This Is What Engaged Citizenship Looks Like

On Friday, fifty-four members of the global climate movement were arrested in Washington, DC after blockading the offices of an environmental engineering firm responsible for contributing to what protesters see as a deeply flawed impact statement on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a controversial tar sands project that has become a focus of the climate change debate in the US.

Demanding that the State Department’s final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) of Keystone XL be fair, balanced, and free from the influence of the fossil fuel industry, the activists surrounded the offices, locked arms, and refused to leave until they were arrested by local police.



You can read the full story here.

H/t trapdinawrpool

Is Trudeau's Poll Lead Such A Good Thing?

The latest polls show the Trudeau-led Liberals leading the Harper Conservatives 36% to 29%, with the NDP at 23%. Coincidentally, this petition from Forest EthicsEthics suggests it is not necessarily an occasion for celebration:



WHOSE SIDE IS JUSTIN ON, ANYWAY?

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has been in office just a couple of short months and already he's making friends with folks on the wrong side of the tar sands issue. High-fiving Alberta Premier Alison Redford for spending billions to lobby for the tar sands industry and then slamming Prime Minister Harper for not doing enough to promote the Keystone XL pipeline... really? Really?!

Does Justin Trudeau stand behind Canada’s First Nations and Canadians from coast to coast who are saying no to pipelines and tankers, or does he stand behind Big Oil?

Send your message to Justin Trudeau using our handy email tool. Use the sample message or write your own. It's time we let Justin know we're watching his support for tar sands very closely.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s only been on the job for a couple months – and already he’s getting off on the wrong foot by sounding like he’s showing support for the tar sands industry by promoting the Keystone KXL pipeline.

As Canadians, we must let him know that he is wading into waters that we don't support by high-fiving Alberta Premier Alison Redford for spending billions lobbying for the oil industry. In the same breath he slammed Prime Minister Harper for not doing enough to promote the Keystone XL pipeline. As if billions in oil subsidies and massive cuts to countless environmental regulations weren’t enough?!

I'm Sure It Is Just A Coincidence ...

...but if I were paranoid, I might see a connection between this and this.

This Makes Too Much Sense

...for anyone within the Conservative cabal to heed its words. Nonetheless, enjoy this well-considered editorial from today's edition of The Star:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his hyper-aggressive natural resources minister Joe Oliver are rapidly turning doubt about Canada’s bitumen into bitter opposition.

Oliver, who travelled to Europe this past week to promote Alberta’s heavy oil, ended up alienating his hosts and provoking a trade spat by vowing to take the European Union to court if imposes an import tax on Canada’s “dirty oil.”

Harper http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?category=1&pageId=26&id=5468 this week to defend TransCanada’s embattled Keystone XL pipeline from climate change activists in the United States.

Back home, the two men have stirred up so much ill-will in British Columbia by demonizing “radical environmental groups” and cutting short public hearings that they have all but killed the chances of getting Alberta’s oil to the Pacific.

In Edmonton, Premier Alison Redford, struggling to find a market for her province’s landlocked oil, has resorted to a level of deficit spending that has shocked Albertans and sent her public support plummeting.

Watching Canada’s descent from “energy superpower” to a stubborn peddler of environmentally damaging fossil fuel has been like witnessing a slow-motion train wreck. Yet the government refuses to recognize the damage it has done, much less change its strategy. It has become clear to everyone — except the prime minister, apparently — that lecturing potential buyers while spewing increasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere is not going to work.

What Canada needs to do is provide wary buyers proof that it has a credible plan to clean up the oilsands, that it is working with scientists and environmentalists to extract the oil without using vast amounts of water and gas and that it respects its trading partners’ desire for sustainable forms of energy.

The makings of such a policy already exist. Oilsands producers have made modest progress in reducing the intensity of their emissions. Alberta has just levied a serious tax on carbon production. And an increasing number of eastern Canadians who once regarded the oilsands as a blight on the ecosystem are open to developing them if it can be done responsibly.

