Yet, surprisingly the discussion of energy policy gets brushed under the carpet. My contention is that the reason the various energy debates are so unproductive is that we are operating in the absence of any over-arching strategy. Canada is the only country in the OECD without an energy policy. Canada is one of the only countries in the world not participating as a member of the International Renewable Energy Agency. Canada is the only country in the OECD without a comprehensive climate plan. Canada is the only country in the world to have ratified Kyoto and withdrawn. Canada is the only industrialized country without a national Transportation plan.

These are not small gaps. And their absence contributes to the nastiness of the debate. The debate tends to fall to regionalism. As a federal party leader, I find the province versus province aspect of the discussion the least productive and most damaging to our national interest. Energy decisions cannot be presented as binary choices in which for British Columbia to “win,” Alberta must “lose.”

What we need is to think like a country. We need to assess what set of policy tools best advance the multiple interests of all parts of the economy and all parts of the country. We need an energy strategy for Canada.
The idea that we need a national energy strategy was floated by former Premier of Alberta, Alison Redford. It was then immediately shot down by the prime minister.

That idea must be revisited. We need a national approach to our energy future. Our starting point should be to agree to some key national goals. I would suggest they would include:

1. Energy security – currently half of the oil consumed in Canada is imported from Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Norway and Venezuela. Meanwhile, the “plan” seems to be to boost production of the most greenhouse intensive fossil fuel, bitumen and ship it to China for refining. Unlike the U.S., Canada has no strategic petroleum reserve. There is no plan for domestic energy security.
2. Energy pricing – We need to stop subsidizing fossil fuels and start pricing carbon.
3. An effective greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction plan for the needed transition to a low-carbon economy.
4. Full employment goals – we create more Canadian jobs by processing bitumen in Canada than by mixing it with toxic diluents and then shipping that dangerous product through pipelines to tankers heading overseas to other nations’ refineries and jobs there.
5. The promotion of innovation and competitiveness in Canada – Canada is falling behind the US in productivity and innovation. Part of the reason is shifting from relatively more value-added exports to raw resource exports (60% of all our exports were value-added in the late 1990s, falling to 40% recently, according to Statistics Canada.) Value-added not only creates more jobs, it attracts innovation, R and D and improves Canada’s productivity.
6. Social justice; ending energy poverty – “energy poverty” concerns must be part of any national energy strategy.
7. Any energy strategy needs to be premised on respect for First Nations right and title, as the recent Supreme Court of Canada language in the Tsilhqot’in decision makes clear is not optional; it’s mandatory;
8. Energy strategies for a resourceful and resilient Canada.

Taken separately, we could be fighting over these individual elements without resolution. Taken together in a grown-up conversation, they all fit together.

If we met around the same table and worked to achieve a consensus that respected the interests of all parts of Canada, demonstrated a responsible approach to the growing climate crisis and worked to create the kind of energy super-power we could be, one working to decrease dependence on fossil fuels, I am confident a realistic energy plan could emerge.

The first step is to start thinking like a country.

Originally published in the Hill Times.

The post Why Canada needs an Energy Policy appeared first on Elizabeth May.

From his first words, “Recently, Green Party leader Elizabeth May orchestrated an open letter to United States Secretary of State John Kerry..,” it was pretty clear he didn’t grasp the concept of writing a letter. “Orchestrated?” “Open letter?”

Not quite. The U.S. State Department had a period for public comment on the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on the proposed TransCanada pipeline to take unprocessed bitumen from Alberta to tidewater at the Gulf of Mexico. Having reviewed the submission and visited Washington D.C. in February, it was clear to me that some key points were ignored in the FEIS, while many useful findings of the report were being overwhelmed by popular misconceptions about the nature of the project. I thought it would be potentially helpful to Secretary Kerry to point out a few of these points. The letter was admittedly a bit complex as it assumed a general familiarity with the FEIS.

From reviewing Mr. Green’s piece, it seems he never actually read my letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. In an effort to draw interest to the letter, a simplified version was circulated by the Green Party as an email message, summarizing some of the points, but including the link to the full submission. Mr. Green seems to have only gotten as far as the short email.

Now to his critique of my main points.

