This Dismal Season

Sorry. I asked around. Couldn't find anyone who bothered watching last night's leaders' debate. Not one. I suppose it has something to do with that "none of the above" attitude that permeates the general election this year.

All but two were university grads, the sort who usually pay some heed to these things if only for coffee or dinner conversations. Not this year, sorry.

I'm told some of those I asked simply missed it. The timing was awkward. You might settle down at 9 o'clock to watch the fireworks but, on the coast, you have other things to do - fixing dinner for example or just getting home through rush hour traffic, that sort of thing. One woman told me that she had it on her car radio but it was all gibberish as they talked over each other so she lost interest.

I see that Trudeau's most obsessive attacker was left quite tumescent but, again, so what?

What does it say when we're witnessing the Clash of Titans - a stammering school marm versus a summer-help counter clerk. I've never seen the like of it and I do go back a ways. There's something that is just so dismal about this election. Sort of like trying to mend a flat tire with four puncture wounds. You know very little good will come of it.

It's a pity really because there is so much at stake in this election including the fate of our youngest people and the generations to follow them. Time is running out and this time, four years hence, will probably be too late for Canada to change course.  Too little, too late.

This brings to mind Gary Mason's column in the Globe in late September where he contrasted Mulroney's brilliant effort to 'fix' the seriously damaged Ozone hole to the endless greenwash we're getting today on climate change.

...Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said at a town hall event in Peterborough in January, 2017, that while he couldn’t shut down the oil sands immediately, “we need to phase them out, we need to manage the transition off of our dependence on fossil fuels.” It should not have been a controversial statement because it’s true. And yet, politicians in Alberta (and many citizens, too) lost their minds, accusing the Mr. Trudeau of betraying them, of forging a plan to rob thousands of people of their livelihoods. A few days later, Mr. Trudeau tried to undo the damage, saying that he “misspoke” – the oil sands would not be going anywhere soon, he assured Canadians.

Mason offers four reasons not to swallow the green smoothie voters are being force fed in this campaign.

First, neither of the two parties who will form government when the votes are tallied has a coherent plan to cut emissions enough in the limited time remaining. The Liberals at least have a vague plan but it's aspirational at best. And haven't we heard this aspirational talk from Justin before?

Second is the "fire and fall back" approach to climate change in vogue today. They're not denying the affliction any more. Instead they've moved on to undermining the solutions.

It’s not just members of the public who are in denial, but politicians and the oil and gas industry as well. Everyone agrees there is a problem, but few are willing to accept the sour medicine it will take to do something about it.

Mason's third reason is the refusal of the oil and gas industry (bolstered by their political stooges) to accept that their industry's days are numbered - at least if we intend to see our society last a few more generations.

A recent piece in The New York Times by Christiana Figueres laid it out in stark detail. The life of many of the world’s oil and gas companies, in their current form, could be as little as five years in some cases, but no more than 30 even in the most optimistic scenarios, predicted Ms. Figueres, who was the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Markets have started to abandon many of these companies. Exxon Mobil was the last big oil giant remaining in the top 10 of the world’s most valuable companies – until it dropped out earlier this month for the first time.

We either cut our own throats or we end fossil fuels. It's what Hans Joachim Schellnhuber meant when he said at the 2015 Paris climate summit that our only hope was for an "induced implosion" of the fossil energy giants. Survival depends on our governments putting them down, blowing them up. We know that the highest carbon, most toxin laden fuels have to be left in the ground yet here we have a prime minister so ensnarled in cognitive dissonance as to believe there's a legitimate purpose for building a 60-year, high capacity bitumen pipeline squaring off against a counter-clerk who attacks him for not getting it built fast enough.

Mason's final source of despair is how deeply and angrily divided Canadians are, especially those rallying to the defence of the petro-economy. Even Dame Cathy "we must not harm the economy" McKenna now needs a bodyguard to protect her from the petro-thugs.

Jason Kenney, for one, has relied on often incendiary oratory to get supporters riled up against the Liberal government in Ottawa, which he blames for trying to kill the oil industry. (Even though it bought a pipeline.) But a phalanx of conservative premiers has railed against the dangers of climate measures that will “kill the economy.” The doubt these politicians have sowed in the minds of the public may be having an effect. A recent survey by the firm Ipsos found nearly half of those polled thought scientists were elitists whose findings they discounted because they don’t align with their personal beliefs. Other polls have shown that people believe climate change is real but don’t want to sacrifice much to reverse its effects – a result no doubt influenced by the words of politicians who have convinced many Canadians that measures such as a carbon tax are a mere money grab that will have no measurable impact on GHG emissions.

Mason concludes by observing how quickly we praise Greta Thunberg and her good works and then, just as quickly, put all that out of our minds and, like moths, are drawn to the lanterns of Scheer and Trudeau.

This is a Potemkin campaign with everyone convincingly painted up to appear as someone or something that they're not. That's true of Scheer and Trudeau. It's also true of "late to the party" Jagmeet Singh who can't even get Rachel Notley to say she'll vote for him this time round. I've listened to Jagmeet and I'm convinced he's a very slick and opportunistic bullshitter, not that it's going to matter. Singh may have, pardon the term, found "Climate Jesus" but the New Dem rank and file haven't shown much sign they're with him.

So I will dutifully cast my ballot on October 21 but I don't think I'll waste my time watching the returns.  Maybe I'll dust off my Indiana Jones DVDs and make a night of it.

Mark Carney Sounds Good to Me

Chantal Hebert writes that "Liberal insiders" are looking at Mark Carney to replace Justin Trudeau.

Carney is due to finish his current gig as governor of the Bank of England at the end of this year. There has long been speculation that he could one day land in the Canadian political arena and that if he did, he would cast his lot with the Liberals.

As the party’s fortunes have declined in the pre-election polls, that speculation has turned into active interest — if not on Carney’s part, at least on that of some of his many fans inside the party. 

On a recent conference call, a group of them discussed how Trudeau’s diminished prospects could result in an early opportunity for Carney to succeed him. 

According to one participant, the group is working on the assumption that Trudeau will be hard-pressed to win more than 140 seats in October.

After a string of duds, including the current leader, Carney sounds like the breath of fresh air the Liberal Party so desperately needs.

Why do I like Carney? Where to start? The governor of the Bank of England knows there's no future in bitumen. Like his predecessor, he's been warning everyone who'll listen that the world economy is resting on a giant IED, also known as the Carbon Bubble. That's a reality no Liberal leader has been able to accept.

Carney knows that climate change is an economy killer, something the current Liberal regime doesn't want to think about.  In a 2018 address, Carney showed that he understands the hurdles to clean energy  and the risks if we botch the effort.

