Saturday, August 25, 2012

Harper's War on British Columbia

Is Stephen Harper waging a deliberate campaign to suppress British Columbia and her people?

I have been working on compiling a list of the measures Harper has imposed on British Columbia to facilitate the Northern Gateway pipeline and bitumen trafficking to China.

Taken individually, these measures are affronts, typical of this prime ministerial jackass.   It's when they're viewed in their totality, as they must be, that they can be seen for something far more sinister and oppressive.   Stephen Harper is waging an Alberta-centric war on British Columbia and our people.   He means to subdue us to his will.

Harper is the ultimate master of incrementalism.   Little things but lots of them that all add up.   And look at the list.   He waived the tanker exclusion zone created by the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards under the Trudeau government.  He moved the West Coast Oil Spill Emergency centre to Quebec.   He shuttered the bulk of our Coast Guard stations.   He gutted our fisheries protection regulations.   He laid off Fisheries and Oceans staff, entire departments, responsible for monitoring and protecting our coasts.  He transformed the environmental assessment process into an utter farce.   Layer, by layer, by layer, he's stripped away the people, the organizations and the laws that were just barely protecting the West Coast as it was.

Taken collectively, the most secretive and treacherous prime minister in Canadian history is waging a battle against one province to serve another and powerful corporate interests.   What Harper is doing is underhanded.   He acts against our will, without our consent, as though we were irrelevant to what he is proposing to do to our province.   He acts by fiat, without consultation.

Andrew Nikiforuk very eloquently and powerfully fleshes this out in his article, "Canadian Democracy, Death by Pipeline" published by ONEarth.org.   If you don't fully understand what we feel we're up against, I strongly urge you to read it.   And remember, what Nikiforuk has written here is just for starters.   There's more, plenty more.

h/t Regina Mom

4 comments:

sunsin said...

Sometimes I think Harper wants to be President of Greater Alberta. As the old Chinese proverb puts it, he'd rather be the beak of a chicken than the asshole of an ox. And that's a pity, because as we've seen, he makes a really convincing asshole.

The Mound of Sound said...

Smile, sigh

DarbyCar said...

Wow. Every time I feel confident that this terrible pipeline project
won't proceed, Harper pulls
another fast one. Who knows what
is going on in secret? This is governance by stealth.

Thanks for this - we really have
to stay on constant alert.

The Mound of Sound said...

Well it's certainly government by fiat without consultation much less consent. They label pipeline opponents as anti-Canadian, extremists, even eco-terrorists and then establish a secret police agency comprising Edmonton & Calgary officers, RCMP and even CSIS agents to intimidate pipeline opponents. It's about as undemocratic as it gets.