But the Harper government’s refusal to ratchet down its rhetoric has overshadowed these promising developments.

It is clear Canada cannot sell its bitumen to a wary world without an attitude change and a course shift. The longer the prime minister and his senior ministers remain in denial, the more difficult it will be for Alberta to export its bitumen and become a source of national economic strength. This is no longer an ideological issue. It is a simple matter of common sense.

Is Pierre Poilivre Related To Joe Oliver?

They certainly seem to be singing from the same hymn book.

Orwellian and hypocritical are inadequate descriptors of this little twit:

And speaking of Orwellian, how else might one describe the “Working Families Flexibility Act?”

The Harperites must be salivating.

The World We Are Destroying

My friend LeDaro often posts videos that depict the world around us, poignant reminders of what we are so blithely destroying through our heedless consumerism and governments that know the price of everything but the value of nothing. In this, the slavish promotion of the tarsands by the Harper regime and its henchmen (Joe Oliver, Peter Kent, et al.) are leading exemplars.

I hope you can spare about six minutes to be dazzled by the energy, vitality and mystery of a world that will not be with us much longer if we maintain our present course.

And Speaking Of The Tarsands ....

This is brilliant. Thanks to Anon, who, in his comment on my previous post, directed me to this video:

Let's try to spread this as widely as possible. Mockery and satire often seem to be the best way to respond to the nonsense and lies the government proclaims in our name.

An Embarrassment To All of Us

Like the dotty uncle no one wants to invite to family dinners anymore because of his wildly inappropriate comments, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver is fast becoming an international persona non grata.

With the passion of a senescent zealot, Oliver has drawn unfavorable attention to Canada in recent weeks over his attacks on those who disagree with his unbridled enthusiasm for Alberta's dirty oil. There was, for example, his visit last month to Washington in which he lambasted a leading climate scientist, James Hansen, denouncing him for “exaggerated rhetoric,” that “doesn’t do the (environmentalists’) cause any good.” For good measure, he dismissed the much-respected Hansen for spouting "nonsense' in his warnings about the Alberta tarsands, adding that he “should be ashamed.” His followup interview with Evan Solomon could only be described as 'cringe-worthy.'

His next target was Al Gore who, in a recent visit to Toronto, offered a withering assessment of the tarsands similar to Hansen's. Again, our 'Uncle' Joe denounced him vigorously. Once more drawing upon his limited repertoire, he accused Gore of making "wildly inaccurate and exaggerated claims" about the Harper record on climate change.

But wait, there's more:

On Wednesday in Brussels, Mr. Oliver said Canada would consider filing a complaint with the World Trade Organization, the global referee for trade disputes, if the EU proceeds with its so called fuel-quality directive which singles out crude from Canada’s oil sands as the most harmful to the planet’s climate.

Yesterday, in an apparent rare moment of lucidity, Oliver backed down on the threat, saying that the issue is separate from the European trade deal much desired by the Harper regime.

The antics of our antic Natural Resources Minister have not escaped notice. Yesterday, a group of 12 prominent Canadian scientists wrote a letter to Oliver, essentially asking that he and his government show some maturity on the climate change issue. The letter also offers to help Minister Oliver to understand the data on climate change. No word of a response, withering or otherwise, from the cabinet minister.

Finally, in today's edition, The Star's Rick Salutin has an interesting take on the whole issue, saying that our version of classics like Death of a Salesman, Glengarry Glen Ross, or the current British series Mr. Selfridge would be Mr. Bitumen, the story of a salesman peddling a blatantly faulty, unneeded product.

One of the marks of the enlightened mind is the ability to process new information that can alter one's perspective. Joe Oliver shows no such capacity. Guess that's why he's a member of the Harper Conservative government.

