canada bak

canada1119

MERRI OK HERE 6 24

SOME LOST ON MAIN?

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cda troops to Greenland?

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THREAT 50% TARIFF ON WILDFIRES, USED ARR BOOZE ETC

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney incited a MAGA meltdown after pointing out that the United States shared responsibility for the climate change currently dumping wildfire smoke all over the upper U.S.

Nearly 900 wildfires were burning without control in the north, as of Friday, in the wake of an abnormally dry and hot summer. This led to air quality alerts throughout the northeast and the Midwest, with Chicago and Detroit having the worst air of any major cities in the world — and more US cities due for pollution further east over the next few days.

But Republicans, who are loathe to admit that climate change is real and regularly jumps borders, prefer to blame whatever nation is currently suffering out-of-control fires, whether they are blue US states or neighboring ally nations.

However, Carney, while speaking of the disaster to Canadian citizens, pointed out in French that “We need a contribution from the Americans in the fight against climate change ... climate change is everyone's responsibility, including the US.”

This sent MAGA into even more of a fury.

“Canada is a doomed state. Can’t wait until their total economic collapse, and have to ask the US to buy them,” ranted one critic on X.

“Nice deflection while hiding behind the con that is ‘climate change,’ railed another MAGA heckler — while ignoring the vanishing US glaciers in Glacier National Park. “Dude is inept as hell and has no clue about forest management.”

“This climate change is a hoax,” blasted another critic on X, in contradiction to the majority of science. “Even Bill Gates had to admit that we are not dying from climate change. Now that they need extra energy that renewables can't produce for their data centers … [C]limate change doesn't start over 100 separate fires.”

President Donald Trump himself blasted the PM later on Friday, while denying the fact that the US has regularly been plagued by raging fires as well as temperatures rise and regions get less, more sporadic rainfall.

“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “I will call the Prime Minister during the day to find out what they are going to do about it. The cost is incalculable! Canada has refused to engage in basic Forest Management and Debris Removal, knowing that such refusal will lead to exactly this result.”

Last year, Trump lobbed many of the same accusations at California as that state burned under historic flames, accusing state leaders of not raking forests of debris and not maxing out the Colorado River to wet its dry areas — despite competition with other thirsty western states for the same water source.

A few months previous, in 2024, Trump had threatened to withhold federal aid for fighting California wildfires at a California rally.

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7/8/26 AN

President Donald Trump is at the NATO summit in Turkey where things grew contentious when he dropped a "diplomatic bombshell" on Canada.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Justin Trudeau kept getting threatening phone calls from Trump before he was replaced by Mark Carney.

At one point in a call, Trump told Canada he would kill a 118-year-old agreement that set the border with the U.S. and its neighbor to the north on maps and on the ground.

The agreement came when Canada was still handled by the United Kingdom, and at the April 1908 Boundary Convention, it was the U.K. that signed the agreement, not Canada. But Trump didn't care, telling Trudeau, “I tear that up, and your whole country unravels.”

Trump seemed confused that the law established the border, but the reality is that a slew of other agreements and treaties set the border, including the Treaty of 1818 and the Oregon Treaty of 1846.

According to the Journal, "Over dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trudeau’s envoys tried to dissuade Trump from absorbing their country. When one Trump aide pointed out Canada’s 41 million people would lean Democrat, the president came up with a neat solution: just split the northern neighbor into two states, one red, the other blue."

It's unclear how Trump would make that work, given that he has an approval rating in Canada of around 22 percent, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

When Carney took over, he asked for a review of Canada's dependency "on one particular country for its data storage, military hardware, payments processing and even food."

The report called it the first move for a country shifting the U.S. from an ally to a threat. It was a stark contrast to what NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte did, which is to encourage members that they had to do whatever it would take to keep the alliance together.

"In effect, a push to make Canada America’s 51st state had lighted a fuse of unintended consequences that would play out far beyond North America, as overseas allies asked themselves whether the U.S.-led alliance could truly last," the report said.

Carney's first visit as prime minister was not to the U.S. but to France, where he and President Emmanuel Macron discussed ways to dial down its dependency on the U.S.

"Canada had the critical minerals needed by France, whose state-backed tech firms were taking early steps into the U.S.-dominated spheres of AI and quantum computing. French diplomats joked that since Canada and Denmark share a land border on an uninhabited Arctic island off Greenland, that could make the North American country a legitimate candidate to gain fast-track membership in the EU. Carney laughed," the report said.

When Carney went to the U.K. next, they discussed how "they might band together if the U.S. left 'Five Eyes,'" the U.S.-led intelligence-sharing alliance made up of the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. While that idea never gained traction, it was discussed with MI6.

While in the U.K. his requested report about a world without America was finished and he was able to share it with Kir Starmer’s office.

Starmer wanted to be cautious, insisting that they had to find a way to salvage the relationship between the West and America.

“We don’t have a relationship to keep!” Carney replied, according to the report.

Informal advisor and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner was advising Canada to "produce a video that might persuade the president that they were serious about border security. Trudeau’s government hired a film crew to capture two Black Hawk helicopters and a sniffer dog on patrol. Instead of placating Trump, it seemed to fuel his interest in revisiting the placement of the border."

Carney's team, by contrast, began reading clinical and psychological studies on "impulsivity" to better learn how to deal with Trump. They believed that Trump's 51st state idea was really about "price discovery," when he throws out an absurd idea to see how the financial markets will react.

Other aides thought it was more about Trump trying to kick Trudeau while his poll numbers were down.

Either way, Carney has looked for new ideas to deal with the volatility of the American leader while slowly reducing reliance on the U.S.

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AN 1 26

A small contingent of an oil-rich province in Canada that desperately wants to join the United States met with President Donald Trump's administration.

The Financial Times reported on Thursday that Trump aides met with the Alberta Prosperity Project, which is a group of far-right separatists who want to leave Canada. Since last April, Trump's State Department officials have met with the group at least three times in Washington, the report said.

"They are seeking another meeting next month with state and Treasury officials to ask for a $500 billion credit facility to help bankroll the province if an independence referendum — yet to be called — is passed," said the report.

According to the group's attorney, Jeff Rath, who was at the meetings, “The US is extremely enthusiastic about a free and independent Alberta."

He went on to brag that he has a better relationship with the Trump administration than Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney who hammered Trump in a speech at the World Economic Forum.

The State Department downplayed the multiple meetings however, saying, “The department regularly meets with civil society types. As is typical in routine meetings such as these, no commitments were made.”

The White House echoed the statement, adding that there was no commitment of financial support.

Neither Treasury secretary Scott Bessent nor anyone at the Treasury Department knew anything about a "credit facility proposal," said a person familiar when talking to FT. They said they have no intention of engaging.

Canadian conservatives, however, view the group as people who are only looking for attention.

Carlo Dade, at the Canada West Foundation, “The Americans are more than happy to continue to play Canadians off each other."

Indeed, Bessent commented to a white supremacist podcaster that Alberta is a "natural partner" for the U.S. to make given that the province has so much oil.

“The Albertans are very independent people,” the secretary said. “[There is a] rumour that they may have a referendum on whether they want to stay in Canada or not.”

However, Ipsos polling shows that only 3 in 10 residents in Alberta and Quebec would vote to secede from Canada. Still, the separatists are gathering signatures for a petition to deliver to the legislature.

FT added that it's part of deteriorating diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Canada.

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alternet-no lnx

Home | Republicans have been lying to their voters for years — and now those same voters are dying

Thom Hartmann June 14, 2024

This is a climate change story that fossil fuel billionaires and their GOP lackeys would rather you didn’t know.

As more and more people are killed by extraordinarily severe weather in places where it used to be unusual it’s going to get harder and harder to keep Red State citizens from finding out how badly they’ve been screwed by the unholy alliance between Republicans and oil barons.

Severe weather in the United States is not only getting worse, it’s moving.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

There’s a reason L. Frank Baum placed his 1901 novel The Wizard of Oz in Kansas: the worst and most frequent tornado activity in the world at that time was in the American Great Plains states — particularly Kansas.

Now that’s changing, as weather extremes are moving to the Midwest and the South. Recently, deadly tornadoes — some with wind velocities in excess of 200 mph — have ravaged Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio and Indiana.

This new burst of unusually extreme weather is driven by global warming and its impact on the Arctic, our oceans, and the Gulf of Mexico.

And it’s going to be America’s new normal, although in all probability this is just the beginning and over time it will get a lot worse.

America has always had the most extreme weather of anyplace else on Earth, according to Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina.

China has more people and a larger landmass than we do, but, Cutter told ABC News, “they don't have the same kind of clash of air masses as much as you do in the U.S. that is producing a lot of the severe weather.”

The severity of America’s Great Plains states’ historically extreme weather was the result of geography.

While there’s a massive amount of land on either side of the European/Asian land mass, the United States is bracketed by two giant bodies of water, the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. We also have a huge mountain range — the Rockies — that helps determine where turbulent air from the west ends up, particularly as it encounters colder air from the north and warmer air from over the Gulf of Mexico.

As North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello told ABC News, it’s because of “where we are on the globe,” adding, “It’s truly a little bit ... unlucky.”

But now, as the Gulf of Mexico is heating up faster than the oceans on either side of us, combined with “bomb cyclone” cold weather coming down from Canada because melting ice in the Arctic is making the Jet Stream less stable, that severe weather is moving to the Midwest and South.

This appears to be one of the most consequential outcomes of climate change, severe weather-wise, for the United States.

As Victor Gensini, associate professor in the Earth, Atmosphere and Environment Department at Northern Illinois University, told The Chicago Tribune, the Midwest and South are replacing the Plains states as the epicenter of severe weather.

“That’s a really, really big deal for human exposure and vulnerability,” Gensini told Ezra Maille. “A tornado that goes through a wheat field in Kansas is not a big deal, but a tornado that goes through southern Cook County is a huge deal.”

He added that the Great Plains will probably continue to experience more and more severe drought while tornado activity is shifting toward the East and South.

The fossil fuel industry has known with a high level of certainty how severe weather was a probable outcome of America’s dependence on their products ever since the 1970s.

Yet for the fifty years since then — and continuing to this day — they fund phony “science” and shills to deny climate change or try to spin it as a positive, all while pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign coffers and personal bank accounts of mostly Republican politicians.

We’re at least 40 years behind where we should be in dealing with the fossil fuel/global warming crisis because giant oil companies have run massive disinformation campaigns while funding the political careers of hacks in Congress willing to lie to the public for them.

President Jimmy Carter declared a national crisis in 1979 and proposed legislation to create “this nation’s first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.”

FDR had sold bonds to the public to fund a government corporation that would develop synthetic rubber for fighter plane tires back in the day, and Carter wanted to do the same to end our dependence on fossil fuels:

“Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II,” Carter said, “so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war.”

In that same July 15, 1979 speech, he proposed the government issue bonds that would fund:

“[T]he creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace 2-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation will issue up to $5 billion in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so that average Americans can invest directly in America’s energy security.”

But it all came crashing down 43 years ago when the fossil fuel industry’s candidate, Ronald Reagan, replaced Carter, killed the solar bank and the bond program, and even took Carter’s solar panels off the roof of the White House.

The big question now is how long the GOP will be able to keep up their climate change denial in the Red states currently being hammered by extreme weather before their citizens catch on to what’s happening and demand action to reduce our carbon emissions.

As Dr. Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM), told me yesterday:

“It is rather ironic that many of the states that are seeing the worst climate change impacts—Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida—are red states, with governors and legislatures that are far more interested in doing the bidding of polluters than representing the people they’re supposed to be representing.

“Unsurprisingly, these states are all among the lowest when it comes to per capita spending on public education. The alliance of rightwing politicians and polluters prefers a poorly educated electorate, ignorant of the environmental health damage being done to them.”

So, what can be done other than offering subsidies for electric cars?

Number one on the list is to put a price on carbon, which will bend market incentives toward green and renewable energy as a replacement for fossil fuels.

According to the World Bank, there are currently 70 carbon pricing programs in place around the world, covering a bit over 23 percent of all emissions. Some are outright carbon taxes, typically with a rebate program to low- and average-income consumers, and some are cap-and-trade type programs (like President George HW Bush put into place to deal with sulfur dioxide emissions).

Canada’s carbon tax, which they put into place in 2019, is working so well that they actually sped up the process of implementation this year.

The original plan called for the initial $10/ton carbon tax to go up $10 every year until it hit $170/ton. The money collected is then recycled back to low- and average-income consumers to compensate them for the extra costs they’ll incur driving and heating their homes. But the program has been such a success that Canada’s government announced this week they’re raising the carbon tax by a full $15 this year.

They can pull this off because the rebates represent, for most Canadians, far more money in their pockets than the cost of the carbon tax. The brunt of the tax is instead borne by Canadian businesses, which is the group that's been designed to push toward green -- and tax-free or even green-subsidized -- energy sources.

An average taxpayer in Alberta province, for example, now gets a $386 check or bank deposit from their government every three months. It’s $340 quarterly in Saskatchewan, $328 in Newfoundland, $248 in Nova Scotia, and $264 in Manitoba.

This is a system that could work very well here in the US, if only there was the political will to make it happen. And, as we cut emissions and figure out new and better ways to pull existing carbon out of the air and oceans, we may be able to dial back on the increasing severity of storms that are ravaging Red states.

