Canada must reclaim its role as a world leader

In the mid-1940s, Canada was a principal founder of the United Nations and a Canadian drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then, Canada has built an exceptional international reputation with its commitment to multilateral approaches and solutions to international conflicts.

In 1957, the role of Lester Pearson, then minister of external affairs, earned him the Nobel Peace Prize for developing a solution to end the Suez Canal crisis by proposing a peacekeeping force, the famous Blue Berets. In 1965, Prime Minister Pearson named me as his parliamentary secretary and appointed me to his cabinet two years later.

Under Mr. Pearson’s leadership, Canada called for the end of the bombing of North Vietnam to allow for negotiations to end the conflict. Although armed conflicts are sometimes unavoidable, Canada has traditionally sided with countries that sought peaceful solutions. If, however, there were a NATO or UN mandate for military intervention, as was the case in Iraq in 1990 and a few years later in the former Yugoslavia, Canada always stepped up to meet its international military responsibilities and obligations.

Under Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada pursued independent foreign policy. In 1970, his government established diplomatic relations with China, ahead of the United States. Canada also blazed its own trail, as Mr. Trudeau was among the first to support the struggle of Nelson Mandela against apartheid in South Africa.

Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark, his foreign affairs minister, took the lead in the struggle against apartheid and the movement to free Mr. Mandela. On this point, Mr. Mulroney was not afraid to stand up to Margaret Thatcher and our close ally, Britain. He rightly saw that they were wrong.

Canada has managed to assert repeatedly both its independence and its commitment to international institutions such as the UN and NATO in international relations.

Working within this framework led Canada, during my mandate, to play leading roles on issues such as the Ottawa Treaty, an international convention on the ban of anti-personnel mines, and the establishment of the International Criminal Court. In this same spirit, we also signed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

In 2003, to the dismay of our American and British allies, we refused to go to war in Iraq because the UN refused its consent to what is now universally acknowledged as a big mistake. Canada was noticed and respected for this decision.

However, since then something has happened to Canada’s international reputation. I fear it has been altered and damaged for a long time. In 2010, for the first time, Canada’s bid for a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations was defeated. The next year we sent our planes to bomb Libya, and we are now participating militarily in Iraq and Syria.

After the campaign in Libya – which we now know had disastrous consequences in the region – the Harper government trumpeted Canada’s bombing role with a flyover above Parliament Hill to celebrate our “victory.” This is a ritual normally characteristic of conquering and warlike countries.

Today, with great sadness and shame, I am watching Mr. Harper’s cold-hearted reaction to the tragedy of refugees from Syria and Iraq. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stepped up to the plate, and the world looks upon the generosity of her country with admiration. The same goes for Norway, Sweden and Finland, which have welcomed refugees and do not erect roadblocks to taking them in. Instead they get rid of roadblocks. But not Mr. Harper. He has shamed Canada in the eyes of Canadians and of the international community.

In my travels around the globe, I am regularly asked: What has happened to Canada? What has happened to the advanced, peace-seeking, progressive country Canada once was? What has happened to the country that was a model for peace and stability in a tumultuous world? These questions evoke great sadness in me.

I am sad to see that in fewer than 10 years, the Harper government has tarnished almost 60 years of Canada’s reputation as a builder of peace and progress. During all these years, government leaders, whether Liberal or Progressive Conservative, have sought to understand, engage and influence their international peers, including those with whom they disagreed. They did not try to embarrass or give other countries lessons in good behaviour. Rather, they patiently sought to convince others of the universal values that make our global community a better and safer place to live.

Of course, peaceful dialogue does not always work. War is sometimes unavoidable. But solutions should come from the world community working together – not from a handful of countries acting outside international institutions to which they belong.

Canadians will soon choose their next government. When considering the role of Canada on the world stage, I hope they will choose a government in line with our great tradition of peace-building, initiated by Mr. Pearson and promoted by all of his successors until the arrival of the Harper administration.

Let’s take back our place in the world.

