Jim Prentice meeting with Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard (Twitter)
This story is republished with permission from Desmog.ca.
By Derek Leahy
Alberta Premier Jim Prentice begins an Energy East lobby tour today in Quebec City to try to woo the premiers of Quebec and Ontario into supporting TransCanada’s 1.1 million barrel-per-day oil pipeline proposal.
Ontario and Quebec announced last month that Energy East would have to meet seven conditions to gain the provinces’ approval of the 4,600-kilometer pipeline from Alberta to New Brunswick. Included in these conditions is a demand for a full environmental assessment of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the pipeline.
An analysis conducted earlier this year by the Pembina Institute, an energy think tank, found the greenhouse gas emissions from extracting the oilsands bitumen to fill the Energy East pipeline would erase all reductions in greenhouse gas emissions achieved by Ontario’s phase out of coal-fired power plants. The analysis did not include emissions from combustion, which would make Energy East’s carbon footprint even higher.
“If Ontario and Quebec are concerned about greenhouse gas emissions and climate change then the Energy East tar sands pipeline project is dead already,” Adam Scott, climate and energy program manager with Environmental Defence, told DeSmog Canada.
Prentice meets with Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard Tuesday and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne in Toronto on Wednesday.
Ontario and Quebec’s conditions tougher than BC’s
This is not the first time an Alberta premier has travelled to another province on behalf of a pipeline project. British Columbia Premier Christy Clark famously inflamed relations with Alberta with her five conditions for the Northern Gateway pipeline, which resulted in some icy meetings with then Alberta premier Alison Redford.
Clark’s demand to receive a greater share of the fiscal benefits from Northern Gateway was a contentious issue between the two western provinces, but she did not go as far as Wynne and Couillard in insisting the pipeline’s greenhouse gas emissions be properly assessed.
The National Energy Board’s reviews of pipeline projects aren’t taking climate change into account, which has left a leadership vacuum that the provinces are stepping in to fill. New pipelines facilitate expansion of oilsands production, leading to higher greenhouse gas emissions.
Ontario’s seven conditions – from government website
Belugas and more bad news for Energy East
Prentice’s visit comes during a turbulent public relations spell for Energy East.
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, former Maple Spring student activist and author, announced on Radio-Canada just days after the leak that he was donating his $25,000 Governor General’s Literary Award to an anti-pipeline coalition and encouraged the public to do match it. Donations have reached $400,000 now.
Yesterday the Committee on the Status of Wildlife in Canada announced the belugas whales of the St. Lawrence Estuary — where TransCanada has plans for an Energy East marine oil tanker terminal — are at greater risk of extinction than a decade ago, forcing TransCanada to halt work on the terminal.
“It’s good news and bad news,” Bonin says. “TransCanada’s marine terminal at Cacouna probably won’t be built now, but it is sad to find out the beluga population is not recovering.”
11-year-old Kate Fink-Jensen (CTV) and Premier Clark (Lyle Stafford, Postmedia)
Premier Christy Clark has taken it upon herself to criticize the parents of two 11-year-olds who protested the Kinder Morgan action in Burnaby and were only not arrested because the police chose to refrain from doing so. The premier is concerned that the these children have been encouraged, by their parents, to “break the law”.
This requires, I submit, a bit of examination.
I trust that premier Clark has no objection to parents instilling in their children the principles by which they govern themselves. I suspect that her son Hamish is being brought up to be a free-enterpriser, as defined by his mother and father. (Oddly enough, after the last legislative session, I assume that NDP opposition leader John Horgan agrees with premier Clark, given his obsequious support of her and her government on the LNG issue).
The King CAN do wrong
The basic issue, as I read the Premier’s remarks, is that these two children were taught to flout the law. This is the argument that those in charge of things have always made. It’s really part of the maxim that “the King can do no wrong”.
The problem is, the king can do a hell of a lot wrong. When he takes away the rights of citizens by passing an oppressive law, for which kings and their ministers are justifiably famous, he’s done wrong. Does that mean that he must nevertheless be obeyed at all cost because his laws by definition are “legal”?
Civil disobedience has been part of the democratic process since the Magna Carta and before. One of the principles is that if you stand against a law, you must pay the penalty. This the kids were prepared to do.
In the present case, the two young girls evidently decided, quite on their own, that Kinder Morgan was interfering with their park and with their neighbourhood and wanted to protest. Presumably if they’d decided they wanted to carry signs supporting Kinder Morgan, the premier would’ve had no objection.
The real issue, then, is that these girls broke the law and whether or not it was a good law or a bad law, is irrelevant. The law is the law, period.
What if enforcing the law is an abuse of process? Let me make the case that it is.
Abuse of Process
The matter is essentially a civil one, not a criminal one. The protesters interfered with Kinder Morgan’s right to conduct survey work for its proposed project and, as a result Kinder Morgan, sued the protesters. Instead of the case proceeding to civil court, with a judgment duly rendered on the merits, Kinder Morgan turned it into a criminal matter by obtaining an injunction from the Supreme Court preventing the protesters from protesting on public property. Now, all of a sudden, the protesters were faced with jail if they don’t do what they’re told.
What is it, you might ask, that the protesters were deprived of by the matter being turned from civil to criminal?
The answer is everything. In a civil court, the protesters had a number of defences open to them not the least of which was the breach of Burnaby bylaws protecting their property, parks, roads and neighbourhoods. Remember that the National Energy Board and the Supreme Court of British Columbia are not the last word on these matters – many of them beg to go to the Court of Appeal and higher.
Does Kinder Morgan have the right, even under government permits, to destroy municipal property? Does it have the right to interfere with citizens using their streets and their parks? Does it have the right to permanently sully the neighbourhood with any pipeline, let alone one that Burnaby residents know from experience is dangerous? What about the rights of people to enjoy their environment?
