UPDATED: Sounds Like A Version Of Victim-Blaming To Me

I doubt that this performance will endear Mr. Trudeau to women or indigenous communities:




UPDATE: Chantal Hebert explores the optics of Trudeau's take-no-prisoners strategy:

Trudeau may hope to tilt the balance of public opinion in his favour by undermining Wilson-Raybould’s credibility. But he should worry about a boomerang effect on his already damaged moral authority.

The optics of this prime minister attacking the integrity of a prominent Indigenous champion is already dismally poor. The fact that this crisis pits Trudeau against one of the highest-profile women in his caucus makes for a lethal political combination.

The last thing the prime minister needs at a time when he has bridges to repair with the Indigenous community is to give Canadian women — including some of those around him in the House of Commons — cause to close ranks behind Wilson-Raybould.

Breaking News! Wilson-Raybould Has Resigned

You can read her official announcement here.

UPDATED: Where Is The Public Good In All Of This?

H/t Greg Perry

His fulminations about the need for a public inquiry notwithstanding, it should surprise no one that Conservative leader Andrew Scheer met with officials of SNC-Lavalin to discuss the criminal charges they were facing. But to simply accuse him of his obvious hypocrisy and dismiss the controversy of Justin Trudeau's alleged attempt to interfere with the pursuit of justice is surely to ignore the increasingly fetid odour emanating from his office.

Consider, for example, what Canada's top prosecutor has to say about political and corporate interference in prosecutorial decisions:

In Federal Court documents obtained by the Star, [Kathleen] Roussel responds to SNC-Lavalin, saying that it has no legal right or entitlement to any deal; that prosecutors are independent with broad discretion on how to proceed with charges; and that under the Constitution, prosecutors are free from political or judicial interference.

She says the law passed last year allowing for what is called “deferred prosecution agreements” (a new regime that was stuffed into an omnibus budget bill) [the very kind of bill the Liberals railed against while in opposition - funny how the perch of power changes one's perspective, eh?] is explicit about what factors prosecutors must not consider in corruption cases:

“The prosecutor must not consider the national economic interest, the potential effect on relations with a state other than Canada or the identity of the organization or individual involved” where an organization is charged under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, as in SNC-Lavalin’s case.

In other words, the the director of public prosecutions is arguing that, while the law sets out other criteria Roussel could consider when weighing the public interest, she’s not allowed by law to consider whether a company is too big to fail.

Implicit is that the administration of justice should be the guiding principle behind the pursuit of cases, neither corporate nor political considerations being part of the formula.

The written brief also takes a strong stand against any political interference in prosecutorial decisions, saying it “could erode the integrity of our system of prosecution.”

And it is integrity that should be our uppermost consideration. We have, in this country, the likely accurate perception that there are two kinds of justice: one for the powerful and entitled, and another for the rest of us. To willfully and cravenly defer prosecution on the basis of who the accused is would further erode public confidence in our institutions at a time when there are many forces, both within and without, committed to sowing division and disunity.

More cynicism is the last thing we need today. It is time for the Trudeau government to pull in its neoliberal horns, respect the independence of the federal prosecutor's office, and allow the corporate chips to fall where they may.

UPDATE: An interesting new development:

The federal ethics commissioner has launched an investigation into allegations that former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould was pressured by the prime minister’s office to seek mediation instead of pursuing criminal charges against Quebec construction giant, SNC-Lavalin.

Mario Dion, the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, confirmed in a letter to two NDP MPs that he would probe allegations that became public last week.

In his letter, Dion says that based on the complaint by the two MPs, media reports and other information, he has “reason to believe” that a possible contravention of section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act has occurred.

That section prohibits a public office holder from seeking to influence a decision of another person to improperly further another person’s private interests.

Some Habits Die Hard

In some ways, it is hard to believe that the old Liberal propensity for corrupt coziness with corporate chums has reasserted itself so quickly, barely three years into Mr. Trudeau's tenure. In other ways, it is not hard to believe at all. After all, old habits die hard.

Th latest allegation is that Trudeau tried to influence former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to help SNC-Lavalin avoid a criminal prosecution for bribery of Libyan officials in order to secure business contracts. It is an allegation the Prime Minister stoutly denies, but the fact is that Wilson-Raybould was recently demoted to Veterans Affairs.

Cause and effect? The smell of a smoking gun is in the air.

First, there is what has been described as Trudeau's legalistic denial in response to reporters' and House of Commons' questions:

“The allegations in the Globe story this morning are false,” Trudeau told reporters Thursday in Vaughan. “Neither the current nor the previous attorney-general was directed by me or anyone in my office to take a decision in this matter.”

The new justice minister, David Lametti, repeated Trudeau's words in answering the charge of interference in the House.

So, are we simply jumping to judgement, based on little or no evidence? The Toronto Star doesn't think so.

And what communications, if any, did members of Trudeau’s office have with Wilson-Raybould and her office on this issue? These are questions that can’t simply be waved away with a carefully worded blanket denial. The Globe reported that the company lobbied federal officials more than 50 times since 2017 on “justice” and “law enforcement” issues, including 14 times with Trudeau’s closest advisers in the PMO.

What exactly did they discuss? Did it include the possibility of SNC-Lavalin benefitting from a so-called remediation agreement that would allow the company to avoid a criminal trial on serious fraud and corruption charges (and therefore remain eligible for lucrative government contracts)?

And what communications, if any, did members of Trudeau’s office have with Wilson-Raybould and her office on this issue?

These are questions that can’t simply be waved away with a carefully worded blanket denial.

Susan Delacourt finds Wilson-Raybould's silence on the matter quite telling:

... she didn’t have a thing to say in the wake of the Globe and Mail’s explosive story of how the former justice minister reportedly stood in the way of a deal to let SNC-Lavalin detour around prosecutions that could have blocked it from receiving government contracts for years to come.