Jean Chrétien

Jean Chrétien is a former Liberal prime minister of Canada (1993-2003)

The Globe and Mail, Sep 12, 2015

Linda McQuaig is right: Fossil fuels should stay in the ground

Background: NDP candidate Linda McQuaig's comment on oilsands stirs up hornet's nest

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-mcquaig-oilsands-reaction-cp-1.3184704

The Highlander

Thursday, September 3, 2015, Issue 201

Dear editor, 

Toronto Centre NDP candidate Linda McQuaig’s reiteration of climate scientists’ call to leave most of the bitumen in the Alberta Tar Sands in the ground in order to meet greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets deserves honest discussion and debate in this election campaign. It does not deserve the empty rhetoric and partisan gamesmanship we’ve seen to date.

The truth is there’s a huge gap between what climate scientists are saying about our growing climate crisis and what our political leadership, including the NDP, is proposing to do about it. McQuaig should be congratulated, not reined in, vilified or ridiculed, for having the courage to raise the climate change implications of continued fossil fuel development. Tar Sands supporters seem to think we can continue to pump ever larger quantities of earth-warming chemicals into the atmosphere without any ecological consequences whatsoever. They are about to find out nature bats last. 

The stakes involved are not simply the economic impact of ending our fossil fuel dependency on Tar Sands corporations and workers, the people and Government of Alberta, but something much, much higher than that: the entire climate system within which human civilization has flourished for the last 10,000 years or so. 

Do we as a country have the capacity to rise above short-term economic and political self-interest to play a significant role in ending the fossil fuel dependency which has caused the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in our atmosphere to rise to over 400ppm? The signing of the UN Framework Agreement on Climate Change in 1992 was supposed to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Instead they’ve risen to the highest levels in over three million years. 

This creates a huge and growing risk of runaway and irreversible change to Earth’s climate system. Nothing less than the future of life on this planet hangs in the balance if we fail to stop denying we’re in a greenhouse gas-induced climate crisis and start acting accordingly. 

James Hansen, one of the world’s preeminent climate scientists, puts it this way in written testimony in support of a recent civil suit filed by young people against the U.S. Government for failure to protect their right to a life-sustaining climate: “It is now clear, as the relevant scientific community has established for some time, that continued high CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning will further disrupt Earth’s climate system, and that, in turn, will impose profound and mounting risks of ecological, economic and social collapse. 

"In my view, our government’s actions and inactions that cause or contribute to those emissions violate the fundamental rights of Sophie, other Youth, and future generations. Those violated rights include the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to property, the right to equal protection under the law, the right to government protection of public trust resources, and the right to retain a fighting chance to preserve a habitable climate system. 

“Our government’s persistent permitting and underwriting of fossil fuel projects serves now to further disrupt the favourable climate system that to date enabled human civilization to develop. In order to preserve a viable climate system, our use of fossil fuels must be phased out as rapidly as is feasible. Only government can ensure this will be done. Instead, our government seeks approval for permitting of fossil fuel projects that would slam shut the narrowing window of opportunity to stabilize climate and ensure a hospitable climate and planet for young people and future generations. These projects only allow our government to shirk its duty. Our government’s permitting of additional, new, or renewed fossil fuel projects is entirely antithetical to its fundamental responsibility to our children and their posterity. Their fundamental rights now hang in the balance.”* 

Of course, Hansen’s comments apply with equal force to the Canadian government. With so much at stake we need to demand concrete science-based proposals for real action on climate change from our politicians during this election campaign. They need to stop pretending that business as usual, with its incessant demand for economic growth, is sustainable on a finite planet with a finite atmosphere. They need to get on with figuring out how we can transition off fossil fuels as fast as our combined human ingenuity can get us there. 

Politicians of all political stripes claim they have the best interests of both the current and future generations at heart. They should prove it by initiating an adult conversation during this campaign about the climate crisis and how we’re going to survive it. 

* Paragraphs 7 and 85 From James E. Hansen, written testimony in the matter Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh M. et al. v. the United States of America et al., United States District Court, District of Oregon, filed August, 11, 2015 in New York City, New York. Hansen’s entire written testimony can be found at this website:  http://www.columbia. edu/~jeh1/mailings/2015/20150812_FINAL_ HANSEN_DEC_FOR_US_DISTRICT_ OREGON_9PM.pdf.

Terry Moore 

VP Environment Haliburton, 

Climate Reality Haliburton

___________________________________
Reprinted with permission

Economist Robyn Allan withdraws from NEB review

Robyn Allan has withdrawn as an intervenor in the federal government’s review of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline and oil tanker expansion project, detailing her reasons for quitting in a scathing letter to the National Energy Board.

