Live: Pipeline Protest From Whistler

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

Friends In High Places: The NEB Continues Its Bromance With Enbridge

Last week I posted a story about the National Energy Board taking pity on Enbridge, reducing a fine levied against the energy delivery giant for the damage it caused to private property in Manitoba. Unfortunately, we now learn that this was just the start of a flurry of absolutions granted the company.

The National Observer's Mike De Souza reports the following:

For the second week in a row, politically-appointed members of Canada’s pipeline safety enforcement agency have agreed to reverse penalties imposed by inspectors against Enbridge Inc. for alleged violations, citing a lack of evidence.

The National Energy Board sent two letters last Friday, Feb. 12 to Enbridge, Canada’s largest pipeline company, confirming that it was rescinding two fines, worth $104,000, explaining that its inspector or inspectors failed to make strong enough cases to uphold the proposed penalties.

The letters were published on the NEB website one week after the regulator announced it had reduced two other separate fines, worth $200,000, down to a single fine for $76,000 for environmental and property damage.

While mere mortals (i.e., you and me) are expected to pay for their mistakes, apparently a different standard is being applied to companies with friends in high places (a.k.a., Harper NEB appointees):

In both of the two newest cases, the inspector or inspectors who proposed the fines maintained that the evidence indicated — on a balance of probabilities — that Enbridge had committed the violations by not respecting mandatory conditions of its operations, the letters said.

In one of the cases, a previous letter from the NEB alleged that Enbridge had changed design specifications, such as wall thickness and maximum operation pressure of a pipeline, without getting permission.

But three members of the NEB, two of which were appointed by the previous Conservative government of former prime minister Stephen Harper, disagreed. These board members, led by the NEB chair, Peter Watson, said that they agreed with Enbridge’s arguments that there was not enough evidence to confirm that it deserved the fines.

At a time where it seems to be increasingly common for companies to thumb their noses at financial penalties, the message is becoming clear: corporate malfeasance isn't such a bad thing, no matter what you and I might think.

The Demagogue Speaks Again

Won't anyone tell him just to shut up?

Recently, the CBC, which has an ongoing yet inexplicable and wholly unwholesome relationship with Rex Murphy, gave him yet another opportunity to spew his denigration and venom about those who criticize Alberta and its moribund oil industry. It seems that the rest of Canada is not recognizing its debt to Alberta for being the country's former economic engine of growth.

You may wish to read the original piece, linked above, or move on to The National Observer's dissection of good Rex's cant. To whet your appetite, here are a few excerpts from that dissection, that cuts through the pretext of Rex's article to get to its real purpose: shilling, par excellance, for the oil industry as he vigorously denies climate change.:

After weeping crocodile tears for Alberta and Calgary, Murphy sets about his real work, tearing down anyone who believes fossil fuels have had their day and that climate change is a genuine concern.

David Suzuki and Neil Young are characterized as “dim-minded celebrities that took their jaunts to the oil sands to mewl over its planet-destroying potential.”

Murphy contends that the “critics bark without scrutiny, never receive the zealous oversight they impose on the industry. Environmental reporting is heinously one-sided and close-minded.”

Tell that to the many fine journalists in Canada and abroad - at the New York Times, the Guardian and many, many others - who do their best to tell the complex stories of energy and environment in a balanced, nuanced way.

Like his spiritual brother Conrad Black, Rex Murphy is quite adept at hiding his paucity of worthwhile thought with an elevated and clever use of words. Perhaps it is time someone told him the veneer is wearing thin.

Enbridge Shirks Its Moral Responsibility

The National Observer reports the following:

Enbridge Inc. will save $22,000 after convincing Canada's pipeline enforcement agency that it shouldn't have been punished for failing to help neighbouring landowners with property damage.

The savings will come after the National Energy Board agreed to water down a $100,000 penalty for significant damage that Alberta-based Enbridge, Canada's largest pipeline company, caused to farmland property in southwestern Manitoba during replacement work on its Line 3 pipeline in 2014.

In a newly-released decision posted on its website, the National Energy Board confirmed that it was reducing the $100,000 fine - related to the damage caused by Enbridge — to $78,000, agreeing that the rules used to impose the fine only require pipeline operators to provide "reasonable assistance" to the regulator and not the private landowners.

I'm sure all Canadians will rest easier tonight, knowing that our beleaguered oil industry is getting special consideration during these most difficult times.

The Company You Keep

You remember, I'm sure, what your mother taught you: you are judged by the company you keep. By that standard, almost all of the MPs who form the Harper regime are to be condemned, willing, as they apparently are, to trade any vestige or semblance of integrity and self-respect for the chance of obtaining power. The seal that barks the loudest often gets the biggest fish.

