
UPDATE: Here is a live update from Nexen. One of the most interesting revelations is that the pipeline responsible for the spill is brand new, set up in 2014.
Reflections, Observations, and Analyses Pertaining to the Canadian Political Scene
"It is beyond my comprehension how the system could knowingly deny so many of our veterans the rights and benefits that the people and the government of Canada recognized a long, long time ago as being their obligation to provide.'Hired in 2007 as Canada's first veterans ombudsman, Stogran lost his job in 2010 for criticizing Harper and then Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino for the way vets are treated.
We started to put pressure on. They basically told me to pound salt. It became clear they weren't going to co-operate. It was a waiting game for me to leave . . . My ministers were as thick as three short planks. They were completely dependent on their deputy minister. Julian Fantino is a classic example. He's one of Harper's yes men who says the government is backing vets and is pouring money into programs to help them. At the same time, you have federal government lawyers saying in British Columbia that the government has no legal or moral obligation to the veterans. I argued against the lump sum. I said it was wrong to give people who were physically and emotionally traumatized a lump sum of money and then tell them 'have a good day.' Harper never did anything to back me up ... I despise Harper personally. He's pushed politics to another level."Compounding the injustice of his dismissal is Stogan's belief that his medical records were improperly accessed:
In 2010 he applied to the privacy commissioner to find out why his Veterans Affairs file had been accessed hundreds of times.The experiences of the erstwhile veterans ombudsman is but a small example of the nature of the Harper regime, serving as a pungent reminder of its intolerance of any dissent or criticism. I can only hope that voters in October roundly express their own intolerance of this repressive regime by casting it out of the office it is so manifestly unfit to hold.
- In 2013 and 2014, the Conservative government closed nine Veterans affairs offices across Canada – in Corner Brook, Charlottetown, Sydney, Thunder Bay, Windsor, Brandon, Saskatoon, Prince George and Kelowna. Total served by affected offices = approximately 21, 432.The genius of the campaign is that it is framed in such a way to show that ordinary Canadians are also falling victim to the parsimonious practices of the current regime, making it much harder to dismiss it as simply an effort by public servants to save their own jobs. In addition to the plight of veterans, it offers up facts on cuts to border security, environmental protection, employment insurance eligibility, public search and rescue capabilities and Canada's food safety.
- Total value of cuts to Veterans Affairs Canada as of 2015: $113.7 million
- From 2011–12 to the current 2014–15 budget year, the Veterans Affairs staff has been cut by 24% with an additional 1% cut planned by 2016–17. The majority of these jobs were front-line positions.
- The department now has the smallest workforce since before the war in Afghanistan.
- Veterans Affairs offices are now so short-staffed that there is a backlog of 6 to 8 months in providing requested services to veterans. 1 in 5 veterans suffering from a mental illness has to wait more than 8 months before their requests for help are answered.
Canada’s premiers are poised to sign an agreement to fast-track new oil sands pipelines while watering down commitments to fight climate change.While it appears that the political will to facilitate the flow of tarsands oil is strong, a commitment to mitigating climate change is not:
The Canadian Energy Strategy will be finalized and unveiled at a premiers’ conference in St. John’s beginning Wednesday.
Two sections of the plan commit the provinces and territories to help get more pipelines built, in part by cutting down on red tape to speed up regulatory decisions.
But the strategy contains little firm commitment on battling global warming. Its strongest environmental section – a pledge for all provinces and territories to adopt absolute targets for cutting greenhouse gases – is marked as a point of contention that might be scrapped.
There is vague environmental rhetoric peppered throughout the draft strategy, but no binding promises on exactly what the provinces and territories will do to fight climate change – only a general pledge to “transition to a lower carbon economy.” One section, for instance, lists a series of possible climate-change policies, including carbon capture and carbon pricing, but does not appear to require that provinces and territories do any of them.The obvious contradiction between expanding pipelines and lowering greenhouse gas emissions is one of those pesky details that our provincial political leaders seem happy to ignore:
There is also no explanation on how oil-sands production can expand – a likely scenario if more pipelines are built – while the country still reduces greenhouse gas emissions.Well, of course this is an obvious explanation, isn't there: egregious contempt for the suffering more and more people will experience as the world continues to warm, and lavish cossetting of those who stand to profit the most from the continued burning of fossil fuels, a truth that no political rhetoric, no matter how skillfully spun, will be able to conceal for very long.