The citizens of Burnaby were prevented from raising these and other questions by the matter suddenly, at Kinder Morgan’s request, becoming criminal where the only issue is the protesters conduct.
Injunction disfunction
No process causes quite as much discomfort amongst the judges than this one. A number have publicly expressed their concern, including the late and highly respected Josiah Wood of the British Columbia Court of Appeal, who was scathing in his condemnation of this practice.
I’d be the last to suggest that parents should encourage children to break laws that we all know are just and necessary for the survival of a democratic and, for that matter, a safe society.
On the other hand, it seems to me to be an act of commendable citizenship to teach children that there are sacred democratic principles that must be set above laws made for the convenience of the “establishment”.
Surely it’s appropriate that children be taught how we have struggled against these kind of laws going back to the Magna Carta. Surely they should learn about the expulsion of the Tolpuddle Martyrs for fighting for labourer’s rights, the ongoing struggle for free speech, and the struggle against tyranny by the Fathers of the American Revolution.
My library is full of biographies of people like Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and John Wilkes. I have a substantial mini-library on the American Revolution and those who inspired and fought it. Does this make my house unsafe for my younger grandchildren? Would Ms. Clark have me dealt with severely for telling my grandkids that the people who disobeyed the oppressive laws of the day were heroes? That because of them and other brave men and women we have the rights we now possess?
What would John Wilkes say?
One biography I would urge upon the premier is that of John Wilkes. He was a rebel in 18th century London who amongst other things, went to jail for criticizing a speech by George III. He supported free speech when it was not fashionable to do so. In Parliament, he supported the Americans’ right to independence.
Wilkes was exiled, returned and thrown in jail again. Voters in the city of London rioted in his support as he was expelled from Parliament for sedition. He wound up the Lord Mayor of London, in spite of his lifelong war against the “establishment” of the day.
What position would Ms Clark have taken had she lived in those times? Would she have supported George III, his supine Prime Ministers and the laws they passed to suit themselves and the “establishment” they represented?
Or would she have said to Hamish, “this man Wilkes is a hero and is trying to establish and encourage the liberties of people including the right of free speech?”
The point is that premier Clark is being facile. She ignores the fact that the parents of these two girls are obviously trying to teach them the principles of free speech and freedom from oppression by bad laws made for people who hide behind them.
This was an obvious political maneuver to appear to be on the side of “Law and Order” in order to assure her supporters that she is unyielding in her fight for special rights and privileges, all nice and legal like, for the “establishment” no matter what.
Two Yukon First Nations have won yet another landmark indigenous legal victory – this time against the local territorial government, over the vast Peel Watershed.
Thomas Berger explains Peel case to media in January 2014
The case was brought by famed Canadian legal figure Thomas Berger on behalf of Na-Cho Nyak Dun and Tr’ondëk Hwëchin nations – both of whom share traditional territory in the largely pristine northern Yukon watershed. The plaintiffs also included several conservation groups and individuals.
The battle stems from a land use planning process for the Peel that spanned half a decade of research before devolving into years of political meddling. With various mining and resource players beginning to show interest in the largely untouched watershed, the Peel Commission was struck in the early 2000’s to gather information on the region and weigh out development and conservations objectives.
After delivering its final recommendations in 2009, the Yukon government began a several-year process of additional changes to the plan – ultimately rendering it unrecognizable from the original.
Invoking its perceived authority to modify the plan, the government slashed the total protected areas from 80% of the Peel down to just 29%.
Lack of consultation
It was on this basis that the two First Nations and their conservation allies launched a legal challenge last January in the Yukon Supreme Court (see video below) – claiming infringement of their constitutional rights to be consulted and accommodated. Essentially, under their Final Agreements with the Crown, Yukon First Nations have the right to be consulted on land use planning, among other matters. The government’s proposed modifications to the Commission’s final recommendations were too broad and didn’t receive enough consultation, the court found.
“The Final Agreements give Yukon First Nations certain rights in their Traditional Territories in exchange for the release of their claims to it. This includes a right to participate in the management of public resources,” a media advisory from the courts explains.
[quote]Chapter 11 encourages the development of a common land use planning process that applies to both Settlement and Non-Settlement Land in the Traditional Territories of the First Nations…The Government chose to propose modifications to the Recommended Plan in February 2011. Of the five modifications proposed, two simply stated a preference for more balance and increased options for access. This level of detail was insufficient for Consultation and lacked any tangible or practical guidance for the Planning Commission.[/quote]
Court sends government back to the drawing board
The Peel Watershed’s Hart River (Marten Berkman)
The court ruling forces the government to go back and redo much of its constitutionally-required consultation, but with with certain important restrictions. Specifically, the proposed, vague clauses it wanted to insert into the process – enabling it to make sweeping changes to the development-versus-conservation balance – are a no-go this time around.
“The appropriate remedy is to return the matter to the point in the process where the error occurred,” said the court’s media advisory today. “This was at the stage of Consultation with respect to the Final Recommended Plan.”
“In the result, the January 2014 Government approved Peel Watershed Regional Land Use Plan is quashed.”
[quote]The Government of Yukon is required to hold final Consultations with the affected First Nations and affected communities under s. 11.6.3.2 of the Final Agreements, based on the modifications it proposed in sufficient detail at the earlier stage in the process. Any modifications to the Final Recommended Plan shall be limited to these proposed modifications…but not the stated preference for more balance and increased options for access.[/quote]
Public onside with protecting Peel
Ecotourism in the Peel Watershed plays an important role in the Yukon economy (Marten Berkman)
The court ruling reinforces a strong public will to protect the Peel, says Christina Macdonald of the Yukon Conservation Society – one of the co-plaintiffs in the case, along with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
“I feel like if I opened my window this morning at 9 AM when the decision was announced, I would have heard all of the Yukon cheering – along with our many supporters across Canada and around the world,” said Macdonald over the phone from her office in Whitehorse.
