Eviscerating The Bitumen Bullshit

Give Jason Kenney, his predecessor, Rachel Notley, and our prime minister, Justin Trudeau, their due. When it comes to bitumen and bullshit they'll lay it on just as thick as they can every chance they get.

The Tyee's petro-scribe, Alberta's own Andrew Nikiforuk, systematically debunks every popular lie these characters like to spread about Trudeau's damned pipeline and bitumen's dismal future.

To most coastal British Columbians there's a real malice that emanates from the petro-state's campaign of deceit whether that's from Alberta, Saskatchewan or Ottawa.

I urge you to follow the link and read it in its entirety. For now, here are a few teasers:

According to some of the more ridiculous claims, environmentalists are to blame for bitumen price discounts, Vancouverites are being punished for their orca-loving ways with high gasoline prices, and climate change really doesn’t matter. 

Their politicians don’t dare admit the reality — that combined overproduction of bitumen and U.S. tight oil brought down the global price of oil with a thundering crash in 2014. In the world we inhabit now, oil business as usual has died.

The plot to thwart bitumen sales to China.

The facts are these: Over decades the U.S. has built more than half of the world’s heavy oil refining capacity in the Midwest and Gulf Coast for a variety of reasons. 

Asia owns but 23 per cent of global capacity to refine heavy oil. It’s not willing to pay more for bitumen than the U.S., because it costs more to ship it there.

Alberta’s low royalty policy encouraged the industry to strip and ship diluted bitumen instead of adding value by building more upgrading facilities and complex refineries. 

The province’s dependence on U.S. markets and pipelines is a direct product of what was billed in 2006 as Alberta’s “give-it-away” strategy. 

Obstruction of Trans-Mountain has left BC with a fuel shortage entirely of its own making.

Most of the gasoline consumed in B.C., the nation’s fourth largest market for refined fuels, is made by four Alberta refineries and moved along the existing 65-year-old Trans Mountain pipeline. Less than 10 per cent of the province’s gasoline comes from refineries in Washington State. 

(An historical note: when the Trans Mountain pipeline was built in the 1950s, Vancouver supported four refineries, but as the line exported more oil to U.S. refineries, local refining died off in the 1990s with the exception of Parkland, formerly Chevron, in Burnaby.) 

The Vancouver market has no ready access to refined products brought by sea, so it is a price taker. Economist Robyn Allan calculates that neither taxes, nor scarcity of supply, fully explain why the region has some of Canada’s highest gasoline prices. 

A study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives suggests Alberta refineries have been price gouging Vancouver consumers since 2010, because they can do so due to lack of local competition.

...To date, high prices have had a predictable effect: B.C.’s per capita consumption of refined petroleum goods is 11 per cent below the national average.

Bitumen is the "beating heart" of the Canadian economy.

That’s a big laugh. 

Despite 47 per cent growth in Canada’s oil and gas production since 2000 — largely from the tar sands — royalty payments to government have declined 59 per cent, notes respected energy analyst David Hughes. 

So, too, has the industry’s proportional contribution to GDP.
According to data from Natural Resources Canada, taxes paid by the oil and gas industry since 2006 have dropped from $12 billion to $6 billion*.

It's "Ethical Oil."

There is light oil and heavy oil, but no refinery has ever begged for ethical oil. 

That’s because it doesn’t exist. If Alberta has done such a “moral” job of regulating its resources, what happened to its rainy day fund? 

And if the industry has behaved so ethically, why will Alberta and Canadian taxpayers likely be on the hook for cleaning up and decommissioning $260-billion worth of abandoned wells, pipelines and gas plants?

How ethical is it to allow an industry to set aside funds of $1.6 billion to cover hundreds of billions of dollars in liabilities? 

New research says that “carbon dioxide emission intensities for oil sands facilities are 13 to 123 per cent larger than those estimated using publically available data.”

Is that an ethical development?

Let's do the math. A quarter trillion dollars of unfunded remediation costs versus six billion dollars a year* in royalties to the Alberta treasury. Imagine finding a bar that lets you run a tab for 43-years. That's 43-years worth of royalties.

Myth: Every day Canada loses 30 to 40 million dollars from a shortage of pipeline capacity. That's a lie, one of Junior's favourites.

To illustrate the grandiosity of the claim, just consider the finances of Suncor, one of Canada’s largest bitumen miners. If the industry were losing so much money every day, you’d expect Suncor to be bleeding, too.

But that’s not what its financial statements say.

In fact, Suncor has been recording tidy profits for years, because it mines, upgrades and refines bitumen into a variety of refined products.

The company also hedges against oil price volatility and heavy oil discounts. Even with mandated provincial cuts in production, the company produced396,000 barrels of bitumen in the first quarter of 2019, with net earnings of $1.4 billion compared to $789 million in 2018. 

Husky and Imperial Oil, the province’s other big producers, also reported healthy returns this year.

...So don’t try bullying British Columbians with fictional losses produced by fictional pipelines. 

Alberta’s three major bitumen producers make money regardless of pipeline politics, because they do everything Alberta failed to do: they hedge, add value and refine.

US-funded environmentalists are waging a campaign to block Canada's access to Asian markets. They're out to sabotage our economy.

No conspiracy existed. The campaign largely focused on bitumen’s distinct character. Such crude has higher energy costs and an extreme carbon footprint compared to conventional oils. 

Alberta’s remains one of the world’s dirtiest oils, with emissions 102 to 204 per cent higher than average U.S. refinery crude on a well-to-tank basis that includes all the emissions from mining, upgrading and refining.

That’s why Alberta’s oil was targeted. Period.

And given that oil sands production has increased 376 per cent since 2000, and overall oil and gas production has grown by 47 per cent in Canada, “the alleged foreign funded attack” has been damn ineffective, notes analyst Hughes.

Here on the coast we know these truths. We see the malicious lies, and they are malicious, spun by Ottawa and the oil provinces for what they are, an attack on us and on our coast.  The threats make their malice even more intolerable.

Crimes Against Humanity

Bear with me while I vent a little - no, a lot.



If you want to measure the sincerity and determination of the government's efforts to thwart climate change, try this:

1. - Remember that climate change is the first existential threat that human civilization, Canada included, has faced. It is of an order of magnitude more threatening than any war in history.

2. - Realize this is a "whole of government" size problem. We need to harness the entire power and resources of our governments, federal and provincial, to this effort.

3. - Measure the magnitude of the danger, and the resources available to respond to it against what these governments are actually doing which is not very much.

The economy remains Justin Trudeau's singular priority. It remains Cathy McKenna's priority. This is why we're left with a grimly laughable carbon tax response.

