Canada Stands Indicted

While I most assuredly cannot claim any virtue when it comes to climate-change mitigation (I still fly, probably the greatest environmental sin one can commit), I do understand the gravity of what the world faces; to say I am pessimistic about our future is a massive understatement. That pessimism has been given new impetus by a piece Bill McKibben has written in The Guardian.

Despite having elected a government purporting to take climate-change seriously, it is likely we will approve a new tars sands project that will add countless megatonnes of greenhouse gases to the world's atmosphere:

The Teck mine would be the biggest tar sands mine yet: 113 square miles of petroleum mining, located just 16 miles from the border of Wood Buffalo national park. A federal panel approved the mine despite conceding that it would likely be harmful to the environment and to the land culture of Indigenous people... Canadian authorities ruled that the mine was nonetheless in the “public interest”.

To put things into perspective,

Canada, which is 0.5% of the planet’s population, plans to use up nearly a third of the planet’s remaining carbon budget [emphasis added]. Ottawa hides all this behind a series of pledges about “net-zero emissions by 2050” and so on, but they are empty promises.

Despite the worldwide evidence that we are witnessing the beginnings of runaway climate-change, we just can't seem to help ourselves.

... the Teck Frontier proposal is predicated on the idea that we’ll still need vast quantities of oil in 2066, when Greta Thunberg is about to hit retirement age. If an alcoholic assured you he was taking his condition very seriously, but also laying in a 40-year store of bourbon, you’d be entitled to doubt his sincerity, or at least to note his confusion.

Canada is far from unique in its addiction to, and advocacy for, more fossil-fuel development. What perhaps differentiates us from the world's other bad-actors in this domain is our pious avowals that we are enacting measures that will address the problem

As Bill McKibben points out, nothing could be further from the truth.

“If You’re A Liberal, You’ve Got To Be Very Nervous”

So says pollster Nik Nanos, after a poll showing young people's support for Justin Trudeau dropping dramatically after his recent chat with Greta Thunberg during her visit to Canada.

Polling data from Nanos Research shows that the proportion of voters aged 18 to 29 who cite Trudeau as their preferred prime minister fell from nearly 35 per cent to a little more than 24 per cent within 24 hours.

The Liberal leader met with Thunberg on Friday while the prominent activist was in Montreal for a climate-change march that was attended by hundreds of thousands of people.

The 16-year-old Swede took Trudeau to task, telling him he wasn’t doing enough to fight climate change. Though that is her standard message for any world leader, Nanos said he still saw it as a risk for Trudeau to agree to the meeting.

The results seem to indicate a narrowing of the gap between Trudeau and Scheer (a climate-change denier in all but name), and a small uptick of support for the Green Party.

While those two parties appear to be battling to win the most seats on Oct. 21, another fight is underway further down in the polls.

The NDP are polling at 13.18 per cent and the Greens at 12.63 per cent, likely bringing the two parties into fierce competition.

“It’s like a double horse race … the horse race to win and the horse race to place third,” Nanos said.

The Greens have been hovering around 13 per cent for several days now – their highest level ever, and approximately double the support they were pulling during the early days of the campaign.

“The last week has been very good for the Green Party,” Nanos said.

While I am long past the stage of holding out much hope for our collective future, whatever sliver there is resides in the awakening consciousness of young people, who seem to see with a perspicacity denied to many who, blinded by ideology and past practices, keep voting the same way but hoping for different results.

And that, of course, is a mere variant of a famous definition:

Greta And Justin

H/t Graeme McKay

Given the massive turnout for yesterday's climate strike, one can perhaps be forgiven for questioning the motives of Justin Trudeau marching in the Montreal rally. While the pipeline purchaser continues to insist twinning the Trans Mountain conduit is vital to his plan for saving the planet, some are not so easily fooled.

Greta Thunberg is one of them:

The 16-year-old Swede met privately with the Canadian prime minister but later told a news conference with local indigenous leaders that he was “not doing enough” to curb greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

“My message to all the politicians around the world is the same. Just listen and act on the current best available science,” she said.