Carney has earned high praise from climate activists. He's been dubbed "the unlikely climate champion."

Carney understands climate change in all its dimensions, especially the fossil energy sector and the risks of "stranded assets" a term for coal and bitumen. He would be a breath of fresh air after the endless litany of carbon stooges in our Parliament and provincial legislatures.

Put simply, Mark Carney has everything that Trudeau lacks and then some. It's time the Liberals ditched Justin, son of Margaret, and got a real leader.

At a moment when Canada, and the world, are at risk from threats unparalleled in the history of human civilization, this country could use somebody clear-headed.

The Master of Weasel Words Wants "Reflections"

Right out of the gate, Justin Trudeau is balking at serious action on climate change.

Speaking on Sunday night, Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, suggested that using federal money to help relocate communities affected by flooding was a possibility. “Once we secure the situation through this spring flooding season, we will have to have significant reflections and conversations on how we move forward,” he said, according to the Canadian Press.

Jesus, that's the same crap we heard after the last devastating Calgary floods in 2013, the area's second "once in a century" flood in eight years. First there was the "no one could have known" dollop of horse shit, quickly followed by the "we're going to get on top of this just as soon as we get this mess sorted out."

Politicians are liars and that includes the current boss. The more pressure they face the harder they lie. They also know how to use their "get out of jail free" card. It's called "creeping normalcy." Give the people a little time and they'll simply accept their "new normal" and complacently go about their business. It's what we do. It's part of human nature. It lets them sell us down the river.

Alberta's Tory government, as we now know, commissioned a flood mitigation study in 2006, right after the First Great Flood, and then sat on it until last year, just in time for the Second Great Flood. The report identified flood plain risks and recommended a ban on development there. "What? No development? Are you out of your frackin' mind? This is ALBERTA for f--k sakes. Ditch that report." 

Well that 2006 study is probably useless now anyway. It was based on the 2005 flooding, back when they thought that really was a once-a-century event. By some estimates the 2013 floods could be three times worse and so "flood plain" has taken on a much larger dimension. And that once-a-century business is now pretty much debunked. 

Will the Alberta government do a new flood mitigation study? That would involve thinking the unthinkable, the great conundrum that climate change forces on us. How do we persuade people to prepare for things far outside of our experience? Today's political classes don't work that way. They don't have the political vision or the moral courage.

You see the soggy people of Alberta never menaced the Tories. They never threatened the conservatives' hold on power. They signaled they would settle for whatever they were given and, when the cost of remedial measures was figured out, they weren't going to be getting much.

Trudeau is going to emulate the Tories in Alberta. Why? Because this grave threat is way above his pay grade. He's not smart enough. He's not courageous enough. His credibility is in tatters. He's not even popular enough to implement what, to many, would be unpopular measures. No, it'll be "significant reflections and conversations" from this prime minister, words and hollow words at that, not deeds.

Sorry, Canada, but until you're ready to put the fear of God into these political hustlers you're on your own.

If You're Pouring Gasoline On the Fire, Don't Pretend You're Fighting the Flames.

It's funny, with the October elections nearing, how concerned the Conservatives and Liberals are becoming about climate change or, at least, the flooding that has ravaged eastern Canada and the maritimes.  Oh they're all eco-warriors now. So precious.

It might be inspirational if they weren't such petro-pimps, eager to flood world markets with high-carbon, high-cost, low-value sludge bitumen. It doesn't matter where that garbage is burned. It's all going up into our shared atmosphere and it's our warming and more moisture-laden atmosphere that's delivering all those floods.

Hell, even PostMedia's Montreal Gazette is getting wise. Today the paper warns that this flooding could be Quebec's "new normal." Not really. Give it another ten years, twenty to be sure, and Quebeckers might be remembering this as the good old days. This is just "early onset" stuff. There's no stasis. The climate is worsening. There'll be plenty of new normal to come, sort of like the "oldest person on Earth" contest.

In today's Globe, Ibbitson writes that even the Tories are now getting onside about climate change. Why does Greenwash smell so much like horse shit? Ibbitson begins with the mandatory disclaimer that no weather event can absolutely be linked to global warming and then follows up with this whopper:

Although the United States, China and India are far more responsible for climate change than Canada, that does does not relieve this country of its moral obligation to do its part.

We're really not the problem. Until you consider that Canada consistently ranks in the Top Ten countries for overall emissions and an impressive Top Three standing for per capita emissions.  And that's before we get an honest accounting for the emissions from Alberta and Saskatchewan's bitumen producers (don't hold your breath waiting).

There may not be another issue that has prompted so much blatant dishonest from governments as climate change. Pity it's also an existential threat, the gravest in the history of human civilization. Scheer is about to pull some sort of eco-bunny out of his backside. Singh will go tut-tut, tut-tut. Trudeau will fill a sandbag, maybe flash his abs.

Who to trust, who to believe? The one that produces a convincing policy to meet the immediate baseline requirement for averting catastrophic, runaway global warming - a 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 leading to a near total decarbonization by 2050.

You'll know they're lying if they don't identify how they'll fund such a Herculean effort. Where's the money coming from? What will we have to sacrifice? Who loses so that we all might survive? Something has to give. What'll it be? How about those billions in subsidies and benefits you're lavishing on the Oil Patch? That would be a start.

No rush. The Three Stooges might just get solutions from the motion Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party will table in Britain's HoC this Wednesday.  Harnessing the energy of the Extinction Rebellion and the Greta Thunberg-inspired student climate strikers, Corbyn will demand that the government declare a national climate emergency. It's expected that part of that deal will require a firm commitment to meet the 50 per cent by 2030 and near total elimination of GHG emissions by 2050, something our government hasn't even acknowledged much less accepted.

Will We Let Them Off the Hook Again? Sure We Will.

There are times when politicians have to treat voters like grown-ups. This is one of those moments.

Like it or not, we live in perilous times. It is in such difficult times that we need candour and clarity from those who seek to lead us. That's part of progressive democracy.

You might disagree but I believe we need a direct explanation of what our political parties, the lot of them, propose to do about climate change. The warning we've been given is that we have somewhat less than 12 years to slash our greenhouse gas emissions by half if we're to have a reasonable chance - yes, chance, not certainty, not even probability - of averting catastrophic runaway global warming.

That's like a doctor warning you must choose - quit smoking right now or die.

Remember, this warning comes from the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that, since its inception, has established a dangerous pattern of understating - sugar coating, if you will - its predictions on climate change.  Even the boys and girls with the rose-coloured glasses are saying if we don't give up our carbon-ways and rapidly, we're screwed.

When you're up against a threat like that, you need some answers. You need honesty.