Allan is former President and CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, was Vice-President Finance for Parklane Ventures Ltd., and Senior Economist for B.C. Central Credit Union.

Here is the full text of her letter to the secretary of the NEB:

Robyn Allan
Economist
9294 Emerald Drive
Whistler BC
V0N1B9

Sherri Young
Secretary
National Energy Board
517 10th Ave SW
Calgary Alberta
T2R0A8

May 19, 2015 

Dear Ms. Young,

I am withdrawing as an expert intervenor from the National Energy Board review of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project. After dedicating professional expertise for more than a year, pro bono and in good faith, I have concluded that withdrawal is the only course of action. Continued participation endorses a broken system and enables the pretence of due process where none exists.

The review is not conducted on a level playing field. The Panel is not an impartial referee. The game is rigged; its outcome pre-determined by a captured regulator. The NEB’s integrity has been compromised. Its actions put the health and safety of the Canadian economy, society and environment in harm’s way.

The NEB has unconscionably betrayed Canadians through a restricted scope of issues, violated the rules of procedural fairness and natural justice, and biased its decision-making in favour of Kinder Morgan. These are discussed below:

1. Restricted Scope of Issues

(a) Review is not of the Pipeline System
Once expanded, the Trans Mountain system will consist of two pipelines, related storage facilities and a three-berth marine terminal at Westridge dock. The cumulative impact and risk of this entire system is of concern to the public, but not to the NEB. The Panel has excluded from its assessment the impact and risk of the sixty year old legacy line, existing terminals and storage tanks—these are outside the scope of its review.

What the NEB is considering is the impact of the “Project” which only includes the incremental, new, facilities. It is treating the expansion as if it is not part of a larger, and much more vulnerable system, but as if it is being constructed on a stand-alone basis.

It is a well-known aspect of prudent risk analysis that aggregate risk—the risk of the entire system everywhere along that system—is the relevant scope, not a self-serving limitation that restricts the scope of the review to half the system’s potential transport capacity, much less than half the system’s aggregate risk, and less than half its potential negative consequence.

This dangerous limitation in scope is how Kinder Morgan successfully argued that its existing Emergency Management Plan (EMP) documents “are not relevant to the Board’s consideration of the Project…Trans Mountain notes that although BC considers the EMP documents for the existing system to be relevant for the Board in considering this Application, the Board itself has never taken that position.”^[i]

The Panel agrees, “the EMP (Emergency Management Plan) documents relate to the existing facilities that are not the subject of the present Project application…Whether Trans Mountain is meeting its obligations with respect to its EMP for the existing facilities is a matter for the Board to consider outside of the hearing for this Project. The safe operation of the existing Line 1 facilities under current operating conditions is out of scope for this hearing.”^[ii]

At the Northern Gateway proceedings the Panel relied on similar polluted logic to conclude that the Kalamazoo oil spill was irrelevant to informing the Board of the risk, and cost, Enbridge’s project posed to the Canadian public interest.^[iii]

(b) Review Restricted to Applied-for Capacity not Designed Capacity
The new pipeline is designed to carry 780,000 barrels a day of oil (for total system capacity of over 1.1 million barrels a day), but the Panel is restricting its review to the applied-for capacity of 540,000 barrels a day.^[iv]

When Kinder Morgan comes forward to request NEB approval to increase throughput to designed capacity it will not fall within the definition of a designated project under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012. An NEB Act section 52 review will not be required. The impact of an almost fifty percent increase in capacity on Line 2, including the marine traffic it triggers, will never undergo proper scrutiny.