But Mr. Trudeau is nothing if not relentless in his rhetoric:

The prime minister said after meeting Thunberg and pledging to fund the planting of 2bn trees: “I agree with her entirely. We need to do more.”

Platitudes and posturing will not save the planet. Only earnest, sustained and concerted action hold out a modicum of hope.

Fat chance of that happening, eh?

An Attack On The National Soul

It grieves me to resign from a portfolio where I was at work to deliver an important mandate. I must abide by my core values, my ethical responsibilities, constitutional obligations. There can be a cost to acting on one’s principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them.

- Excerpt from the resignation letter of Trudeau cabinet member Jane Philpott

Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. Canadians like to believe that ours is a nation that embraces fairness, opportunity and, perhaps most importantly, justice.

Unfortunately, given the tact that the Trudeau government is taking to defend itself against the ructions caused by the SNC Lavalin scandal and subsequent departure of two key cabinet members, one can only conclude that Canada's ethos is under attack.

Consider the evolution of Mr. Trudeau's 'explanation' which began after The Globe and Mail released a story alleging that Judy Wilson-Raybould was removed from her position as Justice Minister and Attorney General for refusing to grant a Deferred Prosecution Agreement to SNC-Lavalin. Initially, Trudeau averred that the decision not to prosecute was hers alone, and that she still sat in his cabinet as Verterans Affairs Minister attested to her ongoing contentment. It was at this point she resigned.

Over the last few weeks, the Prime Minister has attempted to change the focus, saying that his government would always stand up for jobs AND the rule of law. Now, the message seems to revolve almost exclusively around jobs and growing the economy. Consider the words of Steven MacKinnon, parliamentary secretary to the minister of Public Services and Procurement yesterday on Power and Politics.

.@stevenmackinnon says "our belief is that this company is one that is, like its competitors around the world, entitled to a deferred prosecution arrangement like they would be able to have access to in the U.K., in France, throughout Europe, in the United States…" #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/dSIur2SY9N

— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) March 4, 2019

"The government's adopted approach on this is one that has favoured jobs, it's one that has favoured pensioners, supply chains and a major Canadian company - all innocent victims of some corrupt management maybe a decade ago."

"We do have a disagreement here. We absolutely have a disagreement here and I think the current attorney general has said that, look you have to keep assessing the facts as these cases move along," he said. "But the fact is that we have 10,000 Canadians and their families and pensioners and suppliers and others who are not entitled to the same kind relief they would get if they were to work for an SNC-Lavalin competitor in the United States or in the United Kingdom ...

"The disagreement goes to how you see how Canada ought to approach major economic questions like the SNC-Lavalin issue. Do we do it like our OECD partners, do with these deferred prosecution arrangements, that have been widely discussed? Or do we do it with a ... perhaps more rigid approach?

That more rigid approach, of course, is not to engage in political interference, pressure, and honour the rule of law.

If you go to the whole interview, (start at the 1:28 mark) you will see that MacKinnon sharply implies that neither Wilson Raybould nor Philpott are concerned about "people" and "real jobs."

In his campaign to win office, Mr. Trudeau stoked the hopes of all Canadian that things could be better, and that politics would be done in a new way. Once stoked, such hopes demand action. Now that the Prime Minister has clearly been hoist upon the petard of his own lofty rhetoric, he can expect massive anger and massive resistance to this unprecedented attack on the national soul and the not-too-subtle message being sent that principle, integrity and honour must give way to economic imperatives.

A Pattern We Cannot Ignore

As I write this on the morning of Labour Day, it is already 38 degrees Celsius with the humidex in Southern Ontario, another day of oppressive heat and humidity in a long line of them this summer. Scientific consensus points to the ever-increasing effects of climate change as the chief agent responsible for a summer that has seen extreme temperatures worldwide. The key, if there still is one, to mitigating this unfolding disaster, is to wean ourselves as quickly as possible, off of fossil fuels.