But the Yukon Government has made no bones about its preference to develop the region. “This remote area holds resources that have the potential to be of great value to Yukon’s economy, both now and in the future,” Yukon Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources Scott Kent said in a statement when the government’s version of the plan was released.
“We’re anticipating the government will appeal,” Macdonald responds, “but the people have spoken and now the courts have spoken, so why appeal? We won here and we’ll win again.”
I’m inspired, if that’s the right word, from two quite irreconcilable sources.
First, the Vancouver Sun editorial of last Thursday, and secondly a wonderful movie called Revolution, by Canadian Rob Stewart, which I urge you to see.
The Sun editorial, amongst other things, mocks those who are protesting at Burnaby Mountain and all who generally oppose pipelines, oil companies and the like and it points out of the need for air travel to Kamloops and other such things.
[quote]It is time for those protesting against Kinder Morgan work crews on Burnaby Mountain to stand down. They have made their point and are now breaking the law…It should be remembered that pipelines are of national importance, with international trade implications, which is why, ultimately, the federal cabinet bears responsibility for sanctioning such enterprises.[/quote]
In the movie, Revolution, Patrick Moore is once again – as if it were necessary – exposed as a blithering idiot as he alleges that if protesters are listened to, then 50 million motorists, or some such number, won’t be able to start their cars and go to work tomorrow. Better, I suppose, that they all start their cars than we try to minimize the impact on the atmosphere of people going to work!
Sprinkled in this is the issue of whether or not school boards ought to accept large sums of money from oil companies.
Let’d deal with the last issue first.
It’s a question of morality. Would the police department accept a large annual sum from the Mafia in order to train officers, on the basis that the Mafia wants to give something back to the community?
Now, when I thought of that example, I said to myself, “Rafe, you are being terribly irresponsible. There’s no equivalence between Chevron, say, and the Mafia. Let it go.”
OK, I will let it go, but leave you with the question as to what the people of Nigeria think of how Shell has behaved in their country and ask whether, looking at the behaviour of oil companies everywhere in the world where law enforcement is lax, the example is so far out as it appears.
The Vancouver Sun and others are completely missing the point. There may be radicals who simply would shut down everything and a crawl back into a cave but the vast majority are simply asking, “What are our priorities?”
Why are we on the one hand saying that we must wean ourselves off fossil fuels, while the governments we elect go out of their way to open more coal mines, more oil wells, and more LNG plants?
No one suggests that airlines stop flying and cars all stop running tomorrow afternoon. I don’t know anybody who considers that we should torpedo all ships, particularly cruise ships that Patrick Moore uses to make highly paid lectures.
No, what environmentalists say is that we have to make a start at reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and begin seriously encouraging alternatives.
Let’s look locally for an example.
LNG is a losing proposition as the government’s own figures substantiate. A 3.5% tax on the net profits, which may never ever show up on company books no matter how much money they make, is a subsidy and a huge one. The absence of any real rules on fracking is an immense subsidy to LNG producers.
Now contrast that to what the provincial government is doing to reduce the use of a fossil fuels. Quite frankly, I can’t think of a thing.
This extends with even greater force to the federal government. It’s falling all over itself to find new sources of fossil fuels and new ways to transport it dangerously through the country and in tankers down our fragile coast.
At the same time, I know of no serious program to subsidize the use of solar power. In fact, Harper cut the small bit of federal funding we did have for innovation last year. One doesn’t get visits from solar power salesman or offers in their email to convert to solar power instead of the fossil fuels being used either directly or through electricity. This is because, in my view, the government has not done nothing to encourage through subsidy or otherwise the use of solar power.
We read a lot of learned articles about geothermal power of which we have immense sources. I’ve spent time in New Zealand where much of their power comes from thermal power and I’ve seen their power plants. What are our governments doing in this area? Is the BC government ensuring that the Crown corporation, BC Hydro, is embarking upon a serious program for geothermal energy to replace fossil fuels and new hydroelectric projects?
One suspects that will never happen as long there are hugely expensive, tax-paid sweetheart deals between BC Hydro – for which read the Clark/Coleman government – and private power corporations, those little “mom and pop” operations like General Electric.
97% of the world’s climatologists say that we have a fatal problem with global warming. It’s predicted that we have no more than until the end of this century to reverse this tidal wave and many say it’s considerably before that.
What the hell are we doing about this?
Almost the entire world, aside from Patrick Moore and the idiot who writes editorials for the Vancouver Sun, accept the global warming warnings and that by far the main cause is the use of fossil fuels. This is an emergency worse than war! What are our governments doing to meet this threat?
The valiant men and women at Burnaby Mountain, and elsewhere, are saying that individually and even collectively they don’t have the power to do anything except to point out forcefully to the governments which are the repositories of our wealth that they must immediately get off their asses and change from making matters worse to taking every possible step to make them better.
It’s always more comfortable to sit back and say that there’s no problem. People like Patrick Moore and editorial writers for right wing news papers know this and make their living off that knowledge.
Those going to jail to protest this attitude have nothing to gain except the moral satisfaction of being right and being willing to make huge personal sacrifices to do something about a terrible and destructive situation.
I think of Harry Belafonte, who famously said, “Don’t turn your back on the masses, mon”. This is precisely what government and industry are doing and, as always, the masses are going to rise – indeed they are all already rising – and will have their way.
Derek Corrigan is my kind of mayor. So is Gregor Robertson.
Both of these mayors are prepared to look beyond the immediate concerns of their city and take a broader view. I have no doubt that Robertson, who won very handily I might add, did so because he was fighting Kinder Morgan. Without any question, that position greatly enhanced the existing popularity of Corrigan.
Social change demands civil disobedience
Now that protesters are being arrested, we see a number of people expressing their undying support for “law and order” and thinking that jailing protesters is a great idea.
I have a few questions to ask them.
Have they ever read any history?