“That is between me and the government as the government’s previous lawyer,” Wilson-Raybould was quoted as saying in the Globe’s scoop, as well as a cryptic, “I don’t have a comment on that,” in reply to more pointed questions about how she handled the SNC-Lavalin case.

Pro tip: “No comment” only works as a clever misdirection in fictionalized political journalism. In real life, it is often regarded as confirmation.

Did she speak truth to power?

Delacourt attended a Robbie Burns dinner last week in which Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes took jabs at her own government:

One of those jabs was aimed squarely at the ouster of Wilson-Raybould from the justice job, and a joke about how an Indigenous woman lost her post for doing it well and unsettling the “white man.”

None of which 'proves' these allegations. However, it is worth noting that SNC-Lavalin, a Quebec company, has had a long relationship with the Liberal Party of Canada, even when it was out of power:

SNC-Lavalin, many were reminding us on Thursday, was the same firm that was detouring around election laws for much of that decade to put roughly $110,000 in the party’s pocket in those lean years.

And so, an old pattern re-emerges. Coupled with Trudeau's stout defence and dismissal of allegations regarding his good friend and fundraiser Stephen Bronfman over what was revealed about offshore accounts in the Panama Papers, as well as the CRA foot-dragging in going after the big corporate cheats who operate such accounts, one can justifiably wonder whose interests the Prime Minister really is protecting.

This may rankle those who believe a Liberal government should never be criticized, given the poor alternatives, but to take such a position is to be willfully and woefully ignorant.

Lord knows we have enough of that already today.

Pleasing Words Mean Nothing

Unless they are in the thrall of rabid partisanship, nice hair, sunny smiles or pleasing but empty rhetoric, most people, I suspect, would agree that the Trudeau government has been a massive disappointment. And while the list of its failure to live up to its promise is long, for me its greatest failure has been on climate change. Its purchase of an aging pipeline at public expense is a clear disavowal of climate-change integrity, as is its anemic carbon tax policy, one that likely has had the unfortunate result of convincing many that paying a little more for the fossil fuels they use will make a major dent in the peril that is quickly overtaking the world.

David Suzuki, for one, has called for Environment Minister Catherine Mckenna to resign.



Michael Harrris writes that, while Mckenna clearly will not resign, Suzuki's words have impact:

What the country’s leading environmentalist has done by calling out McKenna is call out the Trudeau government on its signal failure — the environment. And that could significantly alter the coalition that delivered a majority government to the Liberals in 2015.

The hopes raised by the government and then dashed are consequential:

In Trudeau’s case, the aspirational notion to move Canada toward a green economy has been eclipsed by policies worthy of a ‘fossil award.’ The only thing more dubious than the Trudeau government’s initial support of the Kinder Morgan pipeline was the unpardonable sin of buying it.

Publicly acquiring a leaky, decrepit pipeline for $4.5 billion and facing construction costs approaching $10 billion — all to carry the dirtiest fossil commodity of them all, bitumen, is hardly consistent with the greening of Canada or saving the planet.

But it is perfectly consistent with what Trudeau told an audience of oilmen in Houston who gave him a standing ovation.

“No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there,” he said.

Susuki is not the only one calling out the Trudeau government for its arrant hypocrisy:

In a recent study by U.S. advocacy group Oil Change International, the authors concluded: “There is no scenario in which tar sands production increases and the world achieves the Paris goals… If he [Trudeau] approves a pipeline, he will be the one to make the goals impossible to reach.”

Other actions by this government are equally damning:

Canada continues to spend the most per capita of any G7 country subsidizing oil and gas development — $3 billion in Canada and $10 billion through Export Development Canada in foreign countries.

Last February, Catherine McKenna approved permits for British Petroleum to drill as many as seven exploratory wells off the southwest coast of Nova Scotia. The water is up to twice as deep as the ocean where BP had its Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico back in 2010. Eight years on and people around the Gulf are still suffering the consequences.

Then just months later, McKenna approved the first actual deepwater well for BP 300 km off of Nova Scotia.

As well, the much-vaunted carbon tax is looking increasingly anemic, as Trudeau eases the burden of the worst polluters:

The carbon tax on the worst of them will now be triggered at higher levels of emissions.

The threshold at which the tax would kick in was moved from 70 per cent of an industry’s emissions all the way to 90 per cent in certain cases.

The explanation for abandoning his environmental post? Trudeau was worried that certain industries would lose their competitiveness.

Harris hopes that condemnations from people like Suzuki will lead people to realize that the Liberal Party is not the environment's friend, but rather what it always has been, the party of the economy. He ends his piece with this acerbic observation:

When it comes to the environment, the only growth industry in Ottawa these days is spin doctoring.

On The Carbon Tax

Now that Ontario, under the thuggish leadership of Doug Ford, is in the process of withdrawing Ontario from its cap-and-trade alliance with Quebec and California, baring a failure of political will, next year will see Justin Trudeau imposing a carbon tax here and in other recalcitrant provinces. Despite the fact that Andrew Scheer is salivating at the prospect of making it a key issue in next year's federal election, John Ivison suggests it may not go according to the Conservative leader's plan:

The National Post obtained an advance copy of a paper to be released by Canadians for Clean Prosperity, a non-partisan group led by Mark Cameron, ex-policy director to Stephen Harper, that promotes putting a price on pollution and cutting taxes.

The Liberals’ Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act requires Ottawa to return tax revenue to the province where it was raised in cases where it has imposed a “backstop” carbon tax in the absence of a recognized provincial climate plan. Trudeau has indicated that, rather than sending a rebate to the governments of those provinces, he may choose to send the money directly to its households.

This plan will go a long way toward undermining the populist-right's claim that fighting the tax will mean less money in people's pocket. In fact, it seems the tax itself will be a net benefit to Canadians' bottom line, according to research done by Research by environmental economist Dave Sawyer of EnviroEconomics.