1. In my letter I asked Kerry to reject the Keystone pipeline in order to assist Canada’s long-term energy security and prosperity: “I urge that you do so as the most helpful decision to assist Canada avoid huge future economic losses when the carbon bubble bursts.”

I wrote this being certain that Secretary Kerry was familiar with the term “carbon bubble.” Mr. Green, apparently unfamiliar with the term, leapt to the conclusion that I was talking about Dutch Disease. He then proceeded to box me about the ears for something I had not claimed.

Canada has suffered from a mild case of Dutch Disease. This was the finding of the OECD report to Canada in 2008. However, in my letter to Secretary Kerry, I wasn’t talking about Dutch Disease at all.

Rather, I was referring to the “Carbon Bubble. This term has gained prominence ever since the International Energy Agency explained that of all known reserves of fossil fuels, the planet’s atmosphere cannot withstand the burning of more than one third of them prior to 2050. In other words, two thirds of all known reserves must stay in the ground till mid-century or we will sail right past the danger levels in the atmosphere and unleash truly catastrophic levels of climatic disruption. Other analysts then began to assess the stated value of many fossil fuel enterprises and realize that their assessed values drop precipitously when two thirds of their reserves are removed from valuation.

The other aspect of the term “carbon bubble” is that, just as in any commodity being over-valued, when the bubble bursts a smart investor hopes to have diversified the portfolio prior to the moment of implosion. This is more the point former CIBC Chief Economist Jeff Rubin makes when he talks about the folly of putting all our eggs in the bitumen basket.

The other key economic point is this: all the proposed pipeline projects on the drawing board right now are about shipping out unprocessed product. In other words, Canada’s current government is putting all its weight behind multinationals that want Canada to lose out on all the “value added” processes. Where upgraders in northern Alberta had been on the drawing board prior to the 2008 financial crisis, when the dust settled and investment began to flow once again to the oil sands, the upgraders — and the Alberta jobs they would create — had been replaced by pipelines transporting bitumen to processing in other countries. Shipping out raw bitumen is dumb.

I agree that there is a debate about the economic impact of the current bitumen-based policies. One would think that given the over-blown claims of Canada as an “energy super-power” we might, as citizens and as Parliamentarians, have expected to see a detailed cost-benefit review of the oil sands project. There is none. There is only a pile of assumptions buttressed by unquestioning repetition by most of our news media, fortified by millions of dollars in taxpayer funded propaganda.

2. The product to be shipped is not “crude” at all, neither is it a 100 per cent Canadian fossil fuel product.

There is a very weak level of understanding of the nature of the product to be shipped in the FEIS, as well as in Washington media. Again, my letter to Secretary Kerry adds the context which is a bit truncated in the email. My primary point was that the FEIS was deficient in describing the product as “crude.”

Here’s the excerpt from my letter:

“The State Department report makes the error of describing the Keystone project as being about the shipment of crude oil.

“There are many kinds of crude. Some will argue that bitumen is a form of crude. I ask you to rule that the whole report is deficient in failing to notice that bitumen is not crude.

“I ask you to find that, no matter how light or heavy crude oil may be, to be called ‘crude,’ it is at least required to be a liquid.

“Bitumen is essentially a solid.

“It will only move through proposed pipelines once it has been mixed 30-70 with ‘diluents.’ Diluent is not a term of science, but of industry usage. It has no precise chemical meaning. It is generally a fossil fuel condensate — an otherwise valuable product. It is usually naptha, with benzene added, and often butane as well. It is not produced in sufficient quantities in Canada to keep pace with the planned oil sands boom.

“It is imported to Canada. Enbridge stated in its submission to the NEB hearings that it planned to import its diluents from Saudi Arabia. So ‘dilbit’ is not a 100 per cent Canadian product at all; nor does it necessarily unplug the U.S. from Middle East dependency.”

As one of the sales pitches south of the border is that this is a friendly Canadian product, I thought it was worth pointing out that at least some of the diluents will be coming in from OPEC.