And yet ....



.... our government chooses to ignore reality by buying a stranded asset, the Trans Mountain pipeline, whose expansion has been stopped for the time being by a Federal Court of Appeal ruling. The Trudeau Liberals seem stalwart in their intention to soldier on with this project, but perhaps they need to listen to voices outside their own echo chamber for a more realistic assessment of the situation:

Pipeline ruling shockwaves felt across Canada, Aug. 31

Last week, the Federal Court of Appeal told the government what they should have already known about the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion — the National Energy Board vetting process was horribly flawed, and there was inadequate consultation with the Indigenous people who are affected by it.

The proposed pipeline expansion is simply unfathomable. Even without citizen protests, the financial community knows that investment in the oilsands has no future. Bankers are pulling out and current investors are looking simply to recover their existing investments.

Canada has wasted billions in subsidies to oil companies instead of building the infrastructure for a renewable energy industry. Even when the oil industry was viable, Alberta failed to recover the revenues it was entitled to with too low taxes and too low royalties.

Meanwhile, Norway has made its citizens millionaires by nationalizing its oil industry and undertaking development in an environmentally sustainable way. Canada has given its resources away for a song and now has little to show for it. Compounding the mistake by continuing to prop up a failing industry is a crime against future generations.

Canada and its citizens will have to make wrenching adaptations just to survive when the true cost of climate change hits us. I fear for my children and grandchildren.

Our resources should be directed to building renewable energy and transitioning the workers who will be affected. Those currently employed by the fossil fuel industry should not bear the brunt of the transition. They should be supported by all other Canadians through our tax dollars as they are retrained and find new jobs.

I implore the government to end the Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project now, for the sake of our future generations.

Patricia E. McGrail, Brampton

UPDATED: Please Watch This, Catherine McKenna

As Minister of Environment and Climate Change, I think it is important for you to see what the practice of real integrity, as opposed to the mouthing of inane platitudes, looks like.

French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot has resigned on live radio, in a dramatic announcement that caught even President Emmanuel Macron by surprise.

The former TV presenter and green activist said he had quit after a series of disappointments in attempts to address climate change and other environmental threats.

Mr Hulot said he felt "all alone" in government.

The decision was taken on the spot and, he added, even his wife did not know.

"I am going to take... the most difficult decision of my life," the minister said in an interview on France Inter radio.

"I am taking the decision to leave the government."

UPDATE: Meanwhile, 'Minister' McKenna, I guess you have more important things to do with your time.

A Betrayal With Far-Reaching Implications

Despite the inspiring persona he peddled to win the last election, Justin Trudeau has turned out to be just another politician. As hard as that might be to accept, his betrayal of his promise to be something else, something better, is undeniable. For me personally, the sting of his failure to enact meaningful measures to combat climate change hurts the most.

And I am not alone in recognizing the fraud he perpetrated. Both The Toronto Star's editorial board and columnist Thomas Walkom offer lacerating assessments of the prime minister's perfidious antics. His most recent decision, to scale back the carbon tax, is emboldening the retrograde Doug Ford, Ontario's new premier with some very old (think 1950's) ideas:

... in scaling back one element of the national plan to put a price on carbon, Justin Trudeau managed to weaken an already too tepid program, and hand some provincial premiers — who are determined to oppose any carbon tax — more ammunition to fight in the court of public opinion, never mind, possibly, in the courts of law.

Emission-intensive industries that compete with companies in jurisdictions without a carbon tax, were already set to receive credits worth 70 per cent of what an average firm in their sector would pay under Ottawa’s plan.

Now, most won’t have to pay the carbon tax until their emissions reach 80 per cent. And four industries deemed to face particularly high competitive risks — iron and steel manufacturing, cement, lime and nitrogen fertilizer producers — won’t pay until they hit 90 per cent.