Sawyer’s research indicates that the carbon tax will cost consumers more when it comes to gasoline and home heating — at $20 a tonne,roughly 4.5¢ more per litre of gas.

...for example, in 2019 an Ontario household earning $60,000-$80,000 a year would pay an average of $165 more in increased direct carbon costs for energy, while in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where there is more coal-fired electricity, that figure would rise to $249 and $259 respectively.

However, the study estimates the rebate per household would be $350 in Ontario in 2019, rising to $836 in 2022; $868 in Alberta in 2019, rising to $1,890; and $1075 in Saskatchewan, rising to $2,394. If this scenario plays out, in five years the net benefit per household at that income bracket would be $328 in Ontario, $1,231 in Alberta and $1,711 in Saskatchewan.

And there is a solid reason for these numbers:

Carbon taxes will be collected not only from households but also from business and industrial emitters, and Sawyer’s modelling assumes that while the federal government would return some industrial revenues to large emitters, most would be rebated directly to households.

The trued-and-true fiscal scaremongering tactics of the right-wing, it would appear, will have limited efficacy with the voters. Who doesn't like receiving cheques in the mail?

While I am of the view that our current climate peril means carbon taxes will be as effective as using a dust-pan to clean up after an elephant, it will at least quite possibly raise some awareness about the situation we are in, however late in the game that may be.

About That Odour In The Air

While The Great Pretender and his faux Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, continue to utter platitudes about climate-change action while visiting formerly Beautiful British Columbia, smoke is not the only pollutant in the air. The unmistakable stench of a steaming pile of bovine excrement is also becoming decidedly pronounced, its source not hard to detect for anyone not blinded by unthinking allegiance to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Letter-writer Mike Ward, of Duncan B.C., believes he has found its source and offers up a solution to the miasma:

B.C. and Alberta are engaged in a carbon trading scheme of sorts, and it is to no one’s advantage.

Alberta sends carbon-rich bitumen to British Columbia, which, when added to the atmosphere, contributes to global warming.

Global warming in turn produces the warmer winters that allow pine beetles to thrive, together with the longer, hotter, drier summers during which B.C.’s disease-stricken forests ignite.

Prevailing winds spread this suffocating carbon smoke throughout both provinces, choking the tourism industry, impacting people’s health, threatening towns and destroying the livelihood of communities dependant on forestry and fishing.

It hurts to think that the new normal for our children may be smoky white summer skies, breathing masks and the eerie light of an orange sun.

Further investment in this perverse carbon trading scheme, such as in the proposed Trans Mountain expansion, defies reason as it can only accelerate global warming and amplify the enormous economic, social and health consequences we are already experiencing.

Clearly, it’s time for change. The cost of our stubborn reliance on fossil fuels has simply become too great a price to pay.

Also, your mendacious self-congratulatory rhetoric notwithstanding, this is no time to take a victory lap, Catherine.

Neoliberal Friends With Benefits

Kinder Morgan couldn't have a better friend than Justin Trudeau:

Texas-based Kinder Morgan made a seven-fold return on the sale of its Trans Mountain pipeline system to Canada's federal government, according to a new report that also warns the federal budget deficit could jump by 36 per cent because of the purchase.

The project has an estimated $7.4 billion price tag, of which Kinder Morgan says it has already spent about $1 billion. But the IEEFA report estimates that the company has only put about $600 million into the project so far. It estimates the company will make a 637-per-cent gain on the $4.5-billion sale.

The federal government is on the hook for about $11.5 billion in costs, including both the purchase and the remaining cost of construction, the report estimates.

"This transaction and the cost of further planning and construction could add a $6.5 billion unplanned expenditure to Canada's budget during (fiscal year) 2019," the report stated. "This would increase Canada's projected deficit of $18.1 billion by 36 per cent. to $24.6 billion."

The magnitude of Liberal ineptitude is stunning:

"There is every indication that the Canadian government has bought the pipeline at a high price and is likely to resell it for far less than it will pay to build it," Tom Sanzillo, the institute's [Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis] director of finance, said in a statement.

"Canada is weakening its finances by taking on unlimited costs to buy an unneeded pipeline with an uncertain future and giving an unusual profit to a U.S. company," he added.

But hey. That's what happens when you elect a neoliberal government. But Justin still has nice hair.

Justin Trudeau: A Reality Check

While Canadians are rightfully applauding the retaliatory tariffs the Trudeau government will be imposing on the United States, my concern is that distraction will diminish the outrage that same government's nationalization of the Kinder Morgan pipeline has engendered. Far too many people, it seems, are incapable or unwilling to hold two conflicting opinions simultaneously, our preference for absolutist thinking often winning out.

Solid journalism and astute letter-writers, it is hoped, will keep the climate-change betrayal of Justin Trudeau in the public's eye and mind.

Today's Star does its best on several fronts. Here is what a Millenial has to say:

After the crippling rage and ensuing cynicism I’ve harboured since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s callous electoral reform betrayal last year, I didn’t feel anything at all when I found out he was buying a $4.5-billion pipeline.

How silly of me to think that, in 2019, I would finally be able to vote for someone who would take our carbon budget seriously, and have it actually count toward something other than a tally of the other conscious voters who also wasted their ballot.

When Trudeau went to Paris, he made a major commitment to the rest of the world on our behalf. It was a commitment that his Liberals evidently had no intention of keeping (much like electoral reform), as he preached sanctimoniously to other countries of its critical imperative. Trudeau has made self-righteous liars out of all of us, and many don’t seem to care.

How silly of me to think that Canadians would eventually be embarrassed by the global community’s disapproval of our myopic selfishness, as we refuse to even stop growing our oil industry, let alone phase it out.

I am 34 and live in Toronto. A large portion of my meagre paycheque is depleted by riding expensive public transit, buying expensive vegan groceries and renting a tiny, overpriced apartment. But I don’t mind forking over the money because I feel like I am doing my part to help tackle climate change. After all, our governments are busy subsidizing more important things with their share of my cheque, I’m told. How silly of me.