These people know the degree of decarbonization that will be required to meet the threshold of a 50 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050 and it is only fear of the electorate that keeps them from scoffing at it in public.

I was relieved to see their own commissioner's report recognize that it is "effectively irreversible" but, as I've been writing for a number of years, what we do now will determine how much worse, even deadlier it will be for our young and future generations.

We do have the fate of the future in our hands, just as Greta Thunberg and her school climate strikers remind us, and promoting the extraction and export of highly toxic, high-carbon fossil fuels, precisely when we need to be going just as fast as we can in the opposite direction, is monstrous.

There are monsters among us.

Yes, the will of Justin "No one would just leave it in the ground" Trudeau is monstrous. The will of his environment minister is monstrous. The will of the Liberal government and the Conservative opposition is monstrous. The will of the premiers working to derail even a minuscule carbon tax is monstrous.

Bold as it is to say this, what they're doing represent crimes against humanity and yet almost none of us can get our heads around that. We're Canadians, citizens of the world sans pareil. Canadians are nice. Canadians are caring, generous, compassionate. Canadians aren't the kind to line their pockets at the expense of the lives of little brown people from poor and vulnerable countries in distant lands. To all of that - "bollocks."

There are several papers on accelerating climate change as a crime against humanity. This one, at Jacobin Magazine, summarizes the case without resorting to frustrating legalese.

There is no excuse any more for pretending we don't know what that stench is pouring from those chimneys. We know full well.

A Glimpse at the Risks We Must Bear for Your Pathetic "National Unity."

Two things: the Deepwater Horizon disaster involved conventional, crude oil. They were not dealing with tar-like sludge laced with toxins, acids, heavy metals and carcinogens. Secondly, it was a fairly easy site for oil spill response crews and vessels to get at. No mad currents, no huge swells, no tides, no rocky projections and inaccessible coastlines.

For all that, it was a catastrophe. That much should have been obvious as soon as they used military-grade transport aircraft, C-130 Hercules, to spray an even more lethal chemical, Corexit, not to disperse the oil or render it harmless, but to sink it out of sight.

Oil spills, even conventional crude oil spills, are catastrophic. More than a quarter century later the Exxon Valdez oil still confounds clean up crews in Prince William Sound, Alaska. It's on the shoreline, it's in the water. It's now expected to claim one of the two resident Orca pods in that area. That's a quarter century plus.

What about the Deepwater Horizon? It is now allowing researchers to chronicle how even a conventional oil spill can savage the marine ecology - for ever.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster may have had a lasting impact upon even the smallest organisms in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have found – amid warnings that the oceans around America are also under fresh assault as a result of environmental policies under Donald Trump. 

Lingering oil residues have altered the basic building blocks of life in the ocean by reducing biodiversity in sites closest to the spill, which occurred when a BP drilling rig exploded in April 2010, killing 11 workers and spewing about 4m barrels of oil into the Gulf.

Researchers took sediment samples in 2014 from shipwrecks scattered up to 150km (93 miles) from the spill site to study how microbial communities on the wrecks have changed. On two shipwrecks close to the source of the outpouring of oil – a German U-Boat and a wooden 19th-century sailing vessel – scientists saw a visible oil residue. 

“At the sites closest to the spill, biodiversity was flattened,” said Leila Hamdan, a microbial ecologist at the University of Southern Mississippi and lead author of the study. “There were fewer types of microbes. This is a cold, dark environment and anything you put down there will be longer lasting than oil on a beach in Florida.

The BP oil disaster fouled more than 1,300 miles of coastline, caking seabirds and killing sea creatures and other wildlife, leading to huge financial losses for the tourism and fishing industries. But Hamdan said the oil’s impact on microbes, each measuring just a fraction of a millimeter, could prove even more significant given their foundational role at the base of the ocean food chain.

“We rely heavily on the ocean and we could be looking at potential effects to the food supply down the road,” she said. “Deep sea microbes regulate carbon in the atmosphere and recycle nutrients. I’m concerned there will be larger consequences from this sort of event.”

The marine ecology begins at the sea bed. Ocean food chains begin with the smallest creatures on the sea bed that are eaten by the next biggest creature in a process aptly described as a "food chain" in which the top predators are usually found toward the surface.

As the smallest creatures are eaten, the contamination they have absorbed into their bodies or cells passes on to their immediate predators in a process called "bio-concentration." That contamination keeps concentrating at each successive link in the food chain, straight up to the top. It attacks everything, every species, along the way. It's a direct path from microbe to orca or the great whales.

Maybe you believe prime minister Trudeau's most outrageous and deliberate lie - that there's some magical oil spill response that will keep British Columbia's coastline and our productive marine environment safe from a bitumen spill. Where is this world class oil spill package? Given that oil spills, on average, take 50 years to clean up, "world class" is a euphemism for catastrophe. And, besides, why did his own EnviroMin, Dame Cathy herself, authorize the use of Corexit in BC waters?

Trudeau assures us that his government has "done the science" on these environmental hazards. That's a lie. His very own Environment Canada says the science hasn't been done. Canada's pre-eminent scientific body, the Royal Society of Canada, says the science hasn't been done. They both put the lie to every dodgy and maliciously false claim this prime minister makes. He's simply not to be trusted, especially by the very people his petro-greed most imperils, coastal British Columbians.

Now, of course, Trudeau has even more incentive, 4.5 billion of them (and that's just for starters), to lie and obscure, confound and confuse. He's bought himself a goddamned pipeline, the J. Trudeau Memorial Pipeline, 65-years old and prone to leaking like those middle age women dancing around in those TV ads. He likes that pipeline so much he paid a sketchy outfit from Texas more than six times its actual value. There's a guy who's not looking to give any straight answers on environmental questions.

Even the former Bank of Canada governor, David Dodge, says some British Columbians protesting the pipeline will have to be killed before urging the Trudeau government to find the courage to take those lives.

"we have to be willing to enforce the law once it’s there … It’s going to take some fortitude to stand up.”

No, Dave. What will take fortitude is to take those bullets and fall down.

Justin Trudeau, his entire cabinet and all the horses they rode in on; Rachel Notley, the outgoing premier of Alberta; Jason Kenney, the incoming premier of Alberta; some stooge from Saskatchewan named Moe; that former governor of the Bank of Canada; those Kinder Morgan bandits who fleeced the Dauphin and the entire roster of the Calgary Petroleum Club, they're all - oh what's that word?

Which brings to mind an article in Vox by  Stanford psychology professor, Robert Sutton, who has now defined the term, "asshole" -

There are a lot of academic definitions, but here’s how I define it: An asshole is someone who leaves us feeling demeaned, de-energized, disrespected, and/or oppressed. In other words, someone who makes you feel like dirt. 

