Ford Says Ontario Has Done Enough.

At least there's something Doug Ford can thank his Liberal predecessor for - cutting Ontario's greenhouse gas emissions. He's positively boastful about that, to the point where he's shining an unwanted light on his anti-climate tax comrades, Kenney and Moe.

Doug Ford's government in Ontario is now insisting the province should not be expected to do more than its "fair share" to meet Canada's national commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But Ford's definition of "fair" might present a significant challenge to the rest of the country — particularly Ford's conservative allies in Alberta and Saskatchewan. 

Under Kathleen Wynne's Liberal government, Ontario was committed to reducing its emissions by 37 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030. While tearing down large portions of that government's climate agenda, Ford's Progressive Conservatives settled on a less-ambitious target: a cut of 30 per cent below 2005 by 2030.

That new provincial target matches the national target. It's also (conveniently enough) within reach already. As the Ford government now loudly notes, Ontario's emissions have declined by 22 per cent below 2005 levels. 

"Today's report confirms Ontario has decreased emissions by 22 per cent since 2005, while the rest of Canada's input continues to increase," Rod Phillips, Ontario's environment minister, said last week when the federal government released the latest inventory of Canada's emissions. "Families in Ontario have already paid a significant cost for these efforts, yet the federal government continues to ask us to pay more than our fair share."

But what is the real picture? It's pretty grim. A recent report from the University of Western Ontario's Ivey School of Business shows Canada's greenhouse gas emissions by province, both overall and per capita.

Ford says Ontario has done enough and it's now up to the "rest of Canada" to do their share.

Here are some of the findings from the summary to the Ivey report:

• Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions currently represent about 1.6 percent of the global total. Canada is among the top 10 global emitters and one of the largest developed world per capita emitter of GHGs. 

• Canadian federal governments have committed to reduce annual GHG emissions from the current level of 726 megatonnes (Mt) to 622 Mt in 2020 and 525 Mt in 2030. • Within Canada, GHG emissions vary widely across provinces ranging from 267 Mt in Alberta to 1.8 Mt in PEI in 2013. 

• In per capita terms, Saskatchewan and Alberta are among the developed world’s largest emitters at 68 and 67 tonnes respectively.* Per capita emissions in BC, Ontario, and Quebec are in the 10-14 tonne range, comparable to best performers in Western Europe. 

• For provinces with announced GHG emission targets, the level of ambition varies widely. Alberta plans to increase emissions towards 2020, and then return to today’s levels by 2030, while Ontario Quebec and Manitoba plan to reduce emissions by 56, 27 and 8 Mt respectively. 

• Even if all provincial targets were fully achieved, Canada would still need to reduce GHG emissions by an additional 45 Mt in 2020 and 55 Mt in 2030 to meet its international commitments.

* The Ivey analysis was before the federal government's report this week showing that the Tar Sanders massively understated their GHG emissions from bitumen extraction.

So, since Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia have the lowest, per capital emissions, "comparable the best performers in Western Europe," while Saskatchewan and Alberta, by contrast, are off the chart even using their dodgy numbers, Ford must be referring to his comrades in arms, Kenney and Moe. They're the dirty buggers, the climate wreckers, and they should be easy pickings for Justin Trudeau. Wait, I'm sorry, when it comes to bitumen Trudeau is in their canoe.

No matter how much they shuck and jive, the petro-provinces and the petro-state simply cannot get past this:

According to the latest statistics, Canada emits about 1.6 percent of the world’s GHG emissions.  Despite this relatively low share, Canada is among the top 10 global emitters on an absolute basis, and stands firmly in the top 3 for emissions per capita. By way of comparison, Canada’s population makes up about 0.5 percent of the world total so that our emissions’ share is about 3 times our population share.

Trudeau acolytes at this point tend to drag out SFU economist Mark Jaccard's recent comment that, thanks to the Dauphin, Canada is the climate change envy of the world. It's not. We are among the top 10 overall global emitters even though we're just half a per cent of the world by population and, yes, we are "firmly in the top 3 for emissions per capita." That might make us the envy of Saudi Arabia or Venezuela but the rest of the world, really?

Those Ever So Tarry Sands

You know your country has descended into a petro-state by the arguments it invokes to excuse itself. The classic Tory line that's now the Liberal line is that, gee shucks, Canada is such a minor player that even if we stopped flogging bitumen it wouldn't really change much. Even Environment Canada is beating that dead horse.

Much like the unfunded quarter trillion dollar clean up cost for Athabasca's tailing ponds, the enormity of Tar Sands emissions is never really addressed. Maybe a little bit, but so what, not that bad... Out of sight/out of mind.

Pollution from fossil fuels in Canada continues to grow by staggering amounts, with the oilsands sector alone responsible for more carbon pollution than all of B.C. or Quebec in 2017, says the federal government in its latest climate change report to the United Nations. 

The newest edition of Canada’s National Inventory Report, covering data up to two years ago, shows that the oil and gas sector was responsible for 195 million tonnes, or megatonnes (Mt) of greenhouse gas emissions in 2017, up eight Mt from 2016.

The oilsands, a region in Alberta and Saskatchewan that constitute almost all of Canada’s 173 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, generated 81 Mt of pollution in 2017, making up 41 per cent of the sector’s emissions. 

That is larger than all the pollution generated by the entire economies of British Columbia that year, at 62 Mt, or Quebec's at 78 Mt. It is also larger than emissions reductions that have been seen in other parts of the country.

How Trudeau screwed the pooch.

The NDP government of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, which was defeated in Tuesday night's provincial election, had promised to set an absolute cap of 100 Mt of carbon pollution from the oilsands. Premier-designate Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party is expected to undo Notley's climate policies, including her cap on oilsands pollution. 

But the sector, which has represented about two per cent of Canada's economy according to federal government estimates, was responsible for 400,000 direct and indirect jobs in Alberta in 2016. It has historically opposed proposals to introduce tough national climate change policies.

The last thing Canada should be doing is building pipelines.

"Increases in emissions from the tarsands are undoing all the progress being made in other sectors," said Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, in a statement. 

"If we are serious about protecting communities from climate-fueled floods, wildfires and other extreme weather, the last thing Canada should be doing is building new pipelines to expand oil production and exports. Either we act like this truly is a crisis that threatens our health and survival, or we sleepwalk towards disaster. It's as simple as that and our politicians are currently choosing the second option."

This Is What Gives Them Away

A lot of stupid people in Canada have come to think of Athabasca bitumen as "oil." That is the single most important victory the petro-state has achieved.

It's not oil. It may be turned into oil at a distant refinery, probably in the States  but we're told even in Asia, at some time, somewhere. Until it leaves that distant refinery it's something quite different from  any conventional oil.

"They" - the federal and provincial governments, our bitumen-friendly media, and the Oil Patch - are lying to us about this stuff, filling your mind with images of something that is not. Whether it comes out of Justin Trudeau's mouth or Andrew Scheer's mouth or Jason Kenney's mouth, they're feeding you carefully contrived horse shit and, by the look of things, you've got a taste for it now.

They don't want you to trouble your precious minds with what they're really doing. They don't want you dwelling on what's really in the crap they're squeezing through their pipelines.

They don't want you dwelling on the ultra-high carbon, granulated coal in their crud - petcoke. Out of sight/out of mind. That stuff gets refined out. Then it gets sold wherever no one is too fussy about burning it. It's a lot worse, pound for pound, than brown or thermal coal, the real garbage stuff.

They'll howl like cut cats at the first mention of the lethal toxins embedded in  unrefined dilbit.

The heavy metals, rated as priority pollutants by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, include mercury, arsenic, beryllium, copper, cadmium, thallium, lead, nickel, zinc and silver. All are toxic. Arsenic is a known human carcinogen; cadmium can severely destroy the kidneys and other organs; and thallium is so poisonous that it pops up in Agatha Christie mysteries as a murder weapon.