(c) Review Excludes Socio-economic and Environmental Effects of Bitumen Exploitation, Upstream and Downstream Activities
On April 2, 2014, the Board released its List of Issues. Intervenors were offered no opportunity to comment. The Panel excluded economic, environmental and social impact activities that are of significant concern to Canadians. In particular, the Board “does not intend to consider the environmental and socio-economic effects associated with upstream activities, the development of the oil sands, or the downstream use of the oil transported by the pipeline.”^[v]

This means the Board will not consider:

(i) greenhouse gas emissions from the production of diluted bitumen shipped down the pipeline and from its use in foreign markets;

(ii) environmental impacts of tanker traffic beyond a 12 nautical mile territorial sea limit;

(iii) risks and costs of climate change;

(iv) crowding out of economic activity and the erosion of quality of life in British Columbia as English Bay and Burrard Inlet become oil tanker parking lots for Alberta’s heavy oil;

(v) the opportunity cost to the Canadian economy when raw bitumen is exported to foreign markets for upgrading and refining at the expense of value added, job creation, and economic wealth generation in Alberta; and

(vi) the cost to the Canadian economy of a condensate import dependency. Roughly one of every three barrels intended for Trans Mountain’s expansion consists of imported condensate from the US, much of it brought into Canada on Kinder Morgan Cochin. The expansion is pitched to Canadians as a Made-in-Canada heavy oil export strategy when it is in no small part a US condensate export strategy, making its way to foreign markets via Trans Mountain pipeline and our marine waterways.

The Board received Notices of Motion from the City of Vancouver and Parents from Cameron Elementary School in Burnaby requesting expansion of the List of Issues. Ten Intervenors supported the motions, including the Intervenor Robyn Allan.

The Board argued that,“Oil sands projects, including expansions, have and continue to be subject to provincial environmental assessment or combined provincial and federal assessment. This supports the conclusion that the CEAA 2012 does not require the Board to include in its environmental assessment activities that have been so assessed.”^[vi]

The Board provides false assurances. The Board has accepted Kinder Morgan’s supply forecasts in Volume 2 of its Application. These forecasts include production volumes from some projects that have not received regulatory approval, therefore it is not possible that the environmental costs of these projects have been considered. The NEB attempts to lull Canadians into the delusion that they have.

The Board also argues that it “is mindful that the environmental and socio-economic effects of petroleum exploration and production activities in Canada are assessed in other federal and provincial processes that involve those conducting those activities, and that the end use of oil is managed by the jurisdiction within which that use occurs.”^[vii] This spurious reasoning is nonsense since subsection 52 (2) of the NEB Act grants the Board “authority to determine what is relevant to it in fulfilling its mandate”.^[viii]

The duplicity of the Board becomes glaringly apparent when its reasons to exclude upstream activities, oil sands extraction, and downstream use are viewed in light of the Board’s decision on marine transport issues. The Board has no authority with respect to marine shipping, navigation, safety and spill prevention and yet, the Board included “the potential environmental and socio-economic effects of marine shipping activities that would result from the proposed project, including the potential effects of accidents or malfunctions that may occur.”^[ix]

(d) Review Restricts Marine Shipping Activities Assessment to 12 Nautical Miles
Strangely, the Panel has limited the assessment of marine shipping activities to 12 nautical miles, as if somehow environmental impact and spill threat cease beyond this limit.^[x] The Board is deluding us with this territorial limit. The environmental threats from oil tankers must be evaluated throughout the entire marine vessel trip. For example, Canada is a signatory to the North American Emissions Control Area (ECA)^[xi] requirements, which assist in reducing air pollution from ships, but the boundary extends to only 200 nautical miles. Once past this point, tankers shift to much dirtier, and more environmentally challenging fuel sources, most notably Bunker C—the same oil that spilled recently in English Bay.

If the Board is purporting to assess the potential environmental and socio-economic effects of marine shipping activities then the full atmospheric and spill threat of oil tankers transiting to and from Westridge must be included, not just the incremental tanker traffic within an arbitrary limit of 12 nautical miles.

2. Compromised Principles of Procedural Fairness and Natural Justice 

Much has been written about the Panel’s unprecedented exclusion of cross examination and how this undermines the integrity of the review process. The Intervenor, Robyn Allan, formally requested that it be re-introduced into the hearing schedule.^[xii] Numerous Intervenors sent in letters of support. The Board rejected the request siding with Kinder Morgan, the beneficiary of the Board’s decision.

The Board assured participants that two rounds of written requests would be sufficient to test the evidence. The Board’s assurances are without merit. The first round of information requests resulted in Intervenors formally petitioning the Board to compel Kinder Morgan to answer thousands of questions, but the Board granted only 5% of them. In the second round, the Board compelled Kinder Morgan to answer less than 3%. Separate Information Requests, required because of late TERMPOL and Seismic reports, have experienced similar, unsatisfactory, responses from the Board.

