Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2021-05-10 15:50 [p.6969]

Madam Speaker, very quickly I would add that we did canvass the issue in an emergency debate. It is a legitimate concern of the State of Michigan to protect the waters of the Great Lakes, but we all agree a solution must be found. This is an existing route and it should be maintained by one means or another.

I would say this very quickly to the hon. member. He mentioned in debate the other night that losing the energy chapter of NAFTA in the new CUSMA somehow hurt Canada’s energy security. I actually believe it is the opposite since that section only served to ensure that whatever quantity of fossil fuels or any product Canada was exporting to the U.S. would have to be maintained in perpetuity for those energy products. For instance, even if we were running out of our supplies of natural gas we would be required to continue to sell whatever share the U.S. got at its highest level. Would he not agree this is an improvement to have autonomy?

Greg McLean (Calgary Centre)
2021-05-10 15:51 [p.6969]

Madam Speaker, that is a good question. The actual terms of the energy agreement in the former NAFTA was a proportional sharing agreement. It was not an absolute sharing agreement to the highest levels that we provide to the U.S.; it was a proportional sharing agreement so that if in some emergency or international incident we had to cut back one-quarter to the U.S. we would be incumbent to cut back one-quarter of our own supplies, as would the U.S. if we think about the way this product goes across the borders in both its raw and finished states. It is called a treaty for a reason, so that we can get some solidity on our energy security as an economy going forward.

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Madam Speaker, the debate so far today has been contaminated by so many claims that are contrafactual. In other words, the facts are clear, but the conversation in this place is ignoring them.

For instance, the claim was made that shipping bitumen is safer in a pipeline. The opposite is true.

When the question at issue is the safety of pipelines versus trains, the critical point is to know what product is being shipped. If it is Bakken shale, which is what blew up in Lac-Mégantic, it is clear it should not be on a train, but solid bitumen can only be put in a pipeline once it has been made more dangerous by adding diluent, which doubles the shipment times as a result of making it into a substance that can flow. Diluted bitumen in a pipeline, once spilled, cannot be cleaned up, but solid bitumen on a train is the safest way to move solid bitumen. That is relevant to the first non-fact.

The second non-fact is the idea that diluted bitumen can be cleaned up. The member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley already mentioned this point, but let me point out two incontrovertible scientific studies that were ignored by the National Energy Board.

I intervened in the National Energy Board process. The process was flawed from the get-go by lack of procedural fairness and the abuse of the rights of intervenors in that process, and the courts will rule on that. However, I do need to say that the National Academy of Sciences in the United States—their premier scientific body—and the Royal Society of Canada expert panel both found that bitumen mixed with diluent does not, at this point, have any science to justify the claim that it can be cleaned up. It cannot. It still is not cleaned up in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, and no matter how much we now hear from Liberals what we used to hear from Conservatives, the very well-modulated Kennedyesque tones do not make non-facts into facts.

…

Elizabeth May

Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to be able to put a question to my friend from Cariboo—Prince George. He is my friend. I do not say that merely as a nicety. We are friends. However, I do not agree with him that this project is in the national interest.

It is important for Canadians to know that when the National Energy Board reviewed the Kinder Morgan project, it refused to hear evidence from Unifor, the largest union representing workers in the oil sands. It refused to hear evidence from Unifor, because the National Energy Board ruled that jobs and the economy were outside its mandate in reviewing the project. Therefore, it cannot be said that the economic impact of this project has been reviewed.

It is interesting to know that what Unifor wanted to present to the National Energy Board was evidence that the Trans Mountain pipeline, Kinder Morgan’s expansion, would hurt Canadian jobs and cost Canadian jobs.

I would ask my hon. colleague if he does not agree with me that we should follow the plan for the expansion and development of the oil sands that came from Peter Lougheed. That was the era when the idea was put forward that Alberta’s economy would benefit from mining bitumen and processing it in Alberta. The reason this will cost Canadian jobs, according to Unifor, is that shipping raw bitumen to refineries in other countries will hurt Canadian jobs and actually lead to the closing of the Chevron refinery in Burnaby, because it does not have the capacity to process raw bitumen.