The obstacle to pricing carbon in the US is widespread ignorance of how severe our problem is and its origins in fossil fuel emissions. Fully 58% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters say climate change is “not an important concern” and a mere 17% believe human activities like burning fossil fuels “contribute a great deal to climate change.”

Hopefully the deadly disasters sweeping Red states now will wake up Republican voters and motivate them to demand their Republican politicians stop taking money from fossil fuel billionaires and do something now to stop climate change from getting any worse.

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dunno if cda cts

no lnx

FEC complaint alleges DeSantis campaigns got illegal donations from Canadian firm

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Jake JohnsonandCommon DreamsJune 27, 2023

The Canadian financial services company ECN Capital was hit with a Federal Election Commission complaint on Monday for allegedly donating to the state political committees of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in violation of U.S. campaign finance laws.

The complaint filed by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is the second in recent weeks involving DeSantis, who CLC says violated federal law by transferring more than $80 million from a state political action committee to a super PAC backing his 2024 presidential campaign.

The new complaint against ECN Capital states that between October 2018 and August 2022, the company breached the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) by donating to DeSantis' last two gubernatorial campaigns and a state PAC formerly known as Friends of Ron DeSantis.

That state PAC, which is now controlled by DeSantis allies, is the same entity that funneled $82.5 million to a pro-DeSantis super PAC earlier this month, a move that is the subject of a separate FEC complaint filed against DeSantis last month.

The CLC's complaint against Toronto-based ECN Capital also alleges that the corporation's U.S.-registered subsidiaries "made contributions totaling over $122,000 in connection with federal and state elections" between 2018 and 2022, "and there is reason to believe that ECN Capital's officers or directors may have participated in the decision-making process regarding these contributions—such that these contributions may also have violated FECA's foreign national contribution ban."

"FECA unequivocally prohibits foreign nationals, including foreign corporations, from making a contribution or donation of money or any other thing of value, in connection with any federal, state, or local election, and federal regulations further prohibit foreign nationals from participating in any decision-making process with regard to making a political contribution," the complaint notes.

Saurav Ghosh, CLC's director of federal campaign finance reform, said in a statement that "the recent, unprecedented rise of ' soft money' in federal elections undermines the crucial campaign finance laws that exist to uphold transparency, combat corruption, and safeguard the electoral process."

"As this complaint shows," Ghosh added, "foreign money may already be influencing the 2024 presidential election, which obviously undermines voters' ability to trust that the electoral process and their government are truly serving their interests."

The complaint urges the FEC, which is evenly divided between three Democrats and three Republicans, to investigate ECN Capital's donations to DeSantis' committees and "seek appropriate sanctions for any and all violations, including civil penalties sufficient to deter future violations, injunctive relief to remedy these violations and prohibit any and all future violations, and such additional remedies as are necessary and appropriate to ensure compliance with FECA."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Makes him look very small': GOP strategists question DeSantis’ 'ridiculous' anti-woke campaign against the NHL ›

Ron DeSantis's huge step toward academic control ›

'Goes beyond ignorance' Historians slam DeSantis' claims about American slavery ›

Suspicion of science, government

Religiously based suspicion of scientific and government authority is not unique to conservative Christians; Hasidic Jewish communities share these suspicions and constitute a significant number of those infected with COVID-19 in New York state.

Even in the case of Hasidic Jews, however, the border might make a difference: Hasidic communities in Québec have been praised for their diligence in adhering to social distancing, in contrast to those in New York, where some rabbis have mocked public health recommendations.

The contrasting responses to COVID-19 in Canada and the United States are rooted in very different national attitudes about individual and collective responsibility for public health.

In the United States, Democratic front-runner Joe Biden may come to embrace Bernie Sander’s plan for “Medicare for All,” but even the devastating reality of being the country hardest hit so far by COVID-19 has not seemed to turn the tide of public opinion on the need for universal medicare.

In Canada, by contrast, leaders across the political spectrum are throwing their support behind public health care, with even some conservative politicians calling for more funding, especially for long-term care. While Donald Trump tweeted a call to anti-public health protesters to “liberate” their states, in Ontario, Conservative Premier Doug Ford dismissed a scattering of such protesters in Toronto as selfish “yahoos.”

Invoking religious freedom in an attempt to opt out of health-care legislation is much more common in the U.S. than Canada. Both countries protect religious freedom, dating back to 1791 in the United States with the First Amendment of the constitution guaranteeing the “free exercise” of religion, while in Canada, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has protected the “freedom of conscience and religion” since 1982.

Religious freedom as a rallying cry

These parallel guarantees, however, stem from very different histories of using religious freedom as a rallying cry, including to resist public health care. I’ve discussed this in my research, especially in relation to women’s reproductive health.

In the wake of former U.S. president Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, for example, Catholics and evangelical groups used a religious freedom argument to contest the new mandate that their health insurance plans provide access to contraception for women employees.

In Canada, the less frequent citing of religious freedom rights in the courts to curtail health-care access may be related to a wider acceptance of health care as a public good and a basic human right.

In both Canada and the U.S., the struggle for publicly funded health care in the mid-20th century depended on coalitions of politicians, medical professionals and religious leaders. In Canada, a Baptist minister-turned-politician, Tommy Douglas, galvanized the country with a vision that public health care for all was a human right and, for some, also a religious obligation.

Similarly, in the U.S., when Dr. Montague Cobb, leader of the National Medical Association, successfully argued for Medicare before Congress in 1965, he concluded his testimony with a Christian hymn.

The Canadian version of public health care, however, now serves a much wider range of the population than Medicare does in the U.S., and has become a cornerstone of Canada’s national identity, with minimal overt connections to religion.

But in the United States, public health care remains a source of profound national and religious division.The current Republican administration regularly uses religious freedom legislation, including conscientious objection rules for health-care providers, to chip away at Medicare, limiting access to health care for women, LGBTQ, poor and rural people.

A time of reckoning is coming when public health measures and public and private health-care delivery will be assessed for their effectiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic. The role of religious communities and the ideals of religious freedom in supporting or impeding public health must be included in this reckoning, especially in the United States.

Pamela E. Klassen, Professor of the Study of Religion, University of Toronto

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Promoted to primary 5/14 b/c of tar sands and parallels to press and science suppression

tag 1/15 cda text capt backup

817 capt

Resources: http://www.desmog.ca/

eg http://www.desmog.ca/2015/07/31/will-war-science-emerge-election-issue

david bacon says nafta made cda mining #1?

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american health care system costs four times more than Canada’s single-payer system

Igor Derysh / Salon

The cost of administering health care in the United States costs four times as much as it does in Canada, which has had a single-payer system for nearly 60 years,…

justin t re-elected; coalition problems?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/when-capitalism-kills-culture/

no lnx

When capitalism kills culture

Defense Secretary Ash Carter, center, tours Amazon's headquarters in Seattle, March 3, 2016. DoD photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Tim D. Godbee

Written by The Conversation November 15, 2019

Julien Lefort-Favreau, Queen’s University, Ontario

The story is all too familiar – yet it should command more attention from Canadians.

Recently, the Globe and Mail reported the Ben McNally bookstore, located on Bay Street a stone’s throw from Union Station, would close in 2020. Two days later, Rupert McNally, the founder’s son, confirmed the news on the store’s website. It had been open since 2007.

The reason for the closure is simple: the store will be replaced by an alleyway linking Bay Street to the alley behind it. This redevelopment is part of a project that the owner calls (ironically?) “The Bay Street Village.”

It is therefore a stupid example of gentrification that pits a modest shopkeeper against a greedy landowner.

The increase in the value of Toronto’s real estate is not exactly new. But we can see here an example of a paradigm that is not reassuring for the future of large cities: the profitability of businesses devoted to cultural property is hardly compatible with the overbidding in real estate.

Montréal is facing the same problem, and it affects all independent businesses. In August, the City gave the Commission on Economic and Urban Development and Housing the mandate to conduct public consultations on vacant space on commercial arteries. Several of these areas have rates ranging from 10 to 15 per cent.

A “hygienization” of urban centres

It has already been demonstrated that gentrification is largely based on a city’s ability to offer an interesting and diversified cultural life. Some, such as Richard Florida, have linked this phenomenon to the emergence of a “creative class.”

Geographer Oli Mould, in his excellent book, Against Creativity, published in 2018, attacks the very notion of creativity. He criticizes Richard Florida with virulence by brilliantly showing how “creative” gentrification can also act as a form of hygienization in urban centres that, ironically, hinders spontaneous citizen initiatives. To put it bluntly, once gentrification is completed, culture is more or less eliminated from the central districts.

We are interested in the case of the closure of the Ben McNally bookstore because it shows the consequences of real estate speculation on the vitality of a city and, ultimately, on culture on a national scale. Very quickly, after the announcement by the owners of the bookstore, many players in the Canadian publishing ecosystem expressed serious concerns.

That is because independent bookshops, Ben McNally in particular, do not belong to a large group or chain and aren’t limited to the sole function of selling books. They are truly a place of cultural mediation.

The purpose of booksellers is to introduce readers to more complex works that have received less media attention. In Kingston, Ont., the city where I live, the Novel Idea bookstore is part of the community life. It organizes meetings with local authors and federates a community of readers. In Montréal, bookstores such as Le port de tête, L’Écume des jours and Gallimard also have a clearly established cultural function.

Independent bookstores are places where demanding literature or radical essays can find readers. In short, the exact opposite of a virtual library where algorithms – certainly effective – guide readers’ tastes. There is no doubt that these algorithms favour books that are already selling well, regardless of the careful work of smaller publishers.

For a “bibliodiversity”

Why defend the independence of Canadian literature? Out of pure nationalism? Not exactly.

Rather, it is a question of how the bookstore can, in an era of advanced globalization, be a place of defence for the diversity of cultures, what some have referred to as bibliodiversity: a diversity of languages (in the case of Canada, English, French and Aboriginal literatures), but also socially equitable modes of production and dissemination. In this case, it ensures that cultural property produced with our public funds finds takers.

To put it simply, a book in Canada will sometimes be subsidized at the time of writing through creation grants, in its production through operating grants to publishers, and then sold by Amazon or, in the worst case, unsold due to a lack of suitable distribution locations. The Canadian book system provides a relatively good framework for its authors and publishers to deal with the horrors of the free market, in a spirit of cultural and economic protectionism. But in the current configuration, booksellers seem to be abandoned.

Make the less visible visible

But it is not simply a matter of defending a blurred Canadian identity. It is also a matter of making a diversity of identities visible. Think of the Racines bookstore in Montréal North, which highlights the culture and history of racialized authors. Or, the bookstore L’Euguélionne, which, by settling in the gay village in Montréal and adopting a cooperative structure, has made it its mission to offer a wide selection of literature on women and LGBPT2QIA groups.

An independent bookstore is therefore a meeting place for people from the neighbourhood but also, possibly, for affinity groups. Bookstores can be, in some contexts, sources of resistance. André Schiffrin states in L’argent et les mots – the third volume of a trilogy essential to understanding the effects of cultural globalization – that the number of New York bookstores has been divided by 10 since the post-war period.

Capitalism has its own rhythm, but also its own specific geography. Urban space is profoundly transformed by financial capitalism. Urban spaces are becoming expensive, and the closure of cultural spaces is, metaphorically and by extension, a reduction in the space for ideas and expression.

[ Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter. ]The Conversation

Julien Lefort-Favreau, Assistant Professor, French Studies, Queen’s University, Ontario

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new 1119

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04112019/trump-war-california-auto-standards-environment-violations-justice-department-wildfires

As fierce Santa Ana winds whipped the wildfires outside of Los Angeles, stirring exactly the kind of infernos that scientists expect in a hotter, drier California, President Donald Trump was gloating over the new allies he has won in his epic battle to block that state's efforts to fight climate change.

California has been a world innovator in crafting environmental policy, and its pioneering approach to the difficult issue of carbon emissions from cars helped put the United States on course to cleaner, more efficient vehicles. But a multi-pronged assault by the Trump administration now seeks both to hobble California's climate efforts and to shred the state's reputation as an environmental leader.

In its latest move, the Trump administration doubled down on its fight to eliminate the state's carbon emissions rules for vehicles. It had already revoked California's authority to set higher standards. Now it was pressuring carmakers to take its side in California's lawsuit over the move. When GM, Fiat Chrysler and Toyota made the surprise decision to comply last week,Trump tweeted: "California has treated the Auto Industry very poorly for many years, harming Workers and Consumers. We are fixing this problem!"

The attack isn't just on auto standards. On Sunday, Trump tweeted a threat to cut U.S. aid for fighting California wildfires, reiterating his previous false claim that they are due to the state (which owns of just 2 percent of the forest land within its borders) failing to "clean" its forest floor. Trump's Justice Department sued the state a week earlier, arguing that California exceeded its authority when it launched a cap-and-trade agreement with Quebec to lower fossil fuel emissions.

At the same time, Trump's Environmental Protection Agency has threatened to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to withdraw federal highway funds from the state over air pollution, and to initiate enforcement action for water pollution violations. In a flourish, the EPA blamed the latter on human waste and needles from homeless people in San Francisco.

Those warnings, issued directly from the desk of EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, were at odds with the agency's hands-off approach under Trump. At a time when EPA is weakening environmental standards on both air and water pollution and enforcement activity is at its lowest level in a decade, the agency was invoking one of the most severe penalties available, for a state that has invested billions in improved air quality and has among the best compliance records in the nation on water pollution.