That stuff threatens environmental catastrophe wherever a dilbit pipeline runs. It threatens British Columbia's pristine coastal ecology with every wallowing supertanker that navigates our waters.

They know that a dilbit spill in BC waters is virtually beyond clean up. They know that the diluent quickly evaporates out leaving the dense bitumen to sink to the bottom, hundreds of feet down, where it can never be cleaned up and will destroy the marine food chain for many decades, perhaps forever.



They know how pernicious and devastating this crud is. That's why Trudeau's environment minister, Dame Cathy McKenna, has approved the use of Corexit as an "oil dispersent." It's nothing of the sort. It's an outrageous lie whether it comes out of Cathy's mouth or Justin's.  Corexit doesn't disperse oil, even ordinary conventional crude oil. It sinks spilled oil to the bottom. Out of sight/out of mind. It was used in Price William Sound for the Exxon Valdez. It was used in the Gulf of Mexico for the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. It has one purpose - to make the problem go away for those who can turn their backs on what they've done.

Crews are regularly sickened by Corexit. Most of the crews that worked the Exxon Valdez spill fell seriously ill.  Just read the warning label from Nalco, the producer of Corexit.

Corexit is for use on spills on land. Nalco's clean up directions make that obvious.

"Do not contaminate surface water." As if.

There is no justification whatsoever for exposing my province, my land, my coast to this environmental disaster in waiting. All these things - the toxins, the petcoke, the acids and abrasives - could easily be refined out in Alberta, in Athabasca.

The thing is. If they were responsible - Alberta or the feds - and showed just a little respect for British Columbia and demanded that it be refined on site, it would expose how worthless this high-carbon/high-cost/low-value garbage fossil fuel really is.

Despite all this these bastards threaten us. They jail us and give us criminal records.  It's ironic that we should be going to jail, not them. It's pretty rich to hear Liberals whine that, if we don't vote for their boy, we're electing Andrew Scheer. What a laugh.

So, What in Hell Does Justin Do Now?

This is another fine mess he's created. He tried to help Rachel as much as he could but she's out, bumped off by the bete noire of Western conservatism, Jason Kenney.

The new premier is a truly shrewd bugger who knows to strike when an opponent is vulnerable and, today, "vulnerable" is Justin Trudeau's job description.

Trudeau owns a pipeline, a very costly pipeline, and, no matter what he does with it, the Liberals will have no reward in Alberta.  Jason Kenney is out to whip the Liberals like the proverbial red-headed stepchild. How tightly has Trudeau tied his own hands?

There are seats the Liberals can lose in the west - in British Columbia, Kenney's other target. It's hard to imagine coastal British Columbians warming to a prime minister seen as in league with that conservative thug from the other side of the Rockies.

What a screw up and, yes, I am referring to Justin Trudeau.  He dug this hole. It's his to climb out of if he still can.

This Could Be Another Difficult Day for Mr. Trudeau

He panicked and tossed away $4.5 billion on a pipeline project, money we might not (probably won't) get back. He's about to pour another seven to nine billion into constructing the Justin Trudeau Memorial Trans-Mountain Pipeline.

At the time the prime minister justified this climate wrecking venture as the price we had to pay to bring Alberta onside with carbon pricing, emissions cuts.  The outgoing premier of Alberta, Rachel Notley, dutifully nodded, a wry smile crossing her lips.

The predicted incoming premier, Jason Kenney, won't be fulfilling Ms. Notley's eco-pledges. He will, however, expect Justin to finish that pipeline and be quick about it. And Jason knows Justin can be played.

Welcome to a future of pipeline politics, an issue tailor-made for greasy pols like Kenney.

Jason knows that the Sword of Damocles hangs over Alberta's bitumen pits. With the price of both clean energy generation and storage plummeting, the writing is on the wall for high-carbon/high-cost/low-value fossil fuels - i.e. bitumen. The halcyon days of the Tar Sands are over. Analysis after analysis reach the same conclusion - it will still sell in limited amounts at marginal prices.

There'll be blame aplenty and endless finger-pointing by those not wanting to get their fair share. For some, such as Kenney, an easy out will be the pipeline. The popular narrative, implausible but ingrained, is that Alberta's economic woes are the result of a lack of pipeline capacity. Ottawa has dragged its heels, British Columbia has thwarted Alberta's divine right to imperil BC's coast, yada, yada, yada.

Blaming outsiders is key to ignoring that Alberta's real woes are self-inflicted. It's economy is internally destabilized by provincial energy policy.

During the era of Ralph Klein the people of Alberta were conned into believing they could live beyond their means. Oil and bitumen royalties would cover the tab. No need for sales taxes. Those were for losers. A lot of them still believe that nonsense.

Jim Prentice wanted to bring back the long pants (i.e. taxes) but, when he sought a mandate in 2015, Alberta voters punished the PCs, ending their 40 year reign and consigning them to third place.

Alberta would remain a place that could pay its bills and provide basic services so long as oil prices were booming. That's high-grade stupid.

The delusions of oil run deep across Alberta but, like most fantasies, they can leave scars when they're taken seriously. In Alberta, even education has been neglected, unable to overcome the allure of easy money in the oil patch.

While postsecondary education is not an issue that will get the blood of Albertans boiling the way Quebec and equalization do, it’s arguably far more important to the province’s future. In fact, there is an incipient crisis in this area that so far has been largely ignored by Alberta’s political masters. 

Here is the problem. 

Over the past several decades, young Albertans – especially young men – could get good-paying jobs in the oil patch right out of high school. That’s no longer the case – and likely won’t be ever again. And beyond disruptions in the global energy market, advances in the world of technology – robotics, artificial intelligence, among others – are also affecting job opportunities for low-educated workers.

...Alberta has the lowest participation rates for postsecondary education in the country. According to a recent paper done for the Council of Post-Secondary Presidents of Alberta, between 2007 and 2014 the participation rate for men and women 18 to 34 averaged just 17 per cent. Nationally, that rate fluctuated between 22 and 24 per cent.

...Others have tried to sound the alarm about Alberta’s dismal record on research and innovation, which is what the future is all about. The province received an overall grade of D from the Conference Board of Canada in itsinnovation report card, with a particularly poor mark for research and development. 

In its paper, the council also points to something a recent TD Economics study called the “scarring effect.” This is the wage penalty associated with the period of unemployment for youth first entering the work force; the longer young people sit on the sidelines without a job, the greater the impact it has on both their future earnings and the economy overall. In a province with an outsized number of kids without any secondary education, this could be significant.

Today's editorials in the Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald back Kenney all the way as though, once Notley is driven out, Alberta's petro-economy will return the province to bountiful prosperity of its past glory. Full steam ahead and spare not a thought to the consequences. This brought to mind a recent column written by Andrew Nikiforuk in The Tyee, "The Coddling of the Alberta Mind."

Oil, a commodity that nurtures dependency, has so coddled the Alberta mind that it has fostered a provincial culture of victimization as poisonous as the identity politics unsettling university campuses.

...Every day the province’s oil-obsessed politicos warn Albertans that Canada is a dangerous place full of self-righteous climate activists (and some are indeed self-righteous), anti-pipeline protestors, dumb courts, stubborn First Nations, and nasty liberals. 

Moreover the province’s potential for offence-taking has become as grand as Justin Trudeau’s vindictive Liberal Party of Canada. It can’t tolerate any truth-telling either.

...Albertans have become such a fragile, oil-reliant people, reasons Kenney, that the province now needs the equivalent of university Bias Response Teams, in this case to foster “a safe and inclusive environment” for its petroleum exporters who have now claimed Alberta’s identity as their own. 

(The rulers of Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Russia, we should remember, don’t much like oil critics, either. The political records show that oil relishes conflict and breeds political aggression like no other commodity, except cocaine.) 

