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Jason Kenney just announced a year-long inquiry into opposition to the expansion of Alberta's tar sands, including opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline saying, “Its main tactics have been disinformation and defamation, litigation, public protests and political lobbying." Read more
Jason Kenney is complaining about political lobbying?
- Research by the CCPA-BC showed that between 2011 and 2016 combined BC and federal lobbying efforts totaled 826 contacts over six years (not to mention those in Alberta that we do not have information about). This amounts to about one contact every two business days during that period. Read more
- The largest five stock market listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200 million a year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change. Read more
Jason Kenney is complaining about grassroots groups?
- Resource Works is an industry-funded British Columbian organization that pushes for petroleum projects. Strategy document obtained by Maclean’s shows its priority for 2019 is to “work with major groups on showing the contributions and risks of jeopardizing B.C.’s and Alberta’s oil sands, oil and gas pipelines and LNG and natural gas.” Part of the plan is to put pressure on environmentalists. “Put more scrutiny on organizations that are going after resource sector—transparency of the donors, publicize,” the document says.
- Resource Works is mostly funded by the Business Council of BC, but documents obtained by Maclean’s show, though, that Resource Works is partly funded by Devon Energy, an Oklahoma oil company that donates millions to American Republicans. Devon provided Resource Works with $27,500 of its projected budget of $505,000 in 2019. Read more
- Astroturf groups like Canada Proud, Canada Strong, Oil Sands Proud, Canada Action and a host of others are funded by industry to fight any regulation of the oil and gas industry and smear those working for the environment or the climate. Read more
Jason Kenney is complaining about "foreign-funded interference"?
- Awkward fact, it's not "foreign-funded" groups that have stymied pipeline construction, it's the courts.
- The Federal Court of Appeals condemned not just the failures of the Canadian government on Indigenous consultations, but the refusal of the NEB to consider marine impacts of increased tanker traffic through the coastal waters that are home to the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales.
- Canadians funded the Pull Together initiative that raised almost a million dollars to fund the litigation that was eventually successful opposing Enbridge's Northern Gateway and then another almost a million to support the Nations and litigants opposing Kinder Morgan's, now Canada's, Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project. Read more
Jason Kenney is complaining about public protests?
- Free speech is a fundamental value of democracy.
- It is undemocratic, authoritarian, and frankly scary to oppose the right to public protest.
Jason Kenney is complaining about disinformation?
- He said, “We’re so nice, we tend to be apologetic and I think they understood that this country, among all the major energy producers, would be the most easily intimidated by this campaign. And you know what? They were right.” News flash - major oil and gas companies are making record profits, pay their executives large salaries and have well-funded and staffed PR divisions. Read more
- The Alberta government spent millions on ads touting the Trans Mountain pipeline. Read more And More And Even More
Why do we oppose Trans Mountain and expanding the tar sands?
No Consent
The government has a legal duty to consult First Nations, meaningfully.
The Canadian government pledged to fully support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). It calls for Indigenous groups to have the right to free, prior and informed consent before resource development projects proceed across their lands.
Anyone who wants to build a pipeline through Indigneous territory must have the consent of the title holders.
If Jason Kenney has difficulty with this, imagine if you wanted to run a waterslide through a suburban development of 50 backyards. You would need the permission of every homeowner to go through their backyard. The majority does not rule and if one backyard says no, your waterslide is not going through.
New court cases from First Nations have already been filed. This pipeline will not be built. Read more
Spills Risk
Besides polluting the beaches and coastal waters that our coastal economies rely on (think fishing, film and tv production and tourism) the risk to whales, salmon and a host of other fish and animals is grave.
"My concern is, and that of my colleagues, is that a lot of those studies haven't yet been conducted on the basic toxicity that these different bitumen products might have on different organisms in the marine ecosystem.
