Once the video was on Youtube, and subsequently discussed on every TV news show, Wilks’ website posted a statement of complete support for C-38.

The rally, amazingly well attended, was a boost to us as we went back into the House. It was the last time I saw daylight until Friday morning. The rally’s placards called for ‘13 heroes.’ If the search for heroes is defined by Conservative MPs voting for C-38 amendments, then there are none in Ottawa. However, that is not the case.

David Wilks was attacked in the media for caving, for failing to challenge the Prime Minister directly, despite his clear integrity and unhappiness with the ‘system.’ His statements, despite capitulation and retraction, constituted a kind of heroism in a system where everyone seems to be afraid of earning the Prime Minister’s wrath.

Currently, Ottawa is in the throes of oppression. Scientists are muzzled, but why don’t they defy bosses and speak out anyway? They are afraid of losing their jobs. Some in industry have told me they avoid public criticism of the Prime Minister because they have children working in the civil service. They are afraid for their children’s jobs. Reporters have been cowed by higher ups in their media corporations telling them to lay off criticizing the PM. They are afraid for their jobs (several reporters have lost their jobs for offending the PMO). Little wonder the members of Harper’s caucus are silent. They know from Helena Guergis’ experience just how painful, and complete, banishment can be.

I want to celebrate people of integrity who lost much by refusing to be silenced. Conservative MPs who stood up to the Prime Minister constitute a short list, and only one is still in the Conservative Caucus.

Former Nova Scotia MP Bill Casey stood on principle and voted against the 2008 budget due to the fact it violated the oil revenue-sharing contract called the Atlantic Accord. He was thrown from caucus. Casey is a man of integrity who paid a big price, but he is not the only one. MP Garth Turner was also thrown from the Conservative Party when he refused to stop blogging on issues that concerned him in 2007.

Sometimes bravery in the Conservative ranks comes from refusing to vote. Albertan James Rajotte, and Ontario MPs Royale Galipeau and Pat Davidson refused to stand with their colleagues to vote that asbestos is safe. Braver to be in the room and refuse to vote, than avoid voting by not being in the House – as a number of Conservatives did.

Speaking out against Harper’s agenda is difficult even for retired MPs. Full marks to the two Progressive Conservative Fisheries Ministers Tom Siddon and John Fraser. They signed the joint letter, with Liberal former ministers Herb Dhaliwal and David Anderson, condemning the gutting of the Fisheries Act in C-38. Former Conservative MP Bob Mills, of Red Deer, was heroic agreeing to speak out to denounce the loss of the National Round Table on Environment and Economy in a press conference I organized against C-38.

The very brave are those who stood on principle to support good public policy only to be fired, forced to quit or have careers stall. The following is a partial list, a brief reminder of people who continue to live without the jobs and careers they deserve.

• The former Deputy Minister of Statistics Canada, Munir Sheikh, who resigned on principle one year ago when his Minister, Tony Clement, claimed that no one in the bureaucracy had warned him that cancelling the Long Form Census would be a huge mistake. He had warned the Minister and he could not live with the lie.
• Linda Keen, former head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, fired for insisting on nuclear safety upgrades at Chalk River.
• Richard Colvin, the diplomat who testified to the violations of international law in the transfer of Afghan detainees. He was berated as a Taliban stooge by the Conservatives.
• Kevin Page, Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has found that merely doing his job–providing fiscal updates to Parliamentarians–has earned the PM’s wrath. He announced that he will not stay on beyond his first term.

Meanwhile, he has warned the Prime Minister that he will go to court to force release of budgetary information he believes Parliamentarians need, unless it is released before the House resumes

The Search Goes On

So many people in Saanich-Gulf Islands, and on the Coast in general, are active and engaged. With what remains of the summer, can you contact a friend or relative living in a Conservative-held riding?

Stephen Harper is planning a second omnibus bill to implement Budget 2012 for the fall. We need to urge Conservative Members of Parliament to push back and refuse to support a repeat version of C-38. We need more heroes.

The post The Search for Heroes appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Given limitations of words and space, let me cover some of the main points.

Budget 2012 cuts government spending, overall, by about $5 billion for next year. (Green Scissors, my submission to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, cut by $6 billion, but went after very different things—like government advertising and the Prime Minister’s Office budget.)

Budget 2012 delivers the expected news of increasing the age of entitlement to Old Age Security to 67, while deeply cutting CIDA, CBC, Environment Canada, Statistics Canada, Parks Canada, Library and Archives, and DND (cuts there largely due to the end of involvement in Afghanistan). It also cuts $7.5 million from Elections Canada, $14 million from tourism, and over $50 million from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (leading to the announced closing of the Canada Plant Health Centre on East Saanich Road). It also did away with the youth volunteer-service program, Katimavik.