California's governor has called the moves "pure retaliation," while former federal officials say that the unusual nature of the enforcement actions, and the management of the cases by top Trump appointees in Washington, reeks of political score-settling.

Together, the Trump administration's actions try to deliver the message that California is a laggard in addressing visible air pollution and sewage, and that the state's aggressive focus on global warming is a misguided distraction at best.

But the Trump administration's California narrative falls apart with a cursory review of the science and the state's record as a national leader in environmental protection. And it remains to be seen whether it has the legal arguments to persuade the courts, which will have the final say.

How Did We Get Here?

This is not the first time that politicians have sought to caricature California as a victim of its own progressive policies.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney famously used California's electricity crisis of 2001 as a pretext for expanded U.S. oil and natural gas production. Only later did it become clear that California's power shortages were created, not by conservation-oriented policies, but by profit-hungry energy traders like Enron who took advantage of the state's experiment with deregulation.

The same administration also sought to block California's effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles, but the auto industry's collapse in 2008 forced it into the arms of the federal government for help. President Barack Obama's administration brokered an historic $80.7 billion bailout of the carmakers, which included an agreement to put California's standards into effect nationwide. It forced a gradual fleet-wide improvement in fuel economy that by 2025 would have cut 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the biggest step any nation has taken to reduce greenhouse gases.

Soon after Trump was elected, the carmakers sought to partially undo that deal—they still wanted a nationwide standard, but more flexibility. The Trump administration, however, sought a head-on battle with California that the automakers had long said they hoped to avoid.

Launching such a war runs counter to the Trump administration's stated goal of giving more environmental authority to the states. Just last month, for example, the Trump EPA delegated increased authority to North Dakota for oversight of oil and gas sites, and waste facilities, and power plants.

But EPA Administrator Wheeler has portrayed California as a different case—a rogue state that needed to be reined in.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25102019/canada-children-climate-change-lawsuit-fossil-fuels-teens-youth-erosion-permafrost-wildfires

icn 919

In Canada, Politicians and an Election Targeted

Government policies on climate change also appear to be triggering toxic online activity. Early this week, Canada Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, who is implementing that nation's carbon tax policy, said that she has been assigned an additional security detail because of abuse she has received both online and in person.

And last week, a Canadian government agency issued a report concluding there was evidence of a campaign of coordinated, false social media postings around last April's election for premier of Alberta—a campaign in which climate policy was a key issue. The majority of the questionable postings were in support of the eventual winner, conservative Jason Kenney, who won the election while pledging to repeal the province's carbon tax, which he did in May, and to create a "war room" to combat the oil industry's opponents.

The government agency, Rapid Response Mechanism Canada, was created as part of the G7 nation's effort to respond to foreign influence in democratic elections. RRM Canada said there was no evidence of foreign actors involved in the questionable social media activity around the Alberta election. But, the agency said, "some national actors were disseminating material using tactics that were similar to those used by foreign actors."

Gerald Kutney, an Ottawa-based consultant and author of a 2014 book on climate politics, said it has become difficult to discern what is genuine discussion and what is coordinated attack messaging on Twitter around climate change.

"It's no longer social media, it's bot media," he said. "It's difficult to know the difference."

dn 619

Indigenous Groups in Canada Prepare to Fight Trans Mountain Pipeline Extension

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/3/headlines/report_disappearance_and_murder_of_1000s_of_indigenous_women_a_canadian_genocide

In Canada, a national inquiry found that the disappearance and murder of thousands of indigenous women and girls over decades amounts to a “Canadian genocide.” The report, which was obtained by CBC News ahead of its official release today, says that “We do know that thousands of Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual) have been lost to the Canadian genocide to date” and are the result of “state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies.”

TOPICS:CanadaIndigenous

ew 519

Climate Change Blamed as Flooding Forces Thousands to Evacuate in Canada

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https://grist.org/article/the-arctics-ticking-carbon-bomb-could-blow-up-the-paris-agreement/

yoder 3/19

Even in a dream-come-true scenario where we manage to stop all the world’s carbon emissions overnight, the Arctic would inevitably get hotter and hotter. That’s according to a new report by U.N. Environment, which says the the region is already “locked in” to wintertime warming of 4 to 5 degrees C (7.2 to 9 degrees F) over temperatures of the late 1900s.

The report, released at the U.N. Environment conference in Kenya on Wednesday, says that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the planetary average, and models show that it’s on track to become ice-free during the summer as soon as 2030.

That’s the bad news. So here’s even worse news. The Arctic contains much of the world’s permafrost, which holds what the report calls a “sleeping giant” made of greenhouse gases. As the ground warms, the microbes in the soil wake up and start belching greenhouse gases. Estimates vary, but the report says 1.5 trillion tons of carbon dioxide lurk beneath the Earth’s permafrost. That’s more than 40 times as much CO2 as humans released into the atmosphere last year, and double the amount of the gas in the atmosphere today.

If that permafrost stayed permanently frozen, as the word itself suggests it should, we could continue worrying about other stuff. But researchers expect Arctic permafrost to shrink 45 percent compared to today. Unleashing that stored-up carbon dioxide and methane would obviously “derail efforts” to limit warming to 2 degrees C (3.6CK degrees F) as outlined in the Paris Agreement, the report says. But then again, it would derail pretty much everything.

“New evidence suggests that permafrost is thawing much faster than previously thought, with consequences not just for Arctic peoples and ecosystems, but for the planet as a whole because of feedback loops,” the report states.

This is one of the runaway warming scenarios, often called the “carbon bomb” or “methane bomb.” (Permafrost holds both greenhouse gases.) Unlike a real bomb, however, it wouldn’t explode all at once. And at least one recent study suggests that we still have time to defuse it.

Within the Arctic, the soil formerly known as permafrost — let’s call it “meltafrost” — could pose a danger to 70 percent of current infrastructure by 2050, as well as the region’s 4 million inhabitants, 10 percent of whom are indigenous. Recent studies have shown that permafrost thaw could cause houses to collapse, lead to uneven roads, and threaten important cultural and archaeological sites.

The North Pole runs warmer than the rest of the planet because of a phenomenon called “Arctic amplification” — basically a region-specific term for feedback loops. “[W]hen sea ice melts in the summer, it opens up dark areas of water that absorb more heat from the sun, which in turn melts more ice,” the report explains.

These rapid changes in the Arctic might seem far away, but you will feel them, too. For those of you on the coasts, keep in mind that the melting of Arctic glaciers and Greenland’s ice sheet makes up a third of sea-level rise around the globe. Rising seas will wreak havoc in coastal regions as they deal with flooding, damaged buildings, and the saltwater contamination of drinking water sources.

And for those further inland, there’s the wild weather. The melting of the Arctic causes changes in the jet stream and disrupts weather patterns much further south. It’s been linked to worsening drought across the western United States, stalled hurricanes in the East, and the polar vortex that occasionally dips down over North America to turn us all into popsicles.

As many are fond of saying, “What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic.”

icn 4/19

home province of Canada's tar sands elected a combative, conservative leader this week who came out swinging on the side of the country's struggling oil industry. Jason Kenney promised to cancel Alberta's carbon tax, lift a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands and create a "war room" to combat the oil industry's opponents.

But while his victory Tuesday threw more uncertainty into Canada's efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, there may be little Kenney can do on his own to reverse what has been a steady decline in fortunes for Alberta's tar sands over the past few years.

Instead, the fate of the tar sands industry, also known as oil sands, may rest more in the hands of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the courts hearing legal challenges to proposed new oil pipelines—and, ultimately, with international energy markets and the macroeconomic forces that shape them.

In his acceptance speech, Kenney told the crowd: "As long as there is growing global demand for oil and gas, the question is who will provide it."

Major oil companies have been asking themselves the same question, and increasingly, they've been saying it won't be the tar sands.

Oil Majors Question the Economics

New tar sands mining projects tend to be big and expensive, and they can take years or even decades to provide meaningful returns on investment. While details vary, they also tend to be among the most carbon-intensive sources of oil, raising the risk that future climate change policies could further increase their costs or even shut them down.

As governments try meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement, advocacy campaigns and investors have been increasing pressure on oil companies to explain what a world of dwindling oil demand would mean for their balance sheets. And, increasingly, oil companies have been saying that, even if they're not turning away from their core product, they are focusing on the lower-cost, most efficient sources of oil.

ConocoPhillips described in a report in February its pivot toward low-cost oil and gas production, a process that included selling tar sands assets.

Executives at Chevron have said they plan to cut the company's emissions, not by producing less oil and gas but by doing so more efficiently.

Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, issued a filling with the London Stock Exchange earlier this month that made the case to lenders that the nation's reserves are well positioned because, it says, they can be produced relatively cheaply and with comparatively lower carbon emissions.

In recent years, as global oil prices fell from their highs in 2014—and with Canadian oil prices among the lowest—most of the major international oil companies with a significant investment in Canada's oil sands sold their stakes, primarily to Canadian companies.

A Push for Pipelines and End to Carbon Taxes

Despite all this, Kenney answered his own question: The world needs more Canadian energy, he said. For that to happen, Canada is going to need to build more pipelines. But it's unclear how much leverage Kenney may have in making that happen.

As production increased in recent years without more capacity to ship it, oil companies have had a harder time exporting tar sands crude to refineries in the United States or overseas.

A series of proposals for major pipelines to the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and to the U.S. heartland—including Keystone XL—have been delayed by court fights, denied or canceled over the past few years.

In his acceptance speech on Tuesday, Kenney blamed other Canadian provinces, the Trudeau administration and a "foreign-funded campaign of special interests" for blocking pipeline expansions, and he called on Quebec and other provinces to help Alberta get its oil to markets overseas if they want to share in its resource wealth.

Attempts to build a pipeline to the East Coast have in the past been stymied by opposition in other provinces—opposition that Quebec Premier Francois Legault made clear on Wednesday remains strong. "There is no social acceptability for a new oil pipeline in Quebec," Legault told reporters on Wednesday, according to the CBC.

Alberta has also been pushing for the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which carries tar sands crude to a port in British Columbia. U.S.-based Kinder Morgan had been trying for years to triple the pipeline's capacity, but British Columbia and some indigenous First Nations opposed the project. Last year, the Canadian government bought the pipeline to keep expansion hopes alive, but a court rejected the pipeline's permit and ordered a new federal review of the project in consultation with First Nations along the route.

Map: Major Pipelines Carrying Canadian Oil

While a new decision on the project is expected by the end of May, Kenney's win adds uncertainty to the process.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's support for the expansion was widely viewed as one half of a grand bargain with Rachel Notley, the outgoing Alberta premier and member of Alberta's New Democratic Party, who lost the election this week to Kenney.

Trudeau had been pushing provinces to enact their own carbon taxes as part of his plan to meet Canada's pledge under the Paris climate agreement. Those that didn't would fall under a new federal tax, which is currently being challenged in court by the government of Ontario. Notley enacted a tax in Alberta along with a cap on emissions from the tar sands, and many political observers said that tax was central to securing Trudeau's support for the pipeline.

With Kenney now promising to scrap both the tax and the cap, the political calculus changes. Trudeau could use the pipeline project as leverage over Kenney, pressing the provincial leader to maintain a carbon tax or for other concessions. Or he could decide to abandon the expansion altogether.

The horror of the New Zealand terror attack that targeted two mosques during Friday congregational prayers and left 50 people dead has raised important questions about the kind of ideas that inspire this senseless violence. In Canada, the 2017 Québec mosque shooting that left six Muslim men dead also forced the question: what drives the hate that leads to white nationalist terror?

Recently I attended a “free speech” conference on the outskirts of Toronto. In attendance at the event were lawyers from prominent legal firms and other professionals. When I challenged one of the speakers for remarks I felt promoted hatred against Muslims, I was physically assaulted.

I have long been examining the question of what fuels white nationalist hatred by documenting and mapping the “Islamophobia industry” in Canada. The industry is a constellation of individuals, media outlets, think tanks, politicians and organizations that purvey racism and Islamophobia. These include white nationalist and “alt-right” groups that are proliferating and expanding their reach in Canada from upward of 100 groups in 2015 to nearly 300 by 2018.

While the alt-right, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups are the foot soldiers of the movement, there are other, more covert players that form the soft power of this widespread industry. These power brokers use cultural, political and economic ideas to influence, shape and inform white nationalist views. They help circulate bigotry by dressing it up as patriotism and purveying it through “respectable” channels.

I refer to this as the “liberal washing” of white nationalism, where politically camouflaged xenophobic, Islamophobic and racist notions are disguised under the veneer of liberal discourse such as “protecting democracy,” “freedom” and the “rule of law” from what are regarded as illiberal, anti-modern and anti-democratic minorities.

I had a front-row seat to liberal-washed hate messaging at the conference held by Canadians for the Rule of Law, a registered charity that seeks to challenge “political tribes” and “disruptors” who question the rule of law in Canada.

Teaching Islamophobic fear and bigotry

The idea that “Islamists” are infiltrating and imposing shariah law in Canada was a common narrative at this event and disturbingly echoed the views of the New Zealand shooter, whose manifesto spoke of Muslim “invaders” who were corrupting western civilization.

The vague deployment of the term “Islamist” at this conference reduced a broad political spectrum to a narrow epithet for the violent overthrow of democratic rule to install an Islamic State. The Islamist bogeyman became the dominant representation of Muslims. Fear-mongering about the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada was used as a clarion call to warn of impending threats to Canada’s freedom and democracy from Muslim neighbours, organizations, politicians, Muslim Student Associations and Islamic schools.

Preserving Canadian “values” from the corruption of minorities seems far more reasonable than shouting racist slogans in the street — except this liberal-washing of hate is simply another way of echoing and dog-whistling white nationalist, xenophobic ideals by masquerading them through more “civil” and “polite” discourse.

One of the supporting organizations of the conference was Act For Canada, an offshoot of Act For America, one of the most prominent anti-Muslim groups in the United States. Their website outlines their goals:

“ACT! For Canada is a forum for citizens concerned about the triumphalist brand of Islam that seeks to erode our cherished western principles of free speech and equality with the goal of eventual Islamic supremacy in the West ….”

Other groups supporting the conference included conservative media outlet TAG TV, the Bangladeshi Minority Rights group, B’nai Brith and several pro-Zionist groups that equate criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic and “illegal.” The conference also received funding from Daniel Pipe’s Middle East Forum think tank that “protects western values from Middle Eastern threats” and “emphasizes the danger of lawful Islamism.”

A front row seat to hate

To set the tone for the day, conference organizers began with a condemnation of the New Zealand terror attack. Attendees were asked to rise for a moment of silence. It turns out the silence was not to commemorate the victims of this heinous hate crime, but rather to honour “free speech.”

I spent a long day of being a fly on the wall at this conference, hearing non-stop pro-Zionist rhetoric denying that Israel was oppressing Palestinians and consuming a steady diet of Islamophobic bigotry. Along with this came calls for preserving “Judeo-Christian democracy,” protecting against multiculturalism and the need to build a “coalition of the willing,” (the term used by George W. Bush to refer to countries who supported militarily or politically the 2003 U.S-led invasion of Iraq), to challenge “Islamists” and preserve the rule of law in Canada.

Most egregiously, in one session I attended, panellists repeatedly referred to the Al Noor mosque in New Zealand where the terror attack occurred as a “known site of radicalization” without citing any evidence. They complained the media was not publicizing this information. Despite their caution to say this was not a justification for the shootings, I was concerned their salacious and unfounded claim against the Al Noor mosque created further fear and hatred against Muslims.

I finally decided to intervene.

One of the panellists was Christine Douglass-Williams, who in 2017 was removed from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation for remarks described by non-profit organizations as Islamophobic.

I asked her about a speech she made in Iceland in which she warned Icelanders about the “Islamicist supremacist incursion into their country:”

“Islamic supremacists will smile at you and invite you to their gatherings, make you feel loved and welcomed but they do it to deceive you and take over you, your land, and your freedoms …Many friendly, seemingly ‘moderate’ Muslims are deceiving you …”

I asked her what her warning was for Canadians, given that’s what she told Icelanders.

Not so free speech

Douglass-Williams became defensive and said she was misquoted. I was paraphrasing, but I told her I took the information directly from an article she wrote. The moderator became angry and told me I couldn’t speak anymore. He told me to leave.

I protested and said I was trying to engage in a dialogue, to exercise my free speech rights, which this conference purported to uphold. The moderator, who is an “ethicist,” informed me I was now trespassing and had to leave.

Did I breach conference decorum by being unwilling to be silenced? Yes. Did they have a right to ask me to leave because I spoke after being told to be quiet? Technically, yes. I did not plan to interrupt the far-right echo chamber, but when I did intervene in the discussion, I realized it was likely I’d be asked to leave because of my views. And I was willing to do so peacefully. But I was not prepared for what happened next.

I stood up voluntarily to leave as instructed by the moderator. But I made one final comment: I said their thinly veiled white supremacist views and Islamophobic fear-mongering is the kind of rhetoric that inspires white nationalist terror.

That comment caused a commotion.

A man from the audience grabbed me and pulled me from the room, twisting my arm with force. I shouted to the silent onlookers: “This man is hurting me! He has no right to touch me!”

A man in the audience shouted back: “You are lucky to even be in this country!”

During this incident, not one person said or did anything. All cellphones, by order of the conference, were surrendered so no one took videos of the incident. I had to wait to call the police until afterwards.

As the man was physically accosting me, I looked over my shoulder to the crowd in the room. They did not look like Proud Boys wearing Doc Martens; they were mainly white seniors that included a retired school psychologist, a teacher and lawyers dressed in suits and ties. Others wore leisurewear, the kind worn on a winter cruise.

One of the people in the room was a former Toronto police officer and “security expert.” I thought he might see the danger in the situation and stop it, so I appealed to him: “You are a former police officer and I’m telling you this man is assaulting and hurting me!”

He stared at me and said nothing. Ironically, all of this occurred during a panel about public safety and upholding “the rule of law.” No amount of “liberal washing” will clean this dirty laundry.

Editor’s Note: Prior to publishing this article, The Conversation Canada asked the organizer of the conference, Canadians for the Rule of Law, why Jasmin Zine was forcibly removed from the event she attended. Donald Carr, president of Canadians for the Rule of Law, replied in an email that Zine “did not conform to clearly stated ‘rules’ relating to asking questions of the panellists.” Carr said Zine was asked to surrender the microphone after asking her question and that conference organizers then considered her to be a “trespasser on private property” and asked the conference’s private security firm to escort her out. Carr admitted an “unknown individual from the audience seized the professor to take her out, but on request, released her” and a security officer escorted Zine to the lobby of the building. Carr said a police officer subsequently interviewed several people and told conference staff that there “had been no illegal action.” Zine has since received an email from the investigating officer from York Regional Police who indicated that people at the conference he spoke to “were not very forthcoming with information about the suspect.” The officer said conference organizers told him the suspect was selling books at the conference, but they didn’t have any contact information for him. “I’m sorry I could not find the suspect and give you anymore closure in this upsetting matter,” the officer concluded.

Jasmin Zine, Professor of Sociology, Wilfrid Laurier University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

schizo policies

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/03/us-and-canadian-oil-production-push-the-planets-climate-goals-out-of-reach/

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https://www.ecowatch.com/canada-supreme-court-fossil-fuel-companies-2627712275.html

Green energy campaigners in Canada applauded a precedent-settiing Supreme Court ruling on Thursday which ordered the bankrupt Alberta-based oil and gas company Redwater Energy to clean up its failed wells instead of leaving the task to the public.

Observing the "polluter pays principle," the 5-2 ruling overturned two earlier decisions by lower courts which had sided with a federal law stating that insolvent companies could prioritize paying back their creditors over fulfilling their environmental obligations.

"Bankruptcy is not a license to ignore rules," Chief Justice Richard Wagner wrote in the ruling, which was celebrated as one that would set a new precedent for the entire country.

...

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https://yyy.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/07/canada-indigenous-anti-pipeline-protesters

no lnx

...The pipeline project has previously faced numerous delays, after a group of protesters constructed a blockade – named Unist’ot’en Camp – in order to prevent construction vehicles from accessing the area.

On 14 December, a British Columbia court granted TransCanada an injunction permitting them access to the construction site and ordering the removal of the blockade. Within days, activists erected the new barrier, named the Gidimt’en checkpoint.

On Sunday, Unist’ot’en Camp issued a statement of support for the Gidimt’en checkpoint: “The RCMP’s ultimatum, to allow TransCanada access to unceded Wet’suwet’en territory or face police invasion, is an act of war. Canada is now attempting to do what it has always done – criminalize and use violence against indigenous people so that their unceded homelands can be exploited for profit.”

Both the Unist’ot’en and Gitimd’en are part of the five clans which make up the Wet’suwet’en.

In recent years, British Columbia has been the site of a number of high-profile legal cases surrounding the issue of land title. Because few of the province’s First Nations signed treaties with colonial governments, the courts have often been the arbiters of land rights disputes.

The Delgamuukw v British Columbia case – which covers part of the Wet’suwet’en territory – previously found that indigenous rights to their historical territory are not “extinguished” for lack of a treaty.

Wet’suwet’en claim they retain title to the land and as a result, have sole authority to deny or grant access to the territory.

Trudeau's environmental record on the line in Canada election year

The pipeline feud comes as energy companies in Canada are facing numerous delays and barriers to their infrastructure projects, including environmental assessments and adequate consultations with indigenous communities on whose territory the projects would pass through.

Another high-profile pipeline project, Trans Mountain, was halted over the summer after a federal court determined indigenous communities had not been adequately consulted during the approvals process.

British Columbia premier John Horgan, who made headlines for his fight against the Trans Mountain pipeline, has cheered on the C$40bn liquid natural gas project – of which the Coastal GasLink is a critical piece – citing the large number of jobs and revenue that will result from its completion.

While the provincial government has said the facility will be the cleanest of its kind in the world, a report from the Pembina Institute found that the project would increase the province’s emissions by 8.6 megatonnes by 2030.

Protesters at the Gitimd’en checkpoint have vowed to prevent the project from being built on their territory.

...

5/18

https://www.ecowatch.com/canada-kinder-morgan-pipeline-2573283566.html

yikes kinder morgan

chevron 4/18

https://www.ecowatch.com/us-bank-pipelines-financing-policy-2559289565.html

https://www.ecowatch.com/transcanada-tar-sands-2482964658.html

TransCanada May Abandon Energy East Tar Sands Pipeline

TransCanada wants to suspend and may even cancel its proposed $15.7-billion Energy East pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil across most of the Canadian continent.

The pipeline giant—the same company behind the controversial Keystone XL—is seeking a 30-day pause on the project in order to do a "careful review" of the National Energy Board's (NEB) tough, new climate standards.

As the National Observer explained, the NEB's new rules are a departure from its previous practice of only reviewing the impact of pollution caused during pipeline construction and operations—it also considers the impact of pollution caused by the production and consumption of the oil to be shipped by an operator.

NEB also said it will provide "more visibility" to the evaluation of risks associated with accidents such as oil spills.

TransCanada said the NEB's expanded pipeline standards could affect the "costs, schedules and viability" of its Energy East project. NEB said it will make a decision on the company's request "in a timely manner."

TransCanada's announcement is a win for environmentalists who have long protested the project.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the proposed Energy East pipeline would transport 1.1 million barrels per day of mostly tar sands oil from Alberta to St. John and would bring a significant increase in carbon pollution—the equivalent to the annual emissions of as many as 54 million passenger vehicles—and lock in high-carbon infrastructure expected to operate for at least 50 years.

As 350.org founder Bill McKibben tweeted: "Whoa! Transcanada may abandon its #energyeast pipeline because it doesn't want to confront the climate implications"

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2x?

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bart mcg: sunoco:

The presentation divided groups into categories of "radicals" "idealists" "realists" and "opportunists" and outlined how to engage with them. Rising Tide North America, Oil Change International and the Indigenous Environmental Network were labeled as radicals. Sierra Club and Amnesty International were among groups called idealists, while groups including Pembina and the World Wildlife Fund were called realists.

Some of the groups mentioned have recently been the targets of surveillance in Canada coordinated by the federal energy regulation board, the National Energy Board.

cf http://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/05/05/news/spies-our-midst-rcmp-and-csis-snoop-green-activists

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/12/15/stratfor-canadian-government_n_4449505.html

no link

Stratfor, a.k.a 'Shadow CIA,' Had Contracts With 13 Federal Departments: WikiLeaks

12/15/2013 12:08 EST | Updated 02/14/2014 05:59 EST

Ben Makuch, The Canadian PressCP

OTTAWA - At least 13 Canadian government agencies have had subscriptions with U.S. private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting, Inc. or Stratfor, sometimes dubbed a shadow CIA, newly released WikiLeaks emails indicate.

Stratfor came under fire recently after a leaked company document prepared for an oil company outlined ways to counter activist groups, such as Greenpeace, who oppose Canada's oil-sands development.

The same cache of leaked emails indicates Canadian federal agencies have purchased at least half a million dollars in Stratfor services.

Stratfor's Presentation On Countering Anti-Oilsands Activists

Reportedly prepared for Suncor, 2010.

[docs?]

Stratfor Oilsands Presentation, 2010

Emails from January 2009 and February 2011 show invoices of $13,125 and $13,725 for one-year Stratfor subscriptions for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which were not publicly disclosed by the department.

Under proactive disclosure policy, Canadian government contracts worth more than $10,000 must be posted on the web.

Foreign Affairs spokesperson Jean-Bruno Villeneuve says there was a clerical error in not reporting the contracts.

Villeneuve added the subscriptions were "used widely within the department to help inform policy development and analysis."

Stratfor declined to answer questions about the recent leaks, referring The Canadian Press to a posted statement about its policy not to comment on any of the WikiLeaks documents.

"Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic," the statement reads.

"We will not validate either. Nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them."

A Canadian intelligence expert says some federal departments use private firms such as Stratfor to augment their supply of intelligence.

"I think it's not uncommon," Wesley Wark said in an interview.

"Particularly for people in the intelligence analysis world of the Canadian government … to have contracts from time to time with private-sector firms for delivery of certain kinds of analytical problems, which is basically what Stratfor does."

Wark says such services can be expensive and beyond the budgets of government agencies.

In another leaked email, dated March 3, 2011, a senior executive in the firm applauds a Stratfor employee for cementing a long-term contract with National Defence.

The deal was on behalf of the Canadian Forces College in Toronto, worth $240,600 over three years.

