If you are looking for evidence that Canada’s political leaders are completely detached from everyday reality, consider the current dust-up over the Northern Gateway pipeline.
It is all about the spoils: is British Columbia getting its fair share of the resource bonanza promised by the pipeline, should Alberta be forced to compensate its unhappy neighbour for environmental risks, and what about the rest of Canada? How do Ontario and Quebec grab their share of the loot?
Or, its about the Constitution: does an enabling province have the right to demand a share of another’s energy wealth and, if so, won’t this make the country unmanageable? And what is the role of the federal government when provinces spar: impassive observer, or impartial arbiter?
Enough. You want to take the premiers, the prime minister, Jason Kenney and the rest, by the shoulders and (if it weren’t so crude and derivative) shout: It’s the environment, stupid!
While they have been going about their usual business in air-conditioned offices, half the country has been experiencing torrid temperatures and a taste of the drought already commonplace in prairie regions.
How long are they going to claim its just “weather”? How long are they going to deny, or downplay, global warming when the evidence is all around us — not only in parched lawns, and damaged crops, and increasing food prices, but in implacable statistics declaring yet another record high.
Yet most politicians continue to insist, or concede grudgingly, that oil, notably from the Alberta tarsands, is our economic salvation — well worth the frequent, mostly “minor”, pipeline leaks; the ongoing assault on wildlife; or, the potential for a catastrophic spill on our pristine west coast. Never mind the larger impact of climate change.
But if politicians are slow to catch on, the public isn’t. Growing concern about the specific risks of the Northern Gateway — which will snake through virgin forest, and under hundreds of streams in interior B.C., to deliver oil to tankers plying dangerous ocean channels near Kitimat — finally got Premier Christy Clark’s attention.
Facing almost inevitable defeat in provincial elections in May, this week Clark took a stand (sort of) on the pipeline. To wit: B.C. is taking 80 per cent of the environmental risk and only getting 8 per cent of the benefit, by way of enhanced tax revenues. Clark wants more money, or, “no pipeline.”
She also wants the federal government to finance a serious oil-spill disaster team near Kitimat, and the private sector to cover the entire cost of any leak in B.C.’s interior, no matter how extensive.
It sounds as if Clark isn’t as concerned about environmental catastrophe as she is about B.C. taxpayers being stuck with the cleaning bill. In fact, her case is based on the inevitability of disaster.
Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s initial response was frosty and also focused on money. Clark isn’t getting a penny of Alberta’s oil royalties, she said; if she wants more cash, go talk to Enbridge, which is building the pipeline.
Like Clark, the company is being forced to respond to environmental concerns (and some inconveniently-timed leaks from its older pipelines). It has just agreed to add $500 million to the $5.5 billion project to thicken pipeline walls at river crossings, increase inspections and staff pumping stations at remote locations around the clock.
This — along with an apparently random statement from Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver recently, touting the economic benefits of the pipeline — suggests a shift by pro-pipeline forces from defiance to damage control.
Even the pipeline’s most influential patron, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, with 21 B.C. seats in play, has maintained a wary distance from the inter-provincial spat — although his faithful mouthpiece, Jason Kenney, accused Premier Clark of “toll gate federalism” this week.
But none of these worthies is admitting what is increasingly obvious: the Northern Gateway is not worth the risk, environmentally, or politically.
And, while pipeline boosters enthuse about the schools, hospitals and jobs enhanced oil exports to China will provide, they ignore the social and economic costs of responding to crop failures, water shortages, forest fires and the other baleful consequences of rising global temperatures.
Outside of an increasingly frayed consensus, there are dissenters — notably, federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, the Green party, and B.C.’s NDP opposition, all of whom oppose the Northern Gateway.
As Quebec Premier Jean Charest said at the premiers’ annual gabfest this week, “you cannot disassociate the issues of energy with issues that touch climate change.”
In fact, the environment has to be at the centre of future energy policy — not from virtue, but from necessity. It isn’t about changing their messaging; oil-addicted political leaders have to change course.
If they don’t figure that out soon, with luck, they’ll be gone.