Why was there a Magna Carta? Why was there a Peasants’ Revolt? Why was there a Glorious Revolution and a Bill of Rights?
Have you read about John Wilkes and the fight for free speech? Why did the Tolpuddle Martyrs exist?
How did the American revolution, unquestionably the major revolution in the Western world, come about? Have you ever read the arguments of Tom Paine? Or Benjamin Franklin? Or Thomas Jefferson?
Do you think that African American people got their freedom through the goodness of the “establishment” which managed to have slavery sanctioned by the US Constitution and make it centrepiece of the laws of the Confederacy?
Even the briefest span of history shows that every basic right people have came by standing up to unjust laws of “establishments” – they always exists and always pass laws which suit them. After passing these laws, they constantly spout the sacred need to obey the law.
Unions and Robber Barons
Does this mean that I have become a socialist, or God forbid a communist?
Hell no! All systems like that do is provide a new form of establishment with a new system of keeping themselves on top of society and new laws that are “sacred”.
Most people now accept labour unions, yet the briefest scan of history, taking one back just to the end of the 1800s, shows that labour unions were held by the establishment and its courts to be groups restraining trade and breaking workers contracts with employers. Labour leaders went to jail for standing up to employers and the governments that serve them.
Don’t go too far field – just to look at the history of Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller and the rest of the “robber barons”, all with the government and courts behind them as they broke strikes, killing and wounding 100s in the process. All pillars of the community these murderers were.
Fundamental stuff
The people of Burnaby want to have their rights protected. Those rights are simple and ancient ones – the right to protect their streets, their parks, and their neighborhoods. Pretty fundamental stuff.
Along comes a huge foreign company, earning 100s of millions a year in our country yet paying almost no Canadian taxes, that wants to pipe 900,000 barrels a day of highly toxic bitumen through the green areas, streets and neighbourhoods of Burnaby.
That oil is not going for consumption by the people of Burnaby or indeed British Columbians, but overseas. The good people of Burnaby look at this and ask: “I thought we were supposed to be weaning our way off of fossil fuels. How come we are enabling others to pollute the atmosphere and subsidizing a large foreign corporation to take our oil and helping them do it by placing our community in jeopardy?”
They are saying, and for me, with considerable force, that the lawbreakers in this scenario are Kinder Morgan, and the governments of Canada and British Columbia.
A civil matter turned criminal
Moreover, they can say with considerable force that the establishment of Canada has permitted the situation to develop where a civil dispute between citizens and the company becomes a criminal matter once the citizens try to defend what is theirs – that they will be jailed for protecting where they live!
I don’t expect the Vancouver Province or the Vancouver Sun to change. They are wired into the establishments and so far up the backside of the Harper Conservatives and the Clark/Coleman Liberals that there is no escape.
The poor old Sun simply cannot understand Gregor Robertson’s win in Vancouver, and I almost suspect they’re going to demand a recount!
They don’t understand Vancouverites
To me, as an ancient British Columbian, the Vancouver answer is simple. Mr. Robertson was blessed with an opponent, hailing from central Canada, who fell in with the ever-diminishing influence of the so-called Non Partisan Association because he had no comprehension of how we feel about pipelines and other corporate polluters in this part of the country.
There is a new world out there and the “old” had better get used to it, and soon. The “establishment” has lost its moral ability to govern and their self-serving laws will be challenged until they’re tossed into the trash can.
As ordinary people become more and more confident, this will happen more and more often.
So give ’em hell, Mayor Corrigan and Mayor Robertson! The fact that you have the press and establishment against you is all the proof you need that the majority of the people are for you.
Construction of a private power project on the Ashlu River (Photo: Range Life)
The following article by renknowned energy expert and SFU economist Dr. Marvin Shaffer is republished from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Policy Note
You would think that the fiasco of the government forcing BC Hydro in recent years to buy run-of-river and other IPP supply that it didn’t need, resulting in losses of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, would have put that unfortunate policy on the back burner for a long time.
Not so. Clean Energy BC, the lobby group very ably representing IPPs in the province, has released a report claiming that BC Hydro could save $750 million to $1 billion if it were to buy a basket of run-of-river, wind, biomass and other IPP supply instead of building Site C. And apparently Minister Bennett is looking at that option as an alternative to Site C.
No reason to believe private power lobby
There is, of course, little reason to believe IPP supply would provide cost savings of $750 million to $1 billion relative to Site C. The estimates of such cost savings assume that IPP supply can be secured by BC Hydro at an average cost of $74/MWh, some 40% less than the average $125/MWh price BC Hydro contracted to pay after its last call for new supply.
The estimated cost savings also ignore the relatively low value of run-of-river and wind supply, run-of-river because of the disproportionate amount of energy produced in the springtime and wind because of the intermittent nature of the supply and consequent need for constant back-up. And, the estimated savings ignore differences in the cost of capital between publicly financed and private supply, and differences in the contractual rights to the projects at the end of initial contract periods.
From bad to worse
One can only hope that Minister Bennett does not jump from one bad idea (building Site C even though BC Hydro does not need that supply in the foreseeable future) to an even worse idea (acquiring high cost, low value IPP supply that we equally don’t need).
There is a far better strategy that BC Hydro should pursue.
What Hydro really needs
What BC Hydro really needs in the short to medium term is back-up for its hydro-electric system — assurance it will be able to meet all of its requirements even in drought conditions when hydro production is constrained. As well it will need more peak generating capacity — the ability to meet requirements in very heavy load hours periods.
The most cost-effective way to meet those needs is with the installation of additional generating capacity at BC Hydro’s existing hydroelectric plants — the so-called Resource Smart projects — and with strategically located natural gas turbines — available if needed but otherwise not run. The IPP run-of-river and wind projects don’t provide what BC Hydro needs and while Site C could, it would provide far in excess of what is required.