The Strange Economics of Stephen Harper

Even though he only has a Master's degree in economics, our Prime Minister likes to present himself as an economist. And, like the myriad other untruths propagated by his regime, perhaps the biggest lie is that resource extraction, especially tarsands oil, is the most prudent activity around which the Canadian economy should revolve. Indeed, the Harper propaganda machine is so powerful that when anyone dares question the wisdom of such a narrow approach, he or she is automatically labelled anti-Alberta, anti-growth, and profoundly un-Canadian. One doesn't have to search too far back in memory for the pilloring Thomas Mulcair endured over his 'dutch disease' remarks.

Yet somehow, the most potent criticism hurled against Hugo Chavez as President of Venezuela, his reliance on oil exports to the exclusion of a more diversified economy, is supposed to have no application to Canada in Harperworld.

In today's Star, Thomas Walkom attempts to set the record straight. Entitled Alberta’s oil woes mean trouble ahead for Canada, his piece observes that oil, the unilateral basis of the federal government's trade policies, is in trouble. Citing Alberta's deficit budget in which spending will be slashed, he examines the similarities between Alberta and Venezuela:

Curiously, Alberta has much in common with the Venezuela that Hugo Chavez bequeathed to the world. Both rely on heavy oil exports to the U.S. Both are one-party states (Alberta more so than Venezuela). Both are utterly dependent on the price of oil and both have economies that, in different ways, have been deformed as a result of this dependence.

Venezuela faces a reckoning and so does Alberta. So, indeed, does Canada as a whole.

Echoing the 'dutch disease' currency inflation problem articulated earlier by Mulcair, Walkom says, as a result of the decline in oil prices for the tarsand product,

We are already seeing a decline in the Canadian dollar as a result of the resource slowdown. In the long run, this should be good news for Canadian manufacturers who export their goods. In the short run, it means all of us are a little poorer.

Where we don’t see any change is in the federal government’s approach to the economy. The Harper Conservatives remain dazzled by resources. They believe that if the markets want Canadians to hew wood and draw water, that’s what we should do.

But markets are notoriously fickle. This is a fact the entire country will have to face. Alberta is just getting there first.

As Walkom's piece suggests, expect no new understanding or economic insights in the world that Stephen Harper and his cabal inhabit.

An Insane Country, Or An Insane Government?

Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that standard, we can perhaps infer that Canada is insane.

As we are reminded in a very interesting column by Thomas Walkom in this morning's Star, Canada has a long history of staking its economic well-being on the export of its resources. Citing political economist Harold Innis,

... Canada’s history was dominated by natural resource exports, which he called staples. That Canada has exported raw materials is hardly novel. What Innis grasped, however, was that these staple exports created a pattern of development, both political and economic, that over time was hard to escape. To use the language of one of his students, the Canada that Innis described kept enmeshing itself in a “staple trap.”

Whether the resource was wood or beaver pelts, the government would spend substantial sums building up the infrastructure to cultivate its exports, only, of course, to have any given staple ultimately fall out of favour. The same thing is happening today with our almost total dependency on the tarsands as the country's economic driver, to the exclusion of any real diversification or environmental oversight.

Walkom calls attention to a new study called The Bitumen Cliff which observes that our dirty oil requires vast quantities of money... not just to extract...but to transport it by rail, pipeline or ship.

There are other causalities of this insanity as well:

Again, other economic activities are given short shrift. In this case, the high dollar created by Canada’s soaring oil exports has eaten into the ability of manufacturers to compete abroad.

And again, the political system wraps itself around the staple, with Ottawa’s Conservative government gutting environmental laws for fear that they might interfere with pipelines and resource extraction. (For an example of the latter, take a look at this story about how the pipeline industry essentially dictated the changes to Navigable Waters Protection Act included in last year's omnibus bill which will result in far less protection than existed beforehand, all in the name of pipeline expediency.)

The folly of this approach is that, like our staples of the past, our oil will fall out of favour:

Suddenly, the politics of climate change have made Alberta’s carbon-emitting bitumen less welcome in the United States. More to the point, technological changes that favour the production of cheaper shale oil and gas, are transforming the U.S. from an energy pauper into one of the world’s big petroleum players.

To put it another way, Canada’s biggest export market no longer needs the tarsands quite as much as it did.