There is no mention of climate change. The hoped for extension of the eco-Energy home energy retrofit programme was not to be, ditto hopes for funding to keep the Polar Environmental Arctic Research Laboratory–Canada’s critical research lab on Ellesmere Island and the world’s closest to the North Pole–from closing. No reprieve there, nor for funding of climate science. Scientific research through the National Research Council is now directed to focus on work that is ‘business-led and industry-relevant.’ (I can just imagine what Einstein would have said about that.)

Also announced in the budget was the surprise termination of the National Round Table on Environment and Economy– the only effort remaining within the government to develop consensus between industry and environmentalists to pursue sustainable development. As I was feverishly reading the budget document in ‘lock-up’ (the invitational, embargoed preview of the budget), I scanned for any reference to climate change, I got excited when I saw the word ‘climate,’ only to focus and realize it was a discussion of the ‘investment climate.’

Instead, Budget 2012 commits the country to expansion of fossil fuel production: oil sands, pipelines, super-tankers, seismic testing and off-shore drilling. Consistent with that is the funding of an attack on environmental charities with a new $8 million to spend on going after groups alleged to be conducting ‘political’ advocacy, a charge which has been directed at groups opposing the Enbridge super-tanker scheme.

The budget was very grim news indeed, but did not really prepare me for the introduction of the omnibus Budget Implementation Bill. It’s bizarre tabling was without prior notice—not even the usual advance ‘lock-up’ with technical briefing.

I picked up my copy and made for my desk in the House, where I sat, reading, near tears, for the next three hours. C-38 is over 400 pages repealing, amending or otherwise revising 70 different pieces of federal legislation. Aspects never even hinted at in the budget itself include removing oversight from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, changing entitlement to Employment Insurance (this is still vague but appears to allow refusing EI to anyone if there is any job available, even one not in their field), and allowing the Cabinet to overrule the National Energy Board (NEB).

Not Mentioned In the Budget

Nearly half of the budget implementation bill is directed at rewriting Canada’s foundational environmental laws. The Budget itself never mentioned that the Fisheries Act was to be re-written, gutting habitat protection and restricting federal action in many instances to commercial, recreational, and Aboriginal fisheries. This essentially means that if humans aren’t catching a fish, there is no protection for its habitat.

There nothing was mentioned in the budget speech about the changes to the Species at Risk Act which put the NEB in charge of permitting destruction of endangered species and their habitat along the proposed route of a pipeline; nor about the supplanting of the NEB as arbiter of pipelines under the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The NWPA is amended such that pipelines are no longer considered an obstruction to navigation–even if they are.

Although it was abundantly clear that a large focus was to be ‘streamlining’ the environmental assessment process, the advance hype focused on time limits for hearings. It was nowhere mentioned that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act was to be repealed. C-38 wipes out the entire CEAA and introduces an entirely new law. Under the new act, ‘environmental effects’ (that which is to be studied under a federal EA), is, for many circumstances, restricted to fish and migratory birds.

Not Clear On the Concept

With so many new laws and the repealing of old laws and complex text, the Conservative ministers speaking in the House in support of C-38 frequently claim the budget implementation act will include measures that are simply not there at all, or misstate how the new laws will operate.

I go up to them afterward and, for example, ask ‘I cannot find any reference to increased tanker safety in C-38. Can you show me what section you were referring to?’ Or, ‘I can’t find anything that says environmental reviews will only be transferred to the province if the environmental assessment in that province is ‘as good or better’ than the federal one. Where is that?’ Of course, when I ask these specific questions, it is because I am pretty sure that I haven’t missed anything.

The ministers tend to look back at me, blinking slightly. They mention that it is a very long and complex bill. Yes it is, but I have read it and I missed the section they just told the House was in the Act. Where is it? Then the look on their face is like the ‘lapine’ word from Watership Down for a rabbit caught in headlights on a road: ‘tharn’.

There is much more, but for now, I urge constituents to join growing calls for removal of environmental laws from Bill C-38. The Harper Conservatives have gone too far. Previous Progressive Conservative Fisheries Ministers Tom Siddon and John Fraser have both spoken out against the horrifying changes to the Fisheries Act.

Write letters to the editors of the nation’s newspapers. Contact the other Opposition leaders (Rae and Mulcair) and urge that they join me in a strategy to derail this juggernaut of abuse. For more details about Bill C-38, go to www.elizabethmaymp.ca. Together, we can make Stephen Harper regret taking aim at nature.

The post Budget 2012: environmental laws run over by an omnibus appeared first on Elizabeth May.