Original Article
Source:ottawa citizen
Author: Susan Riley
It is all about the spoils: is British Columbia getting its fair share of the resource bonanza promised by the pipeline, should Alberta be forced to compensate its unhappy neighbour for environmental risks, and what about the rest of Canada? How do Ontario and Quebec grab their share of the loot?
Or, its about the Constitution: does an enabling province have the right to demand a share of another’s energy wealth and, if so, won’t this make the country unmanageable? And what is the role of the federal government when provinces spar: impassive observer, or impartial arbiter?
Enough. You want to take the premiers, the prime minister, Jason Kenney and the rest, by the shoulders and (if it weren’t so crude and derivative) shout: It’s the environment, stupid!
While they have been going about their usual business in air-conditioned offices, half the country has been experiencing torrid temperatures and a taste of the drought already commonplace in prairie regions.
How long are they going to claim its just “weather”? How long are they going to deny, or downplay, global warming when the evidence is all around us — not only in parched lawns, and damaged crops, and increasing food prices, but in implacable statistics declaring yet another record high.
Yet most politicians continue to insist, or concede grudgingly, that oil, notably from the Alberta tarsands, is our economic salvation — well worth the frequent, mostly “minor”, pipeline leaks; the ongoing assault on wildlife; or, the potential for a catastrophic spill on our pristine west coast. Never mind the larger impact of climate change.
But if politicians are slow to catch on, the public isn’t. Growing concern about the specific risks of the Northern Gateway — which will snake through virgin forest, and under hundreds of streams in interior B.C., to deliver oil to tankers plying dangerous ocean channels near Kitimat — finally got Premier Christy Clark’s attention.
Facing almost inevitable defeat in provincial elections in May, this week Clark took a stand (sort of) on the pipeline. To wit: B.C. is taking 80 per cent of the environmental risk and only getting 8 per cent of the benefit, by way of enhanced tax revenues. Clark wants more money, or, “no pipeline.”
She also wants the federal government to finance a serious oil-spill disaster team near Kitimat, and the private sector to cover the entire cost of any leak in B.C.’s interior, no matter how extensive.
It sounds as if Clark isn’t as concerned about environmental catastrophe as she is about B.C. taxpayers being stuck with the cleaning bill. In fact, her case is based on the inevitability of disaster.
Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s initial response was frosty and also focused on money. Clark isn’t getting a penny of Alberta’s oil royalties, she said; if she wants more cash, go talk to Enbridge, which is building the pipeline.
Like Clark, the company is being forced to respond to environmental concerns (and some inconveniently-timed leaks from its older pipelines). It has just agreed to add $500 million to the $5.5 billion project to thicken pipeline walls at river crossings, increase inspections and staff pumping stations at remote locations around the clock.
This — along with an apparently random statement from Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver recently, touting the economic benefits of the pipeline — suggests a shift by pro-pipeline forces from defiance to damage control.
Even the pipeline’s most influential patron, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, with 21 B.C. seats in play, has maintained a wary distance from the inter-provincial spat — although his faithful mouthpiece, Jason Kenney, accused Premier Clark of “toll gate federalism” this week.
But none of these worthies is admitting what is increasingly obvious: the Northern Gateway is not worth the risk, environmentally, or politically.
And, while pipeline boosters enthuse about the schools, hospitals and jobs enhanced oil exports to China will provide, they ignore the social and economic costs of responding to crop failures, water shortages, forest fires and the other baleful consequences of rising global temperatures.
Outside of an increasingly frayed consensus, there are dissenters — notably, federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, the Green party, and B.C.’s NDP opposition, all of whom oppose the Northern Gateway.
As Quebec Premier Jean Charest said at the premiers’ annual gabfest this week, “you cannot disassociate the issues of energy with issues that touch climate change.”
In fact, the environment has to be at the centre of future energy policy — not from virtue, but from necessity. It isn’t about changing their messaging; oil-addicted political leaders have to change course.
If they don’t figure that out soon, with luck, they’ll be gone.
Original Article
Source:ottawa citizen
Author: Susan Riley
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