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.

"Iceberg, Dead Ahead!" Trudeau's Multi-Billion Dollar Pipeline Blunder.

The J. Trudeau Memorial Pipeline could be transformed into a multi-million dollar blunder, swept away by a bursting carbon bubble.

We've been warned about the carbon bubble for years, well before prime minister Slick was first elected to Parliament. We've been warned by successive governors of the Bank of England and that country's Chancellor of the Exchequer. We've been warned by no end of other experts. They've all yelled the same thing, "Iceberg, dead ahead." And the band has just played on and on.

A new study published in the prestigious science journal, Nature Climate Change, predicts a sudden collapse in fossil fuel markets sometime before 2035.

The existence of a “carbon bubble” – assets in fossil fuels that are currently overvalued because, in the medium and long-term, the world will have to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions – has long been proposed by academics, activists and investors. The new study, published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that a sharp slump in the value of fossil fuels would cause this bubble to burst, and posits that such a slump is likely before 2035 based on current patterns of energy use.

Crucially, the findings suggest that a rapid decline in fossil fuel demand is no longer dependent on stronger policies and actions from governments around the world. Instead, the authors’ detailed simulations found the demand drop would take place even if major nations undertake no new climate policies, or reverse some previous commitments. 

That is because advances in technologies for energy efficiency and renewable power, and the accompanying drop in their price, have made low-carbon energy much more economically and technically attractive. 

Dr Jean-François Mercure, the lead author, from Radboud and Cambridge universities, told the Guardian: “This is happening already – we have observed the data and made projections from there. With more policies from governments, this would happen faster. But without strong [climate] policies, it is already happening. To some degree at least you can’t stop it. But if people stop putting funds now in fossil fuels, they may at least limit their losses.”

...Prof Jorge Viñuales, co-author, said: “Contrary to investor expectations, the stranding of fossil fuel assets may happen even without new climate policies. Individual nations cannot avoid the situation by ignoring the Paris agreement or burying their heads in coal and tar sands.”

However, Mercure also warned that the transition was happening too slowly to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Although the trajectory towards a low-carbon economy would continue, to keep within 2C above pre-industrial levels – the limit set under the Paris agreement – would require much stronger government action and new policies. 

That could also help investors by pointing the way to deflation of the carbon bubble before they make new investments in fossil fuel assets.

So, let's unpack that. Before 2035 the bottom is going to fall out of the fossil fuel markets.  Even if Trudeau does get his pipeline up and running as soon as possible that leaves a window of under 15 years to recoup our government's, your, investment that could easily come in at 15 to 20 billion dollars.

Who does Trudeau think is going to buy this pipeline "investment" at this point?  Let's be blunt. How much will he have to pay them to take it? They weren't lining up to buy it directly from Kinder Morgan, the Texas outfit that got 4.5 billion out of Morneau for the half-billion dollar, 65 year old Trans Mountain pipeline. It seems if Trudeau or the government we'll elect next year to replace him does manage to sell it, Canada will take one hell of a haircut on the price.

The bubble is beginning to burst now and it's unstoppable.

"Individual nations cannot avoid the situation by ...burying their heads in ...tar sands." Oopsie, that certainly sounds like some nation I know, eh Justin.

Only this "death rattle" market transition is still happening "too slowly to stave off the worst effects of climate change." In other words, Trudeau and Notley have us heading straight for the iceberg, full speed ahead. We'll get screwed both on the pipeline and on climate change.

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.

No Takers for Pipeline? What's the Surprise in That?

To hear Bill Morneau tell it, potential buyers would be falling all over each other to take over Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline.  Apparently not. There is no queue. Nothing on the horizon.

There are many reasons for investor indifference. Kinder Morgan says it has orders for two-thirds of the Trans Mountain capacity. Really, from whom?
Asia? Three year contracts? Endless renegotiation and uncertainty? The prospect of bitumen becoming a "stranded asset"? The announcement by OPEC that it may open the taps again to drive current high oil prices back down? I don't know, what's not to like?

Then there's that business about never leaving money on the table. For this pipeline, it's a buyer's market. Trudeau and Morneau have revealed that Ottawa is willing to offer financial incentives to see this pipeline through to "tidewater." Any potential buyer for this has to be wondering how hard they can grind the Trudeau government and they are definitely going to squeeze Ottawa for everything they can get. They're not going to settle for the wallet. They want the diamond ring and the Rolex too.

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.

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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.