The absence of oral cross has turned this public hearing into a farce, and the written information request process into an exercise in futility.

“For two centuries past, the policy of the Anglo-American system of evidence has been to regard the necessity of testing by cross-examination as a vital feature of the law. The belief that no safeguard for testing the value of human statements is comparable to that furnished by cross-examination, and the conviction that no statement (unless by special exception) should be used as testimony until it has been probed and sublimated by that test, has found increasing strength in lengthening the experience.”^[xiii]

The Board was advised by the Department of Justice that the absence of oral cross is a failure of the process pointing out that beyond any doubt cross examination “is the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.”^[xiv]

The Board claims to be an independent regulatory tribunal guided by the principles of natural justice and procedural fairness. It is a court of record and has a duty to act fairly. The NEB has failed in upholding these responsibilities.

3. Biased Decision Making

One of the fundamental features of our market system is that the risk borne by shareholders is balanced against the financial reward they expect to receive. This risk-reward trade-off sends appropriate market signals and supports a more efficient and effective allocation of capital.

In an unprecedented decision—the Firm 50 decision—the NEB violated this important principle by allowing Kinder Morgan to amass $136 million to pay for the pre-development costs related to the Trans Mountain expansion project. This fund was not accumulated through shareholder, at risk, capital, but through a pre-approved surcharge on shipper tolls.^[xv] Ultimately, this cost is borne by the Canadian economy and public through foregone tax revenue and—as Kinder Morgan told the NEB during the Firm 50 Hearing—higher oil prices.^[xvi] In contrast, there is no risk to Kinder Morgan’s shareholders for the pre-development phase of its project.

Not only did the NEB undermine the market system by granting Kinder Morgan a fund to push through its project, it has knowingly stacked the deck in favour of the Proponent. The NEB did not ensure concomitant financial resources would be available to Intervenors during these same NEB proceedings.

The NEB socialized project approval costs onto the backs of Canadians while it knows the project’s vast financial returns—some $850 million a year—will be privatized into the pockets of Kinder Morgan’s US based investors.^[xvii] When the Intervenor, Robyn Allan, requested the Board compel Kinder Morgan to reconcile inconsistencies between the economic benefits claims in its application against what it has told its shareholders in Texas—that it intends to siphon away close to a billion a year from the Canadian economy while paying almost no Canadian corporate taxes—astonishingly, the Board concluded this is outside the scope of its review.

By its actions it is clear the Board has no intention of considering the economic impact and financial viability of this application but for accepting Kinder Morgan’s bogus case in Volume 2. Refusing to compel Kinder Morgan to answer questions, the Board allows Kinder Morgan to pretend benefits exist where they do not. When Intervenors submit evidence on the economic issues the Board will give it little, if any, weight; it has already ruled meaningful critique is outside the scope of issues. This is a travesty.

The Board’s unfair approach is also reflected in its determination that the application was complete when it was not. This is most clearly illustrated by Kinder Morgan’s uncertainty over its route and the Board’s accommodation of Kinder Morgan’s lack of preparation inside the review process.

Although aware of the Panel’s violation of the public trust, Peter Watson, NEB Chair and CEO has not sought to rectify the broken process. The entire National Energy Board is perpetrating a fraud on the Canadian public.

Withdrawing as an expert intervenor is not only a form of formal protest against the broken system, it is also a reasoned decision considered in light of efficiency and effectiveness. Protection of our democracy and market economy is best undertaken outside the industry contrived, and controlled, NEB failed system.

The NEB is not a national energy board; it is a parochial board steeped in Calgary petro culture, run by corporate interests.

Industry bias began in the 1990s when the NEB moved from Ottawa to Calgary, leaving two-thirds of its staff behind and requiring permanent Board members to live in proximity to Calgary. Regulatory capture continued as the Federal Government and Board adopted the practice of offering Board and staff positions to people with energy industry backgrounds, at the expense of establishing a diversification of interests.

The Board abandoned prudent and sound economic and financial analysis when these led to decisions recommending projects be rejected because costs outweighed benefits. Rather than continuing to rely on Cost-Benefit analysis as a sound analytical approach, the NEB rejected it in favour of Input-Output analysis; a flawed and misleading substitute that presents impacts as if they are benefits and ignores known and reasonable costs.