Politicians aren't very good at honesty. That's especially true for the Conservative and Liberal parties that, between them, have shared the reins of power in our country. They'll say pretty much anything and everything they calculate you want to hear, whatever it takes to get your vote, and then, the winner will go about breaking an awful lot of those once solemn promises.

Remember Harper came to power promising two things: accountability and transparency. When those tricks worked, he set about building a Hermit Kingdom, in which government was walled off from the public, their own public service. Harper then set about to implement change by incrementalism, slowly enough you would have to be pretty sharp to notice, its path greased with lies and darkness.

Justin brought a happy face to the scene but his promises of wisdom and light were almost as meaningless as what we endured with Harper. Lots of inspirational talk about electoral reform, social licence, First Nations reconciliation and more. It was all just a bag of shiny things and it worked.

We can't have that sort of blather again. Our children's lives are at risk. Our grandchildren's lives are in real peril. There's no more time for politics of the past, including the immediate past.

We need answers. How does the petro-state intend to address climate change? Do the candidates accept the IPCC warning? Are they willing to pick up that gauntlet? Do they intend to meet the "50 by 30" challenge or not? If yes, then how? If no, then what?

Carbon taxes - carbon bullshit. There is nothing in a minuscule carbon tax that would remotely meet the "50 by 30" baseline target. One has little to do with the other. Carbon taxes are gestural, nothing more.

We spent a decade in Afghanistan playing the gestural game. We pumped a lot of money and too many lives into that "mission" and we left the place pretty much as we found it. We never had a chance to tame Kandahar province, not with a paltry force of 2,000 for a job that required 15,000 to 20,000. That was a gestural response. Now the Americans are desperately negotiating for a "peace with honour" deal with the Taliban, much like the deal they cut with North Viet Nam to cover their retreat there in the 70s.

There are deep parallels between how we approached Afghanistan and how we're approaching climate change. The big difference is that climate change is something we just cannot walk away from. It won't let us.  Hiking a mile uphill is not the same as summiting Everest.

For me the question is going to be whether the candidate accepts the IPCC "50 by 30" warning and has a credible plan to meet it. A credible plan, not just carbon taxes.

Credible as in understandable and believable. You have to see how they intend to get from here to there and you have to consider whether they're believable. On both scores, Andrew Scheer is a write-off. He won't pretend that he'll make changes of the required magnitude. He's all for going the other way. His "executive prime minister," Jason Kenney would see to that.

As for Justin Trudeau, we've seen how he meets his promises. He apologizes. He's an ardent neoliberal and he believes in the petro-state. "50 by 30"? How do you figure the chances of Trudeau even promising to meet that target?

Our very survival as a civilization is at stake. It will take a truly Herculean effort and there's precious little time remaining to us. It would be costly and immensely disruptive to meet the target.

One won't. He's the honest one. The other will say he will but won't. Neither of them is worth a tinker's dam. Then again they don't have to be one whit better than they are. When the ballots are counted this October, the two of them will have, between them, about 70 per cent of the vote. With that near certainty, honesty doesn't have much relevance.

David Attenborough Takes Off the Gloves - At Last

He's been criticized for ducking the hard issues of climate change in his breathtaking nature series. That's over. David Attenborough's hour-long BBC documentary, "Climate Change - the Facts," lays bare how we are eliminating life on our planet.



Watch it if you've got the strength and then reflect on Canada as a petro-state and the driving forces behind it, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party of Canada.  Time is running out. Carbon taxes won't get us where we need to be, not in time. We know that the global economy has to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030. Canada is nowhere near that target. Our focus is on a rapid expansion of the production and export of high-carbon, high-cost, low-value garbage fuels like bitumen.

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.

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.

That Horse, It's Dead. Leave It Alone.

The SNC-Lavalin business has jumped the shark. That's not to say it's over or that there may not be new revelations but, until something seismic comes out - if ever, it's a dead horse. We've had our fill. Enough.

I think most of us have some opinion of who, if not both, is blameworthy. Some are backing Justin, others stand with Jody and Jane. Me, a pox on all their houses. There are vastly more important issues we need to address and we simply can't let this keep consuming all the air in the room. Ask Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May what awaits once you start down this road.

There is no shortage of issues confronting the world, our nation, our provinces and our communities. We have elections looming, our once in every four years chance to almost be heard. On some issues the parties are virtually indistinct. On others they're miles apart. We can intuit where they're going on some issues while others are wild cards.

One thing that will help no one is to allow this to become Andrew Scheer's election cudgel. That certainly won't help the country and yet Chuckles would never let that stand in his way.

I think Jody and Jane should get themselves squared away with their riding associations and consider running as independents if they want to remain in federal politics. What could be better validation of their "principled stands" than to run and win their ridings?

So let the electioneering proceed and let's put this Justin/Jody/Jane business on the shelf, see how it ages. If, without constant stoking, it fades to black then we'll know that it was always less than once claimed.

Jody Critics - You've Got Company. Conrad Black Appears Like-Minded

Lord Connie of PiddlePuddle has spoken. Trudeau should have turfed Justice Minister Jody long ago.

And, FFS, stop getting worked up about fine Canadian enterprises greasing a few palms along the way. Pay no attention to that elitist OECD and the 1997 Convention on Combating Bribery that Canada, along with 44 other nations, signed onto and which led to Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act.

It's another ripping yarn from the old convicted felon/jailbird.  Hells Bells, it's just a little larceny after all. Who doesn't do that?

You Loved Him When He Tore into Stephen Harper. Probably Not So Much Now. Michael Harris Takes Justin to the Woodshed.

Corruption, the exercise of official powers without regard for the public good, exacts a monstrous cost on multiple levels.

Michael Harris is at it again, casting bones and reading entrails, Justin Trudeau's this time. He writes it's not looking good for Canada's prime minister.

None of this needed to happen. 

The PM could have admitted to a terrible judgement call two months ago when the story of his interference in a criminal case broke in the Globe and Mail. He could have apologized to the former attorney general and let justice run its course. 

Instead, the prime minister and his PMO have staggered from one communications disaster to the next as their story kept changing. Along the way, four very senior public figures, two Liberal cabinet ministers, the clerk of the privy council, and the PM’s principal secretary have bitten the dust. Now Wilson-Raybould and Philpott are tossed off the stern of the party’s boat. 

[Yesterday's] ethical ineptitude was preceded by another — the PMO and Privy Council Office’s reaction to the “secret” tape that the former attorney general made of a call with the clerk of the privy council. It was the death march of absurdity. 

The clerk, Michael Wernick, would have Canadians believe that he never briefed the prime minister on what was arguably the hottest file on the government’s radar — the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin for bribery and corruption in Libya. If true, Wernick makes Rip Van Winkle look hyperactive. 