3. Rail versus pipeline.

In my February Washington meetings, I found that the multiple recent rail disasters, most tragically Lac Megantic, are being used as a pro-Keystone argument. My letter to Secretary Kerry made a few key points (well buttressed by research) that are relevant to this claim:

•  If you accept our Prime Minister’s stated goal of more than tripling production in the oil sands, then adding up all existing pipeline proposals – Enbridge, Kinder-Morgan, Keystone and Energy East — still mean the use of rail to get dilbit to market.
• The FEIS found that higher transportation costs would operate as a limiting factor on oil sands expansion. So saying “no” to Keystone would help limit growth in the oil sands because shipping by other means is more costly.
• And lastly, both Canada and the U.S. urgently need to regulate for greater rail safety by removing the DOT111 rail cars from our tracks.

4. I pointed out to Secretary Kerry that the Harper administration, having pledged in 2009 to meet the voluntary Copenhagen target also undertaken by the Obama administration, has utterly failed to make any progress towards it. To this Mr Green essentially argues that Canada is so small a contributor to global emissions, who cares if we never keep any promise we make?

The Obama administration itself claims to care. It was the U.S. administration that decided a key criterion in the Keystone decision will be whether approving Keystone would increase GHG emissions.

The larger point is that Canada has no credibility. Having repudiated legally binding commitments under Kyoto, ratified by Parliament, then legally withdrawn from Kyoto (without any debate or vote in Parliament), Stephen Harper took on the Copenhagen target. Obama’s administration will have reached its target while Canada blows right past ours. I really did not need to include this in my letter to Secretary Kerry as the FEIS reports in detail exactly how lamentable is Canada’s performance.

In the 1980s, when Brian Mulroney wanted to get the Reagan administration to stop polluting Canada with acid rain-causing sulphur dioxide, he adopted a Canadian policy of “clean hands.” We came to the U.S. to ask that they cut their sulphur dioxide emissions by 50 per cent once we were already on track to do so ourselves. And the U.S. did, because Canada had taken the moral high ground. We had done what we were asking the U.S. to do, in the interests of our shared environment.

Prime Minister Harper has turned this principle on its head. He has adopted the “dirty hands” policy. Create a record of callous disregard for the fate of the world faced with increasingly dangerous outcomes due to the profligate waste of fossil fuels. And then claim, as part of a sales pitch for oil sands bitumen exports, that we have robust environmental laws and a shared climate goal. This after eviscerating our laws and betraying every promise.

Mr. Harper is a smart man. The only way he could have the chutzpah to try such a tarry hands policy is if he presumes that Mr. Obama is just as disingenuous as himself on climate.

This may prove to be Mr. Harper’s undoing on Keystone. President Obama has disappointed over and over again, but he does appear to grasp the over-whelming significance of the climate crisis.

I am not a bit surprised that the Fraser Institute thinks it is irrelevant that Canada’s emissions are rising, nor that we will be essentially at the same level of emissions in 2020 as we were in 2005. If the Fraser Institute were interested in fact-checking against climate target claims, the place to look for whoppers is not in my letter to Secretary Kerry, but in the daily talking points of Conservative ministers.

In Question Period, they variously claim we are “on track,” “half way to Copenhagen,” or “130 MT less than we’d be under the Liberals. (That last one is really a desperate “hail Mary” pass of a whopper. It falls apart for anyone with a memory that extends to 2005 when there actually was, at long last, a viable Liberal plan that would have gotten us, if not all the way to our Kyoto pledge, at least below 1990 levels by 2012.)

This is how I summarized the issue to Secretary Kerry:

“In 2005, our emissions were 737 megatons (MT). In 2020, our emissions will be 734 MT. We promised 130 MT in reductions. Despite efforts by several provinces, notably a successful carbon tax in my home province of British Columbia, all progress at the provincial levels has been wiped out by growth in the oil sands.

“The most effective way to send a strong message that Canada must start behaving as a responsible participant in the global challenge to avoid exceeding a 2 degree C global average temperature increase, a pledge to which your administration and ours have committed, is to reject Keystone. It will be helpful to explain that part of the reason is that Canada has negotiated in bad faith at the climate table. There have been no sanctions created globally for neglecting climate obligations. The least that should be done is not to reward bad conduct.”

Lastly, I closed the letter to Secretary Kerry by pointing out that the U.S. has to get its own house in order. I challenged him to stop the State Department’s foot dragging in global summits and start to show leadership. I urged that the U.S. stop burning off flared gas from the Bakken fields, producing high-carbon natural gas from fracking and stop its dependence on coal.

All in all, I am glad I took the time to set out some of the less reported issues around Keystone. And in that spirit, I thank the Fraser Institute for ignoring my detailed letter so that I would have a chance to explain the range of concerns it contained.

Originally posted in the Huffington Post.

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By Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, Green MP Bruce Hyer

What is an environmental issue? However you define it, Harper is against it.

“Environment” means different things to different people.

To some, it is the natural world for which conservation values will protect sustainable populations and ecosystems for future generations. The roots of that conservation ethic go back to the late 1800s, and Gifford Pinchot, the first dean of Yale School of Forestry. The ethic embraces “sustainable use” of forests and fish and the renewable resources that have supported economies.

Then, there’s the more modern concept of environment, stemming from Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, published in 1962 and credited with helping launch the environmental movement in the U.S. The 1960s era of environmental awareness was actually more concerned with how human activity and new technologies-in this case toxic synthetic pesticides-threatened species, but perhaps more significantly, human health as well. Now that the publication of Silent Spring has passed the 50-year mark, it hardly is “modern” anymore. Our current use of the term “environment” has increasingly been subsumed in the media into one issue only-climate change.

Yet, climate change is not primarily an environmental issue. Sure, it involves the environment. In the same way drowning involves water, but we do not describe drowning as a “water issue.” Climate change, like drowning, is a survival issue. Climate change is an issue that can be described best as a security threat-although it involves questions of energy, economy, and the environment.

The harsh reality of our current political climate is that all the basic notions of the environment are under assault. We have entered a political era of “decision-based evidence making.” Stephen Harper’s administration has launched an unprecedented assault on government science. More than 2,000 scientists and researchers in the federal civil service have lost their jobs. Most of these scientists were working in areas of the “environment.”

All the scientists working in our national parks have been laid off. Fisheries and Oceans has lost all its habitat specialists after Bill C-38 gutted the Fisheries Act to remove habitat protection. The entire Marine Contaminants Program at DFO has been eliminated. The list is long. Mr. Harper is not just neglecting science; he is attacking any science or data or evidence that runs contrary to his beliefs or agenda.

Meanwhile, even though the only legislative change Harper has made to the Species at Risk Act was to remove the application of SARA when a pipeline is involved (also in C-38), still SARA is being more broadly undermined. Species at risk are going unprotected.

National parks no longer exclude oil and gas activity (with the tragic circumstances of the creation of Sable Island National Park.) This could be the thin end of the wedge for industrial activity in parks, in general. Meanwhile, parks are being privatized piecemeal, as is clear from the Jasper National Park “ice walk,” the Banff hot springs, and now a hotel proposal inside the national park in Jasper. Harper may have expanded national park boundaries, but he has endangered the protection of what lies inside the boundaries.

The pressure to clear away any regulatory hurdles to oil and gas expansion has led to the wholesale dismantling of decades’ worth of environmental laws and regulation. From legislation passed under prime minister John A. Macdonald (Fisheries Act and Navigable Waters Protection Act) to laws passed under former prime minister Brian Mulroney, (the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and National Round Table on Environment and Economy), nothing is sacred. The last eight years bear witness to a devastating reversal of environmental law in Canada. It needs to be said that Canada’s laws never were as strong in environmental protection as those of the U.S. or other industrialized countries, such as Germany. In the race for the bottom, Canada has no competition.

Nowhere is the abdication of environmental responsibility as disturbing as in the area of climate change. Harper first cancelled our legally binding Kyoto targets, then withdrew from the treaty, adopted his own targets for GHG reductions in Copenhagen in 2009, and has now declared those will not be met either. True, he has not actually declared his rejection of his own targets, but the new timeline for oil and gas regulations, first promised when John Baird was environment minister nearly seven years ago (The “Turning the Corner” plan), make it clear no real effort is contemplated.