Minister Bennett would do well by deferring the development of Site C. Maybe one day it will be needed and a case could then be made that it is in the broader public interest notwithstanding the very legitimate objections of those most directly impacted by the flooding it entails. But it isn’t needed right now.
And nor is a return to the forced purchase of IPP supply. Been there. Done that. Don’t need to do it again.
Kinder Morgan Canada President Ian Anderson talks a good game on Canadian benefits from his company’s proposed pipeline – but economist Robyn Allan disagrees (photo: Kinder Morgan)
The following is an open letter to Premier Christy Clark from economist and former ICBC CEO Robyn Allan
November 19, 2014
Dear Premier Clark,
Your government is an Intervenor in the National Energy Board Section 52 public interest review. The hearing is to determine if Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion Project is worthy of a public license to construct and operate a twin pipeline. The system will transport more than 890,000 barrels a day of primarily diluted bitumen to BC’s west coast.
Most of this heavy oil is destined for Westridge dock in Burnaby where it will be loaded onto tankers for marine transit. The tanker traffic triggered by the expansion means two oil tanker transits a day in the Salish Sea and Burrard Inlet. A number of oil tankers will be regularly parked in English Bay and Burrard Inlet awaiting loading.
The Province’s application to participate as an Intervenor in the NEB process reads, “the Province would be directly impacted by the project’s economic activity, including that which would result in revenues to the Province.”
I am writing to you to advise you of results of my research into Trans Mountain’s tax obligation and how that fundamentally impedes the Province’s ability to receive revenue.
Kinder Morgan claims that Trans Mountain is a significant contributor to federal and provincial income tax revenues. The company is relying on this as proof it deserves a public licence to triple its pipeline capacity. Pouring tax revenues into Canada is not the story Kinder Morgan tells its US-based shareholders. Promoting Trans Mountain south of the border, Kinder Morgan boasts of cash tax refunds—two in the past five years.
From 2009-2013 Trans Mountain’s combined federal and provincial Canadian corporate tax contribution averaged just $1.5 million per year.
How could this be? The answer lies in complexities of the Canadian and US corporate tax regulation and Kinder Morgan’s tax planning culture which is explained in theattached brief.
I believe Canadians are owed an explanation why this US multinational pays so little in Canadian corporate income taxes. Trans Mountain plans to triple its capacity and because of economies of scale suggests it will pay a tax rate of 25% on its net income leading to about $100 million a year in federal and provincial corporate income tax.
Based on their structure and corporate culture, this is false.
Kinder Morgan does not pay its “fair share” now, and will not pay its “fair share” in the future—to BC or the rest of Canada.
The Province must request that the Canada Revenue Agency undertake a full and comprehensive audit of Kinder Morgan’s activities in Canada.
Sincerely,
Robyn Allan
Economist
cc. Honourable Michael De Jong, Minister of Finance
Rich Coleman tries to conjure up some good LNG PR with this youtube video (BC govt youtube page)
The BC government is worried it can’t control the way fracking and liquefied natural gas (LNG) are being criticized through social media, documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request reveal.
The June, 2014 briefing note (view full document here) was dug up by Propeller Strategy, a non-profit group with a focus on environmental and public interest issues in BC. Prepared by staff for Minister of Natural Gas Development Rich Coleman, it compares criticism of fracking with the kind of fake news and tweets that surrounded the Boston Marathon Bombing several years ago.
“Misinformation about hydraulic fracturing (fracking) technology, water usage and greenhouse gas emissions relating to natural gas extraction and LNG production facilities is rampant in the community, particularly in social media,” the briefing note states.
[quote]Allowing this kind of “framing” to occur is not in the public interest as social licence is eroded. [/quote]
“Cascade of misinformation”
The document uses the Boston Marathon Bombing as an example of how quickly misinformation can spread through sites like twitter and facebook. In that particular incident, thousands of false tweets muddied the public’s initial understanding of the situation.
“Part of it is people wanting to be part of the story, but part of it is spammers and hoaxers trying to cash in on the fact that people are talking about this,” UBC media professor Alfred Hermida recently explained to The Georgia Straight’sCharlie Smith in a story on social media hoaxes.
The Ministry of Natural Gas memo describes how quickly a single tweet, being picked up by twitter celebrities with large followings, can spread through “thousands of re-tweets” – creating a “cascade of misinformation.”
In the words of Winston Churchill…
Bringing it back to the government’s messaging challenges around fracking, the briefing note warns, “It’s rather difficult to win back the public once the misinformation is etched into the memory of British Columbians.”
[quote]As Winston Churchill pointed out: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”[/quote]
But is that a fair description of the social media discourse surrounding fracking and LNG in BC? The way the document reads, it’s as though the government takes for granted that any discouraging words said about these industries must inherently be construed as “misinformation.”
Why all the secrecy?
It’s difficult to know how much weight the government’s concerns hold, since much of the document supplied to Propeller Strategy was redacted. The entire second page, containing specific discussion and conclusions, was whited out, leaving not a single, tangible example of the kind of false claims the ministry alleges surround fracking and LNG.
Says Stan Proboszcz, who filed the FOI request, “I’m disconcerted about what the province may be planning to do to improve the industry’s failing image, given the redactions. Why all the secrecy?”
[quote]It’s clear the province is concerned with the industry’s evaporating social licence.[/quote]
Cleanest fossil fuel on the planet?
Meanwhile, The Common Sense Canadian has been tracking and publishing on social media the evolving, peer-reviewed science related to fracked shale gas, which increasingly contradicts the government’s branding of BC LNG as the “cleanest fossil fuel on the planet”. (This proposed LNG industry would be fed by a major increase in fracking in northeast BC.)
Methane leaks are common with fracking operations
Cornell University climate scientist Dr. Robert Howarth – an acknowledged leader in the field of measuring the real climate impacts of fracking – scoffs at Premier Christy Clark’s “cleanest fossil fuel” claims. Based on his research into escaping methane gas, which is some 86 times more potent as a greenhouse gas over a 20-year period than CO2,“natural gas – and particularly shale gas – is the worst of the fossil fuels…Your premier has her facts wrong.”