The Board is charged with environmental assessment without appropriately skilled and experienced staff to undertake it. The Board does not have the expertise, or will, to understand complex corporate structures designed to minimize corporate taxes, siphon vast financial wealth out of the country, and leave Canadians holding the bag when major or catastrophic events happen.

I withdraw from this process in defence of the market system and a sound economy. I withdraw from this process in defence of sustainable economic progress that promotes resource development rather than resource exploitation.

The fight to protect the Canadian public interest must be conducted in an open and transparent forum, where those who desire to participate, have a right and opportunity to do so.

The fight to protect the Canadian public interest must include those issues that fully represent the Canadian public interest, not limit them—as the Panel has done—to a definition serving industry. We are being conned by the very agency entrusted to protect us. This must stop. The health and welfare of our economic, social and environmental systems are at stake.

Sincerely,  

Robyn Allan

cc
Intervenors
Kinder Morgan
Peter Watson, Chair and CEO, NEB

---

^[i] Kinder Morgan Response to the Province of BC Motion December 5, 2014, page 5, Letter

^[ii] NEB Ruling No. 31, September 24, 2014, page 4, Ruling

^[iii] Vancouver Sun, NEB Review Panel Violated Public Trust, January 9, 2014, Robyn Allan, Article

^[iv] Kinder Morgan Pipeline Expansion Designed to Carry Much More Oil, The Tyee, May 28, 2014, Robyn Allan, Article In contrast, the NEB approved the $5.4 billion capital budget that includes costs for the designed capacity and incorporated these into approved tolls to be charged to shippers.

^[v] NEB Hearing Order OH-001-2014, Appendix A—List of Issues, page 18, Hearing Order

^[vi] NEB Ruling No. 25, page 3, Ruling

^[vii] Ibid., page 6.

^[viii] Ibid., page 6.

^[ix] NEB Hearing Order, List of Issues #5, op. cit. The Board provided a follow-up to Issue #5 on September 10, 2013 titled Filing Requirements Related to the Potential Environmental and Socio-Economic Effects of Increased Marine Shipping Activities, Attachment 1

^[x] NEB Letter September 10, 2013, Attachment, Ibid, page 1. 12 nautical miles translates into 22.2 km from the low water mark of the coast.

^[xi] Canada Implements North American ECA Requirements, May 10, 2013. Article

^[xii] Notice of Motion, Robyn Allan, April 14, 2014, Motion

^[xiii] Wigmore on Evidence (Chadbourne Rev. 1974) vol 5, p.32, para 1367.

^[xiv] Attorney General of Canada, June 27, 2014, page 5, para 16. Written Response

^[xv] The National Energy Board Guaranteed Kinder Morgan a Fund to Push Pipeline Expansion Through Regulatory Review, June 17, 2014, Robyn Allan, Report

^[xvi] Application for Firm Service to Westridge Marine Terminal, RH-2-2011,Reasons for Decision, page 13.

^[xvii] Ian Anderson, Kinder Morgan Inc. Transcript Part IV Toll Hearing Evidence, January 30, 2013, page 3.

---

Reprinted with permission

Sad Story of Target Workers is all too familiar

The story is always the same. Target store employees, steel workers, bank staff are all dispensable so the wealthy corporate owners can get even richer.

Just before Christmas, it was Scotia Bank slashing 1,500 jobs so it can make more than its current $2 billion a year in profits. And Hamilton workers have been dumped on the streets for decades as big corporations shifted production to low-wage countries like China.

CBC has revealed that the severance package for the Target CEO is bigger than the combined compensation for the chain’s 17,600 Canadian employees.

It’s outrageous but hardly even surprising that Oxfam now reports that by the end of this year the richest one per cent will have more wealth than all the other 99 per cent of us put together. We have an economic system that benefits a tiny handful while squeezing pretty much everyone else – and it just gets worse.

It’s also not surprising that nothing serious is being done about climate change and other environmental degradation both locally and globally because that might cut into the obscene profits of the oil companies.

What’s good for the big corporations is bad for the rest of us. This is particularly obvious when jobs are sacrificed for corporate profits, and when the environment and climate are trashed to extract and transport more oil, gas and coal.