Christy Goldfuss, former environmental advisor to Barack Obama, now with the Center for American Progress, summed it up in a way that should resonate with the people of British Columbia, our First Nations and our provincial government:

“In the absence of a president [prime minister] who is willing to lead, it is now more important than ever that coastal governors [premier Horgan], tribal leaders, state legislatures the [B.C. legislature] and local communities take up the mantle of leadership and work together to defend and restore the health of [Canada's] oceans."

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?

The Perils and Pitfalls of the J. Trudeau Memorial Pipeline - They're Very Real

To hear many east of the Rockies tell it, a dilbit spill in British Columbia's coastal waters isn't going to happen, although it is, and, should it, they have a "world class" oil spill response programme, although they don't. Those are just lies they have to spin to scrub the narrative of their "national interest" claim. Isolate all the problems and then you can say it's a matter of economics and one recalcitrant province.

South of the border, the Americans are remarkably candid about the realities of an increase in tanker traffic resulting from the J. Trudeau Memorial Pipeline expansion. Their honesty is a refreshing break from the nonsense this prime minister tries to force feed British Columbians.

The presence of that much more oil puts the Strait at a “very high” risk of spills, according to one study by Canadian authorities. Another showed that in six of seven simulated spill-response drills by B.C. officials, more than half the oil during a major spill would have remained in the water five days after a hypothetical accident. 

“We haven’t felt that in the past the standards and capability across the border were as strong as they are on the U.S. side,” said Jensen, with the Department of Ecology. 

In addition, oil-sands petroleum has in previous accidents proved more difficult to clean up than North Slope crude. A former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) chemist has argued that oil from Alberta could sink if left on the surface too long, making cleanup virtually impossible.

“We don’t really know how to clean a spill of that stuff up,” said Kongsgaard, of the Puget Sound Partnership. “You’re not going to hear from the cleanup people that we really understand how it behaves at all.” 

But the fact that Haro Strait and Boundary Pass just to the northeast are the most likely place for any serious accident poses a special kind of concern for many officials. 

The region’s endangered killer whales concentrate in those areas, and “We’ve seen that they don’t move around to avoid spilled oil,” said Brad Hanson, a marine-mammal expert with NOAA.

It's times like these that you get to know your friends from your, let's put it this way, your adversaries. The way I see it, our adversaries are the Alberta thugs, Notley and her soon to be replacement, Jason Kenney, and the Ottawa thugs, your prime minister Trudeau and his pack of drylander MPs. It is passing curious that on this pipeline/supertanker steamroller, Justin doesn't have one of his British Columbia MPs leading the charge. Those cowards have gone mute, perhaps Justice Minister Jody excepted and even Jody is keeping her lip buttoned. The rest are fretting about whether they'll get their asses handed to them next year. No, the Gang of Four are Quebec's Trudeau, Manitoba's Carr, Ontario's McKenna and Quebec's Garneau.  A dilbit spill will be no skin off their asses. And, to prove it, McKenna even approved massively toxic Corexit as an oil spill dispersant.

But we do have friends. We have friends in Washington state and Oregon and California, even in Alaska. Notley and Trudeau remind us of the difference between friend and - well, adversary. Notley showed that she's no friend when she passed legislation allowing her government to cut off oil and gas supplies to British Columbia. Trudeau, our other adversary, let her get away with it.

Washington governor, Jay Inslee, however showed that we have a real friend to the south when he assured BC premier Horgan that Washington would supply us with the required fossil fuels if Alberta put the screws to us. It almost seems reminiscent of the Berlin airlift. Notley, with Trudeau's concurrence, threatens to disrupt life for ordinary British Columbians if we don't submit to her will. And then the Good Guys put in an appearance with a friendly "fear not."

Times like these make me just a little sympathetic to Donald Trump who cannot find the billions of dollars he'll need to build his wall along the Mexican border. British Columbians already have the wall we might need. It's huge and it's granite and it reaches thousands of feet into the sky. It's even aligned right, north and south. It's the Rocky Mountains and all the other mountain ranges west of it.

It's not unusual for newcomers to have trouble adjusting to those mountains. They complain that the mountains make them somehow feel cut off from their families and home provinces. Some just go back from whence they came. Some find those mountains distressing but most of us find them assuring, our own Great Wall.

Our majestic mountains create not just a physical divide but also a psychological separation. I wonder if Trudeau gets that. I'm not sure he does.

Trans Mountain Thursday - The Rule of Law and Cooperative Federalism - For Some, Just Not For All.

The Tyee again tackles TTM (Trudeau's Trans Mountain pipeline) with two reports. Stepford Liberals, and your ranks are legion, are not going to like this.

Will Horter explores how the "rule of law" is used by the pipeline proponents but only when that serves them. When it gets in their way, it's a different matter, they've never heard of it. And, yes, that goes for the Dauphin - in spades.

I can’t believe I’m writing this, but it appears that our New Age prime minister has embraced the post-truth era quicker than anyone could have imagined. Quite simply, he is imitating U.S. President Donald Trump in his handling of Kinder Morgan: tell a big lie and repeat it frequently. Attack any opponents as anti-prosperity, and their words as “fake news.” Unfortunately for Canadian democracy, the cynical “big lie” propaganda technique is now becoming the go-to-procedure in Ottawa for all things Kinder Morgan.

Building on a few other whoppers — Kinder Morgan will lower gas prices, Canada needs new tar sands pipelines in order to address global warming, Justin Trudeau’s promise to ensure a renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with First Nations — we now discover the biggest lie of all: Trudeau cites the “rule of law” in support of his claim that his government’s Kinder Morgan approval was a science-based decision made after carefully weighing all the evidence. Credible reports based on newly available documents and government staff whistle-blower accounts indicate that Trudeau’s approval of Kinder Morgan was purely political, and worse, “rigged.”

The hypocrisy of the “rule of law” crowd has a long history in British Columbia’s oil tanker and pipeline struggles. Not so many years ago when Stephen Harper was ruling the roost in Ottawa, we began to the hear the “rule of law” touted in support of Enbridge’s proposal to bisect British Columbia with a pipeline to Kitimat, where bitumen would be pumped into oil tankers for export to China. Pro-Enbridge cheerleaders touted the National Energy Board’s recommendation and the Harper cabinet’s approval. “The issue is already decided, they said, “opponents are ‘radicals’ threatening the economy and Canadian democracy.” 

As then, so today. Until the new allegations of NEB rigging surfaced, Kinder Morgan’s promoters often referred to the “rule of law” as their rationale for moving ahead quickly with the Texas company’s controversial oil tanker-pipeline proposal.
But what exactly do they mean? 

The dictionary defines the rule of law as: “the principle that all people and institutions are subject to and accountable to law that is fairly applied and enforced.” 

Canada is not a dictatorship. Just because some handpicked board rubber-stamps something, or princely Trudeau (or the bully Harper before him) wants something, it doesn’t mean we all have to march in step to make it so.

...The shortcuts and flaws in the NEB review of Kinder Morgan are well known. The Trans Mountain NEB review is haunted by the exclusion of many affected people and groups, the limited terms of reference, the lack of cross-examination to test the evidence Kinder Morgan submitted, the exclusion of relevant evidence (such as scientific studies concluding bitumen sinks if spilled), the expedited hearing schedule and conflicts of interest. 

Even Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada (before they came to power) admitted the NEB’s review of Kinder Morgan was fundamentally flawed. Much has been made about then-candidate Trudeau’s statements that Kinder Morgan would not be approved, and the review would be redone if he became prime minister. However, a more damaging statement has been overlooked: the follow-up letter by Anne Gainey, then president of the Liberal Party of Canada, wrote just before the election responding to questions put to Trudeau about his statements. Gainey wrote: “regarding the Liberal Party of Canada’s position on the Kinder Morgan Pipeline. As you are aware, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada have serious concerns with the process surrounding the approval of this pipeline. We cannot support the pipeline in its current form because the Conservatives have not ensured environmental, community or stakeholder consent. We agree with what you, and Canadians across the country, have been saying for a long time: Canada’s environmental assessment process is broken.”

A Rigged Process. Did Trudeau Break the Law?

If Trudeau’s false promises weren’t enough to threaten the legitimacy of the federal Trans Mountain approval process, we are now hearing credible reports — with documents and several government staff whistle-blowers — describing how Trudeau’s government instructed staff to put their thumb on the scale of justice. Reportedly, Erin O’Gorman — the then-associate deputy minister of the major projects management office — was instructed to “find a way to approve Kinder Morgan.” O’Gorman then reportedly told various departments to do just that. In other words, it appears Trudeau betrayed not only his “Sunny Ways” promises, but violated a host of laws by predetermining the Kinder Morgan approval before all the evidence was in, or consultations with affected First Nations were completed.

...Ironically, when all the evidence is in, it is Kinder Morgan’s cheerleaders, not opponents, that actually are undermining the rule of law. Their get-an-approval-by-any-means-necessary approach — by rigging review processes, ignoring conflicts of interest, trying to pre-empt review by courts, generally putting their thumb on the scales of justice, and using “big lie” propaganda techniques — is the real threat to the rule of law.

Christopher Guly discusses how Trudeau invokes "cooperative federalism" when that suits him but only when it suits him. Sort of like the "rule of law" farce.

The one major certainty regarding the fight between the British Columbia government and its Albertan and federal counterparts regarding Kinder Morgan’s $7.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project is that the cross-jurisdictional dispute is unprecedented in Canadian history.

...B.C. is challenging Alberta’s Bill 12 in the courts, and has submitted a reference to its own appellate court to determine whether or not it can regulate increases in the flow of diluted bitumen that crosses its borders. Ottawa, as an intervenor in that case, will argue federal authority regarding interprovincial pipelines that serve the national interest — a position Saskatchewan, which also wants to join the BC Court of Appeal reference, supports too.

 B.C. won’t get its answer before the May 31 deadline Kinder Morgan set to receive a federal government assurance that its Trans Mountain project could proceed unimpeded. 

The Federal Court of Appeal has also yet to release a ruling on a case launched by seven Indigenous groups challenging Ottawa’s assertion that it properly consulted First Nations. But a decision could be further delayed after the Tsleil-Waututh Nation filed a motion earlier this month asking the court to order the federal government to release uncensored copies of documents cited in a recent National Observer investigation that revealed bureaucrats were ordered to approve the project.

Last month, Trudeau also promised, but has yet to pursue, “legislative options” to “assert” federal jurisdiction over Trans Mountain. But even if he did and introduced legislation — which at this point could not pass Parliament by month’s end — it would not “foreclose First Nations, British Columbia or anyone else from seeking a judicial review of it,” argues Jason MacLean, a former Wall Street corporate and commercial litigator who teaches environmental law and natural resources law at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

But he points out that the political logjam concerning Kinder Morgan’s pipeline is not the only constitutional conundrum facing the federal government. 

The Saskatchewan government intends to file a reference with the province’s top court challenging the constitutionality of the federal carbon tax, and in so doing, is taking an opposite position to the one it will use in the BC appellate court supporting Ottawa’s jurisdiction over the pipeline.

“What is so ironic is that the federal government will defend its carbon tax relying on the doctrine of cooperative federalism, which is how it was designed — to give provinces the ability to tailor the price to their own economies, such as through a tax or a cap-and-trade system,” says MacLean. ...Yet the federal government is trying to jam a pipeline down B.C.’s throat through unilateral federal action. The contradiction couldn’t be more delicious for a law professor. But those disputes will ultimately have to get settled either in the courts or at the ballot box — or both.”

...MacLean says that if a court can rule that Ottawa also has jurisdiction over a mine located within a province’s borders, “it strains the mind to understand how a major oil pipeline project that has ecological, First Nations and climate-change implications is going to be solely within the federal government’s purview.”

Trudeau has done a wonderful job of proving that there's one law for the rest of Canada and another, very different law for British Columbia. He's also done a wonderful job, quite unintentionally, of revealing the real Trudeau behind that charming facade.

Will Horter has written something that I couldn't bring myself to write although the thought has crossed my mind - how Trudeau, like Trump (and Harper before them), has routinely resorted to the "Big Lie" and smear tactics against those who see through him. He's gotten himself in too deep this time. Gee I'll bet he's missing Christy Clark.

Like a Vampire Sizzling Under the Noonday Sun

The more unviable the Athabasca Tar Sands become, the more extreme measures politicians will accept to keep that corpse warm.

There's nothing for it but to drag it out into the burning light of day.

One thing we all know - all of us - is that to these small-minded politicians with their "next electoral cycle" vision, 70 years might as well be 70 centuries. Hell, even their kids will probably be long dead by then.

Imagine if you could just tell the bank how much money you think you owe them and that you’ll settle up 70 years after you move out. Wouldn’t that be easier? 

That is essentially the deal Suncor has been granted by the Alberta government regarding the ballooning liability from their oil sands tailing ponds and related reclamation requirements. 