That particular story was liked over 2,300 times on facebook and widely shared amongst BC users. Is this the kind of “misinformation” in social media that the ministry is referring to?
LNG would dramatically boost BC’s carbon footprint
In addition to the climate problems associated with fracked gas, “using it in LNG is probably the worst way to use it,” Dr. Howarth explains. “It takes a tremendous amount of energy to liquefy the gas to LNG, so a lot further methane emissions associated with transporting and storing the fuel.”
Studies from the Pembina Institute suggest that just the coastal LNG plants associated with the government’s plan could more than double BC’s entire carbon footprint – and that’s only factoring in a handful of the 15-plus terminals currently proposed for the province.
[quote]…even the lower end of that development scenario would produce a staggering 73 million tonnes of carbon pollution per year by 2020. For comparison, the oilsands are currently Canada’s fastest-growing source of climate pollution — but by 2020, B.C.’s LNG plans would produce three-quarters as much carbon pollution if development proceeds as hoped.[/quote]
The government is also clearly concerned about criticism of fracking’s impacts on water – criticism which, again, would seem to be prudent, based on the evidence.
In 2012, BC used close to 11 Billion litres of water for fracking – most of that drawn from the rivers, lakes and streams of northeast BC, a region already hard-hit by drought in recent years. And that’s just what was reported through government figures. Not all water extraction is properly measured or reported.
Shale gas expert David Hughes has run the numbers on what it would take to supply those LNG plants, and it means as many as 50,000 new fracked wells – close to double all the gas wells drilled in the 60-year history of the province’s gas industry.
On an annual basis, that’s equivalent to all the water used by the city of Calgary.
Drinking the LNG Kool-Aid: Gas Minister Coleman and Environment Minister Mary Polak drink water spiked with LNG in an effort to show how safe it is (BC govt youtube page)
Coleman and Clark have also made bold claims as to the safety of BC’s fracking with regards to water, but cracks have begun to form in those arguments. In a 2013 Georgia Straightop-ed, Coleman made the following claim: “The net result of both our strong regulatory framework and our geology is that B.C.’s water supply is protected and safe. It has never been contaminated as a result of hydraulic fracturing.”
Arrow indicates leaking Talisman tailing pond (Two Island Films)
Yet, one week earlier, The Globe and Mailhad broken the story of a leaking tailing pond near the community of Hudson’s Hope – owned by Talisman at the time (now by Malaysia’s Petronas). As The Common Sense Canadian went on to unearth, this pond, containing 30 million litres of contaminated frack water, was leaking into the surrounding soil and groundwater for up to six months before the company went public about it.
The eventual cleanup operation required the removal of some 5,000 cubic metres of contaminated earth.
Minister Coleman may argue on a technicality that there is no evidence of that contamination reaching BC’s public drinking water supply – though that is not even what he specifically said.
All of these stories received considerable sharing and commenting through social media. Each of them based on thorough research and the best available scientific knowledge. And this is on top of a growing body of evidence from across Canada, the United Sates and other fracking jurisdictions of the risks of water and air pollution from shale gas.
Does public have better BS-detector on social media?
With over 1 billion facebook users globally and half a billion tweets sent each day – spanning a broad demographic range – it is becoming increasingly difficult for government and industry to control the public discourse around issues strictly through conventional media.
To this end, the BC Liberal Government is making an effort to engage with the social media space – deploying twitter feeds, hashtags, flickr photo streams, and youtube videos of their own.
Minister Coleman actively uses Twitter, but doesn’t appear to be gaining the kind of “message” traction he’d like. Perhaps it’s because his tweets smack of the very propaganda he accuses his detractors of engaging in.
“In conventional media, it’s the big media companies which get to decide whether messages get circulated or not, and the audience doesn’t have a say,” explains Shane Gunster, Graduate Program Chair at the SFU School of Communication. “So there isn’t really any feedback mechanism (other than yelling at the television) for people to express their opinion.”
[quote]In social media, however, the success of a campaign depends upon that feedback: people are the gatekeepers in terms of deciding if and when messages are circulated through their social networks. And in that context, PR – especially when it is recognized as PR – is just not going to have much traction because most people don’t want to be perceived as industry or government hacks…I think it’s fair to say there’s a fair bit of scepticism, and even hostility when people see government or industry spending millions of dollars to shape public opinion on issues like pipelines or fracking. [/quote]
A brief perusal of Minister Coleman’s twitter feed reveals a series of relatively one-dimensional PR statements and offhand dismissals of critics:
When legitimate questions began being raised about plans to outsource to India and China some of the jobs promised to British Columbians from the LNG industry – one of the key justifications for the whole program – Coleman fired back:
Social media driving social change?
Fracking operation in northeast BC (Two Island Films)
It’s clear from this briefing note that the government is worried about the impact social media are having on its LNG vision. And these fears may be well-justified. These media contribute to the erosion of social licence for the industry in several ways.
Not only do they furnish users with information and foster lively dialogue, but sites like facebook have become key tools for organizing public demonstrations, advertising town hall meetings and other forms of real-world protest of the government’s plans.
We have already seen where largely social media-driven campaigns for telecommunications reform and Internet privacy protection have forced policy changes from government. From viral petitions to facilitating public comment in environmental review processes, to calling out public officials, the range of powerful tools social media offers to citizens is only growing.
So while Rich Coleman and company appear to recognize the problem, solving it is very different matter, especially if the social media they dismiss as mere misinformation actually turn out to bear some truth – the inverse of Winston Churchill’s statement.
In other words, in this scenario, the truth gets halfway around the world before the government’s PR flacks get a chance to put their pants on.
