We should be talking about the science. We should, as Parliamentarians, regardless of party, be acting responsibly as the evidence piles up. Every day it seems there is new evidence, always more worrying. Climate change is no longer creeping slowly. It is galloping, spurred on by dangerous feed-back loops. The Arctic ice is shrinking in ways that spell danger for all of us, permafrost is melting threatening the release of vast deposits of methane (a very powerful greenhouse gas), oceans are acidifying, food production is threatened, and around the world lives are lost in extreme events from floods to fires to mudslides to tropical storms and tornadoes. We should be talking about how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions as fast as possible in hopes of avoiding ever-more-likely runaway global warming. I don’t like thinking about- or worse, talking about, the worst case scenarios of global warming. But former French President Sarkozy was right: the survival of human civilization is at risk.

Those are not the words of the leaders of the mainstream parties. In the House, we get a Punch and Judy show of feigned outrage. Instead of talking about what we should be doing, the main parties are stuck in a Mobius loop of distortion. Yesterday, I couldn’t finish asking a question due to the heckling of the NDP caucus. What was the trigger for otherwise civil folks, many of them people I love, to act out so rudely? I had the effrontery to mention that there had once been a plan to meet Kyoto targets.

I did not do so to laud the Liberal record. The Liberal record is one of broken promises starting when Jean Chretien dumped the promise in the 1993 Red Book to reduce GHG by 20% below 1988 levels by 2005. I am cursed with a good memory. I remember the day we found out Chretien would not allow the federal, provincial, multi-stakeholder taskforce even to analyze carbon taxes as a possible mechanism to meet the Liberal target. I remember his trip with Anne McLellan to the oil sands to drop a few billion and promise rapid development. I remember feeling like I’d just been sucker-punched. But it is absurd for the NDP to want to re-write history to say there was never a plan. I was about to say in the House, that the plan came very late – in spring 2005. But, again, I remember the struggle to get the plan approved. The day to day battle with Natural Resources Canada leaks, undermining Stéphane Dion and Environment Canada with daily front page stories in the Globe and Mail attacking a plan that was not even public yet. It was not a perfect plan. I would not have designed it the way it was designed. But, according to reliable experts, such as Pembina Institute, if the plan had been implemented, Canada would have come very close to our Kyoto targets. Of course, less than a year later, Stephen Harper killed it and the billions of dollars in programmes that had been in the 2005 budget.

The NDP is right to call out the Conservatives for lies claiming the NDP supports a carbon tax. As Jeffrey Simpson points out very clearly in today’s Globe, the cap and trade carbon pricing advocated by the NDP is no different from what Stephen Harper once said he would do.

On the other hand, while the Conservatives keep accusing the NDP of favouring a carbon tax, and the NDP deny it, what gets lost is that we actually need carbon pricing urgently – as in a decade ago. And even with a carbon price, whether through the free market mechanism of cap and trade or through the more efficient means of a revenue neutral carbon tax, we will need far more in programs, regulations, job-creating initiatives in energy efficiency and renewables, to have any hope of playing a responsible role in the world. Greens favour a carbon tax as the best way to reduce GHG and put money in the pockets of Canadians. On the other hand, if a cap and trade plan was properly designed, I wouldn’t oppose it. This is not Lilliput with a war over which end of the egg gets cracked. It should not be a phony fight over mechanisms. We should actually be talking about doing something.

And that is what is not being discussed. The Conservatives are telling lies about the NDP wanting a carbon tax and the NDP are telling a lie that there was never a Liberal carbon plan, and the Liberal attacks on Mulcair over his comments on Dutch disease (a reasonable issue for him to raise) are also spin over substance. It’s all spin.

It would be easy to say “a plague on all their houses.” But global warming is a plague on all our houses. We have to stop the spin and focus on what matters. Science is divided on whether we still have time. For my children’s sake I refuse to accept that it is too late. I will keep telling the truth about who did what and when, but history is just that. We better start talking about what we plan to do. NOW!