Why do the Conservatives prefer creating jobs in other countries, in refineries in other countries, rather than processing the material and creating jobs in Alberta?

Todd Doherty – Cariboo—Prince George, BC

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague mentioned, she is a friend, and from time to time, her interventions are interesting and well thought out. I always enjoy listening to her in the House.

I cannot speak to the comments Unifor made and its position on Kinder Morgan. I will not speak to that. I vehemently dispute my hon. colleague’s assertion that Conservatives are all about shipping jobs overseas and closures and whatever the question was insinuating. Clearly, the Conservatives are all about free trade and making sure that our suppliers and producers in Canada are able to access every market possible, creating not just jobs but great-paying jobs right here in Canada, and ensuring that our products get to market. Whether at home or abroad, Conservatives are all about—

…..

Elizabeth May

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to my hon. colleague, as the member of Parliament for Saanich—Gulf Islands where my constituents are overwhelmingly against this project, I intervened before the National Energy Board on their behalf. I went through all 23,000 pages of so-called evidence from Kinder Morgan and I will say without a shadow of a doubt, most of what is being claimed in the House is nonsense. There was no rigorous review. There was no rigorous science. What science exists was rejected by the National Energy Board as coming too late in the process and therefore unfair to Kinder Morgan to accept.

The overwhelming evidence is that bitumen mixed with diluents cannot be cleaned up. Therefore, having a wonderful, so-called world-class oil spill response program is nonsense when there is no technology known by science, including Canada’s premier scientific academy, the Royal Society of Canada, to deal with a substance that separates in a marine environment with bitumen sinking and the volatile diluents, which include benzene which is cancer causing, entering the atmosphere. We literally have no technology to clean this stuff up.

Would my hon. friend from New Brunswick and the federal Liberals be willing to wait so that a decent, rigorous environmental review can be done by the Government of British Columbia?

TJ Harvey – Tobique—Mactaquac, NB

Mr. Speaker, I completely 100% respect my hon. colleague’s concerns. What is important about the environment we have here in the House is that we can have robust discussions about a variety of topics recognizing that we are not always going to completely agree with each other’s opinions. I do not completely agree with my hon. colleague’s opinions. The reason is that we have done our due diligence. We have recognized the potential of this project given its merits. We have taken into consideration the effects on indigenous communities. We have consulted with indigenous communities. We have consulted with the people of British Columbia.

The National Energy Board has done its due diligence and approved this project. It is our responsibility to respect that decision and recognize the economic potential that we could have from this project, while taking into consideration the effects on the environment and the communities in that area.

I am really proud to say that I am part of a government that has taken those into consideration. I sit on the natural resources committee with hon. colleagues from both sides of the House and we have had robust discussions over the last year about the process and about consulting with Canadians and indigenous communities. I am happy to say that I think that within our committee we have come to a lot of general agreements across party lines. That speaks not only to the strength of this government and our approach but also to the strength of committees.

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Rather, it is one of a family of existential afflictions, including a massive and accelerating loss of biodiversity, acute ecological overshoot, and intensifying social inequities – emergent from the same underlying pathology. And while some climate mitigation pathways address multiple symptoms synergistically, others exacerbate them.

We find ourselves at a crossroads, in need of a map clearly depicting the landscape and a compass to guide us. In this talk I’ll introduce one such map – a framework of ‘planetary boundaries’ … and one such compass – the concept of a safe operating space for all people. What yet remains is the active participation of a broad spectrum of society to keep the full suite of so- called “wicked” socio-environmental problems clearly in focus as we plot a course forward.

Dr. Robert Davies is a Utah-trained physicist and educator whose work focuses on synthesizing and communicating a broad range of research – including climate, energy, agriculture, economics, and complex systems. His published works include research in the fields of spacecraft / space environment interactions; the fundamental nature of light and information; and Earth’s climate system. He is also co-creator of The Crossroads Project, a collaborative communication project combining a hard science narrative with evocative imagery and powerful music, bringing to bear the power of performance art on the topic of human sustainability.

Dr. Davies is an Associate of the Utah Climate Center and adjunct professor in Utah State University’ Department of Plants, Soils and Climate. He has taught on the faculty of three universities; worked as project scientist for Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory; as technical liaison for NASA’s International Space Station project; and served as an officer and meteorologist in the United States Air Force. He lives and works in Logan.

Rob Davies, Physicist, Utah Climate Center daviesre@mac.com

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The keynote, based on the book ‘Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation’ assert that four technology categories will disrupt energy and transportation by:

1- Batteries / Energy Storage
2- Electric Vehicles
3- Self-Driving Vehicles
4- Solar Energy

The outcome of the Clean Disruption is that by 2030:

• All new vehicles will be electric.
• All new vehicles will be autonomous (self-driving).
• Oil will be obsolete
• Coal, natural gas and nuclear will be obsolete
• 80+ per cent of parking spaces will be obsolete.
• Individual car ownership will be obsolete.
• All new energy will be provided by solar (and wind)

Clean Disruption is a technology disruption. Just like digital cameras disrupted film and the web disrupted publishing, Clean Disruption is inevitable and it will be swift.

Copyright © 2016 by Tony Seba

More info at: http://tonyseba.com

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The EIS was dense and lengthy. It was a policy wonkish document. When the NEB report on Enbridge came out I couldn’t help but to contrast the approach taken by two different nations and their regulators. The NEB produced a PR document — complete with pretty pictures, but with a dearth of evidence — to boost a foregone conclusion: the NEB would approve the Enbridge pipeline. As I plowed through the EPA advice to State Department on Keystone, it was equally clear that there was no foregone conclusion. Secretary of State John Kerry could go either way in his advice to the U.S. President.

Last year, Joe Oliver and Gary Doer should have read the EPA report before praising it. Had they done so, they might have noticed the finding that Keystone would not boost GHG only if the price of a barrel of oil remained above $100. If prices dropped to $80/barrel the report found that building Keystone would boost oil sands expansion and thus be a significant contributor to global warming. Gary Doer’s recent attack on the EPA was shockingly undiplomatic. Suddenly the same report he once praised, he attacked as dishonest. I wonder if being Canada’s Ambassador to the United States is really worth Gary Doer’s loss of personal integrity. It must be humiliating to berate the U.S. Secretary of State claiming the EPA “ignores a decade of Canadian achievement in cutting greenhouse gas emissions,” when the EPA report had not ignored the evidence. It cited Environment Canada statistics that confirmed Canada would entirely miss our Copenhagen target.

Meanwhile, some other energy prices are tumbling with less notice. For global energy watchers there is game-changing news in the plummeting price of wind and solar. Several international reports this fall analyzed the levelized cost of energy. Reports from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), investment bank Sanford Bernstein, and financial firm Lazard came to a remarkably similar conclusion: in some regions renewable energy is now competitive with fossil fuels.

The “levelized cost” is a measurement based on the ratio of the lifetime costs of a power plant to the amount of electricity it will generate. The levelized cost factors in all costs – construction, fuel, financing, etc. It does not include subsidies. The drastic drop in the price of renewable energy, particularly solar, is big news. The cost of solar has dropped as much as 60% in only the last five years. In parts of the U.S. solar is already competitive with fossil fuels.

There are caveats of course. It is still cheaper to keep an existing coal plant running than build a new solar or wind facility, but the fact remains that in some regions, including in South East Asia, the cost of solar is competitive with the cheapest and dirtiest of fossil fuels – coal.

The impact globally of cheap wind and solar is still relatively small. But the smart money is looking at what happens in a decade.

Bernstein explained, “…we have previously calculated how large the solar sector would need to be in order to become a material share of incremental energy supply each year and therefore begin to displace high-cost oil and gas supply and start to depress prices.”

“We estimate that the solar industry would need to be an order of magnitude larger than it is today to have this kind of impact. At the point where solar is displacing a material share of incremental oil and gas supply, global energy deflation would become inevitable: technology (with a falling cost structure) would be driving prices in the energy space. But even on an aggressive view, this could take the better part of a decade.”

Bernstein notes that within a decade, solar could drive down demand for LNG from China and the rest of Asia and depress demand for natural gas in the US, Europe and Australia. And he points out the obvious. When large energy multinationals see this shift as inevitable, they won’t wait until they are hemorrhaging profits from unwanted fossil fuel production: they will switch to cheaper renewables.