We all use oil. We will for a long time to come, but it must be used wisely, and we should all seek to reduce our consumption as much as possible, and shift to more renewable and sustainable energy sources. The sad and dispiriting irony is that if Canada embraced real action, we will create more jobs and revitalize our economy faster than by pursuing the mindless vision that puts all our eggs in the bitumen basket. Canada deserves better. We deserve an energy plan, a climate plan, and the new industrial revolution of clean-tech and renewables. We can still get there from here. The first step is for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to get out of the way.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May represents Saanich- Gulf Islands, B.C., and Green Party MP Bruce Hyer represents Thunder Bay-Superior North, Ont.

Originally published in the Hill Times.

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Will the Prime Minister confirm that under no circumstances will the federal government become the aggressive and hostile government that approves a project as long British Columbians say no?

Right Hon. Stephen Harper: Mr. Speaker, the project in question, of course, is subject to a joint review panel process. Obviously, we believe in the rule of law and, in adjudicating these things based on scientific and policy concerns, the government will obviously withhold its decision on the matter until we see the results of the panel and its work.

Related: Sign the petition for an oil-free coast.

The post Question Period – Northern Gateway Pipeline and Provincial Rights appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Debate has been about how best to export raw, virtually unprocessed bitumen — as much as possible and as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the eastern half of Canada depends on imports of foreign oil from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, and Norway. As Gordon Laxer of the Parkland Institute tried to point out to a Parliamentary committee (before the Conservative chair ordered him to stop talking and stormed out of the room), Canada has no energy security.

I feel some responsibility for this shift in debate, as I was the first political leader to point out that there was something wrong with the picture.

RELATED: Sign the petition for an oil-free coast.

Unlike the US, we have no Strategic Petroleum Reserves. If there was a blockade of foreign oil or an economic embargo, those in Eastern Canada would have to wait for tankers to bring them bitumen for processing through the Panama Canal and up the eastern seaboard. As bizarre as that sounds, it was the solution offered by a Suncor executive when asked in committee about the vulnerability of eastern Canada to embargos.

Oppositional Canada

The irony is that the dividing line of foreign oil to the east and Alberta oil for the west was the result of deliberate government policy—aimed at helping the Alberta oil and gas sector. Back in 1961, the National Oil Policy decreed that eastern Canadians (east of the Ottawa River) would only receive imported oil while those in the West had to purchase Alberta product. By deliberate policy, Eastern Canadians became dependent on foreign oil, while Alberta oil was consumed by those in western provinces and exported to the US. Now it is time to think like a country.

The Solution: Shipping East?

However, the current proposal also makes no sense. Former New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna has proposed shipping unprocessed bitumen to St John, New Brunswick, to put it in tankers to export it from there. Others are proposing refining it in New Brunswick.

The first decision point is Enbridge’s application to reverse its Number 9 pipeline. This pipeline was built in the 1970s and had originally flowed west to east. It was reversed in the 1990s as the markets favoured cheaper foreign oil.

Now, Enbridge is applying to reverse it once again, running a different product, dilbit, from west to east. The request to the National Energy Board is being considered in two stand-alone applications; Line 9A (Sarnia to North Westover) and Line 9B to Montreal.

From there the bitumen would likely go south through New England. When I was in Washington DC, I heard from quite a few Congressmen and Senators that they do not want those pipelines over their territory.

Bitumen

The nature of bitumen and diluents in pipelines is a critical issue in why the Green Party oppose pipelines of unprocessed product to either coastline. So, before talking about the direction of pipelines, we need to talk about the product.

Even after the extensive and intensive process of extracting the viscous material known as bitumen from the soil in which it is found (generally about 10% by volume), it is still not processed to even the level of crude oil. Crude oil can flow. Bitumen cannot. It has the consistency of peanut butter, so needs to be mixed with something else to flow. That something else is called ‘diluent’—a mix of undisclosed chemicals. The most commonly used diluent is a natural gas condensate, similar to Naptha. The public does not know the make-up of any particular diluent. Some have more benzene than others—benzene is a well-documented carcinogen.

The resulting so-called dilbit product is about 30% diluents and 70% bitumen. We do know a lot more about dilbit than we used to. And we did a lot of that learning through the 2010 Enbridge dilbit spill in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. We know it both floats and sinks; that it is far harder and far more expensive to clean-up than unprocessed conventional crude. The Kalamazoo spill is still not cleaned up.