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“This is an historic and crucial time for Parliament and Canadians,” said May.  “The Harper Conservatives are playing fast and loose with our democracy, our traditions, and too often the facts.  There were several factors that reveal the weaknesses in the Conservatives’ agenda.”

The economy is going backwards.  Economist Jim Stanford pointed out in an analysis for the Centre for Policy Alternatives that: “In July, 2011, unprocessed and semi-processed resource exports accounted for two-thirds of Canada’s total exports, the highest in decades,” wrote Stanford. “Compare that to 1999, when finished goods made up almost 60 per cent of our exports.”

Dutch Disease is alive and well in Canada.  Even the respected Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has warned Canada about its inflated petrodollar, which inevitably hurts businesses depending on exporting their products (manufacturing, services, tourism).  Oil companies’ annual reports show that the higher dollar hurts their cash flow and profits.

Canada might suffer financially as it becomes an environmental pariah.  The respected National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy warned in a report recently that Canadian businesses might suffer “significant economic repercussions” affecting Canada’s growth and our international competitiveness if this country ignores or avoids sustainable environmental practices in the manufacture of its export products. 

Labour myths are propping up Bill C-38 changes.  The Harper Conservatives have been repeating the message that there are “large and growing labour shortages.”  The most recently released Statistics Canada data on job vacancies – for the three months ending in January, 2012 – show that there were 6.4 unemployed workers for every reported job vacancy.

 “I urge Members of Parliament from all parties to consider the full picture, the real state of our economy, and our childrens’ futures as they wrestle with Bill C-38,” said May.

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Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that the Conservative members who are speaking to this issue of the recent comments by the Leader of the Opposition are distorting what is a well-known term in economic literature. It should not be that controversial to recognize that since 2008, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has warned Canada that by distorting our policies in resource development, we are creating unnecessary impacts through something called “Dutch disease”.

I have heard there are people in the Conservative ranks who have studied economics. Could they please explain to their colleagues what the term means and that it is not calling any section of this country any derogatory term whatsoever? It is an economics issue. It is valid and it should be discussed.

David Anderson: Mr. Speaker, we all know that the member opposite and her party would love to stop resource development in this country. The reality is that we now have the largest two-month job growth in decades. She should be standing up and congratulating us on that.

While the NDP member was attacking western Canadians, it turns out Canadians actually were not listening. Instead, they were going back to work.

There were 58,000 new jobs last month, 24,000 of them in the manufacturing sector that the member talks about. The problem on the other side is not Dutch disease, it is foot-in-the-mouth disease.

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That is not to say we have no policy priorities related to energy. The de facto energy policy of the Harper government is the rapid expansion of the Athabasca tar sands (or ‘oil sands’ if you have gone through the Alberta re-education programme). From the current 1.3 million barrels of crude oil a day, the Harper government has set a goal of 6 million barrels of crude a day. This rapid expansion is destined for export.

It will be exported as crude, because oil companies find it too expensive to refine the crude near the bitumen. That is because the ‘hell bent for leather’ approach to development creates a localized hyper-inflationary bubble all around Fort McMurray and through most of Alberta. Former Premier Peter Lougheed calls it ‘the traffic jam.’ You cannot find a skilled labour force, or materials, at a reasonable price, so we allow the crude to flow through pipelines from Alberta to reach the United States where refineries are being built to convert tar sands crude to petroleum. And, we have discovered, two super tankers a week depart Vancouver, through treacherous channels to the Juan de Fuca Strait and out to other nations. Crude oil exports pass right by the Gulf Islands every week—and Kinder-Morgan plans to expand to ten tankers a week.

Funny thing to be an ‘energy super power,’ yet still import 54% of the oil used in Canada. All of Eastern Canada depends on oil from OPEC nations. We have no Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We lack any infrastructure to get tar sands crude to the rest of Canada.

