL pipeline.

The combination of the advertising campaign and Harper’s comments last week “raises the question of whether your office is working hand-in-hand with TransCanada to try to exploit the current situation in Washington, D.C., at the expense of the American people,” Steyer wrote.

The Prime Minister’s Office didn’t respond to queries about Steyer’s letter. Harper is currently in Southeast Asia for an economic summit with Pacific Rim countries.

Harper’s strong-arm tactics counter-productive?

The majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives, and some Democrats, have long been staunch supporters of Keystone XL and have tried in the past to insert pipeline provisions into bigger pieces of legislation.

Privately, however, some TransCanada officials have bemoaned the strong-arm tactics of some of their Republican cheerleaders.

Just this week, TransCanada’s director of the pipeline said a legislative effort by Republicans in 2012 to push Obama into approving Keystone XL unnecessarily delayed the project.

“As you recall, 2012 was an election year and politics began to weigh heavily into that process and some political manoeuvring occurred,” Les Cherwenuk said in Houston at an energy roundtable.

The president “couldn’t (approve the project) fundamentally, since the work had not been completed and he had no choice but to deny the permit.”

In early 2012, Republicans pushed a mandate through Congress demanding Obama approve the $5.3-billion pipeline within a strict deadline. But the State Department was still assessing the project amid concerns from the state of Nebraska that Keystone XL posed risks to a crucial drinking water aquifer.

The president invited TransCanada to submit another application, one that would reroute the pipeline around the aquifer.

The pipeline has become a flashpoint for U.S. environmentalists who hold it up as a symbol of America’s over-reliance on carbon-intensive fossil fuels. They argue that approving Keystone XL will encourage oilsands crude production, which emits more carbon into the atmosphere than conventional oil production.

Steyer, a former hedge fund manager who hosted Obama in his home for a Democratic fundraiser in the spring, left his firm to devote himself entirely to climate change issues. He’s emerged a major thorn in the side of pipeline proponents, and recently launched a series of TV commercials maligning Keystone XL.

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper looks increasingly desperate to find ways for expanding the Tar Sands. While his government wants to ramp up bitumen production dramatically in Alberta, it faces export challenges at every turn.

This has led to some erratic and questionable moves by Team Harper in recent months – from a sudden u-turn for its aboriginal relations on the pipeline file, to aggressive US lobbying over the controversial Keystone XL project, to today’s news that it has been mulling an unprecedented plan to move massive quantities of bitumen to BC’s coast by rail.

Half a million barrels a day…by rail?

On that last point, we learned today from internal memos pried loose by Greenpeace that the Harper Government and Chinese-owned Nexen sought out CN to explore moving a similar quantity of oil to the embattled Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal.

Oil is moved by rail today, but in relatively small volumes – though that trend is changing, particularly in the US with the Bakken shale in North Dakota. This has had dangerous consequences, as we saw with the catastrophic derailment in Lac-Mégantic of a train carrying highly combustible shale oil. Even with oil-by-rail shipments on the rise around North America, this Prince Rupert plan is unprecedented in its scale and risks.

While the now-defunct operator behind the Lac-Mégantic disaster – the Montreal, Main and Atlantic Railway – moved half a million barrels of Bakken oil a month, CN would be doing that on a daily basis. The company would send seven trains a day, with over a hundred cars each, carrying bitumen to the Port of Prince Rupert.

The trains would travel along Canada’s second largest salmon river, the Skeena – a derailment would be a catastrophe waiting to happen. Pipeline proponents – especially since Lac-Mégantic – have long held up rail as a straw man to persuade the public of the relative safety of pipelines, making this alternative proposal all the more baffling. Unless, of course, it’s intended to frighten British Columbians back into embracing Enbridge.

Memo blacked out

Who can say what Harper and co. are really thinking here, especially since the section of the rail memo discussing the Department of Natural Resources’ views on the matter was entirely blacked out.

The undated memo was allegedly written prior to Lac-Mégantic, so it’s difficult to say to what degree it’s being taken seriously today. Any way you slice it, this is a crazy plan, coming from a government that looks like it’s flailing around for a lifeline, amid the increasingly troubled waters for Tar Sands expansion.

Keystone antics

This desperation has played out in Harper’s erratic attempts to win over President Obama on the controversial, proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to refineries on the US Gulf Coast. With Obama’s apparent conversion on the climate file, Harper looks lost.

When trouble first began brewing for Keystone, he sent his pitbull, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, to Washington, DC for some pipeline diplomacy. The only thing missing was the diplomacy, as Oliver’s brutish antics only served to insult his hosts and provoke ridicule from more enlightened political and media observers around the world.

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Harper’s draconian gutting of environmental regulation and muzzling of scientists to protect his oil agenda is drawing widespread condemnation – visible everywhere from prestigious international journals to a recent New York Times editorial.

Following Obama’s bold climate speech this summer, Harper radically changed his tack, offering to commit to US carbon emissions targets in exchange for giving Keystone a pass. The jury’s out on how effective this tactic will prove, but it can hardly look like anything other than disingenuous, johnny-come-lately political maneuvering to Obama.

Mixed signals to First Nations

Finally, there’s Harper’s dramatic swings in his approach to First Nations on pipelines. Over the past year, he and Oliver have gone from alternately ignoring First Nations’ concerns to vilifying them as “radical” opponents of Canada’s national interest.

Then, out of the blue, we learned recently that Harper and a caravan of federal ministers would be venturing out to our hinterland west of the Rockies to get First Nations onside with the proposed Enbridge and Kinder Morgan pipelines.

If this apparent reversal wasn’t baffling enough for aboriginal leaders like Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, the ministers’ attitude at the table took it to another level. Describing separate meetings with Oliver and Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Velcourt to the Vancouver Observer, Phillip says the ministers made little effort to win him over: