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6/15

Forest fires covering 8,200 hectares of land in northern Alberta continue to burn out of control, spurred on by extremely dry conditions and unseasonably warm temperatures. The fires have forced the evacuation of hundreds of oilsands workers, the irony of which is not being lost on many (just check out the reactions to this CBC article).

“Climate change during the 21st century is expected to result in more frequent fires in many boreal forests, with severe environmental and economic consequences,” said a 2014 Natural Resources Canada post

About 10 per cent of Canada’s oil output — amounting to about 233,000 barrels a day — has been shut down since Monday, May 25, due to the fires. The Bank of America Merril Lynch warned in a research report that if wildfire disruptions persist, there could be a 0.1 to 0.3 per cent hit to second-quarter annualized growth.

you might be wondering, “Wait, what about the press release trumpeting 30 percent reductions by 2030? Isn’t that a bold step forward?” After all, the US, with its curious preference for Dunkin Donuts over Timmy’s, is only pledging 26—28 percent by 2025.

So about that press release and the rhetorical smoke and mirrors at work . . .Here’s what’s really happening with Canada’s INDC and why it’s way too weak for any developed nation to put forward with a straight face.

1. WEAK COMMITMENT TO EMISSIONS REDUCTION

As we mentioned, Canada pledged to reduce its emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. In the past, Canada has aligned its commitments with the US’, but in practice, this new INDC puts the country on a trajectory for a 23.5 percent reduction by 2025, far less than other developed nations around the world are making. Plus, Canada isn’t just pledging to do less than other nations; it’s also pledging to do so more slowly, with an INDC requiring it to only cut emissions at 60 percent of the EU and US’s rate over the same time period.

2. DUCKS THE TAR SANDS ISSUE ENTIRELY

The INDC says Canada will continue driving improvements in environmental performance but says nothing about cutting emissions from the tar sands oil, which is a large and the fast-growing source of emissions. Which leaves much of its reductions to credits the country purchases from abroad. Which means it has no plans to change tar sands business as usual — and is relying on other nations to do the hard work for it.

3. DOESN’T PUT CANADA ON TRACK TO MEET ITS OWN TARGETS

Canada, along with the rest of the G7 countries, signed on to a declaration to collectively reduce emissions by 80 percent by 2050. But if the government was serious about meeting this target, the INDC would have to set a 2030 goal of 38 percent reductions.

The good news is that the bad deal in this INDC isn’t a done deal, and there are several steps both the government and citizens can take to turn things around and join the rest of the world in working for a strong agreement in Paris.

1. INCREASE CANADA’S INDC EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS TARGETS

6/15

MONTREAL (AP) — A judge has awarded more than $15 billion Canadian (US$12 billion) to Quebec smokers in a case that pitted them against three giant tobacco companies. The case is believed to be the biggest class-action lawsuitever seen in Canada.

Superior Court Justice Brian Riordan said in his decision released late Monday that by choosing not to inform health authorities or the public directly of what they knew, the companies chose profits over the health of their customers.

Canada-Australia 'Axis of Carbon' an Obstacle to Climate Pact

The prime ministers for Canada and Australia mince no words in their disdain for putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions to protect their fossil fuel exports.

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

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.”

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.

Related Stories:

Tar Sands Destroying Wolf & Caribou Populations in Canada

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/canadian-minister-promotes-tar-sands-at-a-climate-summit.html#ixzz2Uhc74Mrs

valero wants to bring tarsand to wales? kpfa 5/29 8 am Pembroke

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/67208

(// venz dirty oil blocked) fqd notarsands.com emily cotes ---tarsnads network climateradio kpfa defusing the climate bomb phil england; http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/67208

kent at conf w/ shell http://www.no-tar-sands.org/2012/10/activists-disrupt-speeches-by-canadian-minister-and-shell-chairman/

OTTAWA-Federal Conservatives are downplaying concerns over Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s newly-selected boss for Environment Canada and the bureaucrat’s knowledge about global warming.

The department’s new deputy minister, Bob Hamilton, ran into trouble last Monday at a parliamentary committee when he was asked to explain what causes climate change.

“Wow. Umm. They didn’t tell me I’d have to answer questions like that when I took this job. I think that it’s – I don’t know the total answer to that –,” said Hamilton, before Conservative MPs interrupted to prevent him from continuing.

Hamilton made the remarks as the committee of MPs reviewed his recent nomination along with the appointment of Parks Canada’s new chief executive officer, Alan Latourelle.

After this story was posted online, Environment Canada emailed Postmedia News a statement on Hamilton’s behalf in which he said his job was to produce the best advice based on a full range of considerations, including scientific information produced internationally, nationally and within the department.

“In the case of climate change, the science clearly supports the conclusion that it is occurring, and that human activities are mostly responsible,” Hamilton said in the statement, sent more than 11 hours after Postmedia News had asked the deputy minister to explain his comments from Monday and also to explain whether he believed the scientific evidence.

“I am proud that EC is at the leading edge of scientific knowledge and contributes to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”?

But a few days earlier, as NDP deputy leader and environment critic Megan Leslie attempted to get answers from Hamilton, Tory MPs at the parliamentary committee argued that the bureaucrat’s knowledge of climate change was not relevant.

“It doesn’t seem to me, unless there’s something I’m missing, that that would relate at all to resumes or CVs or work experience of Mr. Latourelle and Mr. Hamilton,” said Stella Ambler, a Conservative MP representing the riding of Mississauga South, near Toronto.

Leslie fired back that the issue was indeed relevant.

To support the government position and its travelling ministers, Ottawa has launched a $16 million marketing campaign that includes a new website and newspaper advertisements in the US to promote Keystone KL. The thrust of the campaign is the promotion of Canada as a reliable supplier of oil and a “world environmental leader” in the field of oil and gas development.

The millions of dollars being spent on marketing efforts and road trips is unsettling to many in the scientific and environment community.

“I think it’s pretty inappropriate for government ministers to be salesmen for particular industries particularly when opinion in Canada is so divided,” Sierra Club of Canada Executive Director John Bennett told The Vancouver Observer in an interview. “We cancelled regulations, we backed out of the Kyoto Protocol, we’ve had four different plans with three different (emission reduction) targets and each time they announced targets they were weaker and further off.”

The federally funded campaign comes two months after the Alberta government purchased a full-page Sunday New York Times ad promoting the pipeline as “the choice of reason.” According to The Globe and Mail, ads “targeted at lobbyists and lawmakers” appeared last Monday, May 13, on Beltway-insider sites The Hill and Politico, and are slated to run later in other influential publications.

Go With Canada, the government’s newly launched website, promotes the idea of the Keystone XL pipeline as a crucial component of the U.S.-Canada alliance. “America faces a choice,” it states. “It can import oil from Canada — a secure and environmentally responsible neighbor that is committed to North American energy independence — or it can choose less stable offshore sources with much weaker environmental standards.”

The Globe and Mail reports:

The taxpayer-funded campaign doesn’t solely focus on TransCanada’s private $5.3-billion pipeline proposal designed to link the vast oil sands reserves with massive refineries along the Gulf coast and thus provide the vital access to major markets that will, in turn, permit further oil sands development. There also is a major effort to portray Canada as a leader in curtailing greenhouse gases and environmentally responsible. Both claims are apparently intended to deflect attacks by anti-Keystone XL groups.

But some of the figures the government’s website touts to back up those claims have already been called into question, says CBC News:

The site asserts that “Innovation and research drives improvement in the oil sands — GHG emissions have dropped 26 per cent between 1990 and 2011.”

In fact, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions more than tripled between 1990 and 2011. The emissions intensity per barrel of oil fell 26 per cent.

CBC also notes that this “current promotional onslaught has been years in the making,” with meetings as far back as March 2010 between the Canadian government and oil industry to start hashing out their communications strategy.

Will the marketing money work? Obama is, after all, the one with the final say — but it looks like the Canadian government, seeing what a fractious issue the pipeline has become, is counting on the president’s tendency to take what he assumes to be the politically safe route.

But when half of Americans don’t even know what the Keystone XL pipeline is [PDF], any information campaign — for or against — has its work cut out for it.

h/t: Fiona Woo at World Future Council ...http://grist.org/news/canadas-government-is-spending-millions-to-get-you-to-like-the-keystone-pipeline/?utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&sub_email=pat13%40dslextreme.com

flint hills is koch canada

In Canada, Koch companies employ more than 2,000 people involved in manufacturing, trading, marketing and sales.

Flint Hills Resources, LLC, through its subsidiaries, is a leading refining, chemicals and biofuels company. Its subsidiaries market products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, ethanol, biodiesel, olefins, polymers and intermediate chemicals, as well as base oils and asphalt. The refining business operates refineries in Minnesota, Texas and Alaska with a combined crude oil processing capacity of more than 800,000 barrels per day. The petrochemical business has production facilities in Illinois, Michigan and Texas. The renewables business operates ethanol plants in Iowa and Nebraska, a biodiesel plant in Texas, and has made equity investments in bioenergy companies. The asphalt business produces and markets product in the Midwest and Alaska. A subsidiary owns a 50 percent interest in a lubricants base oil facility in Louisiana. Flint Hills Resources is among Canada’s largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters. To meet the needs of its more than 130 Canadian crude oil customers, the supply group operates a fully integrated marketing and customer service desk in Calgary and operates a crude oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta. The group also coordinates crude oil supply for the company’s Pine Bend Refinery in Minnesota.

Globe and Mail)

The Harper government is pulling out of a United Nations convention that fights droughts in Africa and elsewhere, which would make Canada the only country in the world outside the agreement.

The federal cabinet last week ordered the unannounced withdrawal on the recommendation of Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, ahead of a major scientific meeting on the convention next month in Germany.

The abrupt move caught the UN secretariat that administers the convention off-guard, which was informed through a telephone call from The Canadian Press.

http://grist.org/news/the-wto-may-halt-ontarios-clean-energy-program/

chomsky says health care b/c in 50's cda unions demnanded it for all vs US got form themselves https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FJUA4cm0Rck

transcanada: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/keystone-xl-new-york-times_n_1959033.html?ref=topbar XL pipe: landowner then reporters

bill mck RS 8/16

Almost every government with deposits of hydrocarbons straddles the same divide. Canada, for instance, is a liberal democracy renowned for its internationalism – no wonder, then, that it signed on to the Kyoto treaty, promising to cut its carbon emissions substantially by 2012. But the rising price of oil suddenly made the tar sands of Alberta economically attractive – and since, as NASA climatologist James Hansen pointed out in May, they contain as much as 240 gigatons of carbon (or almost half of the available space if we take the 565 limit seriously), that meant Canada's commitment to Kyoto was nonsense. In December, the Canadian government withdrew from the treaty before it faced fines for failing to meet its commitments.

On July 1, Canada Day, Canadians awoke to a startling, if pleasant, piece of news: For the first time in recent history, the average Canadian is richer than the average American.

According to data from Environics Analytics WealthScapes published in the Globe and Mail, the net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, while the average American household’s net worth was $319,970.

lagging:

...

The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy added every provincial and federal measure — existing and proposed — to reduce emissions.

Canada is on track to achieve only half of its 2020 target to reduce greenhouse gases by 17 per cent below 2005 levels, the report says.

"Canada will not achieve its 2020 GHG emissions reduction target unless significant new, additional measures are taken. More will have to be done. No other conclusion is possible," it concludes.

Indeed, the federal environment commissioner and many analysts have reached the same conclusion. This report, however, is the first full accounting to add every initiative on the books and project emissions out to 2020 and 2030.

The federal government, after several false starts, has decided to regulate each carbon-producing sector one by one, implementing the rules gradually over the coming years.

Provinces have taken their own paths, with British Columbia implementing a carbon tax and Quebec heading toward a cap-and-trade system...

...

Because it seems the wrong sort of Conservatives beholden to the lobby of fossil fuel energy companies, are currently managing the fortunes of the developed world. Take as an example the Canadian government today…

The Harper government echoing the Cheney-Bush administration’s climate failure policies that led to Katrina and many more Katrinas to come, has now fully abandoned Canada’s climate commitments and backtracks on all progress made in the last twenty five years. Yet the Good Canadians went further than the Cheney-Bush daft policies because the Canadians also cut back completely on science spending and have muzzled government scientists who might stray from the official line. And all this happened since the Conservative Party of Canada, won a parliamentary majority after being in a minority government for many years. It has since staked out an aggressively inimical position on many issues, yet most notably on stifling science, developing the Tar Sands wildly, and trashing the environment pell mell. Scary as hell is how Canadian scientist describe the descent of Canada into the dark ages…

But the rot in Ottawa has set in quite some time ago, and certainly, well before Stephen Harper came to being the Prime Minister. It started with the misguided self aggrandizing effort of the Canadians to become the Saudi Arabia of the North by developing the dirtiest fuel known to man. The fossil fuel called Tar Sands. And all the previous governments of Canada had already climbed on the bandwagon to torpedo potential global Climate Change negotiations because they felt that a legally binding global Climate Change agreement to reduce emissions, might derail their hoped for riches coming from the Tar Sands development. And their mad rush to build pipelines to transport the Tar Sands oil, to wherever it can be burned and further continue warming up our planet is a plan twenty years in the making.

It is a vicious cycle if we have ever seen one. A self perpetuating myth of national fossil fuels wealth, when in fact they destroy the only true wealth we all have — the Environmental Commons. And all this is a sea change for the old Canadian defense of the environment legacy. A big change indeed.

Because this is a big change for a country with a proud history in moderation, conservative science and conservation environmental policy. Back in the 1980s, under ultra-conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, Canada led the way in international policies to control acid rain and chlorofluorocarbons. That is when the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was born and to this day still is the most successful piece of international environmental legislation ever enacted. And it also led to the creation of the best and most successful environmental markets to date. And that was a great success…

Alas those days are long gone. Because after a decade of tepid efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Canada formally withdrew from its Kyoto pledges in December 2011 during the Durban talks, further torpedoeing the Global Climate Talks that it undermined actively for the last seven years. At the 2007 Bali climate conference, Canada and Russia stood alone in opposing science-based emissions targets. Canada’s undermining of the talks in the 2009 Copenhagen conference, earned it a “Fossil of the Year” award from the Environmental Parliament.

And Canada actively undermined their own and the world’s environment in earnest, like the Climate pariah it now appears to have become. This was especially true, when the Good Canadians dynamited the Copenhagen talks intentionally. In part this happened because everyone thought of Canada as a friend of the Environment, and thus we were completely blindsided when they turned on us. And because Canada was always given the benefit of the doubt, since it merely pretended to be a good global citizen, as the current government doctrine reveals. And the Good Canadians had recognized that the targets of emissions set under Kyoto, had been a welcome PR fiction for many years, as all previous centre-left governments made very little effort to cut CO2 emissions while they actively developed their Tar Sands.

But under the conservative Harper government they have moved from “Moosehead” induced apathy to outright hostility. At the 2007 Bali climate conference, Canada and Russia stood alone in opposing science-based emissions targets. As host nation of the G8 and G20 summits in 2010, Canada resisted making emissions a priority issue, and the government has continued to advocate strongly for the illogical development of Alberta’s tar sands, regardless of the vast environmental costs and externalities.

The government is also backtracking on other environmental matters. Last week, a former fisheries official leaked documents suggesting that the government wants to reword its Fisheries Act so that it no longer prohibits activity that harms fish habitat. Instead, the ban would cover only activities that harm “fish of economic, cultural or ecological value”, a much narrower – and harder-to-prove – restriction. The change would make it much easier to gain approval for industrial developments such as the pipelines, now built to transport the dirty Tar sands oil to the ocean coasts and South to the US.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government has also been cutting back sharply on its funding of environmental science. Hundreds of staff have been cut at “Environment Canada” the federal environmental department in a rather fascist push culling those of an open mind and an environmental disposition. Funding has also stopped for the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory, a key monitoring system for global temperatures and the only reliable observer for the ozone hole in the Arctic, that now rivals in size the one of the Antarctic. Replacement funds are not due to come until 2017, leaving a huge data gap at a time when the Arctic is warming faster than any other region on earth and its ozone hole is approaching the size of the Antarctic ozone hole in our atmosphere. Funding cuts have also crippled Canada’s air-pollution monitoring network. As you piece together the parts of this puzzle yo can easily determine the evil genius operating behind the curtain and it’s not just the affable uncle Harper at work here but rather the whole of the Tar Sands political apparatus bought and sold off down the river to perdition… acting in concert and unison to stem any progress on science based rational Public Policy.

And proof of that comes when you see that Canada’s anti-science policies reach far beyond the environment itself but also into the People’s choice in order to pre-empt their reaction when they wake up to the horrors perpetuated in their name. Last year, the government did away with its compulsory long-form census, which was sent to about 20 per cent of households. By making this census voluntary instead of mandatory, the government effectively destroyed its value as an unbiased baseline of information on Canadian society, the economy and people’s choice....

http://panokroko.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/tar-sands-dictate-canadas-public-policy/

attackes on canadians:

Big Oil and the Canadian government are showing their true colors these days, and what an ugly spectacle it is. Not content to squeeze tar sands oil profits from Canada's boreal forest, the industry and the Harper regime are working overtime to squelch free speech in this once-vibrant democracy.

Their main target is nonprofit groups that oppose the Keystone XL and other tar sands pipeline projects. To silence these voices, the government has begun questioning whether the groups are following charitable tax codes and started proposing laws to limit their advocacy work. They've even equated environmental groups with terrorists and money launders.

This effort to stack the deck in favor of big oil companies doesn't just limit the rights of nonprofits. It endangers the rights of all people -- on both sides of the borders -- to breathe clean air, drink safe water, have a healthy climate and preserve forests and farmlands for our children.

The attacks began after President Obama rejected the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to the Gulf of Mexico. Now another pipeline designed to take tar sands oil westward to China is also stirring large public concern. Farmers, ranchers, business owners, religious leaders, members of First Nations, scientists, and many others have concluded that these pipelines will endanger their communities. They also know that strip mining tar sands is devouring Canada's boreal forest and that producing tar sands generates more than three times the greenhouse gas emissions as conventional oil.

People across Canada have made their opposition to tar sands known. The Canadian federal government responded by branding clean energy advocates as "radicals" and threatening to add environmental groups to the list of extremist organizations under anti-terrorism legislation. The attacks expanded when those who questioned tar sands were accused of treason and one Minister even accused environmental charities of "money laundering" for American donors.

But all of this was just the opening gambit. In April, the Canadian federal government's budget bill rolled back many of Canada's major environmental laws on clean water, wildlife, and climate change. Perhaps most significant, it drastically limited the public's right to participate and comment on environmental reviews. Instead it gave the Prime Minister ultimate authority over pipeline proposals such as the controversial tar sands projects.

The budget also cut funding for environmental protection while leaving the $1.3 billion in federal subsidies for the oil industry largely intact. And in a time of supposed belt tightening, it included an extra $8 million to audit environmental groups, specifically going after those opposed to new tar sands pipelines....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frances-beinecke/an-oil-industry-witch-hun_b_1563884.html?ref=green

These sources reveal that Koch Industries has touched virtually every aspect of the tar sands industry since the company established a toehold in Canada more than 50 years ago. It has been involved in mining bitumen, the hydrocarbon resin found in the oil sands; in pipeline systems to collect and transport Canadian crude; in exporting the heavy oils to the U.S.; in refining the sulfurous, low-grade feedstock; and in the subsequent distribution and sale of a variety of finished products, from jet fuel to asphalt. The company has also created or collaborated with other companies that have become leading players in the development of Alberta's oil resources, and it remains deeply invested in western Canada’s oil patch.

Koch Industries declined to answer any questions for this story.

Bitumen from Canada's tar sands is dirtier and thicker than conventional oil. Extracting and processing this unconventional fossil fuel creates far more greenhouse gases than drilling for the light, sweet oil most Americans are familiar with. Environmentalists, supported by many scientists, want tighter regulations imposed on this crude to minimize its role in the U.S. economy as part of a larger effort to move beyond petroleum.

The oil industry is fighting these efforts in court, in public and behind the scenes. A turn toward clean fuels, or the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, or the adoption of a tax on carbon would diminish sales and profits for the major players in the oil sands, including the Kochs. Most of Canada's oil exports end up in the United States.

The Kochs are also active in Canadian politics.

Their company recently added another lobbyist in Alberta to lobby the provincial government about energy and resource development issues. The Kochs have also been longtime contributors to the Fraser Institute, an influential policy shop closely allied with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as bullish as he is on the development and export of oil sands crude to global markets. They contributed $500,000 between 2007 and 2010 alone. ...

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120510/koch-industries-brothers-tar-sands-bitumen-heavy-oil-flint-pipelines-refinery-alberta-canada

Today Koch Industries has both upstream and downstream interests:

• The company is one Canada's largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters, with more than 130 crude oil customers.

The Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change is composed of many of these international groups. In 2007, it published a 100-page book titled Civil Society Report on Climate Change, written by 46 groups in 36 countries. In April, India’s Liberty Institute, a member of the coalition, launched the report at a press conference in New Delhi.

The U.S. Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which has received over $542,000 from the ExxonMobil Foundation, has also created a European group of the same name. In January, CFACT-Europe published “The Climate Catastrophe — What Is It All About? — The Nairobi Report on Climate Change, Climate Madness, and Climate Hoax.”

In Canada, the Friends of Science Society and the Natural Resources Stewardship Project have some key members in common, and both groups have been active in the cause of global warming skepticism. Friends of Science made the film Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You’re Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change in 2005, and subsequent reporting has revealed that the group receives about a third of its funding from the petroleum industry.

The Natural Resources Stewardship project keeps its funding footprint hidden.

The group is led by Tim Ball, a retired climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, and formerly by Tom Harris, a lobbyist who worked for the Toronto-based High Park Group and has been linked to energy industry lobbying interests. Harris has gone on to be the executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition, which seeks to push “the collapse of climate change alarmism,” according to a speech Harris made at the Heartland Institute’s March conference.

keystone XL pipeline

Koch support

dems

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/twenty-two-house-democrats-urge-president-obama-to-ensure-keystone-xl-receives-presidential-permit-2011-10-19?reflink=MW_news_stmp

Canada's government muzzles scientists, stonewalls press queries about health, environment and climate

By Cory Doctorow at 6:53 am Saturday, Feb 18

The Canadian Harper government's policy of not allowing government researchers to speak without approval and without being attended by political minders is in the news again. A series of speakers at an AAAS meeting told the international science community that climate, environmental and health research that calls government policy into question is routinely suppressed. Prof Andrew Weaver of U Victoria said, "The only information [the press] are given is that which the government wants, which will then allow a supporting of a particular agenda."

The allegation of "muzzling" came up at a session of the AAAS meeting to discuss the impact of a media protocol introduced by the Conservative government shortly after it was elected in 2008.

The protocol requires that all interview requests for scientists employed by the government must first be cleared by officials. A decision as to whether to allow the interview can take several days, which can prevent government scientists commenting on breaking news stories.

Sources say that requests are often refused and when interviews are granted, government media relations officials can and do ask for written questions to be submitted in advance and elect to sit in on the interview...

The Postmedia News journalist obtained documents relating to interview requests using Canada's equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act. She said the documents show interview requests move up what she describes as an "increasingly thick layer of media managers, media strategists, deputy ministers, then go up to the Privy Council Office, which decides 'yes' or 'no'".

Canadian government is 'muzzling its scientists

State of play – Canada

Canada is the only country in the world that signed and

ratified the Kyoto Accord and then openly announced it

would not meet its commitments. Canada is also the only

country to decrease its mitigation emissions pledge for

In addition, the Canadian government provides over

$1.3 bn Canadian dollars in handouts to the oil industry

every year, despite calls from within the Department of

Finance to end these subsidies and committing to phase

out fossil fuel subsidies at the G20 in 200934.

• At the heart of Canada’s intransigence on climate

change is the development of the tar sands, the fastest

growing source of emissions in Canada. Oil sands

emissions numbers were deliberately left out of

the most recent national inventory of Canada’s

greenhouse gas pollution submitted to the UN, but

these data were given to oil and gas lobbyists from

the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers

(CAPP) by Environment Canada engineer.35

• The Canadian government’s efforts to undermine clean

energy policy extend beyond its own borders. The

current government has established an ‘Oil Sands

Advocacy Strategy’, developed in coordination with

companies such as Shell and other members of

CAPP.36 The Department of Foreign Affairs and federal

officials are systematically working to weaken and

undermine clean energy and climate change policies

in other countries in order to promote the interests of

oil companies, including California’s low-carbon fuel

standard, a US federal clean fuels policy known as

Section 526, and the EU’s Fuel Quality Directive.

• Working with the Canadian government is Royal

Dutch Shell, the world leader in greenhouse gas

emissions.37 While Shell claims to be concerned about

climate change, it is investing almost exclusively in the

continuous discovery of new oil reserves, including the

huge expansion of the tar sands. Shell is a signatory

to several climate leadership statements, including the

Prince of Wales’ recent 2 Degree Communiqué, yet our

report details how Shell has directly made statements

opposing the EU 30% emission reduction goal. As a

prominent member of the Petroleum Association of

Japan, it has also opposed Japan making a second

commitment to Kyoto, and as a member of the

American Petroleum Association it has opposed US

climate legislation.

TransCanada is a Canadian corporation that owns pipelines in Canada and the United States.

"With more than 50 years experience, TransCanada is a leader in the responsible development and reliable operation of North American energy infrastructure. Founded in 1951 and headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, TransCanada has approximately 3,550 employees and is the general partner and a common unit holder of TC PipeLines, LP." [1]

Contents

[hide]

1 Tar Sands, 2011

2 Closing Sundance units 1 and 2

3 Iroquois Pipeline

4 Directors

5 Contact

6 Resources and articles

6.1 Related Sourcewatch articles

6.2 References

Tar Sands, 2011

In 2011, TransCanada requested permission to build a 1,661 mile pipeline from Canada's tar sands oil fields to U.S. refiners in Texas. The so-called Keystone XL Pipeline would import as much as 510,000 barrels per day. Koch Industries is responsible for close to 25 percent of the oil tar sands crude that is imported into the United States, and are one of the biggest refiners of Alberta oil sands crude oil. [2] Some speculated that Koch Industries would benefit significantly from the project. [3]

The proposed pipeline is highly controversial due to the anticipated environmental harm the project would have and groups in opposition to the pipeline have held large protests to prevent its construction.[4]

Closing Sundance units 1 and 2

In February 2011, TransAlta said it will be closing operations at two of the Sundance coal-fired units because repairs would be too costly. The Sundance 1 and 2 units have been down since December 2010. The units comprise 560 MW of the 2,126 MW Sundance power plant, which operates as a baseload facility for the Alberta electricity system.[5]

The closing of the units could cost consumers more than $200 million in unrealized refunds through Alberta’s Balancing Pool. The agency that oversees power purchase agreements would have to pay that amount to TransAlta as net book value of the plants and to TransCanada as partial payment on the remainder of its contract. TransCanada holds the Sundance units' power purchase agreement and expects reimbursement.[5]

Iroquois Pipeline

TransCanada held the largest ownership share of the Iroquois Gas Transmission System, a natural gas pipeline that brings gas from eastern Canada to the New York City area. Iroquois was constructed over substantial environmental opposition. The construction methods did not comply with Iroquois' proposal to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. As a result a number of supervisors, as well as Iroquois' President were convicted of crimes.[6][7][8]

Directors

Accessed September 2009: [9]

S. Barry Jackson - Chair

Harold N. Kvisle - President and CEO

Kevin E. Benson

Derek H. Burney

Wendy K. Dobson

E. Linn Draper

Paule Gauthier

Kerry L. Hawkins

Paul L. Joskow

John A. MacNaughton

David P. O'Brien

W. Thomas Stephens

D. Michael G. Stewart

Contact

Web: http://www.transcanada.com

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