Tag Archives: Alberta Tar Sands

New Documentary on Wolf Kills Connected to Alberta Tar Sands – “Cry Wolf: An Ethical Oil Story”

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Check out this new short documentary sponsored by DeSmogBlog.com on the killing of wolves in Alberta – connected to a misguided plan to conserve caribou populations being impacted by Tar Sands operations. (April 10, 2012)

Over the last several years, Alberta has killed more than 500 wolves using aerial sharpshooters and poisoned bait in order to conceal the impact of rapid industrial development on Canada’s iconic woodland caribou…A team of DeSmogBlog researchers traveled to the Tar Sands region to investigate the dirty oil politics behind this fool’s errand. Here is our first report: Cry Wolf: An Unethical Oil Story.

Read article on video: http://www.desmogblog.com/cry-wolf-unethical-oil-story

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Respecting the Power of the Sea – Testimony From Enbridge Hearings in Bella Bella

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Highlights from this week’s National Energy Board hearings in Bella Bella on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline and supertankers on BC’s coast. Powerful testimony from three members of the Heiltsuk First Nation, sharing their experiences with the sea. “I’ll never forget it,” said Josh Vickers recounting to the NEB panel a memorable herring fishing trip as a boy. “We were coming back in 40 to 50 foot seas…Our boats were like corks going way up and way down. We couldn’t even see each other – that’s how violent and rough the sea was.”

 

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Bella Bella Opposes Enbridge Story on CBC’s The National Last Night – feat. Footage by Damien Gillis

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Check out this story from CBC’s The National on the recent controversy over the scheduled National Energy Board Enbridge hearings in Bella Bella – featuring footage shot by Damien Gillis. (April 2, 1021)

Watch video: http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/The_National/1233408557/ID=2218694750

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Cancelled Enbridge Hearings to Resume in Bella Bella, Youth Embark on Hunger Strike

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The Heiltsuk First Nation learned late Monday that scheduled National Energy Board hearings on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline will resume Tuesday in Bella Bella, following their cancellation Monday in the wake of a peaceful demonstration to which the Joint Review Panel overreacted. Heiltsuk Chief Marilyn Slett is, however, concerned that the panel will not be adding extra hearing days to make up for Monday’s lost testimony time. Meanwhile, students from the community embarked on a hunger strike to protest proposed oil supertankers which threaten their traditional marine food resources.

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CBC on NEB Cancelling Day 1 of Bella Bella Enbridge Hearings – incl. Audio Clip

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Read this report from CBC on the National Energy Board’s decision to cancel the first day of the Joint Panel Review hearings on Enbridge in Bella Bella after the panel was greeted by a demonstration at the local airport – featuring images and commentary by Damien Gillis. (April 2, 2012)

A public hearing for the Northern Gateway Project has been unexpectedly cancelled after panel members were met by protesters at the Bella Bella airport in B.C. on Sunday afternoon.

 

The review panel was scheduled to hold four days of hearing in the remote community to gather local concerns about the controversial proposal to build a crude oil pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast.

A large crowd greeted the panel members when they arrived in Bella Bella, but later on Sunday afternoon, Monday’s hearing was cancelled. Some high school students in the community reportedly began a 48-hour hunger strike after the panel arrived.

Heiltsuk First Nation Chief Marilynn Slett told a community meeting that the review panel had sent a notice that it would not be proceeding with the sessions because of security concerns.

“It was their perception that it wasn’t a very secure or safe environment,” Slett told CBC News on Monday morning.

But Slett says the protest and the community are peaceful…

…Documentary filmmaker and environmental activist Damien Gillis said the protesters were not threatening anyone.

“The RCMP was in attendance, I’ve spoken to the detachment commander. They are baffled at this reaction. They didn’t observe anything unlawful or remotely threatening.”

North Coast NDP MLA Gary Coons arrived on the plane with the panel members and said all he witnessed was a peaceful gathering.

“It is insulting to the Heiltsuk community and those that were there that they would feel that way. The members of the joint review panel have been welcomed in respectful ways to every First Nations community that they have gone to and this would be no different.” said Coons.

Both Coons and Slett are hopeful a meeting with panel members on Monday morning will help resolve panel’s concerns and get the public hearings back on track.

Read full article and listen to audio clip: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/04/02/bc-bella-bella-gateway-hearing.html

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Budget: Harper Govt. Goes After Charities who Question its Resource Development Plans

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Read this story form the Hill Times on the Harper Government’s intention laid out in its recent budget bill to go after charities who are critical of its oil and resource development plans. (March 29, 2012)

Opposition MPs say a surprise allegation in the federal budget that Canadian charities are violating federal rules limiting their political advocacy is retribution for widespread opposition from environmental groups to the massive Northern Gateway oil sands pipeline across British Columbia.

