Wednesday, September 5, 2018

A Verbal Tap Dance

Talk, as they say, is cheap. Watch the following clip to see Environment Minister Catherine McKenna further debase its value by her non-answer regarding the now-stalled Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the threat West Coast oil tanker traffic poses:

6 comments:

  1. .. Ms McKenna put wallpaper over the wallpaper.. obviously she is not in possession of the formal Trudeau talking point(s) in response to the federal court decision. One does sense, they will try some short cuts and end arounds.. just to appear to be trying for now.

    Earlier, Trudeau held forth on how Canada cannot limit itself to the USA re energy exports. Presumably, that's where all the supertankers come into play. The oft mentioned far away wealth of Asia, where they are crying out for our discounted energy.. or some other rainbow unicorn market for dilbit or heavy crude. Here and there we do send some to South Korea. And yes, we are aiming to deliver LNG over there as well. But price competition is cut-throat currently.. and cash is king!

    The reality is however, that Trudeau, Alberta, BC don't really give a damn about a pod of Orca. Nor do they care about wild salmon or herring, or boreal caribou, or First Nations consultation.. or environment, habitat & species. Its lip service only.. but pedal to the metal if there's any payback for subsidizing foreign owned energy stripping.. or political donation $ !

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    1. The whole group disgusts me, Sal. While they keep talking about projects like this being in the national interest, they pointedly ignore the well-documented economic advantages of embracing alternative energy sources. About the environment, they barely pay lip service. Big oil has our government by its collective genitals.

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  2. The Trudeau government panicked. They were goaded into making a stupid and massively expensive decision that was pinned on unwise assumptions and now they've painted themselves in a corner. Kinder Morgan played Trudeau and Morneau like a harp and pocketed a 700 per cent profit for their efforts. Trudeau and Morneau counted on quickly flipping the pipeline to a private sector owner/operator only no one is going to pay anything remotely close to the government's "cash out" price.

    They got suckered on the deal to the tune of $4.5 billion. No one else wants to touch it. That leaves the pipeline as Ottawa's asset.

    They can't walk away from it and it now falls on the feds to fund the completion of the pipeline expansion - another seven billion perhaps.

    They got suckered, they got snookered and then they got tripped up by the federal court of appeal on a couple of pretty solid grounds.

    McKenna doesn't know whether to shit or wind her watch. She's having her own little Scott Pruitt moment where she has to look the other way on the environment and plaster it over with meaningless platitudes about the glorious consummation of the marriage between the economy and the environment.

    Their approach is very lawyerly. Good counsel can argue any side of any case even when they know the client is a true reprobate. The government is using that same approach but in the court of public opinion in pre-election straits.

    This sordid business is no longer driven by economic or environmental issues. All of that is dwarfed by political considerations. Within that construct, the political realm, Dame Cathy's babble makes perfect sense.

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    1. Public political prostitution is never a pretty sight, Mound. We are seeing it daily with this government.

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  3. It's investing in the past. And it has been -- and will be -- very expensive.

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    1. It's a lesson they seem resistant to accept, Owen.

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