...Over many years, Alberta’s Tories repeatedly gambled that the price of bitumen, a garbage crude that requires upgrading and complex refining, could only go higher, and they bet wrong.

So did the NDP, another oil-coddled entity. (And yes, Albertans should be very angry about the gross mismanagement of their gas and oil resources by their elected politicians.)

...Coddling a mind is a terrible thing, but coddling a province is a social disaster.

In the current election campaign, no politician wants to pony up and tell the truth.

It wasn’t foreigners or bad actors who created Alberta’s failings; it was Albertans and their damn greed and lack of strategic planning.

Albertans, and only Albertans, share the blame for not collecting their fair share and saving for a rainy day. 

All the angry talk about leaving Canada is the whinging of coddled minds in the land of the Wild Rose. Kenney knows how to play the victim card even better than Notley and, barring some miraculous turnaround in markets for high-cost/high-carbon/low-value sludge bitumen, Kenney is going to be looking for whipping boys.

Just like Trump's Gullibillies, Kenney has a ready-made base of easily-manipulated dupes and he has the manual for their care and feeding. He's a bit like the Nigel Farage of western Canada with Andrew Scheer a dull impersonation of Boris Johnson. They've got their sights set on Justin Trudeau and, for that matter, British Columbia. This could be a long and difficult night for the prime minister and for B.C.

Good News for the Environment = Bad Tidings for Prime Minister Pipeline

If it's as good as they say it is - and, with these "breakthroughs" that's always a very big "if" -  the fossil energy industry could be kaput. Sorry, Justin. Sorry, Rachel. Sorry, Jason. Sorry, Andrew. Sorry, Big Oil. WooHoo, British Columbia.

An article in Financial Post claims a BC company has come up with a breakthrough technology to capture and transform atmospheric carbon, carbon dioxide, into fuel for cars, trucks and jets.

In an article published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Joule, Carbon Engineering outlines what it calls direct air capture in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere through a chemical process, then combined with hydrogen and oxygen to create fuel.

“If these aren’t renewable fuels, what are?” said David Keith, professor of applied physics at Harvard University, lead author of the paper and principal in Carbon Engineering.

At least seven companies worldwide are working on the idea. Swiss-based Climeworks has already built a commercial-scale plant. 

It costs Climeworks about US$600 a tonne to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon Engineering says it can do the job for between US$94 and US$232 a tonne because it uses technology and components that are well understood and commercially available.

Winning the cost war.

Carbon Engineering’s fuel costs about 25 per cent more than gasoline made from oil. Oldham said work is being done to reduce that. 

Because the plant currently uses some natural gas, by the time the fuel it produces has been burned it has released a half-tonne of carbon dioxide for every tonne removed from the air. That gives it a carbon footprint 70 per cent lower than a fossil fuel, he said. 

That footprint would shrink further if the plant were all-electric. And if it ran on wind- or solar-generated electricity, the fuel would be almost carbon neutral.

Playing into BC's hand.

“What you need is a way to make a fuel in a place where you’ve got really cheap low-carbon power, and that will power the airplane. That’s the core idea here.” 

Putting a price on carbon has been crucial to Carbon Engineering’s development, said Oldham. 

“We would not be in business if carbon pricing did not exist.”

If the key is to find really cheap, low-carbon power for the extraction/processing operation that means solar, wind, hydro-electric and/or thermal-electric. British Columbia has vast untapped supplies of thermal-energy. It's what you get in mountainous terrain. And, as for hydro-electricity, we've also got that in abundance. That's also what you get from mountainous terrain along the west coast of any continent.

So, let's say this Carbon Engineering outfit is legit and they manage to produce renewable, i.e. "clean" hydrocarbon transport fuels at or below current fossil fuel prices, there goes the market for the sort of fossil fuels we're dependent upon today. Places that can produce the least costly, low-carbon power for recycling atmospheric carbon will have energy independence from the fossil fuel industry.

The logical extension of this is that nations that don't have an abundance of fossil fuel reserves but have the ability to produce renewable energy at competitive cost would be able to harvest atmospheric carbon to produce their own transport fuels. That would throw a huge wrench into OPEC and its parasite producers such as Canada.

Carry that one step further and you come to the Athabasca Tar Sands and Trudeau's Trans Mountain pipeline, both essentially DOA. If Carbon Engineering's technology pans out, Canada's days as a petro-state are finished -except for the aftermath.

Wouldn't that be ironic if a British Columbia company brought down the very jurisdictions that have been pressuring, even threatening, the province to bow to the petro-state?

"Here I Stand" - The Late Rafe Mair on an Independent British Columbia. He Saw This Coming, a Lot of Us Did.

Lawyer, Social Credit cabinet minister, columnist, broadcaster: Rafe Mair was one of those legendary firebrands British Columbia occasionally produces. Mair died in early October, 2017, seven months after he had penned a call for British Columbia to leave Canada.

His words never rang truer than now when we're getting browbeaten and strong armed by our federal government and threatened by the malignancy on our eastern frontier, Alberta. Mair had them both foremost in his mind when he wrote this.

I find I no longer come close to sharing the values Canada now stands for – I’m not talking about opinions but a philosophy of life, a set of basic values. 

As a core value, I value the environment above the desire of bankers and developers to make money and bought and paid for politicians to support them. I accept the need for societal sustenance but do not accept plunder in the name of progress. 

The flashpoint is the Trudeau supported revival of the Alberta Tar Sands and the Prime Minister compelling BC to sacrifice both principle and its environment to the transport and sale of Tar Sands product to places that will be under no constraints as to its use. I believe Canada must accept responsibility for safeguarding water, land and air in places it exports products and services. I cannot be loyal ro a country that has no such values.

...I have long felt more British Columbian than Canadian. When BC Minister for constitutional affairs working on amending the BNA Act to become the Constitution, I observed the perpetual second class treatment of BC and saw how no one cared that the Senate was an ongoing, deliberate putdown of my province, observed its woeful lack of representation on federal boards and commissions, lack of BC prime ministers and utter absence oF BC Governors-General, the disgraceful Prussian arrogant treatment of BC’s fishery by the federal government, the unthinking and uncaring expectation that in the 1970 FLQ crisis that it was fine to put BC, which wasn’t involved under martial law (no one would surely suggest that a murder and a kidnapping in BC by BC separatists, would have resulted in Ontario and Quebec being placed on martial law). The put downs seemed endless and started early. 

My generation grew up learning that Canadian explorers were Cartier and Champlain, Indians were Iroquois, Algonquin and Huron, and some limey, Sir Isaac Brock was a Canadian hero. I learned about Captains Cook and Vancouver, Quadra and Russian settlements in British History in a private school and about Simon Fraser and David Thompson at UBC. I didn’t read a decent history of BC until from Dr. Walter Sage and Dr. Margaret Ormsby in secohd year UBC and the real history of the land of my birth until I was nearly 70 and interviewed Dr. Jean Barman on her classic, The West Beyond The West. I doubt one in 100 kids of my vintage could name the first BC premier or the rich Victoria merchants, without a suggestion of public support, who sold us out to Ottawa for a mess of potage and a railway to help Ontario grab our resources cheap.

...The real reason I want BC out is a question of principles, or values, if you prefer. I’m not talking about political issues but basic tenets of belief.

The Meech Lake/Charlottetown Accords disclosed a basic gap between the Central Canadian elite – the people the late Denny Boyd called “Higher Purpose Persons (HPPs)”, who know best, – and those ignorant idiots in BC who refused to accept special powers for one province. 

After Elijah Harper killed Meech Lake, BC said next time it won’t be the premiers deciding but the people in referendum and thus it was that The Charlottetown referendum was held and 67.9% of British Columbians said “we’ve had enough of your patronizing crap – get stuffed!” 