Meanwhile a debate rages about whether dilbit is more likely to cause pipeline failure. Cornell University found that between 2007 and 2010 pipelines carrying dilbit had a spill-rate three times higher than pipelines carrying conventional crude. Oil sands products have a higher sulfur and a higher acidic content than conventional crude and those properties could explain its increased corrosive nature.

This finding led to the Department of Natural Resources to commissioning a study by a group called Alberta Innovates Technology Futures (ATIF). That study compared dilbit and conventional crudes and concluded the types of corrosive compounds between the two products were comparable. So we have labwork versus the real life rate of spills in US pipelines. At the moment, despite what Harper’s Cabinet ministers claim, the science on the corrosive nature of dilbit is not settled.

Meanwhile, if local residents along the Number 9 pipeline wish to speak before the NEB hearings, or even submit a letter, they are required to fill out a 10-page form, and are also encouraged to submit references and a resume! This is an NEB effort to meet the new requirements imposed by the horrific overhaul of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act that took place last year in the Omnibus Budget Bill (C-38).

Unlike the previous CEAA, which was premised on a fundamental commitment to rights of public participation, the Harperized CEAA restricts access to only those ‘directly affected’. The NEB has made this restriction even worse by demanding that any citizens who want to make comments, fill out the forms and apply within a two-week period—which will close before this article will be in print.

Refineries In Alberta

So, what should be done? The best environmental, economic and climate outcome would be to slow down the boom-and-bust cycle of constant expansion in the oil sands. What the late Peter Lougheed used to describe as the ‘traffic jam’ of feverish expansion in the oilsands prevents the construction of ancillary infrastructure, like upgraders and refineries.

The hyper-inflationary bubble that sits on northern Alberta is what makes it cheaper for Big Oil to build a $7 billion pipeline to Texas, rather than build facilities in Alberta. Any reasonable carbon plan would set a level of managed growth for oil sands production—say 2 million barrels of oil a day (more than the current 1.7 million barrels, but less than Harper’s goal of 6 million barrels of oil a day). That level of production could cool down the capital and labour markets enough to build upgraders and refineries near the resource. Then, we could be talking about shipping—by pipeline, truck or train—a finished product whose properties are better understood. Shipping a product with a far lower risk of environmental impact in the event of spills.

If we are thinking like a country, we should get Alberta oil to Eastern Canada, but we should not ship bitumen + diluents.

The post Pipelines to the east? appeared first on Elizabeth May.

“10,000 barrels of dilbit, a mixture of bitumen and toxic diluent, were spilled in Arkansas last week. Citizens in Toronto and everywhere along Enbridge’s Line 9 have legitimate concerns and tough questions to ask the NEB. Muzzling their opposition is against basic principles of natural justice. These new barriers to free speech would not stand up to judicial review,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May, Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.

In their fight against Omnibus Bill C-38, the Greens tried to prevent the destruction of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA). Green Leader Elizabeth May put forward amendments –rejected by the Conservatives– to protect rights for public participation, which were once fundamental to the CEAA. The terms used in C-38 restrict public participation to those “directly affected”. “It is that terminology that has led to the abuse we witness today, but even with that restrictive language, the NEB has made it even more restrictive by adding its own two-week timeline,” said May.

“Enbridge plans to pump dilbit, with added benzene, a notorious carcinogen, through our neighbourhoods using an aging pipe system originally built for natural gas. What would a spill near Lake Ontario mean for the water supply of millions of people?” asked May.

“After muzzling scientists, Stephen Harper muzzles citizens. Add his obsession for the oil business and his disregard for Parliament in the mix, and you’ve got a great example of Harperland in action,” said May.

The post Enbridge’s Line 9: Needing Permission to Talk About a Pipeline Going Through Your Neighbourhood? Welcome to Harperland. appeared first on Elizabeth May.

May, who has an excellent attendance record in the House of Commons, feels that this sit-in is too important to miss. “I greatly value the work I am able to do in the House of Commons on behalf of my constituents and other Canadians, but there are times when more direct, non-parliamentary action is needed – and this is certainly one of them,” said May.

As a BC MP, she wants to show her support for the majority of British Columbians – whether in small communities, First Nations, or urban centres – who oppose the threats posed by treacherous pipelines through their pristine forests and across their streams and by risky bitumen-filled supertankers along their wild coastline.