Kinder Morgan contractors clash with citizen protestor on Burnaby Mountain (Darryl Dyck/CP)
“If the Law says that”, said Mr. Bumble, “the Law is an ass”.
The good citizens of Burnaby have lost their case against the large international corporation, Houston-based Kinder Morgan, who wish to extend their pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby.
Kinder Morgan case harkens back to past injustices
Over the past few months I’ve found myself reading up on legal writing from the past. I’ve become interested in judges of yore and in particular have been reading the famous letters between Sir Frederick Pollock and the great American jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes.
This has taken me back to my days in Law School, so many years ago, and as I read the decision regarding Burnaby, I thought of England in the Middle Ages when the law had become so hidebound that nobody could get justice.
What had happened is that over the years, the “causes of action”, or the things people could sue for, were further and further restricted and the documentation that one had to use became so technical that the slightest mistake had one thrown out of court. This was so unfair, except to lawyers and judges, that The Lord Chancellor interfered and thus came about the Court of Equity, called the Court of Chancery.
The main principle of this new body of law and courts to enforce it was “Equity will not suffer a wrong without a remedy”.
Just imagine if that laudable principle applied to the Courts today!
Eventually in the late 19th century, the Court Of Chancery, was amalgamated with the Common Law courts, with the principles of equity supposed to remain.
People can no longer sue for their rights
I don’t think there is much doubt that we have once more reached the position where people can no longer sue for their rights.
Surely there has developed the right of people to a clean environment, to Crown Land not being unnecessarily desecrated, a public say when it’s proposed that that it will – to waters being clean and fish being preserved, neighbourhoods being safeguarded, natural beauty being preserved, clean air, and so on.
It’s no different with the Federal-Provincial Environmental Committees looking into so-called “run of river” projects.
With these “Kangaroo Courts” the public is invited and then are treated like children, denied the right to speak their minds or cross-examine witnesses, and then they’re utterly ignored.
Crown land, which is to say the land that belongs to all of us, is administered by the governments – governments clearly in the pocket of companies like Kinder Morgan and other politically-donating companies and they couldn’t care less about honest, decent folks whose great “sin” is to band together to protect where they live.
No “cause of action”
When these neighbours go to court, as we have seen, they’re told they have no “cause of action”. The government doesn’t care because they’re so few in number that their votes won’t matter. Furthermore, by the time elections roll around, there will be many other issues such that these folks and those who agree with them are swamped.
Why can’t people defend what is the theirs just because it isn’t exclusively theirs? The right of the Crown to dispose of rights on Burnaby Mountain is not absolute. As we have seen, through the torturous process of what little democracy we have left, the public could toss the government out and impose their own wishes. Unfortunately, this right is about as easy to enforce as it was to gain access to medieval courts in England.
“The Rule of Law”
It is high time that we, the public, force governments at all levels to recognize this gross distortion of fairness.
One thing is for sure coming out of the Burnaby Mountain situation – there will be more people protesting as time goes on. And good, decent fellow citizens will go to jail so that large corporations can work their wicked and selfish ways.
I notice in the Weekend Sun that the president of an LNG plant proposed for Kitimat is applauding British Columbia for having “The Rule Of Law”. For that, read that he is delighted that “The Rule Of Law” is that he can do whatever he damn well pleases.
From LNG to Kinder Morgan: Citizens rising up
I happen to live on Howe Sound. The citizens from Horseshoe Bay north, led, I might say by First Nations and grassroots community groups, are much exercised about an LNG plant proposed for Squamish. The Clark government, utterly unconcerned about environmental issues and what they consider protesting nuisances, is determined that it will go ahead and the public is determined that it will not. There will be protests and no doubt the usual consequences.
I believe in “The Rule of Law” – provided the law is fair. The law under which we operate with respect to the things that God gave us is totally unfair. If citizens can’t defend that which is their birthright, how can “The Rule Of Law possibly be considered fair?
I applaud the good citizens of Burnaby.
Far from being law breakers, they are, in the best traditions of freedom and democracy, upholding what is right – and God bless them.
The BC Salmon Farmers’ Association continues to make assertions about open-net fish farms that don’t agree with the science, as a recent ad in the Globe and Mail demonstrates. It is surprising the industry, lead companies including the Norwegian Marine Harvest, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood, uses the same spin they have been doing for decades and simply ignore the evidence.
My guess is the timing of the ad (Nov 5, 2014, Page S3)is just before the federal government will announce the aquaculture activities regulations that allow fish farms to continue using the ocean as a free open sewer and even further allow them to release other chemicals, not to mention, as some pundits taking DFO to court put it, they will be allowed to kill wild salmon.
BC Salmon Farmers’ Association ad in this week’s Globe and Mail
Race to the sewage-covered bottom
This is a race to the bottom because fish farms like to say they operate under the strictest laws in the world, and then behind the scenes argue to get rid of them. In the past year, fish farms have made the claim in Chile, Scotland, Norway and Canada.
Yardstick standing upright in waste layer below fish farm, up to 32 inch mark (Friends of Port Mouton Bay)
The claim is false because every country has its own laws. And in Canada the laws have already been weakened. The Fisheries Act S-35, and S-36, were gutted last year along with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012. Enforcement staff numbers are too low and 200 scientists have been laid off.
Well, no. Sustainability usually refers to feed sourced from non-fish sources – salmon are carnivores. However, the industry has contributed to the great decline of small fish – that could be food for third world human beings – and really has no choice but to change. Chile’s anchovy stocks were eliminated by the industry there, mostly the Norwegians.
Pass the chicken feathers
Now, with declining stocks of mack jack mackerel, as well as anchovy stocks off Peru, the protein sources for fish feed are changing. For example, feed giant EWOS is now using increasing amounts of chicken feathers in its feed. Do you want to eat chicken feathers? These have been shown to contain an array of pharmaceutical fluoroquinolones
Other feed companies are now in pristine Antarctica waters fishing down the food web by stripping the ocean of krill, which supports the entire web, even baleen whales.