Then Justin Trudeau decided, cross my heart, hope to die, to give Canadians a better voting system. To do it democratically, we’ll hold cozy neighbourhood meetings around the Country, then the House of Commons will meet, and the Liberal Party will cram through a reformed First Past The Post with a preferential ballot and presto! by an amazing coincidence, The Liberals will have its way and should carry Central Canada forevermore.

HPPs said there mustn’t be a referendum because, er, the people can’t understand these complicared issues and remember what happened when they voted on Charlottetown! In fact the HPPs were right for the wrong reason. Trudeau understood it was a Liberal Party Permanent Election formula he was after and wasn’t going to let those troublemakers in BC spoil it all for the elite, the HPPS as they did with Charlottetown in 1992. It was safer to break your word and lay low.

...I am an environmentalist. When we lose our environment, be it the extinction of a species we’ve never heard of, a valley sustained by its fauna, flora and water or a run of herring it is a huge tragedy. That list, as you know, is endless. Reading reports from Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd breaks the heart. 

Does that mean that I oppose all industry and development? 

That’s a pretty silly question. We have to work, eat and survive. But to the Canada exemplified by Trudeau, development, without more than cynical word service for the values I care about, trumps everything. Bear in mind throughout the balance of what I have to say that the Precautionary Principle is the law of Canada. 

Definition – The precautionary principle (or precautionary approach) to risk management states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public, or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus (that the action or policy is not harmful), the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking that action. 

Start with fish farms. Recently disease spreading from farms to wild salmon was scientifically demonstrated yet another time. The evidence of assaults on our wild salmon by sea lice from fish farms and disease from farmed fish, not to mention damage to other sea life and to the ocean floor, has piled up for 15+ years, is overwhelming yet, in as few words as possible, what was Fisheries Minister and DFO answer to the plethora of evidence generally and to the latest report? “BC, GO FUCK YOURSELVES!” 

Forgive my language but when I look at the work Alexandra Morton has done, the long underfunded battle of First Nations, the impact of this fascist government on commercial fishermen and, yes, sports fishermen, going back to Confederation that’s the only way I can translate the Federal Government’s attitude of sacrificing our precious resources to a large Norwegian despoiler of nature.. 

Does this offend your basic set of values? It certainly does mine! 

...The Alberta Tar Sands, the world’s biggest natural polluter, produces a tar like substance artificially liquefied, which if spilled, especially on water, is virtually impossible to clean up as it usually sinks too quickly to be dealt with, a spill defined as minor into the Kalamazoo River, in Michigan, in 2010, has not yet been cleaned up and probably never will be. The federal government has approved the Kinder Morgan pipeline to bring this from the Tar Sands through BC to Burrard Inlet (Vancouver Harbour) them taken by tankers across the Salish Sea, through or near the Gulf Islands through the Straits of Juan de Fuca to the Ocean. 

The company claims this will “only” add 400 tankers a year but as the Duke of Wellington said to a man on a London street who hailed him ‘Mr. Robinson, I believe’, “Sir, If you believe that, you’ll believe anything!” 

Spills are inevitable. So are tanker collisions and serious ones. Great damage will be done to our precious sea life, lives will be lost. And for what? 

Does this offend your basic set of values? It certainly does mine! 

A final word. Many things make up a nation but in my view shared values outrank all the rest combined. These aren’t political quarrels I have with Canada, though I have lots of them. No, these are fundamental values I can’t live without and Justin Trudeau can’t live with. None of these values destroy industry but put it, and what we are deeply committed to in British Columbia, on a level playing field where he who would impact the very essence of our homeland has the onus of proving he will do no harm or none which we whose home it is will not accept. 

British Columbia, my home, has been pushed around the 85+ years I have lived, worked, served, loved and, yes, loafed in her. To be called a bad Canadian because I want to protect her wild life and their habitat and don’t want to assist uncaring capitalists and their captive governments to spread ruin here and elsewhere has finally become too much. 

I hope you understand but that’s irrelevant, “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.”

I somehow think those words are destined to live on. Eventually, maybe not this year, perhaps not next but, eventually, we're going to get out of this empty shell of a country where choice comes in meaningless options of Harper or Ignatieff, Trudeau or Scheer, pale suits stuffed with wet cardboard. We cannot solve the challenges of this century with leaders of their meagre calibre.

And the Arsehole of the Day Award Goes to - Deron Bilous

He's Rachel Notley's minister of economic development and trade, "Bilious Daren" Bilous.

Minister Bilous wins the Arsehole of the Day Award for referring to his fellow NDP legislators in British Columbia as "a bunch of shitheads" during a meeting with municipal politicians in Edmonton.

Bilous says he ought to have used "more diplomatic" language. Actually, what he ought to have done is pound salt straight up his backside.

"Quite frankly, ideally, we need to be more collaborative with the provinces on either side of us, although B.C. is being a bunch of s--theads," Bilous said, according to a report in the Edmonton Journal. "But we're going to do what we can to get the pipeline built."

The report said members of the audience laughed and applauded loudly.

It's curious that the more British Columbia wants straight answers about this hazmat crud Alberta wants to transport across and out of BC, the more Rachel's Notley Crew turn apoplectic.

This is not a new controversy. The devastation of bitumen spills has been going on for at least 15-years. Alberta and Ottawa who, under the tenets of the Precautionary Principle, bear the burden of proving their dilbit pipeline/supertanker initiative as safe as they claim it to be have done nothing (that we know of) to research the issue. The Royal Society of Canada says they've not answered the fundamental safety questions. Trudeau's own Environment Canada says exactly the same. They've had at least 15 years to do this and yet they come to the table empty-handed.

There's plenty of reason to suspect they know there's nothing safe about this dilbit business and they're keeping that knowledge to themselves. After all, why should they now get indignant when British Columbia wants to get those essential answers? The onus is on them and they aren't meeting it.


BC's Pipeline Vigilance is Backed By Science, Edmonton Journal, 9 Feb., 2018.

The Precautionary Principle is the Law of Canada, the Dragun Corporation, 27 October, 2015.
The Precautionary Principle Recognized as a Norm of Substantive Canadian Law by Federal Court of Canada, 7 Sept., 2015
The Supreme Court of Canada applies the Precautionary Principle, case comment, Castonguay Blasting v. Ontario.

Is Tesla a Death Sentence for Conventional Power Utilities?

Elon Musk wagered he could build s 129 megawatt battery in Queensland within 100 days or it was free. Tesla built and installed the battery with plenty of time to spare and, with it, just might have served a death warrant on fossil energy electricity.

Alternative clean energy, solar and wind, is already cheaper than coal, oil or gas generated power. The hangup has always been the need for some affordable means to store that power when the sun isn't shining or the wind stops blowing. That's where Tesla and others have come in.

The CBC's Don Pittis has an article today on how solar power is driving down the cost of electricity to levels once unimaginable.

The new price, described by the news site Electrek as the cheapest electricity on the planet, was less than 2 cents per kilowatt hour, "part of a pattern marching to 1 cent per kWh bids that are coming in 2019 (or sooner)," the site declared.

The record was not set in a place where energy is traditionally cheap. Nor is it from a traditional electricity source.

The new low price of 1.7 cents per kilowatt was part of a contract between the Italian multinational ENEL Green Power and the Mexican government agency that administers the country's electricity wholesale market.

Fossil energy bad boy Alberta may be the first to step up in Canada.

Alberta is on the leading edge of an energy experiment that is turning global — and Canadian — markets upside down.

Within weeks, the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), which manages and operates the province's power grid, is expected to announce the results of a bidding process to create "5,000 MW of renewable electricity generation capacity connected to the Alberta grid between now and 2030."

The power will come from wind, not solar, and the prices will be more than double the record prices set in Mexico. But for the first time in Canada, the Alberta agency will use the same market auction system for creating green power that has helped push electricity prices down in Mexico and other places around the world.