Wernick’s explanation for this comic narrative is that it was Dec. 19, 2018, and “everyone went on holidays.” As every clerk of the privy council knows, the PMO never sleeps. And as Wernick may or may not know, Trudeau remained in Ottawa until he visited the troops in Mali on Dec. 22. The PM did not go on holiday until Dec. 23 that year.

Besides, there are Wernick’s own words on the Raybould tape: “Well, I am going to have to report back before he leaves.” Nowhere did he say “after the holidays.” 

Wernick’s account was adopted with slight modifications by the PMO. The office claimed that Trudeau had not been fully aware of what had been said in the conversation between the clerk and Wilson-Raybould. You might call that implausible deniability. The weasel word here is “fully.” 

Now that the Wernick tape is public, it is obvious that it would have taken a five-second briefing to convey to the PM Wilson-Raybould’s bottom line: She was not happy about the perceived pressure, and she was not going to change her mind. 

...The plain words on the tape explode the heart of the PM’s defence in this story. Trudeau had maintained that if his ex-minister had had a problem with how the government was handling the SNC-Lavalin case, she should have come to him. The “if only I’d known” gambit. 

The tape makes crystal clear that Wilson-Raybould did exactly that with the clerk. In fact, Wernick tells Wilson-Raybould on the tape that he would be reporting their conversation to the PM. 

The crowning irony of the Wernick tape? On it, the clerk says that the prime minister still thinks there are lawful things Raybould can do to square away the SNC-Lavalin case without a criminal trial. 

Think about that. The PM giving legal advice to the very person who, as chief-law-officer of the Crown, is supposed to be giving advice to him. She, the attorney general and lawyer who had already decided the matter; he, the prime minister and former teacher, who wanted that changed. 

Besides, Trudeau didn’t have to wait for the briefing that Wernick claims he never gave to know where Wilson-Raybould stood on the SNC-Lavalin case. 

Five days before she “took the extraordinary and otherwise inappropriate step” of recording what she believed would be an “inappropriate conversation” with the clerk of the privy council, the attorney general wrote a letter to the prime minister himself. It was a reply to an earlier letter from the PM written on Dec. 6, and received at the Justice Department on Dec. 7.

Trudeau’s letter to his then-attorney general included a copy of a letter that Neil Bruce, SNC-Lavalin’s CEO, had sent to the PM. In that letter, Bruce complained that his company had not been granted negotiations for remediation under Canada’s new Deferred Prosecution Agreement law. He asked for a meeting with the PM at his “earliest convenience.” 

It is easy to understand why the CEO would write such a letter. If the company were convicted in the current court case, it could face a 10-year ban on bidding on federal contracts in Canada. 

So SNC-Lavalin’s interest in appealing to the PM is obvious. But with a criminal case before the courts, why would Trudeau forward that letter to the attorney general? Did he really think it was okay to personally lean in with the full weight of his office on due process? 

After “closely” reading the PM’s letter, Wilson-Raybould replied to him on Dec. 14, 2018. It was an attempt to save a puppy running loose on the Trans Canada.

The real face of this "decent man."

What should bother Canadians about the PM’s take on this matter is that his stand on SNC-Lavalin is not just a one-off. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was the first federal leader to argue that Trudeau is not the champion of the middle class he claims to be, but rather a consistent corporate cheerleader. He talks the talk for the environment, Indigenous rights, and human rights; but for Big Business, he walks the walk. 

Canadians saw Trudeau the corporate cheerleader in Houston, where he told a group of Texas oilmen that no country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave it there. 

They saw the same thing when the PM dismissed the solid opposition of coastal British Columbians to Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, and instead paid the Texas oil company $4.3 billion for this leaky relic and vowed to get the expansion to tidewater. 

They saw it again on Canada’s East Coast, where Trudeau denied that Ottawa had environmental jurisdiction over a project that plans to dump toxic pollutants from a kraft pulp mill owned by Northern Pulp into prime fishing grounds in the Northumberland Strait. 

And now, they see it once more with the PM and his minions interfering in an active criminal case involving SNC-Lavalin. That violates the heart of the judicial system: the complete independence of the prosecution service under the law. 

...It was the former attorney-general, Wilson-Raybould, who protected the government from the potentially deadly charge of interfering in a criminal case the way potentates do in corrupt Third-World countries. It was the PM and his over-zealous operatives who put the government in jeopardy by trying to violate the independence of the prosecution service, and arguably obstructing justice. 

Yet not a peep out of the Liberal lemmings about the PM tampering with the criminal justice process. Instead, general apoplexy about the former attorney general having recorded a conversation with the clerk of the privy council without his knowledge. That is like screeching about a leaky faucet while the house is on fire. 

Now, before you "Liberal lemmings" launch into your usual tirade about "Con media," this is The Tyee, not the National Post. And Michael Harris is no Con stooge either. If you've got a problem, it's yours and it's the way you recoil from the truth.

Hilarity Ensues in the House of Commons

A bit of stand up comedy in the House of Commons as the prime minister hosted a "Daughters of the Vote" gathering.  A few of the attendees greeting Justin Trudeau by turning their backs on him. What if that catches on?

The second clip shows the prime minister extolling diversity but adding that it only works when there is trust. Sort of like when we trusted his solemn promise to implement electoral reform, or his promise to bring reconciliation with First Nations or that goddamned whopper about "social licence."

Oh Dear. Jane Wants to Talk.

This one's gonna hurt.

Jane Philpott wants to tell "her truth."

The former Treasury Board president has given an interview to Macleans's Paul Wells that can only fan the embers of the Jody Wilson-Raybould/SNC-Lavalin affair.

She believes, as she put it, that “there’s much more to the story that needs to be told” but that it can’t come out because “there’s been an attempt to shut down the story”—an attempt she attributed to the Prime Minister and his close advisors. 

But she is also keenly aware, because she has been hearing from Liberal colleagues, that “there are people who are afraid that they’re not going to get elected because of what I did.” As she described that anger, the former minister said: “My only way of living with myself on that, is that this is not my fault. I did not start this.” Now she is trying to figure out how to see it through.

I believe the former attorney general has further points to make. I believe that I have further issues of concern that I’m not free to share. There was a reference by Gerry Butts in his testimony of the fact that I spoke to the Prime Minister on January the 6th about SNC-Lavalin’s desire to have a DPA [deferred prosecution agreement]. This was more than a month before the story became public. And I ordinarily would have not been allowed to share that information. But of course it’s already on the public record from the Justice Committee. I think Canadians might want to know why I would have raised that with the Prime Minister a month before the public knew about it. Why would I have felt that there was a reason why former Minister Wilson-Raybould should not be shuffled?