The leaks suggest National Defence has had the highest-value agreements with Stratfor.

"We locked them in for a three-year commitment," says the email, with several replies of congratulation for the coup.

According to the same email chain, National Defence paid Stratfor $78,225 in 2011, $80,175 in 2012 and $82,200 for this year. The contract was publicly disclosed by the department.

The deal gave the college "Authenticated Access to STRATFOR Enterprise Premium Portal," which includes "Up to 10 individual user accounts" with access to sophisticated analysis and geopolitical forecasts.

National Defence's publicly posted contract reports also show an agreement with Stratfor worth $182,377 from 2008 to 2011.

In 2006, a Stratfor analyst described in an email another deal with comparable value.

"We just inked a deal beginning yesterday similar to the Air Force," the analyst wrote to a colleague, "except it covers the Canadian Forces for $50k (the) first year and $60k for (the) subsequent year."

Industry Canada used an "enterprise premium portal" subscription similar to that of National Defence, an April 2005 email indicates, although a dollar figure was not reported. Another email indicated a renewal of a subscription in 2010.

Additional emails from the WikiLeaks database show the Public Safety Department, whose umbrella includes the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, had a deal with Stratfor in 2010 and 2011, although the valuation was not given.

WikiLeaks obtained the emails from a high-profile hacking of over five million Stratfor emails by alleged Internet activist and Anonymous member, Jeremy Hammond. Hammond pleaded guilty in a U.S. court and received a 10-year sentence last month.

"I don't think they (Stratfor) have formal access to classified material," said Wark.

"But the people who work at Stratfor are for the most part former members of the American intelligence community and have some connections. ... But they're primarily, I think, working with open-source material."

Here is the Stratfor Canadian government subscription list, according to WikiLeaks cables: Transport Canada; Industry Canada; Export Development Canada (Crown corp.); Citizenship and Immigration; Canadian International Development Agency (now part of Foreign Affairs); Natural Resources; Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission; Treasury Board; Canadian Air Transport Security Authority; RCMP; Public Safety; National Defence; Foreign Affairs.

https://twitter.com/BMakuch

MORE:Businessoilsands stratforstrafor tar sandsstratforstratfor canadian governmentstratfor oilsandsstratfor suncorsuncor stratfortar sands stratfor

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http://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/05/18/news/canadas-spies-collude-energy-sector

Part Two: Government spies collude with energy sector:

Canada's spies collude with the energy sector

By Bruce Livesey in News, Energy, Politics | May 18th 2017

Critics say the federal government is spying on environmentalists and First Nations and sharing their findings with the oil patch. File photo of oilsands by Kris Krug

This is the second installment of a two-part investigative series on government, spies and the oil industry

In the fall of 2013, Jason Augustine was in the thick of one of the most important standoffs First Nations activists have ever had with energy companies.

As a district war chief with the Mi'kmaq Warriors Society, and a member of the Elsipogtog First Nation near Rexton, a village on the east coast of New Brunswick, Augustine and his band were engaged in a protest against fracking. For weeks he and his fellow activists blocked the entrance to a compound where a fracking company had stored equipment, among other protests. Augustine notes that they did this because with fracking, "the gas (that is released) contaminates drinking water."

In October of that year, RCMP officers, with guns drawn and dispatching pepper spray, descended on the blockade, arresting 40 protesters, Augustine among them. Five RCMP vehicles were set on fire during this final confrontation. Augustine was later sentenced to 18 months of probation, and pled guilty to assaulting a police officer, two counts of obstructing a police officer, and one count of mischief. This standoff, however, galvanized attention to the issue of fracking and the province soon placed a moratorium on it.

November 1, 2013 photo of Jason Augustine outside Moncton Law Court from twitter by Jessica Doria-Brown, CBC

Yet Augustine's problems with the RCMP have continued: the 42-year-old is frequently followed by what Augustine believes are government vehicles. “And it’s just not me that’s been followed,” he remarks. “A lot of our Warriors Society members get followed. It’s just going to a different reserve and they still get followed. They are always monitoring us and trying to figure out what we are doing.”

“I see it as harassment,” he continues. “Why can’t we live our lives without being watched? We stood up for our water and our land, you know. We did that, and under our treaties we have the right to do that.”

As discussed in Part One of our two-part series, the federal government has created a massive and sophisticated spying apparatus – overseen primarily by the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) – designed to track the actions of First Nations and environmental activists opposed to so-called "critical infrastructure" projects, namely the tar sands, pipelines, fracking and mining. But critics of this network say it does more than just spy on people – it tries to intimidate too. More importantly, the fruits of all of this espionage are often shared with the energy sector.

As an example of intimidation, in May of 2012, the Yinka Dene Alliance in BC decided to take a “Freedom Train” across Canada to Toronto, bringing attention to Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which was slated to connect the oilsands to the BC coast (last year, the Trudeau government canceled the pipeline after former PM Harper had approved it). The Alliance planned to arrive in Toronto in time for Enbridge’s annual shareholders’ meeting. Among the 37 band members who left BC on the train was John Ridsdale, the Hereditary Chief of the Na'Moks, Tsayu Clan, Wet'suwet'en, who lives in Smithers, BC.

On the train with them, recalls Ridsdale, were undercover officers, presumably RCMP or CSIS, or both. “When you have people going up and down an aisle of a train – you know you are being watched,” he says. “They were easy to pick out. They were not really trying to be undercover – they wanted us to know we were being watched.” The trip went off without incident, culminating in a rally and march in downtown Toronto.

Ridsdale says that First Nations people protesting resource development “take it for granted we are all monitored… (but) we are nonviolent and we are here to protect the land and water and freedom. We are not against development – we are against the manner (in which) they do it.”

In response to questions furnished by the National Observer, the RCMP said as part of its mandate "the RCMP does have the requirement to identify and investigate criminal threats, including those to critical infrastructure." They also noted "the RCMP has instituted a measured approach to large-scale public order events."

Wet'suwet'en First Nation Hereditary Chief Na'Moks (John Ridsdale) signs the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion in Vancouver, B.C. on Thurs. Sept. 22, 2016. Photo by Elizabeth McSheffrey

Idle No More panics the intelligence bureaucracy

Yet the culmination of this type of espionage and intimidation occurred after the birth of Idle No More. Founded in late 2012 by four Saskatchewan women in response to Harper’s omnibus bills that gutted laws designed to protect the environment over resource development projects, Idle No More led to teach-ins, blockades, protests and rallies as well as a National Day of Action. It even sparked solidarity protests in other countries.

Yet Idle No More caused panic within the federal government’s intelligence and surveillance bureaucracy, which swung into action. “Idle No More was, as far as I know, the most completely surveilled social movement in Canadian history,” says Carleton University criminologist Jeffrey Monaghan, who has studied this issue. “Every single event had intelligence gathering about it. Whether it’s open source or more covert methods. We’re talking about very remote events in like Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to the more contentious ones, like Sarnia. Every single event was being scrutinized, was being monitored and was being cataloged."

Idle No More protesters march against then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper's policies on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on December 22, 2012. Photo by Isabeau Doucet.

“On top of that, you had formations of national security working groups at the highest level of the bureaucracy having regular updates and streaming information directly to the prime minister and national security adviser and cabinet in real time.”

Indeed, a heavily-redacted 11-page report obtained by the National Post in 2014 shows that CSIS was involved in preparing an all-of-government approach to dealing with the First Nations protests. The report, and a PowerPoint presentation, revealed that Ottawa was planning for every eventuality, concerned by the decentralized, leaderless nature of Idle No More. Moreover, says Clayton Thomas-Muller, a former Idle No More organizer: "There were multiple reports of CSIS and RCMP agents contacting individuals at their homes and in public over participation in Idle No More. Any time an officer of the settler colonial state... approaches an Indigenous person, it is considered threatening, given the statistics around the criminalization of Indigenous peoples and our over-representation in Canada's jails."

Intelligence shared with energy sector

What happens to all of the information and data gathered about activists?

For one thing, some of it is shared with the energy sector. Starting in 2005, Natural Resources Canada, in collaboration with CSIS and the RCMP, began hosting twice-yearly classified briefings with executives from energy companies at CSIS’s headquarters in Ottawa - which continue to this day. “You have the RCMP and CSIS giving these briefings to the private sector – but the private sector wanting those briefings to be driven by the demands of those receiving the information,” says University of New Brunswick sociologist Tia Dafnos, who has researched this topic.

File photo of CSIS sign by the Canadian Press

In 2012, Tim O’Neill, a senior criminal intelligence research specialist with the RCMP’s Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Team, wrote an email in which he said the purpose of these meetings “is to provide intelligence briefings to select energy representatives so they are able to implement the required security precautions to protect their assets. The briefings also provide a forum for the private sector to brief the Canadian intelligence and law enforcement community on issues we would not normally be privy to.” This email noted that the energy sector executives possess at least a “Level II (Secret) Security Clearance.” Indeed, Keith Stewart, head of Greenpeace Canada’s climate campaign, estimates “there are over 200 executives in the natural resources sector who have security clearance from CSIS and RCMP around these things like critical infrastructure.”

Agendas for these briefings, that have emerged through access to information requests, show that items of discussion include issues such as “security challenges presented by Radicalized Individual Groups to Canada’s Energy Sector” and “Extremist Activities within Aboriginal Communities”, and topics such as "Improvised Explosive Devices”, or on specific projects, such as the oilsands and Northern Gateway pipeline.

These briefings are well-attended, too. On the government side, they include people from the RCMP and all of Canada’s intelligence services, as well from the departments of Natural Resources, Defence, Public Safety, Transport, Industry Canada, National Energy Board (NEB), Atomic Energy Canada Ltd., the governments of New Brunswick, Quebec and Alberta, and the federal Office of the Auditor General, among others.

On the corporate side, however, it's unclear who attends. All federal documents have been censored prior to release under access to information legislation to remove the names of companies that send executives to the meetings.

Nonetheless, in 2013, minutes to one meeting reveal that networking and coffee receptions at the briefing was sponsored by the pipeline company, Enbridge Inc., along with the (US) $250-billion Toronto-based global conglomerate, Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (Enbridge did not respond to requests for a response while Brookfield says it has been a number of years since they have participated in the briefings, and did so only because they were concerned about cyber-security and loss prevention).

Meanwhile, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., which operates the Horizon oilsands project in Fort McMurray, Alberta, was an invitee to the briefings, according to one RCMP email (the company refused to discuss its participation in these briefings when approached by National Observer). “This is how the energy companies have become part of the national security bureaucracy themselves,” observes Monaghan. “They are embedded within the bureaucracy because now, for the most part, 'critical infrastructure' is privately owned… It’s a two-way street: the police and CSIS have deputized the companies and their security actors to provide intelligence as well. This emerges from the energy companies putting pressure on the governments saying ‘You are not doing enough to stop these activists from disrupting whatever’.”

Jeffrey Monaghan, Carleton University, Ottawa, spies, Canada, oil patch

Ottawa-based criminologist Jeffrey Monaghan has researched espionage targeting environmental and First Nations activists for years. He is seen here at Carleton University. Photo by Alex Tétreault

Astonishingly, it seems that some of the information collected has been passed on to the companies before it’s even seen by all divisions of the RCMP. In a 2010 email from O’Neill, he mentions that another RCMP officer “was very concerned that the private sector was receiving intell prior to the Detachments, which of course should not be the case as the Divisional CICI (Critical Infrastructure Criminal Intelligence) analysts should be disseminating our products within their Divisions.”

CSIS spokesperson Tahera Mufti does not deny the agency shares intelligence with other parties, saying in a statement to the National Observer: "The role of CSIS is to investigate activities suspected of constituting threats to the security of Canada, and to report on these to the Government of Canada. CSIS collects and analyzes threat-related information, which is typically disseminated to government partners through intelligence reports and other intelligence-related briefings."

In a response to question by National Observer on these briefings, the RCMP said that they, "through the National Critical infrastructure Team, assists in the identification of criminal threats to Canada's critical infrastructure and develops information products that may be used by first responders and the private sector to assess and mitigate risks associated to these threats."

National Energy Board (NEB) collects intelligence on activists

The intelligence gathered is also shared with the federal energy regulator, the National Energy Board (NEB), which is supposed to be a neutral tribunal over the approval and oversight of pipelines and other projects.

Yet documents released by the NEB show that its security staff have been alarmed about protesters showing up at hearings – and gathers intelligence on who they might be. To this end, CSIS and the RCMP provides the NEB with information. In 2013, the NEB’s head of security, wrote in an email that the Board’s security team had consulted with CSIS “at national and regional levels,” noting that they would continue monitoring all sources of information with police and intelligence partners.

Emails that have come to light through access to information requests show that the NEB security staff have been in constant contact with the RCMP's Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Team (CIIT) about potential protests at hearings, too.

In 2013, for instance, a member of the CIIT wrote to NEB staff and at least one CSIS official, Tom Lanzer, regarding the risk of interference with the Board’s hearings by groups opposed to oil sands and pipeline development. Despite acknowledging that CIIT had no intelligence indicating a criminal threat to the NEB or its members, the email advises that CIIT “will continue to monitor all aspects of the anti-petroleum industry movement” and said this information was also being shared with CSIS.