WHERE: In front of the British Columbia Legislature, Victoria, BC
WHEN: 11 am Pacific Time, on Monday, October 22

 May will be attending from 11 am to 1 pm.

The post May to Take Part in Defend Our Coast Sit-In appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Elizabeth May, Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands and Leader of the Green Party of Canada, Jane Sterk, Leader of the Green Party of British Columbia, and Adriane Carr, Vancouver City Councillor with the Green Party of Vancouver and Deputy Leader of the Green Party of Canada all joined forces today to say “No” to Texas-based Kinder Morgan’s project of twinning the Trans Mountain Pipeline between Edmonton and Burnaby, taking its capacity from 300,000 barrels of diluted bitumen per day to 850,000 barrels per day.

“Kinder Morgan wants to nearly triple the capacity of the pipeline. This is an environmental threat not only because consuming all this oil will aggravate climate change, but also because the risks of oil spills are unacceptably high. More than 100,000 litres of light crude oil was spilled at Kinder Morgan’s terminal in Abbotsford, BC, last January.

“The first round of Kinder Morgan expansion allowed off-shore buyers with tankers to out-bid the last remaining lower mainland refinery at Burnaby. We are so eager to ship out unrefined bitumen, at great environmental risk, that we are ignoring the fact that the local economy is also short-changed,” added May.

“This is an ‘old economy’ project,” said Jane Sterk, Leader of the Green Party of British Columbia. “We don’t need more supertanker traffic in the Vancouver Harbour. What we need is to build a new renewable-energy-based economy that will create good jobs, protect our environment and establish greater long-term energy security. ”

“As a Vancouver Councillor, I have been proactive in ensuring that the City of Vancouver has taken a leadership role in opposing Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion”, added Adriane Carr. “Our city needs parties at the provincial and federal levels, where the decision on Kinder Morgan’s plans will be made, to step up to the plate. Only the Green Party has done so, declaring its opposition to Kinder Morgan’s plans at all three political levels. I hope this moves the NDP and the Liberals, both of which are waffling, to join us in saying ‘No’ to all the pipeline and tanker projects that threaten our economy andenvironment.”

The post The Edmonton-Vancouver Pipeline Expansion Should be Stopped appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Back in January 2001, our future Prime Minister sent a letter to Premier Ralph Klein in which he called for Alberta to exercise its Constitutional provincial powers to “build firewalls around Alberta.”  The letter was co-signed by Harper’s mentor from the University of Alberta Tom Flanagan, Ted Morton (at the time described as Alberta Senator-elect), the head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and other Alberta luminaries, including Ken Boessenkool, (described in the letter as former advisor to “Stockwell Day, Treasurer of Alberta,” who is currently none other than Premier Christy Clark’s Chief of Staff.)  Stephen Harper, who claimed top spot in the list of signatories, was at the time President of the National Citizens’ Coalition.

The letter set out what the signatories believed to be Constitutionally allowed steps Alberta should take,  including: withdrawal from the Canada Pension Plan, ending the provincial contract with the RCMP,  a provincial take-over of health care decision-making, and collecting revenue for the province from income tax.  The aim of this bullish use of provincial powers was “to limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach on legitimate provincial jurisdiction.”   

What a difference a decade makes.  Now Stephen Harper is so confident of the right of the federal government to insist on an over-land pipeline to a tanker route through the most treacherous waters on earth that he committed to the project’s approval and completion before the provincial government had so much as uttered a word on the project’s acceptability.  (I leave it to Patrick Brown to set out the nature of Christy Clark’s rather belated demands, but at least she has asserted that British Columbia has something to say in the matter. I leave for another day that other Constitutional objection to the Enbridge project – the constitutionally protected inherent rights of First Nations.) 

NDP leader Adrian Dix has announced he has a high powered legal panel, led by the well respected lawyer Murray Rankin, reviewing the province’s legal options.  The ugly reality is that if Stephen Harper is prepared to push this through, he can.  The Constitution allows the federal government to over-ride provincial powers under Clause 10 of Section 92.  If the federal government declares the Enbridge project to be “for the general advantage of Canada,” provincial rights are trampled.