I did not start this. And a very wise person said two things to me that helped me over that. This is someone who has been around politics for a long time. They said that politicians in general, and perhaps Liberals in particular, make mistakes when they assume that the best interests of Canadians and their own future political success are synonymous. 

Of course I want a Liberal government in federal politics. I do not want to see Prime Minister Andrew Scheer, for a whole bunch of really important reasons. But the Liberal Party needs to be the best version of the Liberal Party. And I had to do the right thing and trust that the details would work out for the best interests of Canadians. And I think that was the second thing that this person said to me: that you have to make the decision that you can live with, based on your own convictions and principles, and you are not responsible for the fallout from it.

This will undoubtedly stir the prime minister's fan club into a fury. They haven't skipped an opportunity to slag Wilson-Raybould and her supposed motivations. Jane Philpott will probably be in for the full treatment.

A Call for Scientists to Rally Behind the Youth Climate Strike

Scientific American magazine is urging scientists everywhere to come out in support of the youth climate strike.

We, the March for Science, an international community of scientists, science advocates, teachers, and parents, emphatically support the Global Youth Climate Strike.

We commit to doing whatever we can to lift up the voices of young people and encourage their leadership. Their generation will be greatly impacted by the effects of climate change. It is critical that their voices are heard.

They are striking because our world leaders have yet to acknowledge, prioritize, or properly address the climate crisis. They are striking because marginalized communities across the world—especially communities of color, disabled communities, and low-income communities— are already disproportionately impacted by climate change. They are striking because their futures are at stake.

Their actions are backed by the best available science which shows that we need to rapidly decarbonize our economy and deeply transform society in order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. They are treating the issue of climate change with the urgency that science and justice demand.

We ourselves, as a movement of science advocates, have taken to the streets in our millions over the last two years to fight for our communities and our planet. We offer everyone else who does the same our unreserved support and solidarity.

To adults—particularly political leaders—who are criticizing students for skipping school, please stand down. Our generations have failed to act. It is time to get behind the courageous actions of our young people.

Our youth have done their homework on climate change—it’s about time that our leaders behave like they have done theirs.

I'm pretty sure that Tory supporters will dismiss this out of hand as nonsense. I do, however, hope it makes some of you Liberals, especially the Justin Trudeau fan club, wince. The government, your government, is on the wrong side of this existential threat. By supporting the Liberal government, you've also chosen to put yourself on the wrong side of this. Don't compound that by being hypocritical enough to praise these kids at the same time. You're not on their side.

Washington Post - Could the Green Party Spell Trouble for Justin Trudeau in October?

Justin Trudeau must be so pleased that he reneged on his promise to rid Canada of first-past-the-post elections and the consequent false majorities it has inflicted on the Canadian people. That broken promise, among the litany of his broken promises and outright lies, may be the one that matters most when we go to the polls this October.

Despite that, the Washington Post asks if the Green Party of Canada could be bad news for Trudeau in the looming election.

With the federal election expected to begin in the late summer or fall, Canada’s political parties are preparing to battle for as many of the country’s 338 ridings as they can — and prognosticators are warming up, too. Will the Liberals hold on to government? Will they retain their majority? Which issues are going to dominate the campaign? 

For months, the Liberals and Conservatives have been in a fairly close one-two race — with the latter picking up steam. Most polls have the former in front. Commentators and pundits, me included, have been saying that the smart money is on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hanging on to government, perhaps with a reduced majority. He remains popular — or popular-ish, depending on which polls you read. 

The economy is doing well on aggregate. A start-up party led by disgruntled former Conservative member of Parliament (and former cabinet minister) Maxime Bernier is set to drain support from his old crew. And the New Democratic Party (NDP), with whom the Liberals compete for left and center-left votes, are currently weak. 

But in politics, as in life, there are threats you know about and threats you don’t. And then there are wild cards. Enter the Green Party of Canada. Led by Elizabeth May — one of the hardest-working parliamentarians in the country, a deeply informed and fierce debater, and a long-term champion for doing what it takes to address climate change — the party, for years, has had one seat in the House of Commons. That tracks with the Greens’ success around the country — not much of it. Until recently. 

In the 2017 British Columbia election, the local Green Party went from one seat to three in the provincial parliament, about doubling its popular support from 8 percent to nearly 17 percent. It ran the idealist campaign: saying no to money from unions and corporations, distancing itself from the old punch-counter-punch of the Liberals and the NDP, doubling down on a clean environment platform and the need for, you know, a habitable planet. In 2018, in Ontario, Mike Schreiner made history as the first Green elected to the legislature in that province. In New Brunswick, after a wacky election, the Greens are benefiting from growing public support, drawing from the Liberals. 

And in Prince Edward Island, some are suggesting the Greens could make history by winning the election and forming government — a year out from the race, they are effectively tied for first place. Recently in Maclean’s, Jason Markusoff profiled the party, asking, “Where in Canada will the Greens win next?” 

The Greens are clearly a growing force. 

Federally, in November, Green Party leader May was polling at 11 percent as preferred prime minister — tied with the NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. Now her party is hovering around 7 percent on the aggregate polling numbers. That’s good news for them and potentially bad news for Trudeau. As David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, put it on Twitter: “Many, including me, say a weak NDP helps the [Liberals] in 2019. But if the Greens pull 8-10% of the vote, that’s tough for the [Liberals].” 

I think he’s right. He concludes, “I’m starting to think that @JustinTrudeau’s greater threat is @ElizabethMay, not @theJagmeetSingh.” Agreed, again, although I’d add that the combination of the two is a particularly serious challenge for Trudeau, especially if either — or both — parties perform well in some of the 34 ridings the Liberals carried by 5 percent or less in 2015 (out of 70 such nail-biter contests in total). 

The Liberals may not be past their best-by date yet — Canadians typically grow tired of federal governments after a few rounds — but they’ve been in government long enough that running the smiling 2015 “Hope and hard work” campaign will be tricky. They’re no longer the scrappy underdog on a quest to unseat the embattled, mean Conservative prime minister. They’re now the ones who broke a promise on electoral reform. They’re the ones who have struggled to build a pipeline — they had to buy the project from the private sector for it to even have a chance — that opponents claim is inconsistent with the government’s environmental agenda. They’re the ones pushing a (morally right and necessary) carbon tax backstop against the will of several (morally wrong and intransigent) provinces. They’re also the target of routine, increasingly nasty attacks from the Conservatives. And now they’re facing a growing scandal over alleged involvement by the prime minister’s office in an attempt to protect the Montreal firm SNC-Lavalin from prosecution over its alleged business practices in Moammar Gaddafi’s Libya. 

