Thursday, December 19, 2019
He's Right. There Are Other, More Dangerous Things We Have to Deal With
So, prime minister Justin Trudeau comes out and says that the reported discontent in Alberta and Saskatchewan is not a threat to national unity. I think Justin just grew a pair.
Now, what about the truly grave threat facing Canada? You can't play both sides, not for long.
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6 comments:
.. I find ms Vassy Kapelos to be tendacious.. much like Don Martin on CTV.. his smug little rejoinders are replaced by her vaguely innocent dimply smile and colored contact lenses.. carefully curled hair. The pretend concerned panels and hosts on these major networks pale compared to TVO's Steve Paiken or PBS and Judy Woodruff, who don't appear to require multiple teleprompters mounted on multiple cameras. Such interviews are granted with strict provisos re Questions in Advance and interview scripting notes. Gotchas are really just surprise questions & are followed by repercussions upon future interviews.
To your point though.. I believe Trudeau et al decided to deliver a mild 'two handed jerk' (doggie training tactic) to Kenney et al and his rabble.. as the 'Alberta' fiction had evolved, grown & cultivated by Kenney et al into actual broader public perception via lazy assed Main Media.. thus the polls then duly reflect the echo chambering.. sigh..
.. a 2nd thought to your topic Mound.. which I see as an absolutely critical topic that lazy media simply punts.. & sold out Main Media denies deflects distorts..
The Boat Harbour Conundrum broke somewhat into Main Media the last few days. I still see this environmental and social tragedy or travesty (take your pick.. in terms of 'grave') as an over ripe solution waiting to be discovered, indeed embraced by deeply concerned and caring capable Canadians.
If the pulp mill simply shuts down.. the consequences are astonishing and grim. Not just to local logging, but to the entire town and all related businesses, local inhabitants.. ie it will be like a giant sinkhole opened and swallowed part of Nova Scotia.. a province of Canada, last I looked. What to do sez provincial government, why is it our problem sez many and sundry. Jason Kenney got a solution ? It just needs money ? Earth to Justin & Mr Butts ? Do you see a solution ? Let the mill continue to pump effluent, but directly into the Northumberland Straits.. home of advanced shellfish culturing and those creatures with claws.. the lobster fishery ?
Boat Harbour is the dying, flopping canary in the coal mine.. so just ignore it ? Hope it will go away ?
I see Boat Harbour as an opportunity.. no, a shining opportunity.. to achnowlege & examine the interwoven fabric of a town build around a pulp mill that is poisoning the waters.. make no mistake, the owners of that pulp mill will destroy the local society by closing, just as they managed to destroy and toxify the entire ecosystems the mill took advantage of.
We need to rescue that town & its local economy if possible, understand the interlocked industries.. any lobbying, any interference. It may be that Boat Harbour can point Canadians to reality.. rather than gobbling up the pipeline to Asia fantasy & 'Nation Building' propaganda of captured Governments and Faux Public Servants. We can remake Boat Harbour into a civic lighthouse for remedial cleanup, retraining and reinvigoration of a small town. Who is going to lead a tiny pilot project costing billions.. so that the monstrous BC & Alberta trillion $ lie of tar sands remediation, methane leaking 'retired' wells, gss & oil fracking wells, orphaned wells.. and all related infrastructure are identified and scheduled ? There has to be an 'upside of down' or all is lost.. and we then must face the reality of how we absolutely screwed the future of Canada & its current young & future generations.. and contributed a hefty dose of the same, to the rest of Spaceship Earth
Everything depends on identifying the real villain.
There's a lot more people affected than the mill workers at Northern Pulp, Salamander. There are well over 10,000 forestry workers and woodlot owners who supply the Mill from all over mainland NS, who are now up in arms. I've mentioned this aspect several times before to deaf ears. I used to live nearby the mill in the 1970s myself; it was dreadful then. I now live near Halifax.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. Premier Stephen McNeil put the kibosh on Northern Pulp today. It will be shut down. The company prevaricated to the end, got the workers to put on a 20 mile logging truck tailback on the Trans Canada out of Halifax/Dartmouth yesterday, and got loud-mouthed louts to preach outside the legislature.
After five years of producing utterly amateur plans for effluent remediation (as directed by law from 2014) which amounted to a miles long pipe out into the Northumberland Straight to poison lobsters instead of people, the company's shitty play was called. Unequivocally.
I applaud McNeil. No prevarication, he was stern today. It's the first major anti-pollution stand I've heard of in this benighted country. He will be reviled by dopes who paid no attention, made no what-if plans.
In fact, he was far more prime ministerial and definite than that little wimp JT. Yup, for the first time, I'll vote Liberal provincially next time.
BM
BM
I'm struck by how little, if anything, we hear about Boat Harbour and Northern Pulp. It's not a priority for our mass media.
.. 'interlocked industries' BM .. its almost unimaginable how many people and their livlihoods aside from citizens in the town proper.. are at risk. The local tourism and recreation industries died the flrst week after the mill opened.. so no relief from that sector. How about the hospitality sector ? Grocery or convenience stores ? Gas stations ? Schools ? Medical services withering up. Trucking, Real estate crashing. What of the businesses relying on the paper products.. and the downstream impact there ? No product being shipped out ! It should not require much imagination to understand the consequences of that pulp and paper mill closing. I give up.. does Boat Harbour have to become a ghost town ? I think it needs to become the scene of a great experiment.. a small town that becomes the 'poster town' for switching into a working model for small scale remediation success. It will (or would) take an enormous amount of Provincial and Federal dollars and staggering cultural shift. The point is.. the louder the outcry at the expense, the impossibility of some level of success.. the more it should be evident that Grassy Narrows can be rescued or will never be.. or the mine tailings 'pond' that burst in BC.. but the scale of Alberta's ongoing ecological disasters that are thousands fold greater in scale then becomes even more shocking.. Folks.. Alberta will never be remediated.. but like in Boat Harbour the proposed 'venting' of millions of toxic litres daily into the Northumberland Strait exemplifies exactly what Alberta wants to do to the Athabaska watershed - while sucking up fresh clean water upstream of the tar sands. Alberta also wants to dump their diluted bitumen through BC.. and let that province take the risks and damage.. and the dreadful costs
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