Last year was the first year in which global investment in renewable energy was larger than investment in fossil fuels. We are nearing the tipping point. So while our prime minister shills for a pipeline to the Gulf of Mexico to ship out unprocessed bitumen, global investors are shifting their bets. Canada is the only country on earth not a member of the International Renewable Energy Agency. Maybe Harper and company haven’t noticed these reports. Maybe Christy Clark hasn’t realized the long-term bet on LNG is a bad bet for BC. But Canadians better start noticing that betting on fossil fuels is not only stoking the furnace on future climate disasters; in purely economic terms, it’s stupid.

Originally published in the Hill Times.

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Central to our policies is understanding that there is no conflict between environment and economy.

A smart economy is one that is resilient. A smart economy is diversified, less vulnerable to global shifts. A smart economy enriches localized value chains, producing more goods and employing more Canadians. According to numerous studies, notably Michael Porter’s work at Harvard, the more ambitious environmental standards and regulations are adopted, the more competitive and productive is your economy.

Most Canadians enjoy one of the highest qualities of life of any people in the world. We are blessed with abundant resources and a skilled and educated workforce.

While thanks to a regulated banking system we endured the 2008 financial melt-down better than many other countries, our economic indicators are flat-lining. Our employment picture is relatively stagnant. Youth unemployment is particularly worrying, as double the national level.
We face a serious crisis of lack of productivity. Productivity is a measure of innovation and investment in research and development. We are falling far behind the United States for the first time since productivity was measured.

Since the 1970s, our economy has shifted from a majority of our exports being manufactured goods to our current majority of exports being unprocessed raw materials. With this shift we have lost Canadian jobs in “value-added” but we have also lost ground in productivity. Raw resource production as a sector invests far less in Research and Development (R and D) and innovation than manufacturing. The Harper Conservatives have increasingly skewed our economy towards the export of fossil fuels. Putting all our eggs in the bitumen basket was never good economic policy. The dropping price for a barrel of oil makes this more transparent, but even if oil prices rebound, the threat to Canada’s productivity remains a real drag on our economic health.

As Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist has said, “Productivity may not be everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything.”

According to the Conference Board of Canada, Canada has slipped in productivity to 13th out of 16 countries studied. So while we are still ahead of Belgium in productivity, we have fallen behind Switzerland, Sweden, the U.S., Germany, Finland, Japan and more. R and D is not kicking in, despite a broad suite of policy changes aimed at stimulating such investments from the private sector. Corporate tax cuts have not resulted in improvements in productivity. Nor have the so-called “job creators,” the spin used to explain dropping Canada’s tax rate on its largest and most profitable corporations, re-invested its avoided tax windfall into job creation. Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada, has derided the corporate sector for allowing huge amounts of cash to build up in their bank accounts. Carney labeled it the “dead money.” It is now over $630 billion – amounting to approximately 35% of our GDP.

Surely, we can adjust the corporate tax rate, now half that of the US. And we can direct funds to innovators and R and D. One winner for investment is Sustainable Development Technology Canada. SDTC has leveraged significant investment in clean tech R and D. This is one of the fastest growing sectors globally. Canada has huge room to grow jobs and wealth in this sector, while also improving our overall productivity.

It is essential that we become far more creative in reducing our unbalanced dependence on trade with U.S., and that we significantly invest in a National Clean Tech/Energy program to remain price competitive and sanction-free. And finally that we conserve natural resources and invest more in long-term education and re-training.

This generation has the potential to capitalize on the single biggest business opportunity in human history – the shift to a post-fossil fuel economy. Whether this is driven by the need to end the recession through economic stimulus, high energy extraction costs or collapsing oil prices, strategic geopolitical threats to foreign oil, the climate crisis or all of them combined, the country that mobilizes resources to develop and commercialize smarter technologies (e.g. alternate fuels, renewable energy, and energy efficiency) will survive and thrive.

Canada should be that country.

Originally published in the Hill Times.

