More on Drilling for Oil in the Gulf of St. Lawrence

As noted recently, the Harper regime, in its bottomless contempt and disregard for the environment, recently opened up the possibility of drilling for oil in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, another unpleasant fact hidden deep within the arcana of Omnibus Bill C-38. Happily, this fact was brought to the public's attention by the Toronto Star, whose readers invariably offer some insights worth preserving and spreading through the blogosphere.

Here are two from today's edition:

Re: Drilling for oil without a clue, Editorial Aug. 6

Thanks for drawing our attention to yet another major concern about the current federal government’s budget bill: highlighting the potential for oil exploration in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and amendments to the Coasting Trade Act that give oil companies greater access to exploration.

An oil spill in the Gulf of St. Lawrence would be disastrous as Green Party Leader Elizabeth May warns. The spill would not only affect the five eastern provinces of Canada but also the eastern U.S. states.

And it would become an additional potential threat to the Great Lakes ecosystem on which all of us on both sides of the border depend for water, for fish and for recreation. If citizens on both sides of the border were to unite around this concern, would Stephen Harper listen?

Anne Mitchell, Toronto

Once again, more surprises are oozing out of the federal omnibus bill. This time, it’s the potential for ecological and economic disasters as a result of drilling for oil in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Through amendments to the Coasting Trade Act and the removal of the requirements for environmental assessments for experimental offshore drilling, this backdoor approval of the federal budget bill has left Canadians astonished, bewildered and decidedly uneasy.

One can only imagine what other surprises are lurking down the road.

Bill Wensley, Cobourg

Another Unpleasant Fact of Omnibus Bill C-38 Revealed

Given that it is a government with a well-known contempt for openness and democracy, the Harper regime rarely shocks me anymore. Its vilification campaigns of those with opposing views, its use of government power to muzzle the voice of science, its almost demonic obsession with resource extraction at any cost has left me pretty much inured to any emotional reaction other than disgust.

Yet even I was both shocked and appalled at what I learned reading The Toronto Star's editorial this morning.

The headline tells it all: Drilling for oil in the Gulf of St. Lawrence without a clue:

Buried within the more than 400 pages of this spring’s federal omnibus budget bill is an invitation for resource companies to open a new frontier in Canadian oil: the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The gulf, which touches the coastlines of Canada’s five easternmost provinces, is the world’s largest estuary. It’s home to more than 2,000 species of marine wildlife — an ecosystem integral to the health of our Atlantic and Great Lakes fisheries.

Now, due to measures deep in the federal budget, that ecosystem may be under threat. The bill explicitly highlights the region’s potential for petroleum extraction and includes amendments to the Coasting Trade Act that give oil companies greater access to exploration vessels.

The editorial reveals that a company called Corridor Resources Inc. has applied to drill the first-ever deep-water well in the gulf, a development with dire environmental implications. Even without an oil spill, the seismic drilling will have profoundly negative effects on marine life, and to compound the environmental crime, there will be no way to measure those effects:

The budget rescinded the requirement for environmental assessments of exploratory drilling and crippled the Centre for Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research, the federal agency best equipped to deliver such assessments.

In a world already in the midst of the biggest disaster ever experienced by humanity, climate change, the Harper regime is unbowed in its headlong rush to give the corporate sector every opportunity to 'live for the moment," something it has historically proven to be very adept at.