The Greens, on the other hand, are rising across the country. Modestly, sure. But notably. They don’t come with baggage. They can run the optimist, hopeful-crusader campaign underwritten by credibility as guardians of the sacred environmental trust — as the environment, day by day, is becoming a more salient issue for voters. Plus, May (as I said, a strong debater) is set to take part in the leaders’ debates in 2019 thanks to rule changes. She’ll be a force onstage. All of that is good news for the Greens and bad news for the other parties. It’s also good news for voters who want and deserve a range of credible options on the ballot.

A Question Worth Asking - Has Canada Been Captured?

As analysis and reports stack up laying bare how much we know and everything we don't know about dilbit and Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline, it is looking like this has nothing to do with the "national interest" as claimed by prime minister Trudeau. Instead it looks as though Trudeau is in service to some rather powerful special interests.  Who is he serving?

An article in The Tyee suggests that perhaps we're seeing the face of Canada's own Deep State, the Fossil Fuelers.

It all began with a Greenpeace energy researcher and a bundle of freedom of information documents he received that somehow had briefing notes for Andrew Leslie, parliamentary secretary to Christia Freeland. One set was for a meeting Leslie had with the CEO of a major pipeline company. The other was for a meeting between Leslie and officials of the oil patch lobby, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

...the briefing notes revealed that while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government was presenting itself publicly as a stalwart defender of all things Canadian against the bullying new regime south of the border — on the environment, trade and NAFTA especially — in this instance there was celebration of the fact that Donald Trump and his administration were pro-oil and pro-pipelines.
In particular, they expressed delight over the U.S. president’s decision to approve building the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline, which TransCanada is constructing, overturning Barack Obama’s rejection of the project. 

“We support TransCanada’s KXL project and efforts to expand its market in North America” was one of the notes’ talking points Leslie was given, consistent with the government’s public position on the pipeline. The briefing notes omitted any hint that climate change was on the agenda — and CAPP confirms the topic was not discussed during its meeting with Leslie. TransCanada and Leslie refused to respond to questions about these meetings.

For years Stewart has seen this sort of language in internal government memos, with cabinet ministers, MPs and civil servants seeing themselves as allies and partners of the energy industry. 

It’s one reason Stewart believes the oil industry constitutes a so-called “deep state” in Canada. 

“When we’re talking about a ‘deep state,’ it’s usually when supposedly democratic institutions and the will of the people is being replaced by the will of special interests,” he observes. “And I think if you look at the development of environmental policy in this country, the oil industry is so powerful, their influence is so pervasive that I think it’s fair to call it a deep state.”

...to academics, deep state is another way to refer to governments that have been captured by corporate or military/intelligence interests, or both. 

“Captured state is a term political scientists have used for a very long time to characterize the relationship in which the government is essentially under the influence of the dominant sector of the economy,” explains Laurie Adkin, a political scientist at the University of Alberta. 

Has the federal government — along with certain provincial governments — been captured by Canada’s energy sector? 

Kevin Taft, a former leader of Alberta’s Liberal Party (2004-08) believes so. He’s the author of a new book, Oil’s Deep State. “In Canada, the fossil fuel industry has captured really key democratic institutions and in some ways has captured so many of them that it has formed what I call a deep state,” explains Taft. “So democracy stops functioning for the people and begins to function first and foremost for the fossil fuel industry.” 

Those who believe the oil industry has become a deep state point to how the political elites, whether Liberal, Conservative or NDP — from Justin Trudeau to Stephen Harper to Rachel Notley — go to bat for the industry, even if it means Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions rise and jobs are needlessly lost. Or how Canada has never forced the oil industry to curb emissions — even as the impacts of global warming become more catastrophic. And why Canada is highly unlikely to reach its targets under the Paris climate agreement.

...Deep states ...emerge in countries that are democracies. “With a captured state, there is a strong heritage of democracy,” notes Taft. A deep state occurs when numerous government departments and regulators are captured and serve specific corporate interests at the expense of public interests. “When that happens, you end up with the appearance of democracy but really you have a state within a state,” says Taft.

...it affects all political parties, no matter whether they’re on the left or right. Hence, elections become less relevant as political parties who win office eventually succumb to the fact so many government agencies are captured.

Oil sand development was largely created by government fiat. After Peter Lougheed became Alberta’s premier in 1971, the sole oil sands operation, Suncor Energy, was producing a mere 30,000 barrels a day. Now the oil sands produce 2.5 million barrels a day. 

While Lougheed encouraged development of the oil sands, he took an interventionist approach with industry, making the oil companies abide by laws, regulators and legislators. When the industry boomed in the mid-’70s, Lougheed raised royalty rates, while the federal government hit it with taxes. 

But by 1993, the balance of power was shifting. Both Premier Ralph Klein in Alberta and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien were desperate to ramp up oil sands production to boost the economy. In return, the oil industry wanted less regulation, oversight and taxation. 

Chrétien and Klein obliged. Royalties were dropped to one per cent and taxes rolled back, while environmental regulations were weakened. 

“From then on, oil sands projects would have fewer standards of accountability to democratic institutions and more accountability to investors,” says Taft. “The system of governing and managing the publicly-owned oil sands had been captured by private interests.” 

The industry boomed. By 2015, one quarter of all business investment in Canada was going to the energy sector, while oil and gas topped Canada’s exports.

The Harper Era.

The impact of this lobbying was visible when Harper was in office. From 2008 to 2012, 27 oil companies and eight industry associations registered 2,733 meetings with federal government officials. During this time, the Harper government withdrew Canada from the Kyoto climate accord, government scientists were discouraged from doing climate science and barred from speaking to the media, while the RCMP, CSIS and Canada Revenue Agency were tasked to spy on and audit groups and activists opposed to pipelines and the tar sands. 

But the coup de grâce were two omnibus bills Harper rammed through Parliament in 2012 that gutted Canada’s environmental laws, most notably the Fisheries Act and Navigable Waters Protection Act, which were viewed as impediments for building oil pipelines.

Think Tanks - Captured

The most famous is the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, which has received funding from the U.S. oil billionaire Koch brothers and long campaigned in favour of the oil sands and pipelines while opposing climate change measures. Its staff produce a relentless stream of oped pieces for newspapers across the country. 

Canada 2020, the Ottawa-based “progressive think tank” closely allied with Trudeau, has been instrumental in shaping the Liberals. It lets industry leaders and lobbyists rub elbows with cabinet ministers and senior government officials. Among the corporate “partners” of Canada 2020 are CAPP and oil industry giants Shell, Suncor and Enbridge. 

The influence of think tanks is not to be minimized: representatives from Canada’s 10 leading think tanks appeared at least 216 times before parliamentary committees between 2000 and 2015 and were cited in the Canadian media almost 60,000 times. “It gave them and their research priceless exposure and influence in shaping government policy,” noted the Globe and Mail in December.