We’re seeing it right now in Hamilton as the railways carry more oil tankers through the city, and Enbridge increases oil flows by 25 per cent in its 40-year old Line 9 pipe. The same scenario is playing out in northern Ontario where TransCanada wants to convert an aging gas pipeline to carry tar sands oil from Alberta to the Atlantic Ocean. The rewards all go to the corporate side; and the risks all get dumped on us.

Where’s the breaking point? We might be able to negotiate with large corporations, but we can’t change the laws of nature.

As Naomi Klein points out, the climate crisis changes everything and forces us to fight together for real change.

Hamilton 350 Blog

March for Climate Change

On Sunday, September 21st, a huge crowd will march through the middle of Manhattan. It will almost certainly be the largest rally about climate change in human history, and one of the largest political protests in many years in New York. More than 1,000 groups are coordinating the march -- environmental justice groups, faith groups, labor groups -- which means there’s no one policy ask. Instead, it’s designed to serve as a loud and pointed reminder to our leaders, gathering that week at the United Nations to discuss global warming, that the next great movement of the planet’s citizens centers on our survival and their pathetic inaction.

As a few of the march’s organizers, though, we can give some sense of why we, at least, are marching, words we think represent many of those who will gather at Columbus Circle for the walk through midtown Manhattan.

We march because the world has left the Holocene behind: scientists tell us that we’ve already raised the planet’s temperature almost one degree Celsius, and are on track for four or five by century’s end. We march because Hurricane Sandy filled the New York City subway system with salt water, reminding us that even one of the most powerful cities in the world is already vulnerable to slowly rising ocean levels.

We march because we know that climate change affects everyone, but its impacts are not equally felt: those who have contributed the least to causing the crisis are hit hardest, here and around the world. Communities on the frontlines of global warming are already paying a heavy price, in some cases losing the very land on which they live. This isn’t just about polar bears any more.

But since polar bears can’t march, we march for them, too, and for the rest of creation now poised on the verge of what biologists say will be the planet’s sixth great extinction event, one unequaled since the last time a huge asteroid struck the Earth 66 million years ago.

And we march for generations yet to come, our children, grandchildren, and their children, whose lives will be systematically impoverished and degraded. It’s the first time one century has wrecked the prospects of the millennia to come, and it makes us mad enough to march.

We march with hope, too. We see a few great examples around the world of how quickly we could make the transition to renewable energy. We know that if there were days this summer when Germany generated nearly 75% of its power from renewable sources of energy, the rest of us could, too -- especially in poorer nations around the equator that desperately need more energy. And we know that labor-intensive renewables would provide far more jobs than capital-intensive coal, gas, and oil.

And we march with some frustration: why haven’t our societies responded to 25 years of dire warnings from scientists? We’re not naïve; we know that the fossil fuel industry is the 1% of the 1%. But sometimes we think we shouldn’t have to march. If our system worked the way it should, the world would long ago have taken the obvious actions economists and policy gurus have recommended -- from taxing carbon to reflect the damage it causes to funding a massive World War II-scale transition to clean energy.

Marching is not all, or even most, of what we do. We advocate; we work to install solar panels; we push for sustainable transit. We know, though, that history shows marching is usually required, that reason rarely prevails on its own. (And we know that sometimes even marching isn’t enough; we’ve been to jail and we’ll likely be back.)

We’re tired of winning the argument and losing the fight. And so we march. We march for the beaches and the barrios. We march for summers when the cool breeze still comes down in the evening. We march because Exxon spends $100 million every day looking for more hydrocarbons, even though scientists tell us we already have far more in our reserves than we can safely burn. We march for those too weak from dengue fever and malaria to make the journey. We march because California has lost 63 trillion gallons of groundwater to the fierce drought that won’t end, and because the glaciers at the roof of Asia are disappearing. We march because researchers told the world in April that the West Antarctic ice sheet has begun to melt “irrevocably”; Greenland’s ice shield may soon follow suit; and the waters from those, as rising seas, will sooner or later drown the world’s coastlines and many of its great cities.

We don’t march because there’s any guarantee it will work. If you were a betting person, perhaps you’d say we have only modest hope of beating the financial might of the oil and gas barons and the governments in their thrall. It’s obviously too late to stop global warming entirely, but not too late to slow it down -- and it’s not too late, either, to simply pay witness to what we’re losing, a world of great beauty and complexity and stability that has nurtured humanity for thousands of years.

