Is Harper Leaving BC Exposed to its own Deepwater Horizon Debacle?

An alarming report from The Tyee's Mitchell Anderson claims that the Harper Cons have introduced policies to undercut BC's Oil Spill Prevention Panel, aka the Pacific Regional Advisory Council on Oil Spill Response, while, at the same time, the Tories secretly rewrite the safety regs.

"...by the time television pictures of an oil-slicked Gulf of Mexico reached British Columbians, the very advisory board mandated to watchdog marine oil safety and communicate with the public had seen many of its veteran experts dismissed, and its resources and responsibilities clipped.

Late last year, Transport Canada unexpectedly replaced five of the seven members, and required incoming members to sign a "Letter of Expectation" that limited their meetings to only two per year "unless pre-approved by the Regional Transport Canada Office."

In previous years, the group met numerous times annually and reportedly had difficulty keeping up with their growing workload.

This leash-shortening, sources say, wasn't the only action by the Harper government that many of the past and present Pacific RAC members found troubling.

The members also wondered why, given their mandate and expertise, they had been denied access to drafts of changes to marine oil safety regulations they've known are in the works in Ottawa.

And this volunteer panel of experts were flummoxed when denied even a modest travel budget to engage communities about increased tanker traffic on the B.C. coast.

In effect, Harper has not only gagged but bound and gagged British Columbia's Oil Spill Prevention Panel just as the Liberal-In-Name-Only government of Greasy Gord Campbell has thrown its support behind offshore oil drilling as well as development of a potentially dangerous tanker port to carry filthy Athabasca Tar Sands oil to Asia.

Pacific RAC veteran Stafford Reid had this to say:

"Here you've got this talented group who's using up their professional time and passionate about protecting the coast and making sure that it's win-win for industry as well as the environment. Yet you've got only two meetings a year and no budget?"

"It [the RAC] appears to be a burr in the saddle for Transport Canada," said Reid, who believes that Ottawa made the move in reaction to the committee becoming more insistent on engaging the public as per their mandate. "It's quite clear that they're not going to give it a budget, they're not going to allow you to have more meetings, and they didn't want to hear anybody howling so they got rid of most of the members."

The long and the short of it is the sooner we turf these provincial conservatives in Liberal clothing and the sooner we put an end to Harper's Tar Sands wet dreams the sooner we on coastal British Columbia can breath easier.

Hey Iggy, there's an issue you can jump in on. Oh wait, sorry, I forgot you're as much of a Tar Sander as Harper. That's okay, we'll just add you to the list with Campbell and Harper.

Read the complete story here.

Florida Balks at Offshore Drilling - Gordon Campbell, Are You Listening?

Florida's Republican administration has had sharp second-thoughts about proposals for oil rigs off its shores. The spreading and intractable oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico has made disbelievers out of what had been staunch believers. From McClatchey:

The oil spill spreading across the Gulf of Mexico is sending ripples through Florida and national politics, giving Gov. Charlie Crist a reason to withdraw his support for offshore drilling.

After a 90-minute plane flight Tuesday above the spill, which was spreading in an 80-by-42-mile blob, Crist said, "Clearly it could be devastating to Florida if something like that were to occur. It's the last thing in the world I would want to see happen in our beautiful state.''

He said there is no question now that lawmakers should give up on the idea of drilling off Florida's coast this year and in coming years. He had said previously that he would support drilling if it were far enough from shore, safe enough and clean enough. He said the spill is proof that that is not possible.

"Clearly that one isn't far enough, and that's about 50 to 60 miles out. It's clearly not clean enough after we saw what we saw today -- that's horrific -- and it certainly isn't safe enough. It's the opposite of safe,'' Crist said.

Earlier in the day the Florida Legislature's main advocate of drilling, incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Orlando, said the disaster had him asking questions.

"It causes me to want to examine what happened and how it could have been prevented, and we need to figure that out before we make any further decisions,'' said Cannon, who has proposed allowing rigs as close as three miles off Florida's beaches.

I wonder if BC's faux-liberal premier and veteran drunk driver Gordon Campbell is watching and learning. He too has become a recent proponent of offshore drilling in British Columbia's pristine coastal waters, another hack politician willing to roll the dice and gamble BC's ecology for the promise of seabed fossil fuel wealth.