Funny thing to be an ‘energy super power’ that is allowing the rampant expansion of the tar sands to undermine the economic health of Canada. I first learned of the increasing warnings of ‘Dutch Disease’ through the 2008 Report on Canada from the OECD. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is an elite club of the world’s wealthiest nations. Canada is a member. From its lavish Paris headquarters, the OECD economists analyze the performance of nations and issue annual updates. It was in the 2008 report that the OECD first warned that the intense concentration of economic and political activity on the tar sands was actually hurting the Canadian economy overall.

This is due to a well-known phenomenon first experienced in the Netherlands. When the Netherlands discovered rich off-shore natural gas, the boom in production had the effect of increasing the value of the Dutch guilder. It did this to such a degree that the manufacturing sector in the Netherlands was devastated. Exports cost too much. While one part of the economy was doing well—other portions were suffering. This became known as Dutch Disease.

Norway avoided it by taking all the oil and gas revenues out of circulation and putting them in a heritage fund. Despite the fact that Norway patterned its plan on Peter Lougheed’s vision, Ralph Klein cancelled the vision. Alberta now has $14 billion in a heritage fund and is in deficit. Canada came down with Dutch Disease. In fact, some economists estimate that for every job created in the oil sands, another was lost elsewhere in Canada. Well before the September 2008 recession, Canada had lost over 300,000 jobs in manufacturing and nearly 100,000 more in pulp and paper. In order to rebalance the Canadian economy, the OECD recommended a go-slow approach in the tar sands and the implementation of a national carbon tax. The carbon tax, plus cutting subsidies to fossil fuel production (an estimated $2.8 billion/year in Canada), would have the effect of slowing down tar sands development, getting the Canadian dollar unplugged from the price of a barrel of oil, as well as helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Last week, the International Energy Agency made essentially the same observations about Canada’s skewed economic picture and offered the same prescription: slow down tar sands development, kill fossil fuel subsidies and put in place a price for carbon. (See ‘World Energy Outlook, 2010,’ IEA.)

The astonishing thing about this global debate on Canada’s economic health and the extent to which it is undermined by the tar sands is that Canadians do not even know the debate is taking place. We continue to swallow the outrageous whopper that the tar sands are an engine of growth for the whole country.

And when we do discuss the tar sands, we have a nonsense debate presented as a zero sum game of ‘shut them down’ or ‘keep them.’ Instead, we should be asking if we should develop the tar sands beyond the current 1.3 million barrels of oil a day, and if so, how? And should we allow expansion in the absence of a national energy strategy?So here we are—the alleged ‘energy super power’— wasting more than half of the energy we burn, exporting to beat the band while importing 54% of what we use, canceling the support for renewable energy, while protecting the taxpayer subsidies to the wealthiest companies on earth. Thanks to the demonized Trudeau National Energy Plan, decades later, we are operating ad hoc. We have gone from ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ to ‘scrapers of bitumen and wasters of water’ and our economy is getting distorted in the process.

Let’s start using those dangerous words—‘national’ ‘energy’ and ‘strategy’—in the same sentence again. Let’s push for a sensible energy plan for all Canadians.

Elizabeth May, Order of Canada, is the Leader of the Green Party of Canada and nominated candidate for Saanich Gulf Islands.

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Given the clout of the Australian mining giant BHP Billiton, the largest mining company in the world, it is likely that the $38.6 billion (US) takeover of Potash Corp will succeed. It will be reviewed to determine if Canada receives a ‘net benefit’ under the Investment Canada Act. But as only one takeover since 2007 has been turned down—for the space division of Vancouver-based MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates, to a US firm—it is likely this one will be rubber-stamped.

So another resource company will move out of Canadian control.