- Dr. Wendy Palen, Associate Professor of Ecology of Aquatic Communities at Simon Fraser University
Climate
Canada is on track to falling 79 megatons short of its climate targets in 2030 without adding new infrastructure like the Trans Mountain pipeline. New research published in the journal Nature Communications in April 2019 demands that previous pollution estimates of the Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project must be revised upwards by 64%. Read more
All research to calculate the greenhouse gas pollution of the Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project have used this now-outdated data.
A rough estimate shows the revised carbon cost for extraction, processing, and refining the total 890,000 barrels per day of the entire project, including the expansion, to be around 34 - 43 Mt of greenhouse gas pollution every year, or around the emissions of 7,218,684 - 9,129,512 new personal vehicles added to the road every year.
If you include the end user burning and dumping into the atmosphere the climate cost is around 71.1 Mts, about the same as adding 15,095,541 cars to the roads every year.
This is a climate emergency -- and it's time to act like it.
Showing 19 reactions
Cecile Lemay
Surrey BC
1- Pipelines spill oil,
and a pipeline running through BC’s unstable slopes
and subject to the imminent tectonic adjustment
will inevitably be sheered.
2- the market for dirty oil is dropping and will soon be negligible;
investing in this pipeline is like building a buggy whip factory
after the Model A has begun to be mass produced
3- arresting First Nations elders for expressing opposition
is a very different thing from consultation and consent
4- only a fool or a liar would claim
that we can reduce CO2 by increasing production of fossil fuels.
Rather than “investing every dollar earned in clean energy transition”
it would be far more practical and intelligent
to invest the cost of the TMX project,
along with the subsidies now given to Big Oil
directly and immediately into clean energy technology.
The Trudeau government is betraying the Paris commitments,
betraying the people of Earth,
betraying the First Nations and continuing the genocide against them,
and betraying the citizens of Canada
by accelerating climate change for the profits of foreign investors.
A family of tradition to opposition to projects such as the gathering of certain people into camps back in the 1940’s in Germany did not sit well with the government powers then.
If anyone needs investigating in the Trans-Mountain matter it is the back room dealers of the Canadian Government who bailed out Enbridge of this insane project. No one in BC needs to risk a spill of the tar sands/bitumen soup you wish to push through our mountains and float to China. For heaven’s sake, do you not see how ridicule it is? Leave it in the ground. Have an inquiry instead of the disaster you have created at Fort MacMurray already…while also seeing the impacts you are having on the good people at Fort Chippewan.
Mr. Kenney, as Mr. Trudeau, you are insane to even question the rights of the BC First Nations in this matter. The fact former “prime” minister Harper went directly to work for the petroleum industry after losing his last elections speaks volumes to your intents and Trudeau’s. The word “prime” relating obviously to “priming the pump”, the oil pump.
And by all means send your investigators my way and I’ll be happy to share in detail with them the source of my $ to the Coast Protectors of BC.
I have heard that you’re setting up an expensive commission to examine the reasons people are against TMX construction. Let me help save Albertans a lot of money and give you a straightforward answer free of charge. We fear the TMX will help spur the production of bitumen, some of the most polluting fuel on the planet both in terms of production of a by-product, methane, an extremely toxic greenhouse gas, and in terms of carbon dioxide production when refined and used.
Let me make it simple. We all know that the climate is going to hell in a hand basket. Alberta’s extreme wildfires alone should clinch it but for further proof, look no further than the extreme flooding in eastern Canada and around other parts of the world, the prolonged heat wave in Europe and elsewhere, the droughts in Central America and parts of Africa, the melting of glaciers in Alberta’s Columbia ice field, Antartica or Greenland, and the melting of the permafrost in northern Canada.
So here’s the lowdown … WE WANT OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO LIVE!!!!!
Sincerely,
Pam FitzGerald
P.S. I was born in Canada and I am a Canadian citizen. I have given a significant amount to the charities in question.
Haven’t we banished slavery in Canada on August first 1834?
I got news for you… It’s back!
We currently live in a country where permanent indebtedness has now a right of residence.
Permanent indebtedness is the new disguise slavery has taken around the world these last decades.