Some experts say the prices set in the Alberta bidding process could be as low as 5 cents per kilowatt hour. That's in the same range as the gold standard combined cycle natural gas power plan and just the beginning of a process that will use market forces to stimulate new efficiencies in Canada's electricity market as technology improves.

In 2014 the world's largest private bank, UBS, warned its moneyed investors to steer clear of conventional power utilities.

In a briefing paper sent to clients and investors this week, the Zurich-based UBS bank argues that large-scale centralized power stations will soon become extinct because they are too big and inflexible and are "not relevant" for future electricity generation. Instead the authors expect it to be cheaper and more efficient for households and businesses to generate their own energy to power their cars and to store any surplus energy in their own buildings even without subsidies.

"Solar is at the edge of being a competitive power generation technology. The biggest drawback has been its intermittency. This is where batteries and electric vehicles (EVs) come into play. Battery costs have declined rapidly, and we expect a further decline of more than 50% by 2020. By then a mass [produced] electric vehicle will have almost the same price as a combustion engine car. But it will save up to 2,000 euros a year on fuel cost, hence, it will begin to pay off almost immediately without any meaningful upfront "investment." This is why we expect a rapidly growing penetration with EVs, in particular in countries with high fossil fuel prices.

These rapidly emerging technologies will show the true colours of our political leadership in the Canadian petro-state.  Trudeau has shown he can always be counted upon to say the right thing and then do something else or simply nothing. Cognitive dissonance is no problem for the diminutive son of Pierre. That apple may not have fallen far from the tree but it rolled all the way down the hill.

Kid Pipeline has broken every promise to commit the federal government in support of the Kinder-Morgan pipeline. What is the justification for that pipeline set to carry the world's highest carbon and toxic ersatz oil in a world on the brink of transitioning to much cheaper, far cleaner alternative clean energy? If bitumen goes bust, becomes a "stranded asset" then the fallout will land squarely on Trudeau. He broke his promises. He made his choice. 

Dirtier Than We Had Ever Imagined.

Oil and gas fracking doesn't draw the same attention in Canada as it has attracted in the United States. It's probably fair to say that most of us hardly think of it at all. That could be about to change.

Two new studies into fracking operations in western Canada show that fracking generally and the LNG industry in particular are far dirtier, leaking massively more methane, than we had been led to believe.

A peer-reviewed study appearing in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions used measurements in the field to estimate that methane emissions from B.C.’s shale gas basins are now at least 2.5 times higher than provincial government estimates.

That makes the oil and gas sector the largest source of climate pollution in B.C., a greater source of pollution than commercial transportation.

Based on measurements from mobile methane detectors driven around in a Dodge truck, the study found that just the drilling part of the industry in the B.C. portion of the Montney Formation, a 29,850 square-kilometre siltstone area in Western Canada, is releasing 111,800 tonnes of methane a year into the atmosphere.

That is equivalent to burning more than 4.5 million tonnes of coal or putting more than two million cars on the road. Half of B.C.’s fracked gas currently comes from the Montney. The study did not look at methane leaks from pipelines or gas processing plants.

...

More than 130 scientists recently criticized the federal government for assessing the climate change impact of a proposed Petronas LNG terminal in B.C. by using unverified and unrealistically small estimates of methane leakage.

All LNG environmental assessments in the province to date have used a questionable methane leakage rate of 0.28 per cent estimated by the B.C. government — one of the lowest rates on the continent.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculates that most natural gas operations lose about 1.33 per cent of their product, while some sites have recorded leakage rates as high as nine per cent. Leakage rates above three per cent make methane as dirty as coal in terms of direct impact on climate change. 

But Wait, There's More

Meanwhile, another study found that methane leaks pose an even graver problem in Alberta, home to more than 300,000 oil and gas wells. (B.C. currently has 25,000 wells, but LNG developments could add 150,000 wells in the Montney Formation alone.)

To back up its case, the environmental group reviewed the findings of a 2017 study by the Alberta Energy Regulator and GreenPath Energy, which found that “the actual emissions at oil and gas facilities from pneumatic devices are 60 per cent higher than estimates used to compile Canada’s GHG inventory.”

Pneumatic devices, mostly powered by methane, help to pump and control the flow of gas from well sites and other facilities. Most vent methane directly to the atmosphere too.

The GreenPath Energy study measured leaks from pneumatic devices at 395 sites and almost 700 wells at six locations in Alberta and identified 77 major leaks via infrared cameras and direct methane vents from 236 pieces of equipment. GreenPath Energy is a Calgary-based company that specializes in managing greenhouse gas emissions.

The researchers found that 95 per cent of the pneumatic devices at conventional oil and gas facilities vented methane and other gases such as benzene. Oil well sites leaked the most methane.

If you're not conversant with the fracking process and perils, this video may help.

Alberta's Hundred Billion Dollar Hangover Cure

There's these two guys, see? Regan Boychuk and Brent O'Neill. Two Albertans. They want to revive Alberta's collapsed labour market while, at the same time, cleaning up the mess "up north." And they figure a hundred billion dollars should just about cover it.

First, however, they'll have to get the Alberta government to face the problem it's spent decades ignoring - the environmental catastrophe sometimes called the Tar Sands.

Their proposal, "is built on several premises. The first is that the time for fossil fuel extraction has ended in Alberta. The low fruit has been picked and nobody saved anything for the future.

"The second is that climate change has become a clear and present danger. “We need to start making a real reduction in man-made emissions so our future generations have the same opportunities we once did” says the RAFT proposal.

"The best way to respond to this emergency — as well as increasing oil price volatility — is to wind down the industry and re-employ people in a massive environmental clean-up, RAFT proposes. While industry has a legal obligation to clean up its inactive wells and abandoned pipelines, it probably won’t spend the money unless government tackles some surprising legal obstacles.

"Cleaning up has many economic benefits. It puts oil service companies back to work and would employ thousands throughout the province. The clean-up would last decades and fixing leaking wells would reduce methane pollution into the atmosphere."

"Current liabilities for the conventional sector, the plan notes, include 444,000 oil and gas wells (only 200,000 are actually pumping liquids), 430,000 kilometres of pipelines (the distance to the moon is 384,000 kilometres), 30,000 oil and gas facilities, 900 square kilometres of oil sands development, 220 square kilometres of tailing ponds and “a 11.2 million ton sulfur pile that dwarfs the great pyramids of Egypt.” (The sulphur is another waste stream from bitumen upgrading.)

"No one has argued about the environmental necessity of a clean-up.

"Consider the size of the environmental burden. Last month the Alberta Energy Regulator reported that the forecast cost of reclaiming inactive oil and gas wells and abandoned facilities now totalled more than $30.6 billion. (When I first reported on these liabilities nearly a decade ago they amounted to $9 billion.)"

But there's a snag.

"Incredibly, the regulator holds only $240 million in its clean-up fund. That potentially leaves taxpayers on the hook for a $29-billion clean-up bill if laws and policies don’t radically change in the province and country.

"It’s widely agreed the industry-funded regulator, directed by a former oil patch lobbyist, has failed to grasp the gravity of the situation or the inadequacy of its current policies.

"That means the final bill for just for 75,000 [conventional oil] wells (not including 60,000 wells that pump less than 10 barrels of oil a day and are no longer economic) could be as high as $82 billion.

"The oil sands add to these growing environmental liabilities.

"Alberta’s auditor general has already warned that the province’s clean-up fund of $1.6 billion is grossly inadequate to cover an estimated $21-billion clean-up liability for just eight oil sands mining sites and 19 coal mines. Treating the toxic water in the tailing ponds might cost another $24 billion.

"Industry and the Alberta government have known about these liabilities for years. And the principle that industry is responsible for cleaning up its polluted sites is widely accepted.

And what would theft be without an Artful Dodger?

"...part of the problem results from small changes made to the federal Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act that effectively made it legal for oil and gas companies to declare bankruptcy and walk away from unreclaimed wells. The changes basically ensured that other creditors got paid while the public got stiffed with the environmental bills."