Like all other operators in the industry, every year Suncor presents the Alberta taxpayer with an estimate of what the corporation thinks it will cost to reclaim the artificial lakes of toxic sludge it has created, in Suncor’s case since mining began in1967. No supporting documentation required.

...Collectively, tailings ponds now cover 25,000 hectares in northern Alberta and contain a poisonous brew of organic acids, benzene, lead and fine clay particles that have not significantly settled out in 50 years. The result is lakes of toxic yogurt impounded by the largest earthen structures in the world.  

Alberta has the constitutional right to manage resources as the province sees fit, but the current situation could be described as regulatory humiliation. Bitumen royalties make up less than four per cent of the provincial budget and capture a similarly puny proportion of the market value of bitumen produced by the companies.

Since 1975, the province produced over 4,800 trillion cubic metres of natural gas, 17.4 billion barrels of conventional crude and 11.4 billion barrels of bitumen with cumulative current value of $1.7 trillion.
Successive governments since Premier Peter Lougheed somehow managed to convert this vast resource bounty into a growing public debt of $43 billion. 

This shockingly inept fiscal management could soon become the problem of all Canadian taxpayers if the largely unsecured liabilities of bitumen tailing ponds are included in the equation. Cleanup costs, as estimated by industry, amount to $27 billion, while other observers put the risk closer to $48 billion. Only $1.4 billion is currently secured by cash reserves from the companies; the rest is backed only by the value of unmined bitumen. 

What happens if global economic forces or disruptive technologies render the remaining bitumen reserves uneconomic? The oil sands are consistently touted as a driver of national economic growth. What if they instead become an expensive and worthless mess the rest of the country is on the hook to clean up? 

An unfolding disaster around abandoned conventional oil and gas wells offers an illuminating glimpse into the future. 

Last March, Chinese-controlled Sequoia Resources announced to provincial regulators it was broke and walking away from 3,000 oil and gas well sites with a potential cleanup liability of $500 million. Sequoia posted no reclamation funds to cover remediation costs, as is typically required, because Alberta regulators granted the failing company exemptions from solvency requirements.

...Throwing federal money at disasters created by captured local regulators is sadly a storied Canadian tradition. 

After operating for 56 years and producing seven million ounces of gold worth almost $12 billion, the Giant Mine in Yellowknife went into receivership in 2004, leaving Ottawa with a $1-billion remediation bill. The Sydney tar ponds cleanup in Cape Breton cost Canadians another $400 million. Ottawa has already contributed $30 million to Alberta’s orphan well fund — a trickle that could soon become a deluge. 

Economic cheerleading by federal and provincial politicians and the mainstream media on behalf of the oil industry is doing the public a great disservice. When the party is over in the oil patch, Canadian taxpayers may find themselves doing the dishes.

It's sad to see Trudeau going down the same path as Harper and Notley doing her best to be even more Tar Sands friendly than her successor, Kenney.

Speaking Truth to Powerful Fools

She's the bane of the Oil Patch and every greasy, dishonest petro-politician in Canada, Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley very much included.

Robyn Allan is a force to be reckoned with. She's had a distinguished career as an economist. She has been President and CEO of the Insurance Corp of British Columbia, VP-Finance of Parklane Ventures and Senior Economist of the B.C. Central Credit Union.

Allan has also been a burr under the saddle of the fossil fuelers and their political minions determined to ride roughshod over the province of British Columbia. She was a regular intervenor before the industry-rigged National Energy Board and, in keeping with the pattern of captured regulators, she was routinely ignored.

A vigorous critic of the Trans Mountain pipeline, Allan has been warning both the federal government and its regulator that Kinder Morgan's numbers have been cooked.

I advised the NEB that project financing was compromised. The NEB ignored the warning. It even reviewed a stale-dated project. The board stuck with a $5.4-billion cost, citing this in its May 2016 report, even though Kinder Morgan announced in October 2015 costs had increased to $6.8 billion. 

In March 2017, costs rose again to $7.4 billion — 40 per cent above the initial estimate. By this time, U.S. private capital markets had summarily rejected the expansion. Kinder Morgan was unable to raise debt or equity, and no joint-venture partner could be found. U.S. investors saw the writing on the wall. 

Kinder Morgan turned its attention to the Canadian government and capital markets. The company acknowledged its search for financial support from the Canada Pension Plan and the Infrastructure Fund.

KMI then announced the Canadian entity would be responsible for raising all required project financing, although the U.S. parent still held 70 per cent ownership. No update on negotiations with Ottawa was forthcoming. 

The foreign parent had effectively washed its hands of all financing responsibility while retaining the majority of any benefits for KMI’s U.S. shareholders. 

In June, Canadian banks entered into a $4-billion construction debt facility with $1 billion more available if the cost exceeds $7.4 billion. Canadian banks are aware the capital estimate is too low.
Kinder Morgan then raised $550 million in preferred shares through the same Canadian banks. Current project costs and carrying charges mean at least $2 billion in unfunded equity remains.

But that’s not all — before construction, even more equity will be required. Kinder Morgan is not up-front with escalating project cost. Instead, the recent ultimatum states: “KML is not updating its cost and schedule estimate at this time.” 

Why not? If there were any time the Canadian public has a right to know the cost of tearing the country apart, it is now. Especially since taxpayers are being set up to pay for it. 

Given Kinder Morgan’s clever cost-obfuscation strategy and the contracts that are yet to be finalized, direct project costs could exceed $9 billion. 

Negotiations behind closed doors with desperate politicians whose behaviour suggests they lack the business acumen to know project costs before they commit to them puts all Canadians at serious financial risk. Either that, or Trudeau’s government is complicit in hiding project overruns to rationalize a taxpayer-funded bailout for a project that sank long ago.

h/t Trail Blazer

National Observer Slams Canada's Business Writers for Media Malpractice

...it is not the media’s job to assume that opinions without evidence are equal in worth to opinions which are fact-based. Or to assume that the scale and decibel level coming from oilsands advocates is proof of their cause. A noise meter is not evidence. Or to assume that the voices of opposition should be discounted as, at best, merely emotional and at worst, severely irrational.

Paul McKay, writing in the National Observer, takes Canada's business journalists and a lot of their fellow journos to the woodshed, accusing them of "media malpractice."

He begins with the story of an American school teacher, Ida Tarbell, who, in 1902, broke into journalism with a 19-part investigative series that set fire to the industrial barons and their monopolies.