The Ontario government is running with this retreat:

Already, Ontario’s Environment Minister Rod Phillips is crowing about how this change is proof that his government was right to kill Ontario’s cap-and-trade plan, and right to fight Ottawa’s carbon tax in court.

All of which, of course, panders to a public that is far more eager to embrace willful ignorance than confront harsh reality, a hint of which was recently released by the Insurance Bureau of Canada, which revealed

2016’s record-breaking year of damage caused by natural disasters such as wildfires, floods and ice storms across the country cost $4.9 billion. And that was just in “insurable” damage.

Thomas Walkom comes at this issue from a different perspective but with the same underlying premise, that Trudeau's weak carbon tax will accomplish little:

Before Ford became Ontario premier, Trudeau was in danger of being outed as a fraud on the all-important climate change file. But Ford is such a laggard in this area that no matter how little the Liberal prime minister does, he seems active by comparison.

Ford’s decision to challenge Trudeau’s carbon tax in court serves to obscure the reality of the proposed federal levy, namely that it is too low to be effective. And it allows Trudeau to continue pretending that his climate change strategy is vastly different from that of former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper — when in fact it is not.

And Walkom offers compelling evidence that the emperor has no clothes, nor any real climate-change convictions as he echoes the old Harper way of doing things, such as mirroring U.S. behaviour:

In 2016, he very publicly matched Obama’s decision to reduce methane emissions. A year later, after Donald Trump reversed that Obama move, Canada’s Liberal government quietly announced it would delay implementation of its new methane rules until 2023.

Last week, Ottawa announced even more quietly that it plans to ease proposed carbon tax rules for big industrial polluters in order to match the new laissez-faire attitude of the Trump regime.

But surely Trudeau's carbon tax marks a bold departure from American inaction? Well, not so much:

Ottawa’s fallback carbon tax — set to start at $20 per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions next year and rising to $50 per tonne by 2022 — is too low. If carbon taxes are to work, they must be high enough to discourage consumers from using products, like gasoline, that create greenhouse gas emissions.

Experts I’ve talked to say that, to be effective, carbon taxes must be set at about $30 per tonne now, rising to $200 a tonne by 2030.

There is no indication that the Liberal government is willing to be so audacious.

Supporters of the Trudeau government will argue that something is better than nothing, and that economic realities constrain Trudeau's hand. The only problem with that thinking is that it is much, much latter than we like to think, and smiles, rhetoric and half-hearted measures will not slow the tide of the earth's inexorable march to a new normal, one that already is proving decidely unpleasant and deadly for millions of people.

Vox Populi

While many will be fixated on the latest soap-opera installments that politics now regularly yields, such as the outrageous behaviour of Trump at the G6+1, or the strange elevation to power of Doug Ford in Ontario, others are not so easily diverted, as these letter-writers demonstrate:

As an atmospheric physicist and an active climate-change researcher, I find the conduct of the Justin Trudeau government in this regard disgusting and appalling. If we are looking for a visionary leader who would lead us from a fossil-fuel-based (and environmentally destructive) economy to a sustainable and clean low-carbon economy in Canada, then Trudeau is not that person.

When Trudeau was elected, there was a sense of hope in doing our part as a nation to really start reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I have followed the United Nations’ COP meetings with a great deal of interest, and Canada promised achievable objectives in the Paris Agreement. These objectives do not seem achievable now.

Kaz Higuchi, environmental studies professor, York University, Toronto

I find it appalling that the government is using taxpayers’ money to benefit a corporation. This makes me realize how influential the corporations really are and how insignificant are the voices of Indigenous people and the thousands of others opposing this pipeline.

How can the government turn a blind eye to the harmful effects this pipeline may pose? Oil spills are an inevitable consequence.

I wish there were some mechanism to determine how I want my taxes used. I am definitely not paying them so a corporation can build an oil pipeline to endanger the environment of a province with some of the most beautiful coastlines in the country.

Sneha Singh, Mississauga

Pierre Berton’s The Last Spike captured a moment when the Canadian government was in the railroad- building business. Now, Ottawa has entered its pipeline era. Will, at some point, Berton’s book get a sequel, perhaps The Last Spill?