Looking decidedly well-fed on piscine fare these days is Finance Minister Joe Oliver who, despite some very obvious shortcomings, appears quite content to be the good soldier carrying out Dear Leader's commands. Yet a closer look reveals that Stephen Harper has some serious competition in the unsavoury associates category. That's because of Oliver's close association with

Rebecca MacDonald, founder and executive chair of Just Energy Group Inc., a $3.9-billion Toronto-based energy marketing company. Oliver appointed MacDonald to his Economic Advisory Council last summer.

MacDonald was in the news last month after Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. made her the head of its corporate governance committee. MacDonald has been on CP Rail’s board for the past three years.

Bruce Livesey writes that MacDonald, who enjoys a high social profile, has a rather low ethical threshold. You may have encountered some of her employees at your door, trying to sell you an energy contract. If your 'Spider sense' started to tingle, your instincts were correct, since

charges of consumer fraud, unscrupulous sales tactics, multi-million dollar fines, and allegations of fabricating credentials have plagued both MacDonald and Just Energy for years. This past winter, for example, Massachusetts forced a (US) $4-million settlement out of the company over its sales methods, specifically over making false representations to customer. “We allege this… supplier engaged in widespread and misleading conduct that lured consumers into costly contracts in the form of high electricity rates and termination fees,” said the state’s attorney general, Martha Coakley, when the settlement was announced.

Just Energy also owes $105-million to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) – a loan it received three years ago after Bay Street refused to finance the company in a public share offering.

Says forensic accountant Dr. Al Rosen, who has investigated both MacDonald and her company, “How they could possibly have loaned them five cents is beyond me”.

Part of the answer may lie in the fact that she has friends in high places, including Oliver, John Baird, Major General Lewis MacKenzie, former Senator Hugh Segal and former Ontario chief justice Roy McMurtry.

An investigation by The National Observer reveals that her life seems to be filled with a series of fabrications, ranging from the lie that her father was the minister of energy in Yugoslavia under Tito, that she became a doctor at the age of 22, and that she is a trained concert pianist. And these were just the lies she told her first husband.

Telling fibs about your credentials is not a minor issue if you’re running a publicly-traded company, says Joe Groia, one of Canada’s top security lawyers. “If you have a director or an officer of a public company who’s falsified her credentials or if she’s telling stories about her background in order to give herself credibility in the marketplace and those stories are not true, that’s a very serious issue… So regulators take it very seriously… because directors have a huge amount of responsibility.”

From suits involving consumer fraud to employing people whose companies were fronts for the Russian mafia to juggling its books, MacDonald's Just Energy, for anyone interested in corporate morality and ethical practices, is a toxic product, a matter apparently of no concern to Joe Oliver or CP Rail:

Oliver spokesperson Nicholas Bergamini responded by saying: “Our government consults widely with leading business and economic innovators – to hear ideas to create jobs, growth and long-term prosperity.”

And CP Rail spokesperson Marty Cej says that MacDonald has the “full confidence of the board” and that her posting to the head of its governance committee was an “unanimous” decision. When pressed if they conducted any due diligence on her background, Cej repeated the same statement.

Perhaps the final word should be accorded to the forensic accountant, Al Rosen, who issues this warning to consumers about the company:

“It's something that you should run far and fast away from.”

It is the same advice I would give to voters about a government that endorses such ethically-challenged companies and practices.

Another Fox Guarding The Hen House

It is hardly news to suggest that the National Energy Board (NEB) is rife with bias favouring the energy sector. Half of its members are professionals from the gas and oil industries, and all but one was appointed by the Harper regime. But now it seems the government is not even trying to pretend that the Board exists for anything but the good of the energy industry.

Mychaylo Prystupa reports the following:

On Tuesday, Conservative Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford appointed Calgary engineering PhD Murray Lytle. "Dr. Lytle brings many years of experience in the oil, gas and mining fields and will prove to be a valuable asset for the National Energy Board as it continues to fulfill its mandate to ensure the safety and security of Canadians and the environment,” said Rickford in a statement.

This appointment is especially egregious given Lytle's background, not just as a consultant and executive to the mining industry and former employee of Imperial Oil, but also as a Conservative Party volunteer:

The Chuck Colson Centre for Christian Worldview website says this about his past: "Mr. Lytle has been heavily involved in national politics (Canada) and is happy to have lived to see the fruition of that labour, and his small part in it, with the election of the ruling Conservative Party,” .

An apparent admirer of theocracy, Lytle has this to say about God's special relationship with the United States:

From his perspective as a Canadian, Mr. Lytle thinks that the American experiment is alive and well - if somewhat fatigued from constant sparring. His understanding of history leads him to believe that God continues to extend His blessing to those who value and offer freedom to other bearers of His image. And no other culture offers that freedom in the abundance of the Americans and for this cause the United States is unquestionably the most creative society in the history of mankind.