In a recent piece in the Ottawa Citizen, Stephen Maher recalled the last time a premier approached a prime minister with the idea of requesting provincial objections be squashed through the invocation of Clause 10 of Section 92.  In 1966, Newfoundland’s first premier, Joey Smallwood, had gone to Prime Minister Lester Pearson to ask for the federal muscle of Clause 10, section 92 to force Quebec to accept transmission lines across that province to bring electricity from the Churchill Falls project in Labrador to be sold to Canada and the US. Smallwood recalled later that Pearson had begged him not to make the request because, “if you ask me I’ll have to say yes, otherwise we would not really be a country.  But I am asking you not to ask me, because we will not be able to keep the towers up.”    Smallwood did not ask and suffered the impact of a lop-sided deal to sell power to Quebec ever since.

Stephen Harper has already hinted that he is prepared to use the federal over-ride power.  In a January 2012 interview he said, “What I think I’d make clear is that I believe selling our energy products to Asia is in the country’s national interest.”

In addition to the Constitution, the prime minister has a precedent of expropriation.  Back in 1999, the federal government expropriated the seabed under the Nanoose torpedo testing grounds when British Columbia decided to end the contract allowing testing.  In that case, the Expropriation Act was used.  225 square km of BC territory was expropriated to allow the military tests to continue.  That was a first, but would Stephen Harper get away with expropriating the whole territory required to build the Great Pipeline of China?

Commentators like Stephen Maher will say that so long as BC objects, no federal government will force the construction of pipelines over provincial lands, nor force ports to accept high risk supertankers for bitumen and diluent.  And it is true, that to force such a thing would tear at the heart of Confederation and do real damage to our sense of ourselves as a nation.  But that does not mean Stephen Harper won’t do it.  No previous Prime Minister was sufficiently reckless and ruthless as to shut down Parliament to avoid a confidence vote he knew he would lose.  The Prime Minister has promised Beijing this project will proceed.  He has declared that those who oppose the project are “radicals.”  

Has Stephen Harper abandoned the idea that provinces have rights?  Is he prepared to ride roughshod over the wishes of the vast majority of British Columbians?  Has he reversed himself or is it merely the case that provinces only have rights when they seek to promote fossil fuel expansionism, never to manage such development?

Perhaps it is time for Mr. Harper’s former colleague, Mr. Boessenkool, to brief Premier Clark on how to build a firewall.  And maybe he could remind the Prime Minister of how he once urged provinces to resist and object “to an aggressive and hostile federal government … encroach(ing) on legitimate provincial jurisdiction.”

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“In the wake of the 2010 Enbridge spill in Kalamazoo, Michigan and findings of US regulators that its corporate culture resembled ‘Keystone Kops,’ you would think Enbridge would have read the riot act to all its operations to avoid spills.  But just days ago, Enbridge had a new pipeline spill in Wisconsin,” said Green Party leader Elizabeth May, Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands. “I am all in favour of getting Alberta oil to refineries in Eastern Canada, but the reversal of Line 9 must be approved only if and when the pipeline is refurbished to the highest industry standards.  Bitumen crude and diluents are almost impossible to clean up. Canada’s energy security can be enhanced if, and only if, Enbridge accepts its responsibility to operate Line 9 to higher standards.”

Green Party Energy Critic Cathy MacLellan said, “Line 9 is aging, and cannot be expected to handle the much more corrosive tar sands crude.  If tar sands crude is sent through Line 9, we can expect the kinds of spills that had devastating consequences for the Kalamazoo River two years ago.  At the very least, projects like this require investment in new infrastructure to meet any safety standards. Canada needs to rapidly develop clean, reliable and renewable energy systems.”

“Avoiding catastrophic levels of global climate change requires keeping fossil fuels, both conventional and unconventional, in the ground, essentially as long as their proposed end use is burning for energy.  As the future feedstock for petrochemicals, the resource has value forever. We need a plan to phase out fossil fuel dependency as quickly as possible,” said Climate Change Critic Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu.

The Green Party welcomes the plan to refine Canadian crude in Canada.  However, any expansion of tar sands extraction is not acceptable.  In addition, pipelines that carry tar sands crude must be built to a higher standard to prevent spills.

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