PARLIAMENT HILL—Opposition MPs say a surprise allegation in the federal budget that Canadian charities are violating federal rules limiting their political advocacy is retribution for widespread opposition from environmental groups to the massive Northern Gateway oil sands pipeline across British Columbia.

The obscure provision in the budget Thursday to beef up the Canada Revenue Agency’s “enforcement tools” to monitor political activities of charities demonstrates the partisan nature of the Conservative government, opposition MPs said.

NDP MP Megan Leslie (Halifax, N.S.) told The Hill Times the measure is one of several provisions that show the budget, aside from its main thrust of public service spending cuts, is all “pipeline, pipeline, pipeline.”

“The over-arching theme here is this is a budget for the great pipeline to China,” Ms. Leslie said. “This is about pipelines, pipelines, pipelines, and at any cost.”

“Whether it is going after charities, who might have a different opinion, cutting the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy and cutting Environment Canada and not relying on science and evidence, or whether it’s going after the Environmental Assessment Act and weakening it, that’s what this budget says to me, it’s all about pipelines,” Ms. Leslie said.

The reference to political activities of charities was a needle in the haystack of the budget’s total $5.2-billion in broad spending cuts the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) is proposing for the next three years, with a projection that the spending reductions, combined with other economic forecasts, will result in a surplus by 2015, the next federal election year.

But the measure was so unexpected at the traditional pre-budget lockup for journalists that Reuters news correspondent David Ljunggren asked Finance Minister Jim Flaherty (Whitby Oshawa, Ont.) about it at a news conference before Mr. Flaherty tabled the budget in the Commons, asking Mr. Flaherty why the budget was putting the “tax police” on charities.

“We’re not making any changes in the rules relating to charities, we are providing some resources, some additional resources for enforcement of the rules by the Canada Revenue Agency,” Mr. Flaherty said.

“Quite frankly, we’ve had a lot of complaints and concerns expressed by Canadians that when they give money to charities they expect the money to be used for the charities purposes, not for political or other purposes,” he said.

“This not black and white, because the Canada Revenue Agency permits a small percentage of dollars to be used for advocacy and other purposes, but there is clearly a need, in our view, for more vigilance, that charities obey the rules as they are now,” Mr. Flaherty said.

The main budget document noted charities are allowed to engage in political activities, centered primarily on advocacy, as long as the activities are related to their charitable goals and represent a limited portion of their resources—no more than 10 per cent for larger charities.

Read more: http://www.hilltimes.com/news/politics/2012/03/29/feds-attack-charitable-sector-in-budget-for-being-too-political-say-opposition/30234

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Bill McKibben at No Tankers Rally in Vancouver

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World renowned climate activist Bill McKibben of 350.org lent his voice to the “Our Coast, Our Decision” rally in Vancouver Monday. McKibben told the crowd of close to 2,000 outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, “This is one of these great moments in human history and you guys are absolutely at the white, hot centre of it.”

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Trailbreaker: Yet Another Tar Sands Pipeline in the Works

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With all the recent controversies and media attention surrounding the proposed Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipelines, you would not be remiss in thinking that these are the only projects currently being considered to get tar sands crude to foreign markets. But you would be wrong.

It seems the Canadian government is quite serious about plans to triple production of tar sands bitumen and would not be satisfied even if they were somehow able to bulldoze public opposition to Keystone and Gateway. Although the project has not been officially confirmed, plans are in the works to pump bitumen from northern Alberta through Montreal to the Atlantic coast city of Portland, Maine, where tankers would then transport about 200,000 barrels a day of the heavy crude to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries and foreign markets.

This so-called Trailbreaker project would appear to present fewer regulatory obstacles, as it would not require construction of a new pipeline. Instead, the flow of the existing Portland-Montreal pipeline, which currently brings oil from Africa and the Middle East into eastern Canada, would simply be reversed.

According to the Portland Daily Sun, David Cyr, treasurer of the Portland Montreal Pipeline Company, is on the record recently as saying, “We do not have an active project…in terms of bringing western Canadian crude here.” While it may well be true that there is no “active” project, Cyr’s comments hardly amount to a rigorous denial and they fly in the face of active rumours I have been hearing out of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Indeed, as recently as last summer Mr. Cyr was quoted in The Globe and Mail as saying, “We’re still very much interested in reversing the flow of one of our two pipelines to move western Canadian crude to the eastern seaboard. We’re having discussions with Enbridge on their Line 9 and what it means to us.” Moreover, other insider industry sources have previously confirmed that discussions are underway to expand the Enbridge proposal to carry tar sands bitumen to the Atlantic.