…With a side of fat and toxins
Then of course, there are the disease and lice problems; that farmed fish have such high fat content it is higher than pizza; and, PCBs, Dioxins and POPs, some of which cause cancer. In Norway, the big news this year is scientists and doctors telling people not to eat farmed fish because of the cancer-causing chemicals in it – largely from fish meal. One third to one half of all aquaculture products are lost to disease every year.
Also, seven of 10 chemicals no longer work on fish farm lice in Norway. Sustainable? I think not.
Land-based closed-containment…now that’s smart
And no to: “Ecologically smart”. In-ocean fish farms are old-tech dinosaurs that refuse to come out of the water because they can use it as a free, open sewer. The smart solution of putting fish farms on land, the industry persistently refuses to do. Among other sources, look at the Shepherdstown, Virginia conference on land-based closed containment fish farms that took place in September 2013. There are easily 50 science presentations on getting fish farms out of the water. See the Tides Canada post.
100,000-plus sign BC petition
In fact, the public who live with fish farms in their waters want them out. The articles on my index will lead you to citizen protest in BC, Atlantic Canada, Scotland, Ireland, Chile, Tasmania and Norway itself. In BC, more than 100,000 people have signed a petition to get fish farms out of our waters.
Farms dump their problems on environment, public
Oh, and do note that my preliminary estimate of the sewage put into public waters, that taxpayers bear the cost of, is $10.4 billion in BC alone. In Scotland and Norway itself the indexed references show that farmed fish produce more sewage than the entire human populations of those countries. Eco-smart? I don’t think so
And the Skuna Bay fish farm in Nootka Sound BC show another non-eco point. They did what was done in Scotland: continue and continue to claim it is a special system of environmentally sound, organic fish. And what happened? They killed 65 sea lions, the males reaching a ton, by drowning them in their nets. Parent company Grieg cut a deal with DFO for $100,000 after getting caught.
More tall tales
Ad:
[quote]How will the world feed a population projected to grow to nine billion by 2050?[/quote]
Well it certainly won’t be through farmed salmon because they are too expensive for those in third world countries to buy. They are only sold in rich countries. In Chile for instance, the anchovy stocks should have been used to feed the people, not made into fish feed. And the disease problems there led to a collapse of the industry in 2008, putting 13,000 to 26,000 third world employees out of jobs and resulting in a quarter of a billion diseased, dead fish.
Ad:
[quote]Salmon are the most efficient eaters on any farm – land or water.[/quote]
What salmon farmers don’t tell you about their estimates of 1.1 – 1.3 kilograms of feed to produce 1 kg of farmed fish is that it is a comparison using dried out fish feed. The more commonly accepted comparison is four to five pounds of actual fish to produce one pound of farmed fish. Not so efficient. And do look at the hog comparisons from Carolina.
Ad:
[quote]Farming efficiency is critical for the future of our food, water, and land.[/quote]
As above, fish farms are only marginally efficient because they don’t have to carry sewage treatment costs. As far as I know, no other form of farming is allowed to dump sewage into another person’s property or the public’s air or water. When that cost is added in, the revenue and jobs pale in comparison.
Ad:
[quote]And farming salmon is one of the most climate conscious of all farming practices.[/quote]
What this merely means is that farmed salmon can only be produced in cold water. They cannot be produced in most of the world that has warm water.
Ad:
[quote]…with the smallest carbon footprint.[/quote]
Again, when you add the sewage costs in, the carbon footprint in many countries is as much as all the sewage of human beings in the country. In BC, for instance, my estimate of $10.4 billion comes in at the same sewage cost as for 4.8 million British Columbians – the total population is 4.6. Any expansion will make the carbon foot print much larger than all that human sewage.
Ad:
[quote]Salmon farming in BC accounts for $800 million toward the provincial economy and generates 6,000 jobs in coastal communities.[/quote]
Sorry, wrong again. Fish farms and Fisheries and Oceans Canada have been using these incorrect figures for a long time. The only good statistics out here are put out by BC Stats. See this story for the summary figures and link to the study.
What jobs?
The contribution to the BC economy from all of aquaculture (mussels, oysters, clams, seaweed, etc. and farmed fish combined) is a very small $61.9 Million. DFO knows this as its name is on the front cover of the report.
In fact, the commercial, processing and sport industries comprise 90% of the salmon sector’s contribution to the BC economy, more than $600 million. And that 6,000 employment? BC Stats’ figure is much smaller at 1,700 – and this is a multiplier number of jobs across the entire economy. It is the only trustable figure out there.
Oh, and fish farming has been stagnant in the recent past. And its only market is the States (85% of its product) because most Canadians won’t eat farmed fish. It may well be put out of business by its own parent companies that have had a 26% tariff eliminated in the States, and by floating a money-raising bond in the USA to set up there – the only real market for BC.
Fish farms gutting jobs in other sectors
At the same time, the commercial fishing sector has lost 1,700 jobs. In other words the evidence suggests that fish farming does not add anything to BC jobs because it simply eliminates jobs in other sectors. In BC, 50% of wild salmon have been eliminated since fish farms set up shop.
And just so that you know, DFO did not like the 1,700 multiplier job number, so it scaled it up by 250% to 3,900. So that and the 6,000 number are simply bunk.
And the kicker to this is that I ferreted out the actual number of fish farms jobs in BC. It is only 795 actual jobs. This is only 13.25% of what the industry claims.
So fish farm jobs and revenue numbers are far lower than claimed, and the environmental damage is excessive. I have a table where I have collected 69 fish farm systems, mostly on-land, around the world, comprising more than 8,000 actual fish farms that are on land.
Go look at all the references. You will come to the conclusion that fish farms are not good for BC, Canada or the world. They need to come out of the water or go back to Norway
