The Harper Attack On The Environment - Part Three

H/t Michael Nabert

Never should one industry get to write Canada's environmental law. Never should one industry get to rewrite Canada's treaties. Never should one industry be listened to over the voice of tens of thousands of protesting citizens.

Yet that is exactly what has happened, according to Yan Roberts and others who have studied the systematic dismantling of tough environmental regulations under the Harper regime.

In this third part of a series exploring the devastation that the Harper regime has wrought on the environment, I am departing from Elizabeth May's book to examine the consequences of Bill C-45, one of the regime's infamous omnibus 'budget' bills that carried within its bulk all kinds of non-budgetary items.

One of the biggest of those non-budgetary targets was the Navigable Waters Protection Act, since changed to the Navigation Protection Act. The omission of waters in the act is a clue as to what happened as a result of lobbying by the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association which, some claim, in fact dictated the terms of the changes.

Two years ago The Toronto Star reported the following:

The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association met with senior government officials in the fall of 2011, urging them not just to streamline environmental assessments, but also to bring in “new regulations under (the) Navigable Waters Protection Act,” a CEPA slide presentation shows.

A copy of the Oct. 27 presentation made to then-deputy minister of trade Louis Levesque was obtained by Greenpeace Canada and shared with The Canadian Press.

These were their demands:

•Regulatory reform so that each project goes through just one environmental review;

•Bolster the Major Projects Management Office (tasked with steering resource projects efficiently through the bureaucracy);

•Speed up permitting for small projects;

•Make government expectations known early in the permitting process;

•Support an “8-1-1” phone line to encourage construction companies to “call before you dig”;

•Modify the National Energy Board Act so it can impose administrative penalties, in order to prevent pipeline damage;

•New regulations under the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

It seems the Harper enablers responded quickly to most of these 'troublesome' regulations:

The first budget omnibus bill [C-38] in June contained a replacement for the Environmental Assessment Act and also a provision to remove pipelines and power lines from provisions of the Navigable Waters Protection Act. [Emphasis mine.] Predictably, reaction from environmentalists was negative, while business and the natural resource sector reacted positively to the changes.

But the Harper wrecking crew was not yet finished:

...the government surprised many close observers by going even further in a second omnibus bill, C-45. The Navigable Waters Protection Act was changed to the Navigation Protection Act, significantly reducing its scope over Canada’s waters.

As Yan Roberts points out,

This new acts leaves 99.9 per cent of our rivers and 99.7 per cent of our lakes without basic protection.

And, as Fasken Marleau made clear in an environmental bulletin,

...the government will limit the application of the new law to the three oceans flanking the Canadian borders as well as 97 lakes and 62 rivers that have been qualified as important commercial and recreational water courses. The building of works on any body of water not mentioned in Schedule 2 of the new legislation will no longer be governed by federal law.

Perhaps the clearest sense of the potential consequences of this legislation is imparted by Vancouver - West Coast Environmental Law Executive Director and Senior Counsel Jessica Clogg:

Bill C-45 transforms the Navigable Waters Protection Act into the Navigation Protection Act. Historically, the Navigable Waters Protection Act protected the right to navigate without interference from logging operations, bridges, pipelines, dams, and other forms of industrial development. In this manner it provided an indirect tool to protect water and the environment.

Now only water bodies specifically listed in a schedule to the act are protected. The Navigation Protection Act excludes 99.7% of Canada’s lakes and over 99.9% of Canada’s rivers from federal oversight. Pipelines are also specifically exempted...

How did we come to this terrible state of affairs, where the gutting of environmental regulation is directed by oil lobbyists whose activities are largely hidden from public view? It would certainly be easy to blame it solely on the Harper regime's unethical use of omnibus bills. It would be easy to blame a regime that is so ideologically driven that it recognizes value not in our natural capital, but only the capital that accrues from destroying that heritage.

But that would be only part of the truth. The other part resides with all of us, too busy 'getting and spending' to take note of or care that the ephemeral is no replacement for the deep natural riches our country has been bestowed with, riches that are being systematically destroyed by the philistines among us.

For Further Reading:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/yan-roberts/omnibus-harper-oil_b_2474752.html

http://davidsuzuki.org/media/news/2012/11/how-bill-c-45-weakens-our-environmental-laws-and-democracy/

http://www.macleans.ca/tag/c-45/

http://www.fasken.com/en/omnibus-bill-c-45-amendments-to-the-navigable-waters-protection-act/

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/02/20/pipeline_industry_drove_changes_to_navigable_waters_protection_act_documents_show.html

Canada's 'Newspaper Of Record' Further Debases Itself

Currently, The Globe and Mail, the hubristically self-proclaimed newspaper of record and Canada's national newspaper, is embroiled in an ugly labour dispute with its workers.

In a statement issued last week, Unifor, the union representing the workers,

recommended members reject the company’s offer because it would weaken job security, reduce base pay for advertising sales staff and require certain newsroom staff to work on “advertorial” articles paid for by advertisers.

The later concept forms the crux of this post. As explained by Wikipedia, an advertorial is an advertisement in the form of editorial content. The term "advertorial" is a blend of the words "advertisement" and "editorial."

Advertorials differ from traditional advertisements in that they are designed to look like the articles that appear in the publication.

For an excellent examination of this sad devolution in journalism, take a look at Alison's post the other day, with links to a variety of examples that amply demonstrate their insidious nature.

But the Trojan Horse of propaganda can take many forms, not all of which are obvious. Take, for example, an article appearing in yesterday's Globe, purportedly written by Mike Harris, arguably the worst and most divisive premier that Ontario has ever seen. Bearing all the earmarks of a public relations offensive carefully crafted by one of the many arms of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), the piece, entitled Work together on Gateway, for prosperity’s sake, is eerily reminiscent of the advertorial written recently by Martha Hall Findlay, who, with a straight face, conflated the Northern Gateway with national-building.

And, like Findlay's, the Harris advertorial is clearly written with the assumption that the public is infinitely malleable and has a collective memory that is virtually non-existent.

Consider the first paragraph:

Canada is a resource nation. In every region, its natural resource sectors, including mining, forestry, energy and oil and gas, support vital social programs and provide stable, well-paying jobs.

Despite the fact that it evokes a nineteenth-century version of Canada as drawers of wood and hewers of water, it equates resource development with things most Canadians consider vital: jobs and social programs (the latter despite the egregious contempt Harris showed for the concept during his tenure as Premier).

The next part is even more redolent of the kind of revisionism the right-wing is addicted to:

Consider, as just one example, the Northern Gateway pipeline, recently approved by the federal government. Since being proposed more than a decade ago, the project’s journey hasn’t always been easy. It has faced tough criticism. But thoughtful debate has taken place and ideas have been exchanged that have resulted in a better pipeline proposal.

As a former premier, I know first-hand the experience of fighting for economic development for your province and its people, but not to the detriment of local communities and the environment. Receiving social licence for resource projects must be the leading objective for proponents; public input and consultations are paramount.

Yet another bald-faced lie, which this link will amply attest to.

The rest of Harris's encomium for 'prudent and thoughtful' development goes on in a similar vein, and to parse it in detail would make this post far too long. But I hope you will check it out for yourselves; as both an indictment of contemporary journalistic standards at the Globe and as a skillfully wrought propaganda piece that demonstrates what money will buy these days, it is a peerless example.