So the damage will have been done, and all we will be left with is a fractured economy and environmental despoliation, only to await the cycle to begin all over again.

Come to think of it, perhaps it is not our country that is insane, only our political 'visionaries'. Yet one more aspect of what will be Stephen Harper's sad and dishonourable legacy.

Is Oil Our Economic Salvation?

Interesting, isn't it, that despite the propaganda coming out of both Alberta and the Prime Minister's Office about oil being the economic engine and saviour of Canada, that our Western friends are finding themselves experiencing some economic malaise?

Thomas Walkom - Harper and Oil

In this time of unprecedented climate change, I think most people realize that Stephen Harper has an unhealthy addiction to oil, one that marks him as truly retrogressive as he seeks to return Canada to its traditional role as primarily an exporter of resources, all the while couching that backward movement with the use of muscular language, calling us, for example, an energy superpower.

And of course, when that language fails to convince, there is always the vilification of opponents, the muzzling of scientists, etc., all arrows in the quiver of this fatuous autocrat.

Yet despite all of those weapons and propaganda efforts, resistance to sending Alberta tarsands to the west coast via pipeline is growing. Thomas Walkom has some interesting insights to offer about the Harper strategy in today's Star, which you can read here.

Harper's Parody of Democracy

Yesterday, I wrote a post expressing cynicism about Heritage Minister James Moore's tough talk concerning Enbridge, expressing the view that it was just more political posturing on the part of Harper Inc. since the company has come under much media scrutiny due to its record of oil spills.

Reading another story today about the time limits and restrictions placed on the NEB hearings into the pipeline, and the fact that it will be the Harper regime that makes the final determination about the pipeline, made me think back to my teaching days.

I always regarded school committee with disdain, and rarely sat on them, since they were generally gatherings characterized by a lot of talk and a paucity of action. On a few occasions I broke my embargo, each time coming away from the experience realizing I had thrown away many hours of my life for nought.

The very last time I sat on one (and I forget what it was for), the end result was that the principal entirely ignored our recommendations, imposing the decisions that he had hoped we would recommend.

Why even go through a charade of democratic participation when the end result is preordained, and the role of the committee is only to lend the air of legitimacy to the autocrat?

That is precisely what I believe is going to happen with the NEB hearings - after all of the applicants are heard, and thousands of hours of testimony are given, no matter the recommendation, the pipeline will go ahead. The best indicator of the future is found, of course, in this little nugget:

The government [has] formalized new rules that for the first time give the Harper cabinet the final word on whether the pipeline should go ahead, even if the arms-length NEB-led panel concludes the project is environmentally unsound.

Were the hearings anything but an empty public-relations exercise, would such a stipulation exist?

Harper's Political Posturing

Given the recent spate of 'bad luck' experienced by Enbridge over its propensity for oil spills, the Harper regime knows it is facing an uphill battle to convince Canadians that the company can guarantee the environmental integrity of the lands over which its pipelines run. In his column today, Tim Harper points out that because the government is running out of opponents to vilify, it is trying a new tact through its mouthpiece, senior minister for B.C./Heritage Minister James Moore:

“This project will not survive public scrutiny unless Enbridge takes far more seriously (its) obligations to engage with the public and to answer those very legitimate questions about the way in which they have operated their business in the very recent past,” Moore said.

Wow! A Harper minion talking tough to business! That surely will solve all the problems, especially when the company repackages its empty and worthless assurances in a new communications' campaign.

And Moore's 'outspokenness' should certainly dispel any impression that Harper Inc. is simply a tool of big business interests.

UPDATE: The emptiness of Moore's rhetoric is attested to, I think, by this announcement today by the federal government.

'Dutch Disease' Confirmed By Harper-Funded Study

Despite the ongoing Harper-led campaign of vilification against Thomas Mulcair for his comments about the Alberta tarsands and Dutch disease, a Harper-funded study confirms the truth of his assertion.