Once a year, I try to take a camping trip to get away from the grind and pretend that I am living in harmony with nature for a few days. This month, I’ll bring my tent to Burnaby Mountain, along with some hard-earned cash that I have set aside to help pay the salaries of those who will arrest and fine me when I get there. At least I can say I helped create jobs, right?

Alykhan Pabani, Toronto

Other writers express similar cynicism and disappointment about a man who promised so much and delivered so little:

Your pro-pipeline editorial states: “To be clear: The new pipeline should be built, or more precisely, expanded.”

I am at a loss as to why the Star would make such a statement when this particular investment in, and expansion of, the Trans Mountain pipeline flies in the face of the Justin Trudeau government’s platform to help Canada (and the world) transition to more of a green-energy economy.

When we expand our investment in fossil fuels by a massive amount, we are obviously moving Canada away from transitioning toward a green economy. Canada has already generously supported the oil industry in a multitude of ways through enormous subsidies, etc. By expanding pipelines and thus promoting the expanded use of fossil fuels, instead of shrinking our dependence on oil, we perpetuate the status quo, which has our planet sitting at the verge of collapse.

If our federal government intended to expand its investment in green technologies and help us transition to a more environmentally feasible energy base, it would not have blown the bank to support this pipeline. Where will the money come from to support green industries and initiatives?

When the sustainability of our planet and our children’s future is at stake, Trudeau’s boldest move should have taken a completely different direction. I am so disappointed.

Fran Bazos, Newmarket

It is no surprise that a deal has been made for a pipeline to transport fossil fuels for financial gain. It seems there is no political party standing the slightest chance of forming a federal government that is prepared to turn its back on the enormous wealth buried below Alberta soil — no one prepared to leave the pristine boreal forests in the ground where they belong.

The resulting toxicity to the land in which we live and breathe, native land rights and the increased world dependence on non-renewable energy sources seem to have no influence on the decision-making process. It’s big business that dictates decisions and the policymakers will ride roughshod over anyone who gets in the way.

Timothy Phillips, Toronto

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has obviously forgotten, or disregarded, what most scientists have preached repeatedly, that keeping fossil fuels in the ground is essential if we are to save our planet. He is planning to ship our dirty oilsands to be burned in Asia, and then claim that Canada is adhering to our commitment to the Paris Agreement on climate change. Ethical?

Ross McCallum, Toronto

Finally, Jennifer Wells offers a history lesson on Kinder Morgan and draws this conclusion:

As for history, what it shows is there was a time and place for pipeline talk. The prime minister is gambling on the merits of using the expansion as a bridge to a climate-conscious future. That might have worked decades ago. Today it leaves the young PM sounding very ’80s

.

Blood On Our Hands

As Canadians, we like to walk around feeling good about ourselves, convinced both of our good intentions and our innate rectitude. Ours is a generally peaceful society, the rule of law largely respected. We look to the violent domestic madness that is an undeniable part of the U.S., and we cannot help but feel smug. We fancy ourselves exemplars for the world, and nod knowingly when someone like Obama or Bono says that the world needs more Canada.

Sadly, there is a another, much darker truth about Canada that few acknowledge. We are merchants of death.



Our hypocrisy is not escaping notice:

When Global Affairs Canada announced another aid package to war-torn Yemen in January, it boasted that Ottawa had given a total of $65 million to help ease what the United Nations has called “the worst man-made humanitarian crisis of our time.”

What Justin Trudeau’s government did not mention in its news release is that since 2015, Canada has also approved more than $284 million in exports of Canadian weapons and military goods to the countries bombing Yemen.

“It’s a bit like helping pay for somebody’s crutches after you’ve helped break their legs,” said Cesar Jaramillo, executive director of Project Ploughshares, a research and advocacy organization that studies Canada’s arms trade.

To whom is Canada selling these weapons? There is, of course, the much-publicized deal with Saudi Arabia, the leader in the coalition against Yemani insurgents.

The Star calculated Canada’s arms exports since 2015 to all of the countries in the Saudi coalition involved in Yemen’s war, as disclosed in Global Affairs’ annual report on Canadian exports of military goods. The bulk of the trade is with Saudi Arabia, to which Canada sold more than $240 million worth of weapons and other military goods in 2015 and 2016 — mostly combat vehicles, but also guns, training gear, bombs, rockets or missiles, drones and unspecified chemical or biological agents, which could include riot control agents.

The original deal with the Saudis, brokered by the Harper government and endorsed by Justin Trudeau's Liberals, is all about jobs, which the government clearly believes trumps the loss of innocent lives:

A $14.8-billion sale of Canadian-made armoured combat vehicles to Saudi Arabia — negotiated by the Conservative government in 2014 but given final approval by the Liberals — will reportedly provide work for about 3,000 people for 14 years in southern Ontario, where manufacturer General Dynamics Land Systems–Canada is a major employer.

While our government continues to express concerns about weapons misuse, they give no indication of how they are monitoring things, which of course suggests they aren't.

The United States and United Kingdom are also arming Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, but they, and Canada, are increasingly isolated in their position. The European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution in 2016 calling on all member states to enforce an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia for its role in Yemen. The Netherlands was first to take up the call. Finland and Norway have since stopped selling weapons to the United Arab Emirates. Earlier this year, Germany declared an end to arms sales to all parties involved in Yemen’s war.

Trudeau’s government has suggested no such ban, despite expressing “deep concern” over reports of Saudi abuses. Ottawa’s official position is that it will stop the export of military goods if there is a “reasonable risk” of human rights abuses. What that has meant, in practice, is that even when a country has a demonstrably poor record on human rights, unless there is definitive evidence Canadian weapons were used to commit human rights abuses, Canada is open to their business.