Tarbell’s target was America’s biggest petroleum conglomerate, Standard Oil. She exposed, installment by installment, the brutally ruthless tactics (including serial Congressional bribery) the corporate colossus used to gain and maintain monopolies for shareholders and its galvanic founder, John D. Rockefeller. It enlightened the public, humbled the high and mighty, and ushered in a ‘trust-busting’ progressive U.S. President who ramrodded federal anti-monopoly laws through a simultaneously amazed, apoplectic Congress. Standard Oil and the Rockefellers never saw Tarbell, a former schoolteacher, coming. No one had dared to ask the questions she did, let alone print them.

Soon, fellow ‘muckraker’ reports exposed corruption and monopoly abuses in Chicago meatpacking plants, rapacious railroad barons, municipal graft, laboursafety violations and union-busting, and appalling conditions in public insane asylums. One investigative report revealed that the owner of the worst slum tenements in New York City was the richest church in America.

The best of these journalists used an alloy of evidence and audacity. They dared to ask questions others were too lazy, inept or timid to ask. Our profession has its heroes – like Emile Zola accurately accusing the French government and military of knowingly convicting an innocent officer of treason. Or Woodward and Bernstein daring to ask if a troupe of third-rate, bungling burglars might be henchmen for President Richard Nixon. Or, more recently, Michael Lewis exposing breath-taking ‘big shorts’, rogue hedge funds and algorithm flash trading. 

But a history of business journalism proves these figures are an exception. It is notorious for failing to detect bubbles before they burst with calamitous consequences.

...In Canada, our business press only belatedly dug up the real dirt on companies like Henry Pellatt’s Home Bank after its 1923 collapse, Viola Macmillan’s 1964Windfall mining scam, the fatal coal methane levels at Clifford Frame’s Westraymine, the $6 billion Bre-X swindle (which was exposed after the chief prospector jumped from a helicoptor with false, salted samples) and the collapse of apparently venerable Nortel Networks in 2009. 

In fact, the leading figures behind these spectacular failures were often lauded by the business press right up to the moment they became disgraced. The evidence of imminent demise was lurking, but nobody went looking for it. None dared ask tough questions. They did not do their job.

And now their failure turns to bitumen and pipelines and the alchemy of trying to conjure convenient facts out of thin air.

Which brings us to Canada’s bitumen bubble, and missing-in-action media coverage, which amounts to malpractice. 

In the days following Kinder Morgan’s ultimatum that it would jettison its planned Trans Mountain oil pipeline and forsake Canada unless it gains a clear and certain path to final approvals by May 31, a collective wail of lamentations ensued from oil companies, the pipeline manufacturers, the Alberta premier and Opposition leader, the Prime Minister and his senior cabinet members, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, and major banks. This is natural and fitting, and so is media coverage of their collective fury and resolve to avert that ultimatum. It is a big story. It needs to be covered.

The questions that go unasked.

In my view, Canada’s mainstream business news platforms (with a few stellar exceptions) have failed in their responsibility to make facts and evidence the cornerstone of their oilsands coverage. I routinely read the business sections of the Globe, Toronto Star, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, Vancouver Sun,National Post and Financial Post. I scan BNN daily and the political panel shows of CBC and CTV.

To my knowledge, no one has asked these four key questions: 

What proof is there that Asian refiners have signed contracts to purchase vast volumes of Alberta raw bitumen for decades to come? If these do not exist, there is no demand.

What proof is there that Asian refiners are willing to contractually commit to a much higher price than U.S. refiners will pay for raw Alberta bitumen? If such contracts do not exist, there is no price certainty to support oilsands expansion. 

What proof is there that Alberta bitumen ranks high in global comparisons of oil quality, price, and ocean supertanker access, shipping costs and speed? 

Which private Big Oil players have recently placed big bets buying new, undeveloped oil sand properties, which would underpin Alberta’s expansion plans? 

Tellingly, the working assumption seems to be that such business case certainty must exist, even though there is no evidence of it. That there isn’t a bitumen bubble, because no reporters have dared to ask if Alberta’s oilsands ambitions really amount to a bright and shining lie. Just as generations of children don’t press their parents very hard about that pony they expect to get for Christmas and how it will get down the chimney. The answer might be unthinkable. 

But this media malpractice is not just a sin of omission, of failing to ask tough questions. It is a sin of commission when business journalists or media personalities lob only softball questions to oilsands advocates. They print or broadcast assumptions masking as facts, and confuse what many Albertans would like to happen with what is likely to happen because of inconvenient facts.

Negating science. Science, what science? Never heard of it.

In a month of media coverage about the escalating battle about the Kinder Morgan pipeline, not once have I seen a climate scientist interviewed about the risk greatly expanded bitumen exports might pose to people and the biosphere. In effect, science (the most reliable source of facts) has been banished from the debate stage, leaving provincial economics and national politics to dominate every discussion. How convenient. 

This has partitioned the parameters of debate, and the very vocabulary used. The fate of Alberta future oilsands and pipeline projects gets confronted not by respected climate or marine scientists, but video clips of Left-Coast environmentalists with a placard in one hand and a latte in the other. Bitumen with a demonstrably deadly chemical signature becomes a benign ‘product’ or ‘resource,’ barely different from wheat, lumber or potash. 

Yet the world’s top climate scientists have explicitly warned that Alberta’s oilsands amount to a delayed-fuse ‘carbon bomb’ our biosphere cannot tolerate. Top international economists, led by the esteemed and astute Lord Nicholas Stern, have identified those same bitumen deposits as ‘unburnable’ stranded assets. To date, these scientists and economists have not issued warnings about the perils of Canadian potash exports. 

Once adopted, these unchallenged oilsands euphemisms take on a force of their own and foster new imperatives. Of course, Albertans should be outraged if they can’t get their ‘resource’ to market. Of course the federal government should step in to protect the sanctity of equitable, inter-provincial trade. Ergo, the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion becomes a matter of national interest, where supporters are patriots, opponents are almost treasonous and any province which defers approvals until more science is completed is worthy only of being ‘nation-shamed.'

A Press that goes along to get along asks few questions.

...the business press readily reported alarming forecasts that western Canada would lose untold billions in future wealth should the two new pipelines not get built. Those forecasts of forfeited wealth came from major Canadian banks which assumed, without providing evidence, that exported bitumen could fetch much higher prices from Asian refiners than U.S. counterparts now pay. The banks did not disclose that they also have billions in outstanding loans to oilsands and pipeline projects. I saw no media reports or commentators that called out this brazen conflict of interest. 

In an equally glaring case, former Bank of Canada chief Mark Carney (who now heads the Bank of England and is a perennial newsmaker), warned on behalf of a consortium of central banks that global corporations involved in fossil fuel financing or production must assess and explicitly warn their shareholders about ‘stranded asset’ risks in a climate-constrained world. It fell on deaf ears at business news desks in Canada. 