The Media - Captured

The oil industry advertises heavily in newspapers, on television and online. In 2013, CAPP and the Postmedia newspaper chain struck a deal whereby the media company promised to further the industry’s interests. The Postmedia papers are famous for championing the energy sector while belittling the environmental movement. A study published in 2013 by University of British Columbia and Memorial University researchers found that the Globe and Mail and National Post were failing to provide readers with a complete picture of global warming issues and underemphasizing the impacts.

Academia - Captured

The oil industry also pours millions into universities — in particular in Alberta. The University of Calgary has been beset by scandals in this regard. 

In 2011, one of its political scientists, Barry Cooper, was discovered to have transferred research funds to a climate change denial group called Friends of Science. (Cooper was also a long-time columnist with the Calgary Herald, where he poured relentless scorn on the environmental movement and any opponents of the oil sands.) 

But the topper was the Bruce Carson scandal. The federal government spent $40 million to finance a University of Calgary think tank chaired by Carson, a former senior advisor to Harper and a convicted fraudster. The institute worked with the industry on a plan to rebrand the oil sands as responsible and sustainable, and Carson co-ordinated some of his activities with CAPP. 

In 2016, Carson was found guilty of violating lobbying laws in connection with his work at the University of Calgary and fined $50,000.

Canada's Regulatory Agencies - Captured

Some critics believe key elements of the federal bureaucracy are under the industry’s sway — in particular Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN) and Environment and Climate Change Canada. 

“I think NRCAN has become the Department of Oil and Gas and I think Environment Canada was converted under Harper from a public service agency to a corporate concierge service to speed along the approval of oil sands projects,” says [Elizabeth] May. 

In 2015, after the Liberal government was elected, Jim Carr, the new natural resources minister, appointed Janet Annesley as his chief of staff. Annesley had spent five years working for CAPP as a vice-president, and nine years at Shell Oil before that. (Annesley was replaced earlier last year by Zoë Caron, a long-time environmental activist). 

When Catherine McKenna became environment minister, her deputy minister was Michael Martin, who had been appointed by the Harper government as chief climate negotiator for the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, which set no firm targets for reducing greenhouse emissions.

May feels Martin pressed the Liberals to stick with the former government’s target. “There was a shift and suddenly Harper’s target was Trudeau’s target.” 

But it’s not just the federal government. Last year, internal B.C. government documents [Christy Clark's Liberals] were unearthed that revealed the province’s climate plan unveiled in 2016 had been secretly drafted jointly with CAPP and its members — in part at CAPP’s offices in Calgary.

The Crown Jewel - Captured

Then there is the National Energy Board (NEB), which has the task of reviewing things like pipeline applications. 

In recent years, the board has been accused of being heavily biased in favour of the oil industry. In 2015, for example, NEB board members met privately with Jean Charest, a former Quebec premier, who was a lobbyist for the pipeline company, TransCanada. This led to the resignation of NEB panel members when the meeting was exposed the following year. 

The NEB is also accused of not upholding the public interest when it comes to pipelines. Unifor, a trade union that represents nearly 12,000 workers in the oil industry, is opposed to pipelines designed to ship raw bitumen out of Canada, arguing it should be refined and upgraded in Canada. Over the past 30 years, nearly 20 refineries have been shuttered in Canada. 

Unifor has argued before the NEB that it should stop this trend. In a brief presented to the NEB in 2016, the union noted that by exporting raw bitumen “Canada will forego the enormous economic and employment benefits of adding value to Canadian resources through upgrading, refining, and secondary manufacturing. Not only does the bitumen export model undermine investment in value-added production over the long term, it actually threatens the security of supply to existing Canadian refineries… Incredibly, in 2014 Canada actually became a net importer of refined petroleum products: with imports of product now more than offsetting our own exports.”

The Biggest Capture of Them All - Justin Trudeau - Captured

As I argued recently, with Trudeau, just like Trump, you have to judge this prime minister by his deeds, not his words. All too often one has no relation to the other.

At the Paris climate talks his government pushed for a higher-than-expected goal — holding the planet’s rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius rather than two degrees. Trudeau also announced a plan to reduce methane emissions by up to 45 per cent from 2012 levels within the next seven years. 

But Trudeau has also undermined those goals by supporting three pipelines the industry desperately wants — Kinder Morgan, Enbridge Line 3 and Keystone XL. He also approved the $11.4-billion Pacific NorthWest LNG project to convert fracked gas in B.C. 

Prior to the election, Trudeau had promised to cut $1.6 billion in federal subsidies to the oil industry. More than two years later, this has still not happened. While recommendations to overhaul the NEB have been made, they’ve not been implemented. And the environmental laws Harper gutted have not been reinstated, although are under review.

Even the promised carbon tax on industry has been altered to give big breaks to industrial emitters like the oil and gas sector. And regulations on methane emissions have also been delayed. 

Most crucially, Trudeau has refused to place limits on the oil and gas sector’s greenhouse emissions. 

“If you take a look at the climate plan that Canada articulated… it lays out very aggressive and ambitious plan for decarbonizing the nation,” says Abreu of Climate Action Network. “It impacts almost every sector of the Canadian economy — except the fossil fuel sector.”

A Government Wearing Petro-Blinders

Canada’s capture by the oil and gas industry’s deep state is proving ill-timed. 

“The harsh reality is that global warming is real,” says Kevin Taft. “And while much of the rest of the world is moving aggressively away from fossil fuels, Canada is going to get left behind in that transformation if we’re not really careful.”

The Tyee article provides a wonderful backdrop to help make sense of the Trudeau government's energy policy so riddled with contradictions, inconsistencies, outright falsehoods and, ultimately, cognitive dissonance.

It makes sense of the radical transformation from Trudeau 2015 to Trudeau 2018. Liberals, I'm sorry but your boy has been processed, remanufactured, and reissued to someone's liking - just not Canada's.

I've Got an Idea to Rescue Justin From His Slump

Unfair or not, Justin Trudeau has taken a hit in the public's mind over his pretty clumsy trip to India. With JT et famille sporting an elaborate wardrobe of Bollywood's best fashions, the Indian press took the piss out of him pretty relentlessly. The local scribblers piled on.

Now Trudeau's approval numbers have dropped to within spitting distance of Tory leader, Andrew Scheer's. That's Andrew "Chuckles" Scheer people, a guy with all the charisma of a recycled catheter.

Maybe JT should consider upping his game. He could start by reversing himself and honouring a major campaign promise - electoral reform. I would like it even better if he went for electoral reform and pipelines but that's probably too much to ask. 