There is a great deal more to this story, which I encourage you to read at The Star.

Canada is in the killing business. Unless and until Canadians come to understand that fact, expect much, much more blood to flow.

Full Of Sound And Fury

... signifying nothing.

So says Macbeth about life in Act V Scene 5 of Shakespeare's eponymous tragedy. He might also have been talking about the 'policies' of the Justin Trudeau government.

Watching Global News last night, I was struck by the sheer lack of substance so apparent in the Liberals' almost three years in office. Here is the story that prompted my ruminations:



To listen to Catherine McKenna and the mainstream media, one might infer that the federal government is "acting in the national interest" and with boldness in its carbon-pricing scheme, and that all is well with the world. Of course, if one is refuses to embrace such willful ignorance, one understands how dire climate change has become, and that no piddling carbon tax, which affects no one's fossil-fuel-consumption habits, is going to change the destructive trajectory we are on.

And of the Liberals' contradictory, hypocritical push for pipeline expansion and greater bitumen production, I will not even speak.

Human beings need direction and leadership if we are to mitigate the worst effects of climate change; otherwise, they will allow themselves to continue in the self-indulgent behaviours that are destroying the planet as we know it. Consider the recent decision by Ford Motor Cmpany to concentrate almost exclusively on the production of truck and SUVs:



The two key takeaways from the above are that by 2022, 73% of sales in the U.S. will be utility vehicles. The second is that low fuel prices are a large factor in the purchase of the gas-guzzlers.

So tell me that the world doesn't need strong and decisive leadership. The path of least resistance and the web of illusions spun by governments such as ours are no match for the unforgiving cascade of events currently being meted out by nature.

Words Versus Deeds

Our Prime Minister, always keen to appear as a progressive on the international stage, is decidedly less so at home, as recent events are demonstrating. Another reminder of the gross disparity between his words and deeds came when he met in London with Teresa May, who is planning to ban the sale of plastic straws in Britain.

“Plastic waste is one of the greatest environmental challenges facing the world, which is why protecting the marine environment is central to our agenda at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting,” May said in a statement ahead of a Commonwealth summit.

Leaders from the Commonwealth — a network of 53 countries, mostly former British colonies — are meeting in London this week. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is also there and on Thursday was asked if he would join Britain in the ban.

What he says is a whole lotta nuthin'


Here is a closer examination of his capacity for platitudes, still apparently believing that empty words will carry the day:



Meanwhile, regular people are treading with the Prime Minister fears to tread:




Mr. Trudeau can talk all he wants about a "plastics charter." Talk is cheap, and clearly he thinks it is the politically safest route to take.

That is not leadership. It is abject capitulation.

Last Gasps?

Some days, writing this blog is quite easy, as I only have to turn to the letters page of my newspaper to aggregate the well-considered thoughts of my fellow Canadians. Today is such a day.

To believe our Prime Minister, we can have our economic and environmental cake served upon the same plate. His fatuous assertions that pumping out more bitumen by twinning the Trans Mountain pipeline goes hand in hand with his climate change 'policy' is the stuff that will satisfy the untutored and the ideologues, but offers not even thin gruel to those prepared to open their eyes to our increasingly fraught world and engage in some critical thinking.

Today's Star letters are ample testament to the fact that some refuse to don the blinders that the federal government is so keen for the electorate to wear.

While I encourage you to read all of the letters online, here is but a sample:

Tim Harper has it right. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in a cul-de-sac of his own making. The social-permission requirement made sense when campaigning for office. So when Trudeau talked of “consultation,” it made sense.

To alter that promise in order to sell oil makes sense, except that it does not make environmental promises believable. Development doesn’t happen without side effects. So to invoke constitutional authority and say the federal government rules makes a mockery of “consultation.” Trudeau’s government is caught not in a cul-de-sac, but between a rock and a hard place. Or is it a political dead end?

The Liberals will lose seats in B.C. whatever they decide. If they go ahead and put coastal waters at risk, they will lose seats. When there is an almost inevitable oil spill, Liberals could be friendless in B.C. for a long, long time. They don’t have many real friends in Alberta and the phaseout of oilsands extraction is inevitable.

So why not create an environmentally friendly Liberal legacy now and say farewell to Texas pipeline companies?

To invoke the heavy hand of federal authority now will make a lot of enemies. Think of British Columbia and Quebec for starters and Canadians who care about global warming, too.

Bruce Rogers, Lindsay, Ont.

Dear Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notely, what about your children? When they’re suffering from the effects of climate change, what will you say? “I’m sorry but, like John Turner, I had no choice?”

Canadians want investors for a sustainable country, not an oil-stained, disfigured landscape. It’s 2018. Isn’t it time for sustainable political leadership?

Barry Healey, Scarborough

In 25 years or so, if people in Canada and around the world are facing unstoppable species extinction, extreme weather events and flooding, widespread ocean acidification, mass displacement of people, epidemics of illness and disease, and an expanding civil war, we may have a hard time explaining to our children and grandchildren why we used taxpayer money to “rescue” an American company’s oilsands pipeline, despite wide opposition from Indigenous leaders, scientists and other citizens, and the fact that its construction undermined Canada’s international commitments to reduce greenhouse gases when it was still possible to avert catastrophe.

Perhaps we’ll just have to tell them that it was in the national interest, and leave it at that.

Michael Polanyi, Toronto

Thomas Walkom explains the Trans Mountain pipeline controversy very clearly. The hysteria around this project proves it is a last gasp of a dying industry. Unfortunately, the last gasp would involve more huge, expensive, damaging infrastructure, causing enormous environmental harm that Canadians would have to pay for, now and into the future. We have many difficult choices ahead as we change to a sustainable economy, but this choice is obvious: no new pipeline.

Martha Gould, North Bay, Ont.

If these engaged citizens are correct, perhaps the gasping you hear is not just those of a dying planet, but also a political party and government going the way of the dinosaurs.