Ken Luckhardt, Etobicoke

Note To Justin

Because it is 2018, instead of buying leaky pipelines on the taxpayer's dime, maybe you should enter the modern era and emulate China:

His Hypocrisy Is Breathtaking

Perhaps he is counting on a fawning international press and a somnolent Canadian public. Perhaps he is counting on those who put partisan loyalties above all else. Or maybe he thinks his dazzling smile will continue to beguile. It may be any or all of these that are leading the Prime Minister to believe that his arrant hypocrisy on climate change will go unnoticed. Whatever it is, one thing is undeniable: Justin Trudeau has absolutely no shame.

As reported by The Globe and Mail (article not available online unless you subscribe or have access to the digital replica through your public library), Canada's leader plans to tell the rest of the G7 at the upcoming summit to step up their game on climate-change mitigation:

The G7 leaders are being urged to accelerate action on climate change, given that current commitments under the Paris accord are insufficient to meet the goal of limiting the increase in average global temperatures to less than 2-degrees Celsius.

However, Mr. Trudeau’s climate leadership credentials are under attack after last week’s pipeline deal, which aims to bolster the fortunes of the emissionsintensive oil sands sector.

Canadian environmentalists argue the Liberal government’s support for the Trans Mountain pipeline and growth in the oil sands is inconsistent with its international commitments on climate change.

Yanick Touchette, a policy adviser with the International Institute for Sustainable Development co-authored a report assessing the level of subsidies given by G7 governments to the fossil fuel industry. Although it was written before before the Trudeau-Morneau acquisition of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, the ugly truth is that the

Canadian government support for the oil and gas industry is the highest in the G7, when measured by size of the economy...

“It’s all the more reason to provide more transparency regarding the overall picture of support to the oil and gas industry … and come up with a plan how Canada plans to meet its commitments to remove inefficient [fossil-fuel] subsidies.”

Not of this is escaping the notice of some very influential forces:

A group of international investors – including some prominent Canadian institutions – are calling on the G7 leaders to increase their efforts – “with utmost urgency” – to reduce carbon emissions and encourage investment in low-carbon energy sources in order to meet Paris targets.

Ceres, an American non-profit that contributed to crafting the statement on behalf of institutional investors, is led by Mindy Lubber:

Ms. Lubber suggested that Mr. Trudeau’s support for the oil sands pipeline is misguided both financially and from an environmental perspective.

...she argued the government-backed pipeline could become a money-losing venture in the long term as the world moves to reduce its use of fossil fuels.

“We are convinced that more money put into the oil sands, in the tens of billions of dollars, are very likely to become stranded assets,” she said in an interview.

All the signs are pointing in a direction opposite to what Mr. Trudeau's braintrust has told him is a viable path forward. Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, this decision, and the one who made it, appear headed for disaster.

Another Protest Against Kinder Morgan Pipeline

This time, it is in front of the constituency of Trudeau's Justice Minister and Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould:

Our Naked Prime Minister

Disingenuous, Dishonest, Cynical. Calculating. Choose any or all of those adjectives, and you will have an apt assessment of Justin Trudeau and his decision to nationalize the Kinder Morgan pipeline that will ultimately see an almost tripling of bitumen transported to Canada's West Coast. It is a move that does not well with either Thomas Homer-Dixon or Yonatan Strauch. Neither is afraid to declare that the emperor has no clothes.

Their argument is compelling:

Continued investment in the oil sands generally, and in the Trans Mountain pipeline specifically, means Canada is doubling down on a no-win bet. We’re betting that the world will fail to meet the reduction targets in the Paris Climate Agreement, thus needing more and more oil, including our expensive and polluting bitumen. We’re betting, in other words, on climate disaster. If, however, the world finally gets its act together and significantly cuts emissions, then Canada will lose much of its investment in the oil sands and the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, because the first oil to be cut will be higher-cost oil such as ours.

