Wednesday, May 31, 2017

What? It's Not Our Coast?


Them's fighting words, Rachel.

According to the Alberta premier, we're just people who happen to live on the Pacific coast, nothing more. That still gives Alberta some overarching right to ship whatever the hell it wants through our waters.

British Columbia cannot lay solitary claim to western tidewaters and must allow landlocked Alberta to have access to the coast for export markets, says Alberta Premier Rachel Notley.

"At the end of the day, we can't be a country that says one of its two functional coastlines is only going to do what the people who live right beside it want to do," Notley said in an interview Wednesday with CBC Radio's Edmonton AM.


Oh Rachel, please, go fuck yourself.

What if we played your game, Rachel? What if we told you there was no reason for you not to refine your hazmat bitumen on site in your own greedy province? Clean it up as you might your own kids for church on Sunday. Refine out the pet coke. Refine out the acids, the heavy metals, the abrasives and the carcinogens. You keep claiming the stuff is oil. But it's not oil you want to ship across our province and through our coastal waters.

So, Rachel, let me borrow your own words. We can't be a country where one province says it can needlessly imperil the terrestrial and marine environment of another province because that works to their financial advantage. We can't be a country where one province gets to "externalize" such massive risk by unloading it on another province for the sake of a better return.

We're not your garbage dump, Rachel. Clean up your act and then we might talk. Until then, as I said before, go fuck yourself.

And, by the way, it is our coast.


12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rachel should negotiate "access to tidewater" with NWT. By the time the pipeline's built, climate change should have opened up another "functional coastline."

Cap

The Mound of Sound said...


Sure, what better place for a dilbit spill than the Arctic, especially in the pitch black conditions of the Arctic winter. What could possibly go wrong?

J MacDuff said...

Unfortunately most Albertans share her view. Fossil fuels at all cost, especially when another province accepts ongoing risks. They care little about the risk to our province. I love the idea of building a refinery in Alberta. Not in their interests apparently. Pollution maybe? Any pipeline may open market, but the foreign oil companies profit first. Alberta and even BC have signed away their share of profits under pressure from the foreign interests. Just look at the Alberta Heritage Fund. Empty after oil prices topped $100.00 a barrel and extraction was increased 100 percent. Bad management by earlier Alberta governments. A lesson for all provinces.

Jay Farquharson said...

I'm pretty sure Anon.'s comment was snark.

No way you are building a pipleline across melting permafrost.

rumleyfips said...

Sorry Rachel, Alberta politics makes people stupid.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps Alberta cannot lay solitary claim to the oil resources beneath it and must allow petroleum starved provinces to have unfettered access the the revenue it generates.

Anonymous said...

Heard Notley's enraged speech. Scratch the last provincial premier that seemed to have some faint clue from my list of one. The rest are abject losers from any vantage point.

Me, I'm subject to the forces surrounding Energy East, a dilbit pipeline to Saint John NB and the Irving Oil export terminal. No thought about energy independence, because the refinery there cannot refine the stuff - just another outlet for Alberta muck to the world. And Irving, the feudal ruler of NB, gets to make a buck or two on each barrel, while outwardly giving the impression that it's all wonderful for the economy. Which to all intents and purposes is them anyway. Irving Forestry got only a $3 tariff on its softwood lumber exports to the US Everyone else $19 and up. Oligarchs get special deals, at least on the face of it.

Notley, and if not her the futurists of the Alberta right, will bang this export drum for ever and a day. Good luck in BC battling that crazed lot.

BM

the salamander said...

.. Notely seems to be posturing.. protecting.. blah blah woof woof..
the old Harper/Novak mantra.. Jobs, the Economy, the wonder..
in lockstep with Jason Kenney..

Where is the vision, the fortitude.. ?
To go after a required reality.. ie green industry
tourism, recycling, creativity.. ?

But no.. its bank & wank on the tar sands & fracking for Asia
and pretend its 'energy security' for Canadians
As if the Asian economy will fuel your cars or warm your home

John B. said...

Let's not be selfish. Would the coastal people just let the Asian bastards freeze in the dark for the sake of their precious fish and scenery?

the salamander said...

.. for John B - In my humble view..
Asia is welcome to all the Tar Sands Dilbit they can handle
completely free.. tho with a few provisos..

- Get it out of Alberta without entering any other province or territory
- all 'jobs' are to be filled by Canadian citizens - with no exceptions
- no freshwater or saltwater shall be contaminated in any way, shape or form
- no species or ecology shall be extirpated - even 'accidently'
- no political doublespeak, blandishment ie 'emergy security' to be spewed
- thou shalt not shaft the First Nations or steal more land from them

- i will be glad to define how they are also welcome to LNG FOR FREE
since that seems to be the current subsidization plan
Similar rules and laws would apply of course..
but in the case of LNG, both in BC and Alberta

If Saskatchewan want to destroy their environment
they can keep re-electing Wall.. or hire Kouvalis or Ezra Levant
or build more churches or become heathens or pagans

i love & admire Saskatchewan..
drove harrows there, seed drills and the combines too
Place ks chock full o good hearted Canadians..
but I guess at least one province
needs to be the sacrificial pig
once Alberta is completely poisoned & gutted
It won't be Quebec.. seeing as they banned fracking

Anonymous said...

First off, love the blog, Mound.

Next, "we can't be a country that says one of its two functional coastlines is only going to do what the people who live right beside it want to do". To which I say, then we can't be a country that says the profits from one of its natural resources go to the people who happen live on top of it."

That was a right Harperish bit of sophistry from Notley.

Anonymous said...

Anyong...Today in the news June 10, 2017 CBC Calgary....There is a move afoot to take Alberta out of Confederation. How's that one.