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I couldn’t agree more with Mayor Fortin that citizens of southern Vancouver Island must have a say, and a definitive say, about the proposal to dramatically increase bitumen-loaded tankers through our waters. I am also an intervenor in the Kinder-Morgan National Energy Board hearing process. By reducing the process to largely a paper exercise, by eliminating the opportunity for oral cross-examination, the weakness of Kinder Morgan’s evidence may escape public exposure.

I first appeared before the National Energy Board as counsel in 1980. It is a quasi-judicial body and cross-examination is an essential element of the process. In fact, only under Harper has the NEB started denying the right of cross-examination. The fact that Stephen Harper wants the NEB to report quickly is not sufficient justification for eliminating the rights of intervenors. I have retained respected lawyer Clayton Ruby to represent me to challenge the process if cross-examination is not allowed.

I have worked my way through the 15,000 pages of Kinder Morgan’s application. I believe its length is intended to impress and intimidate. It is long because it is duplicative and contains masses of irrelevant and bogus material. I have found some amazing bloopers. They claim that dilbit (the mixture of bitumen and toxic condensate they are shipping) will behave just like crude in the marine environment. We know crude is a disaster when spilled, but we know from the Enbridge Kalamazoo River spill that dilbit is worse and impossible to clean up. In an appendix, I found the technical report setting out KM’s evidence. It was a test conducted in Alberta over a thirteen day period. Contractors for Kinder Morgan put salt water in tanks and then dumped in dilbit. Then they stirred and took other action they claimed approximated wind and wave action in the natural environment. The tanks held 26.5 m3 (7,000) gallons. Additional tests were done in a 1m x1m x 1m fish tank and in plastic five gallon pails. The five gallon pail and fish tank research went awry, even according to the researchers:

“Errors occurred in the fish tank, because the spill was installed in a manner that resulted in a large amount of dispersion at the outset, due to air ingestion, and the resulting slick was larger than the ruler and developed an asymmetric form.”

In other words, this so-called research was conducted by a team over 13 days that didn’t have a ruler the right size to measure a spill in a five gallon bucket. That is not the only example of shoddy work in the KM application. Another intervenor spotted that the model KM used to forcast oil spill dispersion, which KM claimed in the report was a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved method, was a draft EPA publication which had failed at peer review. KM had emoved the word “draft” from its submission. This is tantamount to fraud.

We must not allow the NEB process to be a paper exercise. We need to be in the room with the right to cross-examine Kinder Morgan.

Elizabeth May, O.C.
Member of Parliament
Saanich-Gulf Islands

Leader
Green Party of Canada

Originally printed in the Victoria Times-Colonist.

The post Letter to the Editor: Give Capital Region a Say on Pipeline appeared first on Elizabeth May.

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.

“Quite simply, this Bill will allow oil and gas exploration inside a National Park and drilling, including fracking, underneath Sable Island itself, said May. “I’m disappointed that this has already passed the Nova Scotia Legislature, but we will absolutely not support S-15 until these provisions are removed.”

Oversight for Sable Island is divided between Nova Scotia and Ottawa. Both levels of government have introduced identical legislation to create a national park on this wild, iconic island. Nova Scotia’s bill received Royal Assent in early May and the Harper Conservatives have introduced time allocation to make S-15 law before the summer recess.

After years of negotiation, ExxonMobil agreed to give up its decades-old rights to drill on the island, but it insisted on keeping its horizontal drilling rights to natural gas below the island one nautical-mile away and beyond. It would also retain the right to do seismic testing on the island.

Furthermore, Bill S-15 would give the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board, whose mandate is to expand oil and gas production, unprecedented power to make regulations inside a National Park, setting a dangerous precedent and undermining the integrity of our entire national parks system.

“Local environmentalists and the general public are against oil and gas exploration and extraction on Sable Island, especially once it’s a National Park,” said May. “We all want to see Sable Island protected, but it is tortured logic to think that we would protect this rare and pristine area by allowing oil exploration. We must get this legislation right.”

There is pressure to establish a new identity for Sable lsland because the Canadian Coast Guard is withdrawing its services and there is no other government agency to replace it. As a national park, Sable Island would come under the jurisdiction and protection of Parks Canada which has been weakened by the Harper Conservatives.

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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.

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