Heads or tails, we lose. That’s the idiocy of it. We can’t have our lucrative oil sands profits and a safe climate, too.

Both Homer-Dixon and Strauch see through Trudeau's lie than we can have our climate cake and eat it too:

Canada has no plan to meet its 2030 Paris Agreement emission targets, because it’s virtually impossible to do so if the oil sands’ output rises to Alberta’s cap of 100 million tonnes of carbon emissions a year....Scenarios to limit warming to 2 degrees, the Paris Agreement’s bottom-line target, clearly show that oil demand must decline.

When considered against rapidly-rising world temperatures, Trudeau's crime has a magnitude that puts him beyond even a modicum of sympathy:

We’ve already jumped from an equilibrium climate – the benign and largely stable climate that allowed our species to propagate and prosper over thousands of years – to a climate regime that’s constantly on the move, with temperatures shooting inexorably upward.

The German climatologist and oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf puts it bluntly: “We are catapulting ourselves way out of the Holocene.” If humanity stays on its current climate trajectory, he goes on, “we will not recognize our Earth by the end of this century.”

It will become a world in which any efforts at adaptation will be puny and pitiable:

... adaptation measures such as better flood protection or a little economic tinkering at the edges, such as a modest carbon tax, don’t remotely cut it. We face an implacable imperative: Humanity either undertakes fast and deep cuts in its carbon emissions or, some time later this century, civilization starts to unravel.

The prognosis is grim. It is time for all who care about succeeding generations and the radically-changed existence they will inherit to see Trudeau for what he ultimately is: an enemy of the planet.

Live: Pipeline Protest From Whistler

Clearly, Mr. Trudeau's "sunny ways" do not dazzle everyone.

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

.

Nathan Cullen's Peerless Takedown Of The Hapless Justin Trudeau

Enjoy (or not, depending upon your political/philosophical/environmental orientations):




Meanwhile, Star letter-writers offer some much-needed reality checks about Trudeau's betrayal:

Your editorial highlights the political risks in the Justin Trudeau government’s decision to buy the Kinder Morgan pipeline, but there is also a major economic risk involved.

If the government had read the fine print of Kinder Morgan’s security filings, it would note that the company warned its investors last year about the threat posed by successful action on climate change, in response to a formal complaint from Greenpeace on inadequate disclosure of climate risk.

According to the filing, serious progress on achieving the Paris climate agreement’s decarbonization goals would reduce oil demand and thus oil companies might not be able to honour their contracts with Kinder Morgan or sign new ones.

So Ottawa has bought itself a pipeline that only succeeds economically if the Paris agreement fails. Quite the Faustian bargain.

Keith Stewart, Greenpeace Canada, Toronto

Not only is this pipeline in direct violation of the constitutional rights of Indigenous peoples, but the bottom line is there is no viable market for bitumen transported by tankers. It’s not a product the world wants to buy.

HSBC and other big players know this and they are divesting from Alberta’s difficult oil because it’s not a valuable product, and even they are saying loudly that they want to steer clear of the oilsands because of the heavy consequences to the environment and Indigenous rights.

It’s shocking to see Paris climate “rock star” Justin Trudeau showing his true colours.

David Quigg, Toronto

UPDATED: Call Him By His Real Name

I hope Justin Trudeau has a vivid imagination and total recall. That way, he can revisit the fall of 2015, depicted above, a time, you may remember, when he was exultant, having won his a majority government after posing as a man who was going to bring Canada into the 21st century. It was a time he fooled so many of us. With any luck, he will not do so again.

That the clown prince/neoliberal stooge's gambit in buying out the Trans Mountain pipeline is not going over well is evident on a number of fronts. Following are but a few illustrations of that fact:

Star letter writers offer this:

As an atmospheric physicist and an active climate-change researcher, I find the conduct of the Justin Trudeau government in this regard disgusting and appalling. If we are looking for a visionary leader who would lead us from a fossil-fuel-based (and environmentally destructive) economy to a sustainable and clean low-carbon economy in Canada, then Trudeau is not that person.