Defining The National Interest

As the video included in yesterday's post shows, Justin Trudeau likes to defend the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline as in 'the national interest." The term itself is a contentious one, given its nebulous nature. For the Prime Minister, it seems to mean economic growth, moving Alberta's bitumen to port, and bolstering Rachel Notley's climate change initiatives.

As the following letter from a Toronto Star reader indicates, however, there is a more crucial definition that Mr. Trudeau and his fellow bitumen and pipeline enthusiasts are entirely dismissing, one that should take precedence:

PM’s pipeline woes of his own making, Harper, April 11

According to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, B.C. Premier John Horgan should compromise because this pipeline is in the national interest. Why is that? He doesn’t say.

I see the national interest as one where all of us move in a planned and purposeful way toward an economy that does not depend on oil and gas. In that world view, giving oil companies breaks on environmental assessments or emissions rules or buying pipelines so they can move their oil is against the national interest. It is the interest of oil companies not to leave stranded assets. The national interest is to move forward into a low-carbon future in Canada and around the world.

Mr. Trudeau speaks out of both sides of his mouth. “Yes,” he says, “we will meet our Paris targets.” Then he approves drilling in Nova Scotia, refuses to sign on to an Arctic heavy-oil treaty and permits Alberta oil to triple production of a very inefficient, high-greenhouse-gas emissions product, and approves a pipeline without ever reviewing its climate impacts or demonstrating that bitumen can be cleaned up.

Meanwhile we have never reduced our emissions targets as a country and are not projected to meet those targets any time soon.

And how can he say he has consulted with First Nations when the B.C. Federation of Indian Chiefs is standing at the Watch Tower, committing civil disobedience, and getting arrested to make their voices heard? Yes, let’s act in the national interest. Let’s all of us move toward a low-carbon future in right relations with our first peoples.

Rev. Frances Deverell, Nanaimo, B.C.

That Was Then; This Is Now

Funny about campaign promises. Most people take them with a large grain of salt, yet once in awhile, large segments of us are drawn in by the hope for a better day, hope fueled by an earnest politician who seems intent on upending the traditional shoddy, cynical and ultimately heart-breaking way of doing things that has become the default position of contemporary politics.

Such was the promise of Justin Trudeau.

But that was then, and this is now.

The Star's Tim Harper writes about the pipeline dilemma now facing Justin Trudeau, one, as I noted yesterday, is self-created:

For all the prime minister’s talk about how the economy and the environment go hand-in-hand, sometimes they become detached and action is needed, not a continuation of a Goldilocks not-too-hot, not-too-cold mantra that works as a sound bite, but not always as policy.

So here we are, a defining moment for the Trudeau government, with the clock ticking; a defining moment which Trudeau has largely brought upon himself.

The battle between Rachel Notley, desperate for a pipeline win if she is to have any chance at re-election, and B.C. Premier John Horgan, whose coalition with the Green Party will fall apart if he is not steadfast against the Kinder Morgan twinning, has grown increasingly acrimonious. Predictable, perhaps, but largely wrought by Mr. Trudeau himself:

It is important to remember how a campaigning Trudeau promised to deal with pipelines and other resource development compared to where he stood Tuesday.

On “social license” the Liberal platform read: “While governments grant permits for resource development, only communities can grant permission.”

Today, however, is a different story:

That was modified a year into the mandate with a more broad definition that dealt with consultation and dropped any reference to permission.

Another golden oldie from the Trudeau campaign trail:

...from the 2015 platform was a promise to Indigenous Canadians that they would be full partners on resource projects: “This will ensure on project reviews and assessments, the Crown is fully executing its consultation, accommodation and consent obligations, in accordance with its constitutional and international human rights obligations, including Aboriginal and treaty rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

Words have consequences, and now Trudeau will have to wear that betrayal of the Indigenous people:

Trudeau is going to have to force an unpopular pipeline expansion by bulldozing it past a provincial government, Indigenous leaders and protesters.

Trudeau will expend much more than political capital. He will have his green bona fides shattered.

Justin Trudeau will hardly be the first politician to break his promises. However, given the great hope Canadians invested in his election, he can expect some long-lasting consequences to his betrayal of the public trust.

That's Another Fine Mess He's Gotten Himself Into

In a post yesterday, The Mound offered a searing assessment of Justin Trudeau's abject failure on the climate-change file. Only the most ardent acolytes of the Prime Minister will fail to see that his soaring rhetoric has far outpaced his level of achievement. Says Mound:

Raising public awareness about climate change as needed to secure public support for carbon taxes only shines a spotlight on the hypocrisy of Trudeau's pipeline policy. You can't have people thinking too much about climate change when you're trying to ramp up the extraction, transmission and export of dangerous, toxin-riddled, environmentally devastating, high-carbon, ersatz petroleum. You simply cannot square that circle.

And Trudeau's dilemma is deepening as he is hoisted on the petard of his own pleasing rhetoric about social license, indigenous rights, etc., all of which some people, especially residents of British Columbia, have taken seriously, putting them on a collision course with both Alberta and the federal government.

Alberta's Rachel Notley is warning of an approaching constitutional crisis over B.C.s refusal to play ball with the twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline:

The lack of action followed Monday morning comments by Premier Rachel Notley that British Columbia’s actions to halt construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion aren’t “too far off” from a constitutional crisis.

“If the national interest is given over to the extremes on the left or the right, if the voices of the moderate majority of Canadians are forgotten, the reverberations of that will tear at the fabric of Confederation for many, many years to come,” Notley said.

In his determination to get the pipeline built, Trudeau has a panoply of unpalatable options, all of which would entail a huge political price. As the following clip states, he could suspend transfer payments to British Columbia, impose economic sanctions on the province, or, most draconian of all, invoke the Federal Emergencies Act, which would allow him to call a state of emergency in both B.C. and Alberta, enabling him to suspend provincial law, thus paving the way for the pipeline construction.