But last week, Europe’s largest bank, HSBC, joined other global banks, insurance pools and pension funds in declaring it would no longer risk loans to new oilsands projects, or planned pipelines like the Trans Mountain expansion and Keystone XL. That may amount to a final, fatal bullet aimed squarely at Alberta’s bitumen bubble.

What's that blur? Oh, that's Notley and Trudeau and McKenna spinning like Dervishes.

For failures to unravel Looney Tunes logic, candidates abound. Alberta premier Rachel Notley, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and federal environment minister Catherine McKenna blithely claimed that ramping up carbon-laced bitumen exports would garner new cash to help pay for low-carbon investments in Alberta and B.C. marine safety upgrades. And that Canada could meet its solemn Paris pledge to reduce national carbon emissions while two oilsands provinces go totally rogue. Alberta touted its vaunted carbon tax on large emitters as a sign of climate leadership, but all future raw bitumen exports are exempt. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals promised a reform of national environmental assessment laws, then exempted oilsands and pipelines in the draft regulations.

...But what if this red-hot rhetoric, and a potentially ruinous breakdown in the bonds of Confederation, are actually warning signs that a bitumen bubble is beginning to crack open? Last year, Big Oil players dumped $22.5 billion in oilsands assets. If that is accurate, it is perhaps too much to expect politicians from Alberta and Ottawa to question the future their reputations and political fortunes rest on. 

But when the stakes are so high, and when there are whiffs of panic, extortion and even all-out political warfare in the air, it is precisely the time business journalists should be asking tough questions and demanding answers. Where are the Asian contracts to buy vastly more raw bitumen for decades? What price have they promised to pay? How does that square up with competing, global oil supply rivals? Who has prepared a serious global oil market analysis? 

That is our job. It is our professional, perhaps even patriotic, duty to do it well.

It seems odd that this story begins with an American schoolteacher, Ida Tarbell, and ends with a Canadian schoolteacher, Justin Trudeau. I guess they just don't make them like they used to.

What We Need to See For Starters

Tankers, safe? No.

Even double hulled ships can founder in many ways. Their hulls can still be pierced by rocky projections, especially if they're battered against those rocks repeatedly in stormy seas. They can lose steerage. It does happen. They can suffer engine failure at a critical moment. Fires always pose a problem given that tankers are full of stuff intended to burn.

Now, a government that goes to some lengths to assure anxious citizens that an armada of heavily laden, clumsy supertankers can safely navigate the Strait of Georgia needs to tell those citizens, in detail, real detail, what happens when things go wrong. What happens if one of their tankers is broken on the rocks in a storm? What happens if there's a collision with another ship? What happens if the ship experiences a major fire? What happens if that tanker sinks?

The Georgia Strait, the passage these tankers will ply, has a maximum depth of 447 metres or a little over 1,665 feet. The mean depth is only 515 feet.

So, what do you do if you have a dilbit laden tanker broken in two lying on its side in 1,665 feet of water that's ripped by tides and currents? How do you make that safe? Have you got anything capable of handling a task that massive at those depths? If so, what? What if it's only at the mean, 515 feet. How do you make that safe? What have you got capable of handling that Herculean challenge? Nothing? That's what I thought.

What happens if those currents carry that dilbit out onto the seabed? How far will it go after a month, after three months, after a year?

We know that the marine food chain begins at the seabed. How much contamination will dilbit or just bitumen cause to the marine food chain? For how long? Decades, generations, essentially forever? How long does it take for the heavy metals and the carcinogens to leach out? How do those deadly elements enter the food chain? How do they work their way up the food chain through bioconcentration? How long before it reaches the salmon, the orca and the humpbacks? What havoc will it wreak on the seals and sea lions, the porpoise and dolphins? What about the Dungeness crab and the giant Pacific octopus, the sidestripe and the spot prawns, the squid? What will it do to our oyster beds, our mussels and our scallops? Will it turn the main prey fish, the herring and the sardines, into toxic time bombs for those many species which, without them, cannot survive? Will it take weeks, months, a year? How long will it continue to contaminate the marine ecosystem, one of the richest in the world? Decades, generations, essentially forever?

Trudeau, McKenna, Garneau, that idiot Carr, they all ought to have verifiable answers (they have lied, a lot. they cannot be taken at their word) to each and every one of these questions. They ought to have those answers at their fingertips. They ought to have it published and a leaflet delivered to every home in the area.

What's their plan if this enters the human food chain? Are they planning on closing off the Strait, perhaps the Salish Sea, to the public, to boaters and sport fishermen? Are they going to tell the fishing boat owners and their crews, the sport fishing guides, the whale watching operators, to start flipping burgers and selling fries? What's the plan for those people?

We know that Dame Cathy has approved the use of Corexit as an oil spill dispersant. It's the same toxic garbage that was used on both the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters. It doesn't really disperse oil. It merely sinks it to the bottom. Research from the Gulf of Mexico revealed that Corexit makes oil some 52 times more toxic. However it does get oil out of sight  and out of sight is, supposely, out of mind. Just approving the use of Corexit is an admission, what lawyers call a declaration against interest. It is an admission that they haven't got a hope of cleaning up a dilbit spill.

How are you going to make this right with anybody, everybody affected? Who's going to put up the money? Notley? She's broke. Trudeau? Fat chance. He's the last guy anybody should trust. He breaks his word as easily and often as ordinary folks break wind only they're a good deal less noxious.

What about our First Nations? We celebrate them when they recreate the voyages of their ancestors in their majestic and massive cedar canoes. As far as they're concerned the Salish Sea is their ancestral waters. What are you going to do if you ruin that for them? How can you conceivably make that right? How do you place a price tag on someone's ancient birthright?

What about the precautionary principle, Justin? It's the law of the land, the law of Canada. Its purpose is to protect ordinary Canadians, their homes and their livelihoods, from reckless dumbasses like Trudeau and Notley and Kinder Morgan and the bitumen barons who can't answer these questions. The onus is on them to prove that this can be done safely.

As far as can be told, Justin imagines the precautionary principle may be the law of Canada, just not coastal British Columbia. We are apparently beyond the protection of that law as far as Trudeau is concerned. He and his minions and the corporations they serve aren't too keen on answering these fundamental questions because they all know, full well, what that would mean to their infernal pipeline.

Fuck that.

------------

Update: I realize this is an angry post. Perhaps it should be tempered with a touch of levity. Here for your amusement is Justin Trudeau's mandate letter to Enviromin Cathy McKenna. Let the hilarity ensue.

"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.

At Last, An Ally. Merci, Quebec.