As reported in The Globe, Industry Canada paid $25,000 to three academics to produce the lengthy study, which is about to be published in a prestigious journal, Resource and Energy Economics. The study concludes that between 33 and 39 per cent of the manufacturing employment loss that was due to exchange rate developments between 2002 and 2007 is related to the Dutch Disease phenomenon.

Despite that inconvenient finding, don't expect the character attacks on Mulcair to abate. If past practices are any indication, they will probably be taken to new levels as the party of national division, the Conservatives, seek to drown out rational debate with hysterical name-calling and finger-pointing, the chief weapons in their childish arsenal.

Mulcair's Dutch Disease Comments: A More Rational Assessment

Despite the near-hysterical reaction of certain CBC broadcasters to the comments made last week by Thomas Mulcair about how tarsands developments are inflating the value of the Canadian dollar, thereby weakening our manufacturing sector, there are those who are able to more objectively assess his comments. One of them is Lawrence Martin.

In his column today entitled Ottawa’s industrial policy divides Canada against itself, Martin observes that we made progress in the decades before 2000 in moving away from an economy based on resource extraction. Using figures from Jim Stanford's research, he reveals that well over half of Canada’s exports consisted of an increasingly sophisticated portfolio of value-added products in areas such as automotive assembly, telecommunications, aerospace technology and more.

However, as of July 2011, unprocessed and semi-processed resource exports accounted for two-thirds of Canada’s total exports, the highest in decades,” Mr. Stanford wrote. “Compare that to 1999, when finished goods made up almost 60 per cent of our exports.”

So while the Conservatives and their apologists at the CBC (aka Peter Mansbridge and Rex Murphy) can wax apoplectic about the 'divisiveness' of this national leader's comments, Lawrence Martin ends his piece thus:

But let the debate roar on. The country needs a new industrial strategy, one based on more than corporate tax cuts, free-trade agreements and rampant resource exploitation.

The Harper Budget's Attack On Charities

Although hardly surprising, given both the ideological bent of the Harper regime and earlier warnings from Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, there is little doubt that the provisions of the new federal budget authorizing an $8-million special audit by Canada Revenue Agency to see if charities are adhering to the 10-per-cent political advocacy limit is aimed directly at the 'enemies' of this regime.

While the charitable status of overtly political foundations such as the C.D Howe Institute, The Fraser Institute, and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy seem to enjoy a special immunity from scrutiny, those whose vision of Canada run counter to Harper's are undoubtedly in for a very rough ride.

Paul Waldie has an interesting piece on the implication of this new measure, suggesting that a kind of chill will now permeate environmental organizations, precisely the intention, I am sure, of the Harper regime that has no interest in respecting differences of opinion, an intolerance typical of extreme right-wing thinking and its refusal/inability to comprehend nuanced thinking.

Will Your Next Banana Be Chiquita?

Mine will be, given that the Harper government, aided by one of its fronts, ethicaloil.org, has issued a fatwa against the company for its resolve not to use tarsands oil for its transportation needs.

In a rare departure from Harper's find-no-fault-with-corporations-policy, he and his ministers are in high hypocritical dudgeon over Chiquita's decision, and are employing the same tactics to demonize the company as they use against anyone who stands in their way:

Several high-profile government MPs, including Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose, have urged Canadians not to buy bananas distributed by Chiquita Brands International after the Ohio-based company said it would avoid using fuel for its trucks derived from Alberta’s oilsands.

Here is a sample of the propaganda currently being employed on our airwaves:

“The Chiquita banana company says it’s boycotting oil from Canada’s oilsands. Apparently they like oil from OPEC dictatorships better,” an announcer’s voice says over orchestra music. “While they boycott Canada’s oilsands, you can boycott them. Don’t buy Chiquita bananas or Fresh Express salads at your grocery store.”

This perverted appeal to patriotism is especially rich, given the consistent contempt Harperites have shown, not only for the opinion of Canadians on an array of issues, but also the world's concern for climate change, as evidenced by their recent sad performance at Durban.