Trudeau promised that 2015 would be our last first-past-the-post election. In short order he reneged on that committment but his "can't" sounded more like "won't."  His claim that it wouldn't work here, even though it works elsewhere, was utterly unconvincing. We would even accept the preferential ballot option if he insisted. Just do it.

Or maybe Justin can change course. Maybe he should transform himself from just another free trade mule into a Renaissance Man befitting of his legendary father. (full disclosure. what follows is taken from an email I wrote to a fellow blogger this morning)

I have long argued that Canada needs some serious redecorating. Ever since George H.W. Bush started this “coalition of the willing” business, America has treated certain allies, Canada included, as its de facto Foreign Legion.  Desert Storm was, arguably, a good cause – driving Iraq out of Kuwait. Kosovo – meh. Afghanistan, well we all lost our minds at the 9/11 attacks streamed live into our livingrooms. We even bent the rules around Article 5 in that, 1) – the US never attacked by Afghanistan, and 2) – at the time the US invoked Article 5 it was not truly “under attack.” Picky, picky.

Where we lost the plot was when Bush/Cheney decided America should turn to invading Iraq rather than finishing what it had begun in Afghanistan. We knew from Hans Blix and his team of UN inspectors that Saddam wasn’t hiding a mountain of WMDs. It was pretty obvious that Washington thought it could roll in and basically grab the oil for US energy giants. Why was the only Iraqi ministry US forces secured the oil ministry?

The US decided to offload much of the Afghan mission to free up troops for Iraq and wanted a Foreign Legion. Rick “Big Cod” Hillier talked Paul Martin into taking the combat gig in Kandahar with a laughably token force of just 2,000 personnel, no more than half combat ready, to a province whose area and population mandated a combat force of between 20 to 30,000.  Martin didn’t know any better. Hillier probably did know, definitely should have known , but obviously didn’t tell his prime minister. It’s right there in the US Army/Marine Corps field manual, FM-3/24.

We lost our war in Afghanistan, the first military defeat in Canadian history. We lost badly. War is a state of armed conflict used to achieve a political outcome. That sought outcome was defined by Stephen Harper. We were there to stay. We would never cut and run. We would stay until the Taliban had been vanquished, effectively eradicated. We would make Afghanistan safe for democracy and a restoration of human rights (as they had once enjoyed under the country’s last king). We did none of those things. The Talibs are resurgent. The government is a hopelessly corrupt amalgamation of warlords from five main ethnic groups. Little boys’ bums are all the rage again and the struggle for women’s rights languishes. Meanwhile we definitely chose to cut and run.

Then along came Libya, a not so tidy war that Obama basically offloaded on Europe. Harper staged a victory fly past over Parliament Hill for that one even as Libya itself descended into an intractable, second phase civil war, this one substituting Islamist radicals for Gadhafi.

Syria? ISIS has been driven out, more or less, for now. It has been reduced from a rebellion to an insurgency to what is today essentially a terrorist movement. That’s the thing with these guys. They can morph from one state to another, often rather effortlessly, and that enables them to be flexible, mobile. They’ll be back, probably in another guise.

I have gone on at some length on these events because the world has become no safer for all of our post 9/11 misadventures. If anything we’ve demonstrated, repeatedly, that all the King’s Horses and all the King’s Men are no longer a sure path to a meaningful, lasting victory. We have all the watches but the bad guys have all the time.

We are returning to a more challenging era, one akin to the last Cold War, another win that we utterly failed to consolidate as we allowed triumphalism to get the better of us. That Doomsday Clock is now closer to midnight than it has been since the Cuban missile crisis. Around the world but particularly in Europe, Eurasia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the greater Asia Pacific region all the way to Australia, Russia and China, everyone is madly rearming.

America is being overtaken, economically, by China which is fast making inroads into the Middle East, Africa and even South America (whatever happened to the Monroe Doctrine anyway?). We have seen a number of these major power transitions over the centuries. At various times in the modern period the dominant spot belonged alternately to the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, the Brits and now the Americans. Before that came the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, etc.

Here’s the thing. History tells us that these transitions tend to be difficult. Two-thirds of them result in war. Is war in the offing between the U.S. and China? From what I’ve read over the past ten years, China’s military leadership is quietly bellicose.  At some level they want to exact revenge for China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of us white folks – Opium Wars, etc.?  That thought came to mind when I found an essay in the Proceedings of the US Naval Institute wherin an acting service officer complained bitterly that China was overtaking the United States “without a fight” as though that was unthinkable.

It would be tempting to dismiss that view as the work of a hothead only his sentiments go deeper in that, all the way back to the Project for a New American Century, the neo-cons (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz, Libby et al)  developed an “over my dead body” policy prescription that was subsequently embodied in the Bush Doctrine. That doctrine provided that America reserved the right to institute pre-emptive war against any nation or group of nations that challenged America’s economic and military domination.  Seriously, look it up.

The backbone of American airpower today and into the future are its stealth warplanes, the F-22 and F-35. Those are not dual purpose aircraft. They’re not defence oriented. There are simply too few F-22s to handle the job and the F-35 has a series of deficiencies that make it marginal in the air defence role. They are primarily offensive weapons designed to “take the fight to the enemy” and not just any garden variety enemy either.  They are purpose built to operate in heavily defended, hostile airspace.  One American general called the F-35 his “kick in the front door” weapon. Do you remember that the Japanese ran a dress rehearsal of their Pearl Harbour attack to test their shallow-draught Long Lance torpedoes in an appropriate anchorage? The USAF staged a similar “proof of concept” exercise called Operation Chimichanga that simulated a stealth first strike attack on China. Do you the Chinese maybe didn’t hear about that?

Whether it’s North Korea or the South China Sea or maybe just two countries getting into each other’s faces, this is not a very placid time. For Canada, however, it may be a time to begin loosening the ties that bind us to American foreign and military policy, perhaps by aligning Canadian  policy more directly with our western European allies. It doesn’t mean we won’t pick up the phone when Washington calls but maybe just not on the first or even the twenty-first ring.

If you follow this global rearmament business as I do you’re drawn to the conclusion that the world has absolutely no shortage of state of the art weaponry. State of the art everything. Hell even the city state of Singapore has six modern and very capable submarines.

How about we zig where everyone else chooses to zag by decoupling ourselves from Washington and restoring our credibility as an honest broker nation? Communications between rival nations (at all levels) are apt to become more strained in this overheated and armed-to-the-teeth milieu that has become our new reality. The need for a trustworthy intermediary may be greater now than ever before in Canadian history. It's a job suitable for the nation that gave the world the concept of peacekeeping, an initiative that earned Mike Pearson the Nobel Peace Prize.