Let's hit bully boy Justin where it hurts, in his home province of Quebec, where the government has come out swinging in support of British Columbia. The first and, to date, only province that has rallied to our side.

Quebec politicians are speaking out against Ottawa's intention to override British Columbia in its opposition to the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline extension, and are calling for more collaboration with provincial governments when it comes to environmental legislation.

In an open letter published today in La Presse, Jean-Marc Fournier, the Quebec minister responsible for Canadian relations, called on the federal government to acknowledge and work with provincial legislation with regards to projects that touch both provincial and federal jurisdiction. 

"The recent assertions of federal representatives regarding the Trans Mountain pipeline, which refer to an exclusive application of federal rules, are detrimental to a proper resolution of this issue and raise concerns for the future," he wrote.

"Not a Good Sign for Federalism"

...Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard said Thursday that the federal government's plans to go ahead with the pipeline are "not a good sign for federalism."

"At the end of the day it's about people, citizens living on the land," Couillard said. "Why don't we work together and exercise our full jurisdiction?"

Trudeau's Hollow Constitutional Claims or Blowing Smoke Up Canadians' Backsides.

One federal official, Finance Minister Bill Morneau, said Friday that Ottawa is "resolved to move forward on the project." 

"We have the federal tools to do that. We will be, of course, discussing how to do that with the project proponent," Morneau said. 

Fournier said these types of claims encourage those running these projects to ignore provincial environmental rules enacted on behalf of citizens interested or affected by projects that could have environmental consequences.

DeSmogBlog's Emma Gilchrist did an insightful interview with veteran Ottawa constitutional lawyer, Jack Woodward, who, back in 1981, put pen to paper and drafted the constitutional provision enshrining aboriginal rights.

In the ensuing 37 years, Woodward has come to know a thing or two about Canada’s constitution. For one, he fought the Tsilhqot’in Nation’s title case for a quarter century, resulting in the landmark Supreme Court ruling that the nation holds title to about 1,900 square kilometres of its traditional territory in B.C. 

So when Woodward hears pundits and politicians bandying around the phrase “unconstitutional,” his ears perk up. 

“The government of Alberta will not — we cannot — let this unconstitutional attack on jobs and working people stand,” Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said after the B.C. government announced its intention to limit the transport of diluted bitumen through the province in January. 

“She’s completely wrong about that,” Woodward told DeSmog Canada. “And if she was right, she could go to court. But she knows she’s not right, so that’s why she’s using that word as if it is a political tool rather than a legal tool … That’s a superficial and incorrect view of how the Canadian constitution works.” 

...Beyond Indigenous rights, landmark rulings such as the Tsilhqot’in decision have emphasized something called “co-operative federalism.” 

“The modern trend of federalism is that nobody has the upper hand — and everyone has to work it out,” Woodward said. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s statements on the Trans Mountain pipeline also seem ignorant of that reality. 

“Look, we're in a federation,” Trudeau has said. “We're going to get that pipeline built.” 

But Canada’s constitution governs by the principle that you err on the side of allowing two different laws to exist if at all possible, Woodward says. 

“So it’s true that Canada could authorize a pipeline, but it’s also true that B.C. could probably govern safety aspects of that pipeline within B.C. including regulation of hazardous products, such as diluted bitumen,” Woodward said.

Woodward's insights make Justin Trudeau's arrogance and bullying almost painfully transparent.

It may be 2,400 miles as the crow flies between Victoria and Quebec City but it's never felt closer.

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.

Great. Now Notley Imagines She's Speaking for All Canadians. You Too?

Rachel Notley is taking to the interwebs in her war with British Columbia. If it's war B.C. wants, it's war she'll get.

Now the Alberta premier, speaking for Alberta and all Canadians (including you, I guess) is going to expose the recalcitrant coastal curmudgeons, damned hippies and geriatric draft dodgers,  as never before.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Notley explained that this would drive home Alberta's message in the “ongoing dispute that British Columbia has triggered with Alberta and with all Canadians.”

“Albertans (will) be able to engage with people in other parts of the country to help make our point around why this is so important for Canada, for the Canadian economy, for Canada’s environmental progress, for all these issues,” Notley told a press conference in Edmonton, Alta.

But B.C.'s goal of improving scientific research into spills was actually supported by the federal government's Environment Department in 2016.

In January of that year, Environment and Climate Change Canada told the federal pipeline regulator, the National Energy Board, that there were significant "knowledge gaps and uncertainties with respect to hydrocarbon product behaviours in the marine environment," and that the company should commit to funding more research to strengthen spill response planning and risk assessment.

"Significant knowledge gaps." Now there's an understatement. 

As renowned Alberta ecologist, the University of Alberta's professor David Schindler wrote in a recent op-ed in the Edmonton Journal, we know essentially nothing about what a dilbit spill in British Columbia's coastal waters would mean. This admits of but two possibilities. Either the federal government hasn't researched the threat, which would make Justin Trudeau a despicable liar. Or it has done the research and, for some reason, has chosen not to share it with the public, especially coastal British Columbians. 

Me? I'm going to assume Ottawa has done the research and knows what a generational, environmental catastrophe awaits British Columbia's coast when, (not if but when and how often*) a wallowing, fully loaded supertanker has a mishap. And I'm going to make that assumption based on the decision of Dame Cathy McKenna's environment minister to quietly approve the use of the lethal chemical stew, Corexit, as an oil spill dispersant.

Before that other Albertan asshat, Shifty Steve Harper, rescinded it, our federal government imposed a tanker exclusion zone, that kept U.S. supertankers carrying Alaska crude oil to the lower 48 well out of British Columbia coastal waters. That wasn't dilbit. It was the far more benign conventional crude oil. Canada didn't implement that exclusion zone for shits and giggles. We knew the hazards even a conventional oil spill would pose to our coastal waters.

So, let's recap. Justin Trudeau's own environment ministry has said all along that the essential research into dilbit spills hasn't been done, directly contradicting this prime minister's empty assurances. The eminent science body, the Royal Society of Canada, says the research hasn't been done, not a lick of it. Alberta's most renowned ecologist, professor Dave Schindler says the British Columbia government's argument isn't intransigent. In fact it's pretty much unassailable. Trudeau lies to our faces and says his government has the science but won't produce it. Possibly his dog ate it. McKenna's environment ministry has green-lighted a vicious chemical compound that sinks oil spills straight to the bottom where the toxic sludge will contaminate the marine ecosystem for generations. And those uppity British Columbians should just shut up and keep their damned questions to themselves.

* during National Energy Board hearings, many experienced mariners from the Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Navy and the merchant marine testified that a tanker spill isn't a matter of if but of when and how often.