None of these options is desirable, but again, Trudeau has brought himself to this precipice by his love of his own public image and rhetoric. One thing is certain in my mind,whatever option he chooses: in 'going to the mats' for the petroleum industry, Justin Trudeau will be making abundantly transparent that he is little more than a servile enabler of the neoliberal agenda.

Are Two Sellouts Pending?

He's loved of the distracted multitude,
multitude, who like not in their
judgement, but their eyes.

Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 3

As Claudius in the above states, there will always be those who suspend their deeper thinking when evaluating public figures, preferring to reflexively accept the public images the latter so carefully cultivate, often at the expense of some less attractive realities. Never has there been a more important time, however, for critical public vigilance.

For example, despite the soothing words of Justin Trudeau that his government will never accept a NAFTA agreement that is not in the best interests of Canadians, Thomas Walkom has some grave doubts amid reports that a deal is close:

In actual fact, Canada will be lucky to minimize its losses.

After having restructured its entire economy to become an integral part of the U.S. market, Canada has little appetite to walk away from even a diminished NAFTA.

I fear that the Liberal government’s brave talk about no deal being better than a bad deal is just that — talk.

Trump also needs a victory. He has called NAFTA the worst trade pact ever. He needs a deal that, to his supporters at least, plausibly seems better.

He must show that he has bested Canada and Mexico.

For example, Trump's

plan to bias government procurement in favour of U.S. companies, [is] blatantly detrimental to Canada.

There is a precedent for all of this. In January, the U.S. and South Korea began renegotiating a free trade deal that Trump claimed was unfair to the Americans. Last month, they reached an agreement in principle that gave the U.S. virtually everything it had demanded.

In return, South Korea was granted a permanent exemption from Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs — tariffs that never should have been imposed in the first place.

On another front, despite all the Trudeau talk about taking action on climate change, given the EPA decision to roll back vehicle fuel efficiency, environmentalists are wary of the pressure being put on our government to "go along to get along."

The auto industry wants Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to go along with U.S. President Donald Trump’s move to weaken fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks. Environmentalists want Trudeau to refuse, immediately, and join forces with liberal American states.

Thus far the feds has been noncommittal on the matter, and Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna's office has said it will make a decision based on “careful considerations of environmental and economic impacts.”

It hardly sounds like she is on the side of the angels here, a suspicion that has prompted Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist for Greenpeace Canada, to observe that

“standing on the sidelines is standing with Trump” rather than with the march of history.

Stewart says it is time to take a stand.

Cutting auto emissions is a significant component of Trudeau’s plan to meet Canada’s target, under the Paris climate accord, of cutting emissions by 30 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030. Canada is not close to being on track to hit the target, a report released last week showed.

Finally, those still besotted with the early promise the Trudeau government showed on issues crucial to our collective survival should take a few minutes to watch this recent 'performance' by Catherine McKenna:



The Russians have a saying: "Better a bitter truth than a sweet lie." Unless and until we are able to make that choice (and our time is running perilously short, cooing government reassurances notwithstanding) we can only expect more temporizing and political expedience from this and any other government.

A New Record In Canadian Debt

It is $1 trillion and counting. While I am by no means a fiscal hawk, such a high debt level should concern all of us, given the looming spectre of interest rate hikes, which means the cost of servicing that massive debt has only one way to go - up.

Sadly, Justin Trudeau's promise to grow the economy 'from the heart outwards' is turning out to be just another of his empty rhetorical flourishes. With no discernible plan to manage and pay down that debt, we should all be worried.

Go to the 8:33 mark for the full story:

Who Do You Trust?

When it comes to a choice between believing a government with a vested interest in protecting a $15 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia and independent reports that those armaments are being used against domestic populations, I tend to side with the later.

Consider the evidence.

The Saudi Arabian National Guard, a buyer of Canadian-made light armoured vehicles, posted this photo on Twitter in November, 2015. It shows combat vehicles being moved to Najran, a Saudi town near the border with Yemen.

Two years ago, the following was reported in the Globe and Mail:

Canadian-made armoured vehicles appear to be embroiled in Saudi Arabia's war against Yemeni-based Houthi rebels – caught up in cross-border hostilities that critics say should force Ottawa to reconsider a $15-billion deal to sell Riyadh more of these weapons.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis – who are aligned with Iran – has already been accused by a United Nations panel of major human-rights violations for what its report called "widespread and systematic" air-strike attacks on civilian targets. Along the Saudi-Yemen border, constant skirmishes pit Houthi fighters against Saudi ground forces such as the Saudi Arabian National Guard.

...a retired Canadian general consulted by The Globe and Mail, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified the LAVs being transported to Najran as fighting vehicles made by General Dynamics Land Systems. Stephen Priestley, a researcher with the Canadian American Strategic Review, a think tank that tracks defence spending, also identified the LAVs as Canadian-made.

Critics say having Canadian-made arms enmeshed in a conflict that has claimed more than 2,800 civilian lives should prompt Ottawa to rethink the recent $15-billion deal to sell hundreds or thousands more to the Saudis.

And last summer, a video emerged appearing

to show for the first time Canadian-made light armoured vehicles being deployed by Saudi security forces in an operation against militants in the Shia-populated eastern part of the kingdom.

EXCLUSIVE: New video purports to show Canadian LAVs being used in Saudi crackdownhttps://t.co/DEfZlfTGXG pic.twitter.com/4YuPPZWmSu

— Levon Sevunts (@LevonSevunts) August 8, 2017

Add to the above the fact that Saudi Arabia is a notorious abuser of human rights, so much so that a group of British lawyers has launched a campaign to remove the country from the UN's Human Rights Council.