In response to a query from the National Observer, the NEB did not deny it monitors people who appear before the hearings. Sarah Kiley, a communications officer with the Board, said "we are required to continuously assess any potential security risks and take the appropriate steps to make sure that our staff, our Board Members and those attending our hearings, are safe and can freely participate in our hearings. Advice, guidance and other services provided by lead security agencies support federal agencies, such as the National Energy Board, in maintaining acceptable levels of security."

Is spying on peaceful protesters legal?

But is all of this espionage and sharing of data actually legal?

Paul Champ doesn’t think so. The Ottawa-based human rights lawyer is involved in two on-going complaints launched by British Columbia's civil liberties association against the RCMP and CSIS over their role in spying on peaceful protesters. Launched in 2014, Champ says the complaints have become "bogged down... These processes are ridiculously slow and unresponsive and obviously lack transparency" and he says there is no end in sight.

Champ argues that the Mounties and CSIS have no legal grounds to spy on people who are opposed to projects that don’t even exist – which is true for most of the pipelines being discussed.

“It’s one thing if it's a pipeline that’s already been built and people are protesting that, than maybe, theoretically, there’s a threat to that critical infrastructure,” says Champ, “but here these environmental and Indigenous groups are opposed to the policy of a pipeline. And a policy, in my mind, cannot be viewed as an aspect of national security. Therefore the jurisdiction of national security by CSIS cannot be engaged.”

Lawyer Paul Champ responding to questions in the House of Commons on March 12, 2015, on Bill C-51. Screencap from Vimeo

Champ notes that in order to justify this surveillance, “there is a legal threshold that must be crossed before an individual or group can be actively investigated... We think they need some kind of grounds to suspect, in the case of the RCMP, that someone has committed a criminal offense, is about to commit a criminal offense or, in the case of CSIS, that a group is, or might be, a threat to national security as defined by the act. We have a set of legal thresholds and until they are met CSIS and RCMP should not be getting themselves involved in gathering information about groups that are otherwise lawfully exercising their democratic rights.”

Champ also notes that “there’s no authority to be a sharing their intelligence reports with third parties such as corporations. Or the NEB, for that matter. Sharing information in that way is outside their jurisdiction and the CSIS Act and is a breach of (people’s) Charter rights.”

Has this espionage under the Trudeau government continued? In fact, evidence suggests nothing has changed. After all, Trudeau has approved or supports the Kinder Morgan, Keystone XL and Energy East pipelines, and greenlit a $11.4-billion liquefied natural-gas (LNG) mega-project in British Columbia. And the twice-yearly briefings held at CSIS's headquarters with the energy sector continue.

“The bottom line is that Canada’s entire economic paradigm is fundamentally based on the oppression of Indigenous people’s collective rights, the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands to provide open-door access to extractive companies to get resources to international markets to sell to the highest bidder,” says tar sands campaigner and Manitoba Cree, Clayton Thomas-Muller, who has been the target of RCMP surveillance himself. “When we look at all of the pipelines and all of the oilsands and all of the mining and all of the mega-hydro dams and the places where Canada’s most toxic and destructive industries are placed, it's in the backyards of First Nations peoples. So it’s a very big issue.”

Indeed, shortly after the Kinder Morgan and Enbridge Line 3 pipelines were approved by the Trudeau government late last year, Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr gave a speech to a group of business leaders in Edmonton, where he assured them: “If people choose for their own reasons not to be peaceful, then the government of Canada, through its defence forces, through its police forces, will ensure that (your) people will be kept safe.”

A few days later, Carr said he regretted his remarks and apologized.

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https://fsrn.org/2016/09/earth-hits-co2-concentration-point-of-no-return-canada-plants-a-carbon-bomb/

LNG BC ok'd env cda

3 Reasons the Historic U.S.-Canada Commitment to Curbing Methane Emissions Is Big

alberta plan?

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http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/05/04/news/how-canada-made-koch-brothers-rich

Author's note: Until this past February, I worked as a contracted television producer for Global TV and its current affairs program, 16x9. Last fall, I was commissioned to do a story for the program about the Koch brothers, their holdings in Alberta’s oil sands and their interest in getting the Keystone XL pipeline built. In January, two days before the 22-minute documentary was about to air on 16x9, Global's senior management pulled the story. After Jesse Brown's Canadaland published a story about its sudden disappearance, Global fired me, although I was not quoted in that story or had any involvement with it. What you're about to read includes some of the material that has not yet been permitted to be shown on Global.

The attacks were nasty.

In the winter of 2011, Karen Kleiss, a reporter with the Edmonton Journal, wrote a story about how Koch Industries Inc. had hired a lobbyist in Alberta. The story provided background on the Wichita, Kansas-based energy conglomerate, its presence in Alberta, and its American billionaire owners, Charles and David Koch.

http://www.desmog.ca/2015/10/14/new-report-shows-systematic-dismantling-canada-s-environmental-laws-under-conservative-government

http://www.desmog.ca/2015/12/10/canada-intervenes-keep-human-and-indigenous-rights-climate-treaty-during-final-hours-paris-negotiations

...Yet, among the high-level talks, Canada stepped in to raise another crucial issue: the potential exclusion of indigenous rights from the text of the agreement, expected to be agreed Friday.

Catherine McKenna, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, spoke before a plenary hosted by French President Françoise Hollande late Wednesday night to implore international leaders to make reference to human and indigenous rights in the Paris climate agreement stronger and permanent.

“The agreement must recognize adequately the importance of respecting human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples,” McKenna said.

Indigenous Rights Uncertain in Climate Treaty

Last week negotiators placed the only reference in the draft text to such rights within square brackets. This means it is contested and could eventually be removed from the final agreement. Indigenous leaders at the climate talks say they want to see a climate deal that not only acknowledges the unique rights of indigenous peoples but that traditional lands, cultures and practices have been greatly impacted by climate change.

In addition, indigenous groups want to ensure a new low-carbon plan is not used to by governments to justify controversial hydro, wind or other projects.

“We are deeply concerned that the reference to human rights and rights of indigenous peoples…is under brackets,” McKenna said, recommending the reference be “unbracketed as we move forward.”

McKenna further called for human and indigenous rights to appear in the “operational paragraphs” of the text as well as in the agreement’s introduction, where it currently sits. The introduction is not legally binding.

“This is critically important to us,” McKenna said.

Last week indigenous groups observing the negotiations revealed countries including Norway, the United Kingdom and the European Union were working to remove mention of human and indigenous rights from the agreement.

Saudi Arabia and the United States have argued specifically against the inclusion of human rights, saying the language could open up unnecessary liabilities in an agreement that, they argue, is only supposed to be about environment....

new minister

Leaders in Canada’s environmental community are expressing optimism about the appointment of lawyer Catherine McKenna as Minister of Environment and Climate Change at a swearing in ceremony in Ottawa Wednesday morning.

“Including climate change in the environment minister’s title signals how high a priority this issue is to our new federal government,” said Merran Smith, executive director of Clean Energy Canada.

As a lawyer, McKenna focused on international trade and competition and co-founded a charity focused on advancing human rights in the developing world. She was also a legal adviser and negotiator for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in East Timor. A video on her website shows her biking around Ottawa with her three children.

Although her background isn’t heavily weighted to environment and climate change, Ed Whittingham, executive director of the Pembina Institute, said it’s a good appointment.

“I’m impressed with the NGO experience, which suggests a very different approach to working with environmental NGOs like Pembina,” Whittingham told DeSmog Canada. “It indicates a more engaging, communicative, collaborative approach, reading the tea leaves right now.”

McKenna pulled off an upset on Oct. 19, defeating popular NDP MP Paul Dewar to win her seat in Ottawa Centre. She will lead a Canadian delegation to Paris later this month for a critical United Nations meeting to negotiate a new agreement on cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

“I think she has just the right kind of experience,” said Louise Comeau, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada. “We’ve moved beyond the science and even the economic dimensions on climate change. This is now about the issues of justice and fairness and I think she’s well positioned to deal with that.”

Comeau is also pleased with the appointment of Stephane Dion as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Winnipeg South CentreMP Jim Carr as Minister of Natural Resources. Dion, Carr and McKenna will co-ordinate during next month’s climate negotiations.

“The minister responsible for Natural Resources Canada doesn’t have a vested interest in the oilsands or pipelines so we can expect a more open mind on transitioning to a clean energy system,” Comeau told DeSmog Canada. “I’m quite optimistic. This signals a significant attempt to move forward in a balanced way.”

The Liberals’ election platform was vague when it came to how to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, promising only to work with provinces to put a price on carbon and to end subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has vowed that Canada will do its part to prevent the catastrophic consequences of more than a two-degree rise in global temperatures.

The Liberals have also promised to restore robust environmental assessments and to review changes to the Fisheries Act. Nunavut MP Hunter Tootoo was named Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard during Wednesday’s swearing in ceremony.

Tootoo defeated Conservative MP and former minister of environment Leona Aglukkaq. Aglukkaq had to apologize in December 2014 for reading the newspaper while opposition parties asked the government about high food prices in the North during Question Period. She also once indicated that there’s still “debate” about some elements of climate science.

The Liberals will have a lot of catching up to do on the environment file. New documents obtained by CBC indicate federal efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will make just a small dent, in part due to many of the most effective programs — such as the ecoEnergy efficiency programs to help homes and business save energy — being cancelled by the Conservative government.

“For the last 10 years at the federal-provincial table they wouldn't even allow the word climate change to be used. That's a challenge,” Ontario's Environment Minister Glen Murray told the CBC.

http://www.desmog.ca/2015/11/04/meet-canada-s-new-environment-minister-catherine-mckenna

Alberta's New Climate Plan: What You Need to Know

Alberta's government unveiled a sweeping plan on Sunday to phase out coal, curb emissions from oil and gas, grow renewables and price carbon, marking a stark policy reversal for the province that is home to the tar sands. "This is the day we step up, at long last, to one of the world's biggest problems—the pollution that is causing climate change," said Alberta Premier Rachel Notley.

The ads were hard to miss for anyone taking the subway in Washington, D.C.—particularly someone working at the White House, the State Department or Congress.

They included images of children waving the American and Canadian flags, a green mountain with a river running through it, and construction workers building a new pipeline in Texas.

The ads in some of the capital's busiest Metro stations are but a small part of an aggressive, ongoing campaign that targets the most powerful people in Washington. The goal: President Obama's approval for the Keystone XL pipeline, a major expansion project that could bring more of Canada's carbon-intensive tar sands oil into the United States.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has set aside $22.7 million for an advertising blitz this year to promote oil and Canada's other natural resources in the United States, Europe and Asia. But scientists and environmental groups say the advertising message is misleading its target audience about the Canadian government's failure to clean up the oil sands, Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.

"Those [advertising] messages aren't accompanied by any changes in policy—they're basically defending Canada's current record, which we know to be quite poor when it comes to climate," said Danielle Droitsch, the Canada project director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a U.S. environmental group that has criticized the Keystone pipeline project and the expansion of Canada's oil sands industry.

Environment Canada, the Canadian counterpart to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, recently issued a report that projected a 42 percent cut in its pollution management and mitigation programs before the 2016-17 fiscal year. A labor union representing federal scientists, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, has estimated the Canadian government is in the middle of a three-year purge, cutting nearly $3 billion in spending and up to 5,000 jobs from its science-based departments.

Meanwhile, Canada's advertising campaign—which includes the pro-oil sands government website gowithcanada.ca [3]—touts Canada as a reliable partner and a "world environmental leader in the oil and gas sector." It also boasts of a new oil sands monitoring system "founded on science and transparency."

Harper's government defends the campaign, saying it wants to ensure that other countries get all the facts. But one fact the ads don't mention is that the oil sands industry's rising carbon footprint is projected to wipe out reductions elsewhere in Canada's economy, putting Harper's commitment to reduce annual emissions to about 3 percent above 1990 levels by 2020 out of reach.

[4]

Promise vs. Performance

Environment Canada estimates that greenhouse gases from the oil sands industry grew by 62 percent from 2005-2011. They are projected to grow a further 84 percent by 2020.

Harper has repeatedly pledged, but delayed, introducing rules to reduce those greenhouse gases. At the same time, his government dismantled a team of seven specialists who helped design the oil sands monitoring program. They also had the expertise to draft credible tests and regulations for air pollution and greenhouse gases in the oil sands. The government eliminated their jobs, forcing some into early retirement or transfers.

It has also apparently prevented the remaining three members from using all their skills to tackle the environmental challenges in the oil sands. An internal email, distributed within Environment Canada's Emissions Research and Measurement Section (ERMS), revealed that the section's manager couldn't find any work for the specialists in the new federal and provincial Joint Oil Sands Monitoring (JOSM) initiative that the government promotes in its advertising campaign.

"All of the staff are affected by the fact that there is no oil sands work...as a result of the changes," wrote the manager, Fred Hendren, in the leaked email sent on April 14. "The intent is to find permanent duties for all of the staff."

Environment Canada confirmed that the joint monitoring plan won't be testing stack emissions directly from the source. Instead, the plan will test ambient air "at some distance from sources."

Former members of the emissions research team, speaking through their union, have urged the government to allow them to measure emissions directly from stacks, in order to establish baseline data on mercury and other substances. The union said that would also allow the government to collect other information it needs to draw up credible regulations to reduce air pollution, water pollution and greenhouse gases.

Department spokesman Mark Johnson said the work done under the joint monitoring plan was meant to complement Alberta's existing regulatory approach, which uses emissions data reported by oil companies.