Enbridge, the company behind both Trailbreaker and Northern Gateway, has already requested fast-track approval from the National Energy Board of their $16.9 million plan to reverse the flow of tar sands crude from western Canada to Montreal. Yet according to Dylan Voorhees, Clean Energy Director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, this is merely phase one of a plan that would then be followed by a reversal of the Portland Montreal Pipeline. The NRC believes that by splitting the project into pieces, Enbridge is attempting to bypass full regulatory and public scrutiny.

Enbridge had secured permission in 2010 from the Quebec Commission for the Protection of Agricultural Land to build a pumping station near the town of Dunham, Quebec. Just last month, however, the environmental group Equiterre and a citizen from Dunham won a Quebec Court ruling by arguing successfully that the issues surrounding the pumping station were not fully aired at the commission. This ruling would appear to stall, for the time being, an attempt to ship oil from Montreal to Portland.

The NRC recently joined three other environmental groups in Portland to educate the public on the dangers of transporting tar sands bitumen. “The larger context is that there’s a large effort of getting tar sands crude oil out of Canada,” said Voorhees. “It doesn’t seem prudent on us to wait until there’s an application to start learning about this because it’s very clearly on the radar.”

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Audio: Damien Gillis Talks Tar Sands PR, Muzzling of Science on CFUV

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Get MP3 (22 MB)

Listen to this interview of Damien Gillis on Victoria’s CFUV 101.9 FM by the Hidden News’ host Mehdi Najari. The pair discuss a range of topics, including the Harper Government’s taxpayer-funded Tar Sands PR campaign and the characterization of environmentalists and citizens opposed to the proposed Enbridge pipelines as radicals and threats to the national interest. What is the world’s scientific community saying about Canada’s muzzling of scientists and cutting off funding to key research projects and regulatory bodies – and how is that damaging Canada’s global reputation? (19 min – from March 7, 2012)

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Photo from flickr - BC Gov Photos

Harper and Clark Playing Dangerous Games with Enbridge

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The Premier and the Prime Minister are playing very dangerous games indeed.
 
Prime Minister Harper is acting as though the Enbridge pipeline is a done deal– indeed he’s telling anyone he meets that very thing.

The PM, never much for public opinion at the best of times, cannot see any possible way the general public and First Nations could stand in the way of this ghastly project.
 
He’s relying on the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel hearings to allow him to say that the people have had their say so – on with the pipelines! That they will approve of the double pipeline is all but a forgone conclusion and already The PM and his Resources Minister are complaining that the Commission is tiresome and wasting time; however, the time isn’t wasted as far as I’m concerned, for every moment the Commission sits will make more people aware of the egregious environmental insult this project is.
 
Where is Premier Clark? I believe that the provincial government has shared jurisdiction, yet she seems to think if she ducks her head British Columbians won’t notice her.
 
Ms. Clark and the Prime Minister are paying no attention to the fact that the First Nations across the entire project oppose it, but here’s the crunch: if this Tar Sands gunk doesn’t get shipped from the coast there’s no point to pipelines.
 
Premier Clark can’t avoid the tanker issue. On this issue the First Nations are adamant – in Coastal First Nations spokesman Gerald Amos’ words on the tanker traffic, he is nothing if not concise: “It isn’t going to happen.”
 
The issues of the pipelines and tankers are joined at the hip – Enbridge is scarcely going to build pipelines unless the Tar Sands gunk will have customers and customers require tankers to go down the coast.
 
This means that even if Premier Clark can avoid the pipelines issue, she sure as hell can’t avoid the tanker one. To make the cheese more binding, this will be a huge issue by the time the next provincial election comes around in May of 2013.
I have no doubt that the NDP will be unalterably and vocally opposed to the tanker traffic and the premier will have to fish or cut bait. To make it worse, she’s in a Catch 22 position – if she opposes the tanker traffic  many of the right wing of the party will vote Conservative; if she supports it, the centre/left and the crucial swing folks will vote NDP.
 
Both the PM and Clark completely miss the strength of the opposition to the pipelines and tanker traffic – a strength that is growing and will continue to grow.
 
In my lifetime, a long one, I have never seen a more dangerous situation where violence may well not be avoided. I have also never seen such a serious situation be ignored by our political masters.
 
Harper trots around the world to get customers to buy Tar Sands gunk without any serious process to hear the people; while the Premier pretends that it has nothing to do with her.
 
All the while opposition grows and grows – a clear prescription for disaster.
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