"In an article in University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review, Alexander Clarkson proposed changing federal law to declare well reclamation a “super priority.”

"That would give clean-up costs priority over creditors who extended risky loans to the company.

"More importantly, it would force bankers and other creditors to factor in environmental risks when lending to the highly indebted oil patch."

The Scam - Three Card Monte

"Cenovus, for example, paid only $3 million in royalties on bitumen sales worth $1.1 billion in the first six months of 2016. That’s less than a one per cent royalty.

"CNRL Resources paid $6 million on sales of $1.9 billion worth of bitumen.

"Suncor paid $48 million in royalties on $4.7 billion worth of gross bitumen sales. And on it goes.

"Many of the oil sands companies making money tend to own refineries and are what industry calls “integrated producers.” They include big oil sands players such as Suncor, Imperial, Husky and Cenovus.

"Even when oil prices are low these integrated players make huge profits by buying low-priced bitumen, upgrading and refining it and then selling high-priced refinery products in the North American market. Oil prices might be low but gasoline prices remain surprisingly high."

In other words, the screwing of the province and people of Alberta is nearly complete and, as usual for someone screwed over, they're left with a parting gift - environmental devastation and an enormous clean up bill. That's what they get from decades of utter neglect by Conservative governments (and now Notley's to boot).

Ralph Klein instilled the Mardi Gras mentality in Alberta's legislature and no one's been able to shake it since. Oh there was wealth, vast wealth supposedly but, oddly enough, there's nothing to show for it today except for that cesspool in the backyard. Shoulda listened to Peter Lougheed ...but, no.

Stephen Harper's Oily Comeuppance

A Saudi prince once said that the Stone Age didn't end because man ran out of stones.  The Age of Oil may be headed for the same fate.  A Goldman Sachs outlook suggests the price of crude oil will hover around $45 a barrel for the next year or so and could even hit $20.

That's not good news for self-styled 'energy superpowers,' i.e. Canada.  Richard Fantin of Canadian Trends has an insightful report of what's in store for his province, Alberta, and it makes for grim reading.

Remember when then Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, proclaimed Athabasca the "beating heart of the Canadian economy for the 21st century"? Remember, "Iggy"? Oh, you would rather forget? I see.

That's the problem with betting the farm on the idea of flogging the world's highest-carbon and costliest oil.  It's like eating too many of those Pringles with Olestra. Something bad is bound to happen in your pants.

Poor Stephen Harper. He's devoted his entire premiership to Canada's Alberta's bituminous bounty. He rode roughshod over every possible obstacle, sweeping aside fisheries, navigation and marine habitat regulations; transforming Canada's National Energy Board into a blatantly kangaroo tribunal; even harnessing the state police and security agencies into service of Big Oil, all on the taxpayer's dime.

They knew it was a race and that time might not be on their side. Harper even brought in a repeat offender jailbird to be his envoy to the Oil Patch, brought the guy right into the PMO (which, judging by recent revelations, must have felt like a second home to Bruce Carson).

At one point Harper's then natural resources minister, Joe "Leatherback" Oliver, let slip the urgency of getting bitumen to "tidewater" and into the holds of supertankers. Oliver, perhaps imprudently, noted that if these pipelines weren't brought online and soon, Canada was at risk of bitumen becoming a "stranded asset."

The world is moving toward carbon pricing (no, it's not the idea of the opposition leaders) and even Harper is going to be hard pressed not to follow suit.  It could be a "perfect storm" - low oil prices, high-cost/high-carbon oil, carbon taxes.  As Richard Fantin noted, the squeeze is already causing Big Oil to 'cut corners' on its operations and that usually translates into shoddy maintenance, monitoring and, eventually, more oil spills.

If we're to have any hope of avoiding the worst climate change outcome, runaway global warming, the world is going to have to decarbonize very soon. The first fossil fuels to be abandoned will be the high-cost and the high-carbon. Coal, while relatively cheap, is very high-carbon and there's no shortage of US coal companies going bankrupt these days.  Bitumen, while not as high-carbon as coal, is the highest carbon fossil oil and, unlike coal, it's also costly to produce.

Harper gambled everything on bitumen, including Canada's reputation abroad. He and his government have brainwashed Canadians into believing the Tar Sands are indispensable to our economy whereas bitumen revenues really only represent 2% of Canada's GDP.  Two per cent doesn't sound like much but it's Heaven and Earth to the province of Alberta where royalties are treated as general revenue to fund essential services.

Albertans have a term for it. During boom times they "piss it all away" and when boom turns to bust in the oil patch the province dives headlong into recession. They've institutionalized a bubble economy. If you organized your household finances that way people, especially your creditors, would heap scorn and derision on you. In no time you would find yourself in a very ugly place.

There's more than schadenfreude to this. I don't live in Alberta. I live in British Columbia, coastal British Columbia.  Out here the collapse in world oil prices may be enough to halt Stephen Harper's pipeline/supertanker obsession. Let us pray.

They Get It. We Don't.

California has set an ambitious target for greenhouse gas emissions.  Their target is to cut emissions 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.  That's an ambitious target but, let's face it, 2050 is a long way off in the world of politics which means there's lots of time to duck any meaningful action, enough that it can be left until it's simply too late.

Apparently California governor Jerry Brown knows the best way to make that 80% of 1990 by 2050 target a reality is to trim the lead time.  What better way than to order an interim emissions reduction target.  And so he's ordered the state to cut emissions from 1990 levels by 40% by 2030.  

2030 is not that far off for reductions of the magnitude governor Brown has ordered.  Analysis, planning and implementation have to get underway almost immediately.

Mr. Brown’s order marks an aggressive turn in what had already been among the toughest programs in the nation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Under the law put into place by Mr. Brown’s predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state was required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 on the way to reach the 2050 target; California is already well on its way to meeting the 2020 goal, and may exceed it, officials said Wednesday.

So California is just five years away from reducing its emissions to 1990 levels and they might exceed that target.  Ten years after that, they have to cut their emissions a further 40%.  

Now remind me, what are Canada's targets?  What are we aiming for?  Oh yeah, a 17% reduction below 2005 levels by 2020.  And, what, we're not going to make even that?  Even as Ontario and Quebec make inroads on cutting their emissions, Alberta's are already far more than those two provinces combined and are set to soar even further.  Price of progress, I guess.  

The "Piss Away" Province

The key to understanding the dilemma is to realize that Tar Sand, bitumen, is just a part of Alberta's oil history.  The province has also produced a vast amount of conventional crude oil.  It's actually produced and exported a good deal more conventional crude oil than Norway.  That brings us to the starting point of the conversation.

The CBC today features another one of those awkward, cringe-worthy stories about Alberta and Norway and why Albertans are wallowing in another recession while their Norwegian counterparts are sitting on a mountain of wealth.  The easy answer is that Albertans, while deeply Conservative, simply can't be trusted to handle money.

Norway today sits on top of a $1-trillion Cdn pension fund established in 1990 to invest the returns of oil and gas. The capital has been invested in over 9,000 companies worldwide, including over 200 in Canada. It is now the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.

By contrast, Alberta’s Heritage Savings Fund, established in 1976 by premier Peter Lougheed, sits at only $17 billion Cdn and has been raided by governments and starved of contributions for years.

“For the last 10 years, when nothing went into the Alberta fund, and we put a lot of money aside, the profit went out of Canada," says Rolf Wiborg, a petroleum engineer who recently retired from Norway’s public service.

Wiborg, who studied at the University of Alberta and worked for a Norwegian oil company before joining Norway’s Petroleum Directorate, says the key to success has been Norway's ethos of sharing and a commitment to never waver from that goal.

“We don’t change our policies in Norway, with changes in the oil price – you can’t do that," he says. “Lougheed’s government in Alberta knew that, they made policies and then they left them behind."