Such NEB appointments, to say the least, invite widespread cynicism:

Liberal Environment Critic MP John McKay said public confidence in the NEB has sunk so low that its chair, Peter Watson, just completed a 34-stop “national engagement” tour in an attempt to reverse that sentiment.

“I think he’s doing a national tour known as the ‘No, I’m not a lackey tour,’" said McKay.

"It’s extraordinary that the head of the board feels he has to go from one end of the country to the other... because clearly the NEB has lost credibility of the eyes of the public,” McKay said on Thursday.

“This appointment [of Lytle] just fuels the suspicion, even when they comply with the regulations, that they are beholden politically to Mr. Harper,” he added.

And here is Elizabeth May's take:

Green Party leader Elizabeth May said Harper’s spring 2012 omnibus budget bill fundamentally altered the environmental assessments of pipelines into an “absolute sham of a review process.”

The reforms removed the responsibility to do environmental reviews of oil pipelines from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA), and put it in the hands of the NEB, which “doesn’t have the credentials” to do the job said May.

She said the legal reforms also nullified the Species at Risk Act, the Navigable Waters Act and the Fisheries Act from the board's decisions on pipelines.

"So the pipeline ruling trumps all those laws. The NEB is now basically a pipeline approval agency."

But perhaps the Harper regime is once again counting on something that has served them so well for so long: Canadians' apathy and ignorance. I guess this October's election will show if that faith continues to be well-placed.

The High Cost Of Integrity

In this world, remaining faithful to one's principles can be a very difficult proposition. We often hear how important it is to "go along to get along," and while we all make compromises during the daily course of living, sometimes the issues confronting us are too large to ignore, too loud to mute that voice crying from within. But acknowledging that voice can come at a cost.

Dr. John O’Connor appears to be paying the price.

The northern Alberta doctor, the on-call doctor for the residents of Fort Chipewyan, you may recall, has been an outspoken critic of the tarsands, his studies showing rare cancers occurring at extremely high rates for the residents residing downstream of the oilsands, apparently the victims of toxic emissions and effluents from the bitumen extraction taking place in their environs. His warnings have been largely ignored by both the Alberta and the federal governments.

But someone must have been listening.

O'Connor, as reported in The National Observer, has been fired.

After 15 years of committed service, his termination came on May 8 without the slightest warning.

“Please be advised that Nunee Health Board Society no longer requires your professional services to provide any patient consultation or on-call services to the staff at the Fort Chipewyan Health Center.”

And just in case that wasn’t hard-edged enough:

“In addition, you have no authority to speak to or represent the Nunee Health Board Society in any way to any other individual, party or entity (sic)”

While at this time there is no proof that his outspokenness caused his termination, the Observer offers some history that puts his dismissal into a provocative context:

Twelve years ago, he diagnosed an unusual number of cancers of the bile duct in the tiny northern hamlet of Fort Chipewyan, located downstream of the oil sands. The condition is familiar to Dr. O’Connor because his own father died from this same illness in 1993.

He also noted higher-than-average rates of other kinds of diseases, as well as persistent reports from local hunters and fishermen of unpleasant changes in the wildlife in the region – such as dead and disappearing muskrat, and fishes with strange deformities. He wondered if these circumstances had to do with the pollution from the oil sands companies.

In 2006, the CBC reporter contacted O’Connor, who said publicly, for the first time, that he felt there was a looming public health issue in the region.

Dr. John O’Connor's data was challenged by Health Canada and public health officials in Alberta, and he was threatened with loss of his license because he had raised “undue alarm”.

While he was eventually, over several years, cleared of such charges and complaints, it turned him into a tough crusader for what he considers life and death issues.

His dismissal coincides with another curious event:

About three weeks ago, renowned physician Dr. Esther Tailfeathers, who had been spending a week every month in Fort Chipewyan for the last three years, suddenly ended her service, without explaining why to the staff at the nursing station where she worked.

That a respected First Nation physician would suddenly disappear from the community, and then three weeks later Dr. O'Connor would be abruptly terminated raises important questions as to what is going on behind the scenes.

And it would seem that the impact of these losses will reverberate throughout the region he and Tailfeathers served:

John O’Connor has been supplying on-call services, 24/7, for 15 years. He has answered calls while traveling in other countries, from holiday locations, and even from the shower, walking nursing and paramedic staff in Fort Chipewyan through challenging medical emergencies whenever they occurred. On a number of occasions over the years, he offered to reduce his fees if the Nunee Health Board Society was having trouble meeting them. In fact, [he] reduced his invoice for August 2014 to February 2015 by 50 per cent at the request of Caroline Adam, the person who sent him the one-line email [of termination] on May 8.

Virtue, we are told, is its own reward. That may have to be the consolation for O'Connor, but given his capacity to fight the good fight, I very much doubt that the matter will end here.