None of this, however, has forked any lightning with the Trudeau government. The Toronto Star reports that an investigation by the Canadian government has concluded that there is "no conclusive evidence" that the above is true, and so the arms deal will continue.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland told a Commons committee Thursday the “independent objective opinion” of her departmental officials [can there truly be independence in a government department?] did not determine that was the case. When the NDP asked for the report to be publicly released, the minister deferred to her department.

As frequently happens with Mr. Trudeau's regime, while they continue to give Saudi Arabia carte blanche in its abuses, they are vowing to toughen up the export permit process.

Governments should be required to deny permits where there is a “substantial risk” that an export on Canada’s control list “could be used to commit human rights violations,” Freeland said.

Freeland said the Liberal government will accept amendments to enshrine such an obligation in law, via a bill now before Parliament to allow Canada to accede to the international Arms Trade Treaty. At the same time, she said, pre-existing contracts would be honoured, meaning the Saudi contract would not be subject to review under new criteria.

That kind of fancy footwork may provide a measure of political cover for a government aiding and abetting the Saudis. However, one can't help but wonder how reassuring it will be to those domestic populations who will continue to be abused by the Saudis and quite possibly fall victim to the Light Armoured Vehicles that Canada will continue to ship to the repressive nation.

Seeking Some Substance - Part 2

In Part 1, I tried to establish that there is a gross discrepancy between the rhetoric and the reality of Justin Trudeau's promise to makie sure corporations pay their fair share. Indeed, if truth be told, his government has done little or nothing to alter the CRA ethos, imposed during the Harper era, to give the corporate world an easy taxation ride. For example, as outlined in the previous post, where other countries are recovering significant sums previously lost to offshore tax evasion and avoidance, Canada has thus far recovered nothing.

The CRA, it appears, would rather indulge in some domestic spying than go after the real evaders:

The Canada Revenue Agency's Postal Code Project is targeting the wealthiest neighbourhoods in all regions of the country, those with gold-plated postal codes, where auditors will pore through the tax filings of every well-heeled resident, address by address.

They're looking for undeclared wealth, signs that a taxpayer is actually richer than their income tax filings suggest.

"Comparing someone's lifestyle — cars, boats, houses — to their reported income helps us identify people who are non-compliant," said CRA spokesperson Zoltan Csepregi.

Class warfare, anyone? Or how about a little misdirection to distract people from the real villains of the piece, the corporations?

In fact, the CRA is really not making any effort to conceal their true motives:

"The Postal Code Project also has the potential to demonstrate to the public that the CRA is actively working towards its fairness objective, which speaks to our integrity as an organization."

While not opposed to this measure, Diana Gibson of the Ottawa-based Canadians for Tax Fairness

said it deals with only a small part of the problem.

"It's a good step. It's a small step," arguing that Canada's big corporations are responsible for about two-thirds of the country's tax avoidance problems.

"We applaud it, even if it's small," she said. "It's nowhere near adequate."

While this government-approved misdirection is taking place,(and one would be exceedingly naive to believe the CRA acts independent of government direction) a new report by The Tax Justice Network shows that Canada is, effectively, one of the world’s more attractive “onshore tax havens.”

Every two years, the Network releases its Financial Secrecy Index, which shows how much

a country’s legal system facilitates global financial crimes such as money laundering and tax evasion.

Canada is No. 21 on the list, slightly higher than its 2016 ranking at No. 23. The higher the ranking, the more financially secret a country is.

“It’s a bad exam grade on the state of the country’s financial secrecy laws,” said Arthur Cockfield, a tax law scholar and policy consultant at Queen’s University. “It means that if you’re a crook or a super rich person who wants privacy, then you can use our corporate laws to hide the identity of the ultimate owner of the shares (of your company).”

You can read the details at the above link, but Cockfield draws a damning conclusion:

“The hypocrisy is that Canada is part of the OECD, forcing countries like the Bahamas, like Panama, to change,” Cockfield said. “We use our power to make them change their laws, but that just makes Canada (a) more attractive place for these crooks. We won’t change our laws.”

So, to repeat the question posed in Part 1 of this post, "What is to be done?"

There are some obvious answers, like closing the loopholes that allow this corporate cheating to take place. That is exactly what a strange alliance between the NDP and the Conservatives (politics does indeed make for strange bedfellows) is calling for:

“The system is designed for multinationals and big companies to avoid tax,” said NDP tax critic Pierre-Luc Dusseault in an interview. “The system is the problem.”

And that worm, Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre, chimed in:

“Those who have the financial means to set up complex arrangements are always better off under regimes that are highly complex.”

“The smaller, leaner entrepreneurial businesses can’t afford to have large legal and tax accounting departments that allow them to game the system. So they are automatically at an unfair and unjustified disadvantage,”

Do not forget that we are talking about some very, very significant lost tax revenue that the individual has to make up:

In 2016, Ottawa collected $3.50 in income tax from individuals for every $1 it collected from businesses.

The Star/Corporate Knights investigation revealed that Canada’s 102 largest corporations collectively avoided $62.9 billion in income taxes over the past six years. On average, that’s $10.5 billion less per year than if they paid the official corporate tax rate.

It’s also an average of $100 million missing from the public purse per company, per year.

The message about tax cheating is filtering down to the average citizen as well, with

more than 27,000 Canadians [having signed] a petition calling on the government to raise corporate taxes and close tax loopholes.

The petition also asks the government to consider imposing a special levy on banks, which are the country’s biggest tax avoiders.

While the Big Five banks are collecting record profits, their income tax rates have dropped to the point where companies in the banking sector paid 1/3 the rate of other large Canadian companies in 2015.

At 16 per cent, the tax rate paid by the biggest Canadian banks is the lowest in the G7.

Canada is hardly a passive victim of tax avoidance and evasion. It is clearly a facilitator. If Justin Trudeau's speech in Davos about the need for corporations to pay their fair share is to be seen as anything more than his usual pious pontifications, it is long past due that he finally prove that he is no longer interested in giving these entities the free ride they have thus far enjoyed.