It's one reason why, as a coastal British Columbian, I sense the need to push back hard against the Oil Buffoons from Alberta and Ottawa and their damned pipelines.  You can't trust them. They're idiots and I don't trust the safety of my coast to idiots out to make - and yet again piss away - a quick buck.  It's like letting a chronic drunk drive your kid's school bus.  No, I don't think so.

There's a reason Harper has rendered coastal BC defenceless with his rigged environmental review farce and his extensive stripping of our ecological, fisheries and navigation protections.  Each safeguard he steals from us is money in someone else's pocket, someone else in another province or across a vast ocean in a place like, oh I don't know, Beijing.  And to know that the money they're trying to stuff into their pockets at our endangerment and expense is just going to be pissed away yet again - well it makes the blood boil.

A Closer Look at Oil and Climate Change.

Stephen Harper will not be pleased.  The Carnegie Endowment is fingering his cherished Tar Sands.

Not all oil is created equal.  Sweet crude, of the Saudi sort, comes out of the ground almost ready to use.  It's pumped out of the ground easily, free of most contaminants (sulphur, water, sand, natural gas).  The amount of energy required to extract and refine a barrel of oil is modest.  That, then, provides the benchmarks by which other oils from other places can be judged.

A new report from the Carnegie Endowment, "Know Your Oil: Creating a Global Oil-Climate Index," evaluates the major oilfields around the world in the context of their respective climate change impacts.

This is research Harper can't suppress.  It's available online and it's free of charge.  Why does this report matter?  It clearly identifies the highest-carbon oil fields, such as our own bitumen fields.  If we're to have much hope of avoiding runaway global warming, the highest carbon stuff will have to be left in the ground.  These are the "stranded assets" the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, recently warned about.

For Canada overall there's good news along with the bad.  While Athabasca fields are at the upper end of the scale for greenhouse gas emissions, the east coast Hibernia field is second to the lowest.  Bad news for Alberta.  Good news for Newfoundland & Labrador.

Jimbo Prentice Pokes Albertans in the Eye With a Sharp Stick.

Well, this is certain something.  Alberta's unelected premier, Jim Prentice, better learn to bite his tongue.

Prentice has sparked a bit of a furor by blaming his constituents for the mess the province now finds itself in.

Premier Jim Prentice is facing a social media backlash after telling Albertans to "look in the mirror" to find who is responsible for the province's current financial woes.

Speaking on CBC's Alberta@Noon Wednesday, Premier Jim Prentice told host Donna McElligott that "in terms of who is responsible, we need only look in the mirror. Basically, all of us have had the best of everything and have not had to pay for what it costs."

Well, sure Jim, that's right - in part at least but only in part.  It was your own government that allowed the Big Energy gorilla to ass rape the province.  And it was your own government that decided it was a fine idea to depend on petro-royalties to fund its budget outlays.  

Your government didn't do those things because they were good for the province or for the people of Alberta, current and future.  Your government squandered your energy revenues like a piss-drunk sailor in order to buy your way through election after election with faux prosperity for - well, forever.

You knew better.  The last sentient premier that despoiled province had warned you.  Peter Lougheed drew you a map through the energy minefield, showing you how to use it as a bounty, not a curse.  Peter Lougheed was not only the last intelligent premier, he was also the last honest premier Alberta has known.  And, by trying to shirk the blame for your government's own policies, you're showing that its business as usual under your management.

Even the Fraser Institute Can't Look the Other Way But It Can't Tell the Truth Either.

There's a bumper sticker line that could double for the provincial motto of Alberta:  Dear God, Please Give Us One More Oil Boom and, This Time, We Promise We Won't Piss It Away.

Now, with another boom gone bust, Alberta has fallen back into a raging deficit and even the uber-Right Fraser Institute can't bite its tongue although it can't face facts either.  Naturally, the neo-liberal Fraser Institute sees workers' wages, especially government workers' wages, as the culprit.

Ten years ago, before the boom started in earnest, Alberta spent $8,965 (in 2013 dollars) per person in program spending. This does not include capital spending on items like hospitals, schools and roads.

The report argues that had the province increased program spending in the following years at the rate of inflation plus population growth, it would have spent $295 billion on programs over the next nine years.

Instead it spent $345 billion, a $49-billion difference.

So where did the money go? Mark Milke says a lot went to public sector wage growth, which in some years grew at nearly twice the rate of inflation.

"When you take these wage deals and unreformed pensions and start to multiply them by 200,000 people in the provincial public sector in Alberta, then over time, you get these big numbers."

Between 2006 and 2008, Alberta contributed $4.5 billion to the Heritage Savings Trust Fund. Nothing has gone in since then, and the fund's total sits at $15 billion.

In Alaska, a minimum of 25 per cent of resource revenues are deposited into its Alaska Permanent Fund. The income generated from the fund can be used by the state government, but not the principal. As of June 2014, the fund stands at nearly $64 billion US.

In Norway, 100 per cent of net proceeds from resource revenue are supposed to flow into a fund. According to Milke, that doesn't happen every year, but Norway has gotten close to that ideal. The Norwegian Petroleum Fund sits at $759 billion as of Sept. 30, 2014.

Of course, being the consummate neo-liberal Hack Shop, the Fraser Institute steers well clear of facts that don't fit its 'blame the workers' narrative.  While the Fraser report extols the success of Norway, for example, the authors deceivingly avoid the heart of that story - that Norway negotiated far higher royalties for its oil; that the government wisely (and in keeping with Peter Lougheed's advice) did not take oil revenues to into current accounts but, instead, used hefty income taxes to support the generous services it provides to its people. 

Lougheed, perhaps the last sensate premier Alberta has seen, knew that taking oil royalties into general revenue would create a dangerous government dependency on an insecure source of funding.  When boom turned to bust the government and people of Alberta would be dropped into a stinking mess.  Lougheed also warned that injecting that windfall revenue into the economy would overheat the economy, cause real wealth to evaporate as prices soared, and leave the province already wounded when oil prices plummeted.

Everything Lougheed foretold has been demonstrably proven - by both Norway and Alberta.  Too bad the Fraser Institute is so intellectually compromised that it can't tell the simple truth.

Alberta - Yet Again, Number One!

It seems that Alberta has claimed another world record.  This time it's for the magnitude of a fracking-induced earthquake, a 4.4-magnitude temblor last week at Fox Creek.

"The location of the earthquake is consistent with being induced by hydraulic fracturing operations," confirmed Peter Murchland, a spokesman for the Alberta Energy Regulator.

"The AER regards all changes in seismicity that have the potential to indicate an increased risk associated with hydrocarbon production seriously," Murchland added.

...For years industry and fracking experts argued the technology wouldn't cause quakes that could be felt on the surface.

But specialists in earthquake hazards such as Gail Atkinson, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Induced Seismicity Hazards at Ontario's Western University, argued the opposite.

"I have consistently maintained this kind of thing can happen," said Atkinson. "With fracking, the magnitudes have been increasing every year."

Natural Resources Canada reported a swarm of at least 15 earthquakes this January west of Fox Creek in a region where Encana, Talisman, Apache, Chevron Canada and ExxonMobile intensified the drilling and fracking of two-kilometre-long horizontal wells nearly a year ago.

These fracked earthquakes may also impact on the feasibility of underground carbon sequestration.  The fossil fuelers regularly promise to capture CO2 emitted from extraction and processing that will then be liquefied under intense pressure and pumped underground.  That CO2, if it leaks to the surface, is deadly and all it might take is a failed well cap or seismic rift to allow that to happen.

What's a Single Issue Prime Minister to Do?

These are not good times for Canada's petro-prime minister.  Harper's Holy Grail, Canadian energy superpowerdom, has sprung a leak.  Even The Globe & Mail, says bitumen no longer makes any economic sense.