When Trudeau was elected, there was a sense of hope in doing our part as a nation to really start reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I have followed the United Nations’ COP meetings with a great deal of interest, and Canada promised achievable objectives in the Paris Agreement. These objectives do not seem achievable now.

Kaz Higuchi, environmental studies professor, York University, Toronto

I find it appalling that the government is using taxpayers’ money to benefit a corporation. This makes me realize how influential the corporations really are and how insignificant are the voices of Indigenous people and the thousands of others opposing this pipeline.

How can the government turn a blind eye to the harmful effects this pipeline may pose? Oil spills are an inevitable consequence.

I wish there were some mechanism to determine how I want my taxes used. I am definitely not paying them so a corporation can build an oil pipeline to endanger the environment of a province with some of the most beautiful coastlines in the country.

Sneha Singh, Mississauga

Pierre Berton’s The Last Spike captured a moment when the Canadian government was in the railroad- building business. Now, Ottawa has entered its pipeline era. Will, at some point, Berton’s book get a sequel, perhaps The Last Spill?

Ken Luckhardt, Etobicoke

Across the country, the sense of betrayal and incredulity at this asinine purchase was palpable:

“We are absolutely shocked and appalled that Canada is willingly investing taxpayers’ money in such a highly controversial fossil fuel expansion project,” said Grand Chief Stewart Philip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, in an emailed statement. “We will not stand down no matter who buys this ill-fated and exorbitantly priced pipeline.”

On Parliament Hill, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May called the purchase “an historic blunder with taxpayer dollars,” citing a document from the National Energy Board that says Kinder Morgan bought the existing pipeline from its previous owner for $550 million in 2007 — a far cry from what the Texas company will get by selling it to Ottawa, she said.

She also accused Trudeau’s government of writing a “blank cheque” for the pipeline’s construction costs, which Kinder Morgan has previously pegged at $7.4 billion.

“It seems completely insane,” May said. “I’m quite certain that this will go down as an epic financial, economic boondoggle.”

Environmental groups were equally unimpressed:

The Council of Canadians, meanwhile, attacked Ottawa’s purchase as a “Big Oil bailout” that would not remove obstacles to the pipeline expansion. Greenpeace, in its own statement, said Trudeau’s government has “signed up to captain the Titanic of tar sands oil pipelines, putting it on a collision course with its commitments to Indigenous rights and the Paris climate agreement.”

Columnist Gary Mason calls it a Faustian bargain:

Environmentalists who once applauded Mr. Trudeau and his enthusiastic embrace of the Paris climate targets feel deceived. Celebrity crusader Naomi Klein promised the PM on Twitter his decision would “haunt him” everywhere he travels now. He was called a climate fraud by influential activist Bill McKibben.

But the immediate and long-term political fallout is only part of Trudeau's problem:

The government’s chance of finding a private investor to buy the project before the end of summer is unlikely. The threat of lengthy, potentially violent protests and the impact that had on creating a reliable construction timetable is one of the reasons Kinder Morgan wanted out. Any new investor is going to wait until Ottawa gets most of the dirty work done, gets the project built through the most contentious areas of B.C., before feeling comfortable enough to take it on.

Clearly, if the feds ultimately succeed, the only happy campers will be the investors who buy it back from the government.

Thomas Walkom points out a flaw in the plan few want to acknowledge:

... the real weakness in Ottawa’s nationalization scheme is economic. The Trans Mountain expansion was conceived at a time when petroleum prices were hitting record highs and before shale oil had become an important source of energy.

In those heady days, it made some economic sense to build a pipeline devoted to developing Alberta’s high-cost oil sands for export. Now it makes less sense.

What’s more, as Alberta’s Parkland Institute points out, the Trans Mountain expansion was conceived at a time when there were fewer pipelines bringing tar-sands oil to market. Since then, the Keystone XL pipeline, which is meant to take heavy oil from Alberta to Texas, has been approved.