But the union representing the scientists said the absence of independent data will compromise the credibility of any new regulations.

With the internal team disbanded, the department now hires consultants when it needs emissions research.

"When you cut an entire group and then simply farm it out to an outside contractor that really isn't even qualified to do that work, that to me smacks of incompetence," said local union president Stephen Vanneste. "But it's also pretty mean-spirited. There's no good intention there."

The union said it is looking into possible grievances but needs one of the government scientists or engineers to make a formal complaint.

"People are very reluctant to stick their neck out because they are very much afraid—and justifiably so—that they're going to get their heads cut off," Vanneste said.

Peers, Papers and Potatoes

The Canadian government's advertising also fails to mention some of the new peer-reviewed research emerging from the oil sands as part of the new monitoring program.

Those include studies that have documented rising toxic pollution such as mercury and cancer-linked compounds around oil sands production. But in most cases, the government scientists that have produced this research were unavailable for interviews, feeding into criticism that Harper is muzzling scientists who produce inconvenient research for industry. The allegations prompted a probe launched last year by a federal watchdog.

An industry spokesman told InsideClimate News that he wasn't aware of recent cases of alleged muzzling of scientists. He said the industry supports transparency and wants scientists to provide context about their research and data, which is featured on the monitoring plan's online public website [5].

"That's really the foundation that we've been [doing by] trying to increase the level of transparency of all of the monitoring in that region," said Greg Stringham, vice president of oil sands and markets at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

The oil sands are natural deposits of bitumen—a tar-like heavy oil—mixed with sand under forests in northern Alberta. It takes massive amounts of water and energy to extract and process the oil, leaving a significant footprint on the surrounding water, air, wildlife and climate.

The process is more expensive than conventional oil production, but the industry has historically received billions of dollars in subsidies or tax incentives. It has also created tens of thousands of jobs while generating billions of dollars in tax revenues for both Alberta and Canada.

Stephane McLachlan, a professor of environmental science at the University of Manitoba, has praised his peers in government for doing credible research but he is concerned that the joint monitoring plan fails to examine human health impacts.

"It's the hot potato that no one wants to hold," said McLachlan.

He said his own research, examining consumption habits of local aboriginal communities and their traditional sources of food, found additional evidence of toxins accumulating in ducks, fish and some mammals that are putting human health at risk.

McLachlan said he felt compelled to release the data prior to peer review because of those risks.

The federal Canadian Health Department downplayed McLachlan’s findings, saying he hadn't showed "conclusive" evidence linking the oil sands activities to human health problems.

It declined a request for an interview with one of its experts.

Environment Canada has also declined interviews with scientists who published recent peer-reviewed papers on mercury contamination. It didn't provide an explanation for the lack of media access but instead provided written statements that downplay some aspects of the evidence.

The Harper government previously spent at least $9 million on a domestic ad campaign in 2012 to convince Canadians it was promoting economic growth while "maintaining high environmental protection standards." These ads followed a first round of budget cuts to environmental monitoring programs, combined with new laws that reduced federal oversight.

Meantime, there's no sign that public relations and marketing efforts are slowing down. The Harper government is paying international public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard at least $5 million to plan and manage the campaign. It recently renewed the firm's contract until 2015, which could mean more ads are on the way.

"Often when we talk with decision makers on Capitol Hill, they also have observed that there really isn't a difference between the government of Canada and the tar sands industry," said Droitsch, the NRDC Canada project director. "I think that for those members of Congress who are concerned about the tar sands issue, it hasn't helped Canada [and the industry] to be so closely aligned."

Comment space is provided for respectful discourse. Please consult our comment policies [8] for more information. We welcome your participation in civil and constructive discussions.

Links:

[1] http://insideclimatenews.org/author/mike-de-souza

[2] http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/canadaenergyposter_0.png

[3] http://gowithcanada.ca

[4] http://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/images/canadaenergyposter2.png

[5] http://www.jointoilsandsmonitoring.ca/

[6] http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20121114/climate-change-scientists-global-warming-stephen-harper-canada-skeptics-oil-sands-budget-cuts-muzzling-protests

[7] http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20140214/harper-govt-makes-moves-silence-canadas-leading-environmental-groups

[8] http://insideclimatenews.org/about/comment-policies

[9] http://insideclimatenews.disqus.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Finsideclimatenews.org%2Fnews%2F20140902%2Fkeystone-ads-mislead-canadas-deep-cuts-environmental-monitoring

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/04/3478734/nova-scotia-fracking-ban/

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20140623/first-nations-being-courted-back-tar-sands-refinery-projects-their-land

if BC pipeline goes in undermines XL fight?

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/first-nations-first-dibs-says-canadas-supreme-court/

Canada Is Warming At Double The Global Average

http://link.huffingtonpost.com/4cb49b68b61807701fa21cad1nhba.6qj/U6yTNuYQ9wfDF0lvC83a7

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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/23/3428984/canada-war-on-environmentalists/

...Can’t Criticize If You Don’t Know

In all, I was delayed for about 45 minutes — a relatively painless experience — but I did get the feeling I wasn’t the only one being hassled in Canada for an association with environmentalism. Indeed, as interviews with multiple reporters and activists show, the federal government places numerous obstacles in the way of those who try to disseminate information about the Canadian tar sands. Many believe this has amounted to a full-on war.

There are logical reasons why impeding environmental journalists could be in Canada’s interest. The tar sands are the third largest oil reserve in the world, and production is currently accelerating so quickly that the government predicts capital investments will reach $218 billion over the next 25 years. Part of that investment could come from the Keystone XL pipeline, the controversial proposal that, if approved, would bring up to 830,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil per day down to refineries in the U.S.

So it makes sense that Canadian officials may want to prevent environmental perspectives on Fort McMurray’s vast tar sands reserves, which have replaced thousands of acres of boreal forest with massive refineries and sprawling mining sites — shiny, black excavated deserts that sit next to glowing white ponds of chemical waste. A small portion of boreal forest remains, but it doesn’t do much to cover the scars.

CREDIT: NEXTGEN CLIMATE ACTION

From the air, you can see enormous white smokestacks 50 miles away. And from the ground, you can talk to those who have been physically harmed by accidental releases from the white ponds of tar sands chemical waste, called tailings ponds, which leech into the Athabasca river and flow downstream to First Nations communities like Fort Chip, where cancer rates have skyrocketed in the last 30 years.

Stories that describe the detrimental effects of Canada’s fossil fuel boom — not to mention the high carbon-intensity of tar sands oil extraction or unlikelihood that mining sites will ever be adequately reclaimed — threaten public support for projects like Keystone XL, and by extension, speedy and lucrative development.

‘A Culture Of Secrecy’

According to Tom Henheffer, executive director of the non-profit Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), the Canadian federal government has been actively working for the last decade to prevent journalists’ access to information, particularly in science-related fields. The trend only got worse, he said, when current Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a fierce supporter of tar sands development, took office in 2006.

“It’s specifically very bad in science-related fields, but it extends into every other field,” Henheffer said. “This government has a culture of secrecy that is extremely harmful to Canadian society.”

This government has a culture of secrecy that is extremely harmful to Canadian society.

Henheffer, whose group in April released its annual Review of Free Expression in Canada Report Card, noted two main issues at play. One, he said, is an increase in the amount of bureaucracy journalists must go through to get information. The other is a gradual de-funding of research, so the information journalists want isn’t even created in the first place.

The CJFE’s report card gave a failing grade to Canada’s access-to-information (ATI) system, which saw delays beyond the legal time limit affecting almost 45 percent of information requests, and more than 80 percent of responses partially or mostly censored. That report card also slammed the government for cutting scientific research, dismissing more than 2,000 scientists and cutting 165 research programs affecting “almost every federal scientific and monitoring institution.”

The report also noted a nationwide “muzzling” of federal scientists, citing government efforts to ensure its scientists limit discussions with the media on their work — much of which includes the environmental and climate impacts of tar sands development. This was confirmed in 2007, when a leaked PowerPoint presentation from Environment Canada revealed that government scientists were told to refer all media queries to communications officers who would help them respond with “approved lines.”

The current climate, Henheffer said, is frustrating journalistic efforts throughout the country.

“They’ve essentially dismantled our access to information system,” he said. “It makes investigative journalism impossible.”

The ‘Extremist Threat’ Of Environmentalists

Along with access to information for journalists, Stephen Harper’s government has also been working to dismantle environmental groups, a fact that has been revealed, ironically, by document requests from journalists. Those documents show unprecedented attempts from agencies across the federal government to spy on, de-fund, and otherwise disrupt the efforts of environmental groups.

[Environmental] groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.

The most recent example of this has been a rigorous effort by the Canada Revenue Agency to target environmental groups for possible abuse of their nonprofit charity statuses, alleging they may be violating the limits on how much political advocacy work they can do. The CRA’s $8 million effort was launched in 2012, shortly after the pro-tar sands group Ethical Oil kicked off a public campaign to “expose the radical foreign funded environmental groups” criticizing the oil industry.

“There are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade,” Joe Oliver, then-Natural Resources Minister, wrote at the time. “These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda. They seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects.”

One of the original groups targeted was ForestEthics, a British Columbia-based nonprofit with branches in Vancouver and San Francisco. One of the fiercest and more outspoken opponents of the tar sands and the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, the group responded by giving up its charitable status (thereby giving up tax breaks to its donors) so it could focus more on combating what it refers to as “attacks on the environment.”

“Ever since we formed the advocacy group we’ve been under further … ‘intense scrutiny’ I guess is the nicest way to put it, because the advocacy group is set up explicitly for the sake of taking on the Harper government,” ForestEthics tar sands campaigner Ben West said.

West said that since his group founded its advocacy arm, it has been a target of a recently-revealed spying effort by the Canadian federal government. That effort, revealed in November by a public records request from the Vancouver Observer, showed that officials had been sending spies to meetings of anti-tar sands groups, relaying their plans for rallies and strategies for public meetings.

What’s more, documents obtained in February by the Guardian revealed that both Canada’s national police force and intelligence agency view environmental activist protest activities as “forms of attack,” and depict those involved as national security threats. Greenpeace, for example, is officially regarded as an “extremist” threat.

West said the revelations have had a “chilling” effect on the groups’ volunteer and donor base.

“The word is out that ForestEthics is one of the groups that the federal government is paying close attention to, and that has an impact on people’s comfort levels and their desire to get involved,” West said. “If you look at the pieces of the documents we were able to get our hands on, they explain what was happening at meetings where you would have had to have been in the room to have known the content of that meeting.”

‘A Government Of Thugs’

In addition to the more-calculated attempts to prevent environmental criticism, multiple reporters and activists say they experience an egregious amount of defensiveness, spitefulness, and intimidation from the federal government that prevents them from doing their jobs effectively.

“We have a government of thugs in Ottawa these days who are absolutely ruthless,” said Andrew Nikiforuk, an award-winning journalist who has been reporting critically on Canada’s oil and gas industry for more than 20 years. “It’s a hostility and thuggery, is the way I would describe it. That’s exactly what it is.”

We have a government of thugs in Ottawa these days who are absolutely ruthless.

Nikiforuk says he’s been shut out of government events, “slandered and libeled” by a member of the government’s conservative party, and repeatedly contacted by government flacks who criticize his reporting.

The most blatant example of government intimidation Nikiforuk can recall was when members of Canada’s Energy Resources Conservation Board actively tried to prevent the publication of his 2010 book, Tar Sands, claiming he made numerous factual errors and posting a long letter about it on its website. Nikifourk rebutted the claims, eventually winning the Society of Environmental Journalist’s Rachel Carson Book Award for his reporting.

Documentary and satire filmmakers Andy Cobb and Mike Damanskis also said they experienced government intimidation when, like me, they were detained at the Fort McMurray airport in October 2013. Unlike me, however, they were deported.

“He basically told us that the tar sands weren’t news, that he wasn’t recognizing us as journalists, and that if we wanted to come to Canada, we weren’t going to be able to do it today,” Damanskis said.

Though it seemed like at first they would be able to enter the country without working papers, Damanskis and Cobb said the border official had an “immediate change of heart” after watching a clip of their previous work — a video satirizing the infamous Mayflower, Arkansas tar sands pipeline spill.

Border spokesperson Lisa White said she was not authorized to speak on specific cases, and declined to specify whether officers were allowed to make entry decisions based on the content of journalists’ work. She did say, however, that documentary filmmakers required working papers to enter Canada, and that all entry decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

“All decisions are made in accordance with Canadian law,” she said.

Swift And Snarky Push-Back

Of course, it’s important to note that journalists like Nikiforuk, Damaskis, and Cobb are more likely to get negative feedback from Canadian government officials because they are not, and don’t claim to be, completely objective. All three are openly and fiercely opposed to the speed of tar sands development.

But even reporters who are seemingly more objective toward development have been subject to government push-back. For example, Economist correspondent Madelaine Drohan said via e-mail that Alberta’s provincial government once posted a “defensive” response on its website to an article she wrote that mentioned leaks from tailings ponds, which are large lakes of tar sands waste. That response has since been removed, but Drohan said she remembers it happening.

“It made me think that the government was even more sensitive than the industry,” she said.

As for hostility from the Alberta provincial government, one journalist pointed specifically to David Sands, a director at Alberta’s Public Affairs Bureau, whose Twitter account is made up largely of rebuttals to journalism critical of Alberta government. In recent tweets, Sands compared two newspapers’ coverage of Parliament to “jihad,” among other critical responses.