If $40 a barrel still seems a ways off, consider that the benchmark price for oil sands crude is already trading in that price range. What’s more, if production from high-cost sources isn’t withdrawn from an oversupplied market, oil prices may soon be trading even lower.

The first thing Canadians should recognize about the new world order for oil prices is that – contrary to what we’re being told by our federal government – the economy is no longer in dire need of any new pipelines. For that matter, it can live without the new rail terminals being built to move oil as well. Yesterday’s transportation bottlenecks aren’t relevant in today’s marketplace.

At current prices there won’t be any massive expansion of oil sands production because those projects, which would produce some of the world’s most expensive crude, no longer make economic sense.

The recent spate of project cancellations by global oil giants – Total’s Joslyn mine, Shell’s at Pierre River, and Statoil’s Corner oil sands venture – is only the beginning. As oil prices grind lower, we can expect to hear about tens of billions of dollars of proposed spending that will be cancelled or indefinitely postponed.

...If plunging oil prices are writing a boom-to-bust story in provinces such as Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland, the narrative will be much different in other parts of the country.

Ontario’s long-depressed economy is already beginning to find a second wind, recently leading the country in economic growth. And the engine is just beginning to rev up. As the largest oil-consuming province in the country, lower oil prices put more money back into the pockets of Ontarians, while also juicing the buying power of its most important trading partner. Ontario’s trade leverage with the U.S. is set to become even more meaningful as the Canadian dollar continues to slide along with the country’s rapidly fading oil prospects.

Just as the oil sands boom turned Canada’s currency into a petrodollar, pushing it above parity with the greenback, the loonie is already tumbling in the wake of lower oil prices. And it shouldn’t expect any help from the Bank of Canada, which continues to signal that it’s willing to live with a much lower exchange rate in the face of a strengthening U.S. dollar.

A loonie at 75 cents means GM and Ford may once again consider Ontario an attractive place to make cars and trucks. Even if they don’t, you can bet others will. With the loonie’s value falling to three quarters of where it was only a few years ago, we’ll start seeing Ontario, as well as other regions of the country, start to regain some of the hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs that were lost in the last decade amid a severely overvalued currency.

Yes, kids, that was the very conservative Globe & Mail admitting that Eastern Canada has for years been afflicted by the Athabasca-borne "Dutch Disease."  Harper, Oliver, Flaherty and the rest of the parliamentary clown car have expended massive energy in denying it but Alberta's wealth (the money they've long since 'pissed away') has hurt Canada's manufacturing sector and the hundreds of thousands of workers that lost their jobs. 

Whether You Support Pipelines or Not, Here's Something We Can Surely Agree On.

No secret I'm opposed to both Kinder Morgan and Northern Gateway.  A sizeable majority of British Columbians are of the same mind but a significant minority supports the pipeline initiatives.  In situations like this it can be helpful to seek out areas of agreement, common ground.

Here's an idea we should all be able to endorse.  If you insist on shipping Athabasca oil to Asia, why not ship oil?  That may sound facetious but it's not.

Bad as these pipelines are, they're made far worse by what Ottawa and Alberta want to push through them - dilbit.  Dilbit is bitumen mixed with a light oil condensate called a diluent.  Bitumen is just too sludgy to push through a pipeline.  It's full of acids, toxins, heavy metals and, of course, petroleum coke or "petcoke," a granular and very high carbon form of sulfur-rich coal.  To get it through a pipeline you have to dilute it with condensate.  Even then you have to heat the mixture and propel it with powerful pumps to get it moving through the pipeline.

Pipeline opponents have plenty of reason to object to dilbit pipelines.  You're taking a product that is full of corrosives and forcing it through a pipeline under high pressure.  If you want to know what that pressurized corrosive does to a pipeline you might ask the authorities in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Yes, and that was an Enbridge pipeline.

British Columbians have ample reason for concern because a Kalamazoo-type spill here would likely happen in the mountainous wilderness where Enbridge intends to run Northern Gateway.  That would make it more difficult to detect and extremely difficult to get crews and equipment in to attempt clean up.  A spill into a fast-moving mountain stream would spread rapidly, confounding clean up efforts and endangering the ecology for great distances.  Enbridge repeatedly balked at cleaning up Kalamazoo.  How would the company respond to a far more difficult and enormously more costly clean up in British Columbia?

Another cause for concern is the prospect of a supertanker catastrophe. Navigating those northern coastal waters with their currents and tides is challenging on a good day and, up there, good days are not abundant.  When you're tasked with moving the volumes of dilbit Enbridge is planning for Northern Gateway, you have to keep tankers sailing in and out no matter the conditions and that is a formula for disaster.

Dilbit, because of all the sludge in it, sinks.  The condensate separates out and floats to the surface where it dissipates.  The bitumen component congeals and heads for the bottom which, in a lot of places up there, can be 600-feet down and neither the governments nor Enbridge has anything that can clean up a deepwater spill like that.

So, where is this elusive common ground?  I think both sides should be able to rule out the dilbit option/problem.  How can that be done?  Refine the product on site in Athabasca.  Do it there, at the source.  Then, once you have refined out all the garbage, all you'll be transporting is conventional crude oil.  The product you send to market won't be bitumen or diluted bitumen.  The acids, the abrasives, the toxins and heavy metals, the carcinogens and the petcoke will be removed and dealt with on site in Alberta where they belong.

That doesn't mean we'd be okay with it.  The 1989 Exxon Valdez catastrophe, after all, was a conventional oil spill,the ship didn't even sink, and, a quarter century later, Prince William Sound still isn't cleaned up. However refined oil that floats is vastly preferable to hazmat oil that sinks and coats the bottom for generations, poisoning the entire marine habitat.

Another major factor is that transporting fully refined conventional crude oil significantly cuts the volume of product shipped.  The condensate isn't in there. The crud isn't in there.  All of that is removed and left behind in Alberta.  That refining process would allow a major reduction of up to 40% in the number of supertanker trips required to get the product to overseas markets.  The more tanker trips you have the more groundings or sinkings you'll have.  It's that simple.  Even pipeline supporters can understand that.

Bear in mind that the stuff Big Oil and its governmental minions want to ship, dilbit, still has to be refined somewhere.  That somewhere will be in Asia where they'll have to refine out not only the condensate but also all the crud, including the pet coke, out of the bitumen.  So what could be the objection to refining the goop in Athabasca?

What we're usually told is that it would be uneconomical to refine bitumen in Alberta.  Overseas markets, we're told, have unused refining capacity.  So what? We could not only address the hazmat issue but also create a lot of jobs and revenue by refining Athabasca bitumen on site.

I suspect the on-site refining option would be refused because it would add an unbearable burden to the sleight-of-hand trick used to portray the Tar Sands as a huge money maker.  It would also leave Alberta responsible for the energy requirements and emissions related to the refining process.

So you can see how, to a British Columbian, this smacks of a set up.  We have to accept the risk of a potentially catastrophic hazmat spill to bolster the bottom line of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.  They're externalizing the risks, offloading them on the province and people of British Columbia, and we're being told they're doing it as of right.

That they're dealing us cards from a stacked deck is obvious.  One by one, Harper has stripped us of our safeguards.  He moved the West Coast oil spill emergency centre to Quebec.  He shut down entire sections of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans responsible for monitoring our coastal marine habitat. He trashed fisheries regulations. He closed essential Coast Guard installations.  He gutted the navigation regulations to accommodate the supertanker armada.  He set up an utterly fraudulent environmental review process, plainly sculpted to deliver a scripted result.  He's engaged the state security apparatus to spy on environmentalists.  Now you tell me this federal government isn't already at war with us.

When taken in the context of this litany of skulduggery, the refusal to refine this bitumen on site in Alberta can be seen in a plain light for what it is - a deliberate choice to expose British Columbia to enormous risks by transporting hazmat - hazardous materials - through highly risky conditions while simultaneously stripping us of every means we ever had to respond to catastrophe.