Educating oneself about important issues is a key responsibility of all citizens in a healthy democracy. To abdicate that responsibility is to encourage reckless, irresponsible government policy and action. Today, we reap the results.

However, for those informed on the issues, to say that Trudeau's name is mud is perhaps to date myself. How about updating it to bitumen?



UPDATE: In The Guardian, Bill McKibben says the only thing differentiating Donald Trump and Trudeau on climate change is that the former is not a hypocrite about his disdain for the environment. Considering the latter's lofty rhetoric, the analysis fits:

Trudeau says all the right things, over and over. He’s got no Scott Pruitts in his cabinet: everyone who works for him says the right things. Indeed, they specialize in getting others to say them too – it was Canadian diplomats, and the country’s environment minister, Catherine McKenna, who pushed at the Paris climate talks for a tougher-than-expected goal: holding the planet’s rise in temperature to 1.5C (2.7F).

But those words are meaningless if you keep digging up more carbon and selling it to people to burn, and that’s exactly what Trudeau is doing. He’s hard at work pushing for new pipelines through Canada and the US to carry yet more oil out of Alberta’s tar sands, which is one of the greatest climate disasters on the planet.

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.

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.

UPDATED: An Increasingly Tattered Cloak

That would be the one Justin Trudeau wraps himself in with such rectitude whenever he attempts to convince the public of his climate-change bona fides. Increasingly, both his cloak and his rhetoric are wearing thin.

The latest example of the hollowness of his public persona comes with news that his government is doing something it shouldn't be doing, interfering in provincial rights:

The B.C. government says Ottawa is interfering in an independent review connected to the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, just days after Alberta Premier Rachel Notley called on Ottawa to intensify its efforts to defend the project.

"It's both a highly unusual and a highly troubling intrusion on a province's right to enforce its own permits, its own regulations and the interests of its own citizens," B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman said in an interview on Wednesday. "We do not take kindly to this intervention."

Federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr announced in a statement on Wednesday that Canada has filed a letter to the National Energy Board supporting a process to quickly resolve conflicts with local and provincial governments that could slow down construction on the pipeline.

It would seem that the powers to whom both Trudeau and Alberta's Rachel Notley answer are unhappy:

The NEB is hearing a complaint from Kinder Morgan, which has already begun construction, that the city of Burnaby, B.C., is blocking the project by refusing to issue four permits. The city, which opposes the project, denies any unreasonable delay.

The company – now with Ottawa's support – wants a standing panel to allow any future permit disputes to be resolved quickly.

In Calgary on Wednesday, the NEB heard Mike Davies, Trans Mountain's senior director of marine development, say the company's dealings with Burnaby have been difficult for some time.

B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman doesn't care that the pipeline giant has its knickers in a twist:

"The federal government should not be intruding on provincial rights and authority," he said.

"I would expect the National Energy Board, which in this case has the powers of the federal court, to understand that we as a province have a responsibility and a right to both permit and enforce our own standards. "

It would seem that Mr. Trudeau and Ms. Notley only have ears for one entity here: Kinder Morgan.

Now why does that not surprise me?

UPDATE: NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has now entered the fray. Whether this is mere political opportunism or principle, only time will tell.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh slammed the Trudeau government on Wednesday for its "betrayal of the people of British Columbia" in order to support a large corporation, Texas-based multinational energy company Kinder Morgan.

Trudeau had promised during the 2015 election campaign to introduce a brand new environmental review process to assess the Kinder Morgan project. But once elected, the prime minister approved the pipeline last November based on an assessment by the National Energy Board (NEB) under controversial rules adopted by the former Harper government. Singh said that Carr's new proposal was a second "betrayal" of the west coast province.

"They’re supporting the rights of a corporation to override the decision making of an elected body, the municipality of Burnaby," Singh told reporters. "That to me is a massive concern. That is something that is very troubling and it’s the second major betrayal of the people of British Columbia."