The list of iconic Canadian corporations that are Canadian-no-longer is fairly shocking. Since 2007, we have lost Hudson Bay, Inco, Falconbridge, Dofasco, Alcan, and Stelco, to name the largest. 2007 was the previous all- time high of foreign takeovers, but 2010 has a larger number of transactions already. Despite reviews to ensure a ‘net benefit’, the track record is not reassuring—US Steel did not honour promises to Stelco workers, and Brazilian Vale did not keep its commitments to former Inco workers.

Such takeovers usually pit nationalists against investors. Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, argued, ‘This [the Potash Corp takeover] is the wrong way to go. When you hand over all the power over these resources to international investors, be they backed by a large country or just private investors, you lose control, you lose the ability to take care of your local economy, your local environment.’

Meanwhile, business leaders claim it is good for Canada because we are short of capital—although some are not as sanguine. Dominic D’Alessandro, while he was still CEO of Manulife Financial, worried that we might ‘all wake up one day and find that as a nation, we have lost control of our affairs.’

When you look at a graph of the foreign takeovers of Canadian corporations, you would be entitled to wonder why it suddenly spiked in 2007. The reason for the sudden surge in Canadian companies being the target of hostile takeovers is not much discussed. Nor are the economic implications for our productivity as a country.

It turns out there are a lot of very interesting and complex interactions beyond the nationalist argument. There is an argument that Canadian companies started being gobbled up at an unprecedented rate by foreign giants because Stephen Harper broke his promise not to tax income trusts. This may seem too obscure to be credible, but as long as corporations could convert profits to trusts, they had sufficient cash to withstand takeover bids. Once Stephen Harper broke the promise to never tax income trusts, not only did many Canadian seniors lose their savings, the bonanza of takeovers began.

Right after the taxing of income trusts, Penn West’s CEO predicted that foreign takeovers would increase in the energy sector. ‘Where you’ve seen a Canadianization of the energy industry, it will go the other way, there will be a lot of purchases,’ said William Andrew, chief executive officer of Penn West, on November 2, 2006 (Bloomberg, ‘Canada’s Trust Tax May Spark Oil Industry Takeovers.’) Sure enough, on August 24, 2010, it was announced that Penn West Energy Trust PWT.UN-T had signed an $850- million natural gas joint venture in British Columbia with Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp.

Another Harper government change encouraging more takeovers was smuggled into the 2009 Budget Implementation Act. The Investment Canada Act was amended so that only acquisitions of more than $1 billion, are reviewed. A one billion dollar purchase looks like peanuts as we watch the potash takeover, but any firm sold for less than one billion is no longer reviewed at all.

The effect of all the foreign purchases of previously Canadian companies was to drive up foreign direct investment (FDI). That indicator is generally seen as positive. The growth in the tar sands also increased FDI. But there are downsides to that kind of growth (making no comment on the environmental costs). With a higher FDI and higher oil exports, the loonie rose to heights not seen since the early 1970s. That led to a collapse in export- dependent sectors. Pulp and paper and manufacturing took big hits, with over 300,000 jobs lost in manufacturing alone. And these job losses were before the 2008 recession.

In its 2008 Report to Canada, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned that our economy was being increasingly skewed to tar sands production, risking the other regions and other sectors. That phenomenon is called ‘Dutch Disease,’ after the negative impacts of early development by the Netherlands in North Sea oil. The OECD warned Canada to avoid Dutch Disease and go slow in the tar sands.

Sensible economic strategies take all of Canada into consideration; all regions and the need for a diversified economy. The fire sale of Canadian industries is not only an issue of national sovereignty. It has an important impact on a wide range of economic indicators, including productivity. As more jobs are lost in resource and manufacturing sectors, the job market shifts to service jobs. Our declining productivity rate, now falling well behind the US, is also attached to losing our own corporations.

Hanging on to Canadian corporations, controlling our destiny is more than high-minded rhetoric. It has a lot to do with Canadian competitiveness, productivity, and a strong economy in all parts of the nation.

Elizabeth E. May is the nominated candidate for the Green Party of Canada in Saanich Gulf Islands. She lives in Sidney.

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