“Yeah, I’m the mean guy,” Sands told ThinkProgress. “It’s definitely my personal style, but nobody told me to be mean.”

Sands said part of his job is tracking down stories that include inaccuracies about Alberta government policies. He said he’s the only one in his department with the specific mandate to do so.

Still, many have criticized Alberta for the number of people they’ve employed to hunt down stories. According to documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation in April, Alberta employs 214 communications professionals at a cost of $21 million per year, a number that the National Post noted “far outstrips” the number of reporters who cover government.

Sands rebutted that story too, saying communications staff span a range of departments — healthcare, education, law enforcement — that are not all dedicated to attacking journalists.

“It’s sort of an enjoyment of the media to say we have 214 communications people who are all dealing with the media,” he said. “When reporting is challenged, people take it very personally.”

The Strategy Is Working — Or Is It?

Thus far, government push-back against environmental journalism seems to be working. As a recent survey of Canadian journalists showed, many environmental and climate stories about the tar sands often go unreported. That survey, titled “The Alberta Oil Sands, Journalists, and Their Sources,” questioned 20 reporters with extensive daily experience reporting on the tar sands.

Of the 20, 14 said stories about the tar sands were not being told, and seven of those 14 said environmental issues were the main ones untouched. Environmental damage done by leaking tailings ponds and bitumen waste; toxic contaminants leeching into the water; the impact of excess sulfur produced in the mining process — all of those were included in the issues journalists perceive as under-reported.

“I hate this story,” one reporter who participated in the study said. “It’s important, but there’s no direction or progression.”

As for activist groups, Ben West of ForestEthics said the hostility has actually been helping his group’s efforts. And it’s not just the group itself. As the government’s attacks have become more and more public, West says his and other environmental advocacy groups have been obtaining record-breaking donations from individuals — what he calls a “clear sign” that Canadians want to protect their environment from the tar sands.

“I actually kind of welcome these attacks from the federal government in a sense, because they are a great opportunity to highlight how crazy our government’s acting, and use it as a reason to ask people for more support,” he said. “Many Canadians feel strongly about this. Let the government create their own disincentives.”

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alter: April 23, 2014 |

Fancy living up in Canada? Granted, it’s a bit chilly. But the middle class up there has just blown by the U.S. as the world’s most affluent. America’s wealthy are leaping ahead of the rest of much of the globe, but the middle class is falling behind. So are the poor. That’s the sobering news from the latest research put out by LIS, a group based in Luxembourg and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

After taxes, the Canadian middle class now has a higher income than its American counterpart. And many European countries are closing in on us. Median incomes in Western European countries are still a bit lower than those of the U.S., but the gap in several countries, including the Netherlands, Sweden and Britain, is significantly smaller than it was a decade ago. However, if you take into account the cost of things like education, retirement and healthcare in America, those European countries’ middle classes are in much better shape than ours because the U.S. government does not provide as much for its citizens in these areas. So the income you get has to be saved for these items.

The report found also found that the median U.S. income, which stands at $18,700, has remained about the same since 2000. And it found that the poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.

...

In part, Vancouver is just lucky. British Columbia is rich in hydroelectric power, so keeping the lights on in all those coffee bars pumps a lot less CO2 into the atmosphere than in cities where power comes from fossil fuels. It also helps that Vancouver has a relatively mild West Coast climate. Inland cities like Minneapolis and Denver, with more weather extremes, need more fuel for heat in the winter and electricity for air conditioning in summer.

But Vancouver has also made a lot of smart public policy choices. Even as the Canadian national government backslides on environmental protection, Canada’s more liberal localities are making progress. Ontario banned coal-fired electricity this year.

Vancouver has been committed to sustainability, and creating policies to advance that goal, for several decades. Mayor Gregor Robertson keeps raising the bar on his predecessor’s successes. He developed the comprehensive “Greenest City 2020 Action Plan,” which lays down benchmarks that each sector of the city’s government must achieve....grist

http://insideclimatenews.org/todaysnews/20140304/aboriginal-rights-threat-canadas-oil-and-gas-mining-plans-documents-reveal

...But while President Obama has encouraged citizens to "stand up and speak up" to demand change on energy, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's administration has tried to silence critics of pro-tar sands policies.

In the most recent evidence, seven influential environmental organizations have become the subject of rigorous audits by the Canada Revenue Agency.

Activists allege that the scrutiny is an attempt by the Harper administration to subdue tar sands opponents as decision time looms for pipelines needed to bring Alberta's landlocked oil to market—the Texas-bound Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway to the Pacific Coast of British Columbia.

"Canadians are starting to understand that the government has overstepped and overreached in its attacks against environmentalists and scientists," saidTzeporah Berman, a Vancouver-based environmentalist and co-founder of the activist group ForestEthics. "We're seeing a growing grassroots movement as a result. … People are angry."

The prime minister's office directed requests for comment to the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA). Noël Carisse, a spokesman for CRA, said that since 2012 "the CRA has conducted additional review activities focused on political activities. Audits are being conducted in addition to our regular audit activities, and will include charities from across the entire spectrum of charitable activity."

The revenue agency is auditing the environmentalists for possible abuse of their nonprofit charitable status, which exempts them from paying taxes and allows donors to claim contributions as tax deductions. Canadian law states that nonprofits can only use 10 percent of their resources for political advocacy work. The CRA is investigating whether the groups exceeded this limit.

For decades, Canadian nonprofits interpreted political advocacy to mean they couldn't endorse candidates or elected officials. Like in the United States for tax-exempt organizations, support for or criticism of government policy was customary.

"They are seemingly reinterpreting what they perceive as being political activity," said Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, one of the green groups being audited. "It is a shifting landscape."

If the CRA determines that the organizations passed their annual political advocacy limit, they could lose their charitable tax status, forcing them to pay taxes and potentially driving away donors. That could cause some of the groups to shutter their doors, Gray and Berman said.

In addition to Environmental Defence, other groups being investigated include the David Suzuki Foundation, Tides Canada, West Coast Environmental Law, the Pembina Foundation, Equiterre and the Ecology Action Centre, according to theCBC, which first reported the audits.

The targeted groups have been instrumental in raising public awareness about the impacts of tar sands development on the environment and climate. They stoked a grassroots movement that helped delay the Northern Gateway pipeline in Canada and, together with U.S. environmentalists, helped make the Keystone XL a climate red line for Obama.

Environmental organizations appear to be bearing the brunt of the recent investigations.

While most of the groups are still under review by the agency and are therefore staying mum, Gray said his organization received its results from the CRA.

"They told us that basically everything we do is no longer charitable," he said. The group immediately filed an appeal. If rejected, Gray said he is unsure what that will mean for his organization's future.

Across the Border

The audits are the latest in a string of attacks on environmentalists and scientists in recent years by a Harper government that has made oil sands expansion a centerpiece of its economic agenda. Since Harper took office in 2006, production of Alberta's carbon-intensive tar sands crude has doubled, and Canada has set a goal to at least double it again in the years ahead.

Simultaneously, the conservative administration has cut funding for climate science research, shuttered environmental research labs and buried government reports highlighting the dangerous climate and environmental implications of runaway oil sands development. It has also muzzled its own scientists from speaking about the issue, cancelled thousands of environmental assessments for pipelines, oil sands mining and other development projects, and gutted 70 environmental protection laws in 2013 alone.

In 2012, the government listed environmentalists as a terrorist threat.

Amid the erosion of environmental law in Canada, across the border in the United States the Obama administration has sought to apply federal law to combating climate change. The centerpiece of this work is an historic regulation under the Clean Air Act to cut carbon pollution from the nation's coal plants. ...ICN 2/14

Canada’s End-Run Around Keystone XL Pipeline Opposition

Much to the surprise of everyone, climate activists in the United States led by environmental author and activist Bill McKibben and the action group he helped to found, 350.org, have succeeded in delaying U.S. government approval of the Keystone XL pipeline for more than two years. Once considered a sure thing, the pipeline, if completed, will carry 830,000 barrels per day of diluted bitumen (“syncrude”) some 1,700 miles from theAthabasca tar sands in Alberta to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. It has, however, been held up by detailed environmental impact studies and other procedural steps ordered by the U.S. State Department. (Because the pipeline will cross an international boundary, it requires approval from the Secretary of State and, ultimately, the president, but not Congress.)

Opponents of the pipeline claim that by facilitating the exploitation of particularly carbon-dense Canadian tar sands, it will substantially increasegreenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The use of this bitumen-based fuel releases more carbon per unit of energy than conventional petroleum and its energy-intensive extraction generates additional carbon emissions. Should all of the bitumen in Canada -- the equivalent of 1 trillion barrels of oil -- be consumed, it’s “game over for the climate,” as former NASA climate scientist James Hansen has famously written.

How the Obama administration will come down on Keystone XL is still unknown. In a speech on climate policy last June, the president indicated that he would give highest priority to climate considerations when deciding on the pipeline. “Allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding that doing so would be in our nation’s interest,” he said. “And our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” At the time, his comments raised the hopes of climate activists that Obama would ultimately decide against the pipeline. More recently, however, an environmental assessment conducted at the behest of the State Department and released on January 31st cast doubt on this outcome. The report’s reasoning: even though the exploitation of Canada’s tar sands will increase the pace of carbon emissions, their extraction and delivery to refineries is assured by alternative means -- mainly rail -- if the pipeline isn’t built and so its construction will not “significantly exacerbate” the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

While this is certainly a uniquely sophistic (and shaky) argument, it is important to note that the Canadian producers and their U.S. partners are indeed attempting to stage an end-run around opposition to the pipeline by increasing their reliance on rail cars to deliver tar sands.

“The indecision on Keystone XL really spawned innovation and mobilized alternatives, and rail is a clear part of the options available to our industry,”observed Paul Reimer, senior vice president in charge of transport at Cenovus Energy, a Canadian oil company planning to increase rail shipments from 7,000 barrels a day to as many as 30,000 barrels a day by the end of 2014. Other Canadian firms have similar expansion plans. All told, the Canadians claim that, over the coming years, they will be able to increase rail-carrying capacity from the current 180,000 barrels per day to as much as 900,000 barrels, or more than would be carried by the pipeline.

If this were to happen, count on one thing: rail transport will turn out to have its own problems -- and its own opposition. Not surprisingly, then, Canada’s oil industry still craves approval for Keystone XL, as it wouldallow even greater tar sands exports and legitimize the use of this carbon-heavy fuel. But the growing reliance on rail transportation does once again demonstrate the powerful gravitational pull of Planet Carbon. “At the end of the day, there’s a consensus among most energy experts that the oil will get shipped to market no matter what,” says Robert McNally, a former energy adviser to President George W. Bush.

Reducing Carbon’s Pull

These three recent encounters in the historic struggle to avert the most destructive effects of climate change tell us a great deal about the nature and terrain of the battlefield. Climate change is not the product of unfortunate meteorological phenomena; it is the result of burning massive quantities of carbon-based fuels and spewing the resulting gaseous wastes into the atmosphere. As long as governments, corporations, and consumers prefer carbon as an energy source, the war on climate change will be lost and the outcome of that will, in turn, be calamitous.

There is only one way to avert the worst effects of climate change: make the consumption of carbon unattractive. This can be accomplished, in part, by shaming -- portraying the producers of carbon-rich fuels as the enemies of human health and survival. It’s an approach that has already achieved some modest successes, as in the prevention, until now, of Keystone’s construction. Withdrawing funds from fossil fuel firms, or disinvestment, is another useful approach. Many student and religious groups are attempting to hinder oil drilling activities by pushing their colleges and congregations to move their investment funds elsewhere.

But shaming and disinvestment campaigns are insufficient; much tougher sanctions are required. To stop the incineration of our planet, carbon must be made expensive -- so costly, in fact, that renewables become the common fuel of choice.

There are at least two ways to move toward accomplishing this: impose a tax on carbon emissions, raising the cost of fossil fuels above those of renewables; or adopt a universal cap-and-trade system, forcing major carbon emitters to buy permits (at ever-increasing cost) in order to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Both measures have been advocated by environmentalists and some attempts have been made to institute each of them. (Both California and the European Union, for example, are implementing cap-and-trade systems.) There may be other approaches to the problem that could prove even more effective, but the most essential thing is to recognize that genuine progress on climate change will not be possible until carbon fuels lose their financial allure. For this to happen, as BP’s Dudley begrudgingly acknowledged on January 15th, “you need carbon pricing. Universally accepted carbon pricing.”

The gravitational pull of carbon is immensely powerful. It cannot be overcome by symbolic gestures or half measures. The pressures to keep burning fossil fuels are too great to be overcome in piecemeal fashion. Rather, these forces must be met head-on, with the institutionalization of equally powerful counter-forces that make fossil fuels economically unattractive. We humans have a choice: we can succumb to carbon’s gravitational pull and so suffer from increasingly harsh planetary conditions, or resist and avoid the most deadly consequences of climate change.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation.

Canadian Gov't Emissions Report Undermines Keystone Pipeline Pitch

When Alberta Premier Alison Redford came to Washington this year to urge approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, she argued that producing tar sands oil generates much less global warming pollution today than it did two decades ago.

It would be wrong, Redford reasoned, for the U.S. to block the project on climate change grounds.