There’s a world to march for -- and a future, too. The only real question is why anyone wouldn’t march.

Eddie Bautista is executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. LaTonya Crisp-Sauray is the recording secretary for the Transport Workers Union Local 100. Bill McKibben is the founder of 350.org and a TomDispatch regular.

Lac Mégantic a grim warning for Hamilton

Federal rail safety deregulation means city has to look after itself

By Ken Stone

Since the Lac Mégantic tragedy, Hamiltonians have grown increasingly worried about crude oil shipments by rail. And well they should! The tankers that exploded in Lac Mégantic may have passed through Hamilton. They were apparently filled with fracked oil from North Dakota, which contain highly flammable chemicals. Trains probably also carry bitumen from the Alberta tarsands through Hamilton. If bitumen-carrying tankers derailed and ruptured close to Hamilton watercourses, bitumen could sink to the bottom, poisoning our water, as occurred when Enbridge's pipeline ruptured in Kalamazoo, Mich. A billion dollars and four years later, it still has not been completely removed.

Regrettably, shipping dirty fossil fuels from fracking and from the tarsands is growing enormously by pipeline and by rail. There's been a 28,000 per cent increase in volumes of oil shipped by rail during the past five years. The Canadian Railway Association forecasted about 140,000 oil tankers to be shipped in Canada in 2013, up from only 500 carloads in 2009. And railroads plan to continue this exponential expansion.

Triggering this vast increase is the reckless plan to quintuple the output of the tarsands and to introduce fracking all across North America. These plans to exploit dirty sources of oil are motivated by profit-seeking corporations owned mainly by foreigners. Yet, the projects have the solid backing of the Harper government. Ordinary Canadians are left to live with the negative economic, social, health and environmental costs of this rapid plundering of Canada's finite natural resources.

For the Hamilton 350 Committee, the question of rail versus pipelines for shipping oil misses the point. We hold that two-thirds of all fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground. Climate change is happening and it's already hurting Hamilton with extreme weather, such as floods and ice storms. Unless Canadians reduce their use of fossil fuels, we're heading for ecological disaster.

But why should city councillors be concerned about rail safety during budget deliberations? The answer is liability. In Lac Mégantic, the MM&A Railway had $25 million in insurance and declared bankruptcy when it became clear the cleanup would cost hundreds of millions. What steps has Hamilton taken to avoid financial catastrophe should an oil-bearing train derail in Dundas and ignite? Has Hamilton done its due diligence on defects in hundreds of aging DOT-111 tankers passing daily through Dundas? These tankers make up 70 per cent of North America's rail-tanker fleet. Yet, their propensity to rupture is well-documented. CP Rail's CEO Hunter Harrison recently declared the DOT-111's should be "removed from the rails tomorrow." Let's take him up on that call. Unionized workers at National Steel Car, where many were built, would be working three shifts and a lot of overtime for years to come to retrofit or replace them.

What about other safety factors such as better track maintenance, slower train speeds, in-cab cameras, and automatic stopping systems? Since the Lac Mégantic inferno, Transport Canada has instituted a weak hazardous-materials reporting regulation. The railways themselves instituted some voluntary new safety rules.

However, weak and voluntary measures won't adequately protect Hamilton from an oil tanker spill. Why? Because the Lac Mégantic tragedy was the direct result of deregulation of rail transport. The federal government has, for decades, been cutting resources to Transport Canada while placing increasing reliance on railways to police themselves. This move is akin to placing the fox in charge of the proverbial chicken coop. For example, just weeks before the Lac Mégantic catastrophe, the Canadian Railway Association formally asked Transport Minister Lisa Raitt to permit them to stop railway inspectors from examining brake, axle, wheel and car components. The request was quietly withdrawn after the tragedy. The regulatory downsizing of train crews was also a factor in the catastrophe. The MM&A train that destroyed Lac Mégantic's core had a one-person crew, a far cry from decades ago when trains had much larger crews plus a caboose for them to stay in.

Because of lax federal regulations, city councillors must budget staff time to investigate what measures to protect itself from train wrecks a municipality can undertake on its own or in concert with other municipalities.

But even the best safety rules for trains (and pipelines) can't prevent all accidents, since people make mistakes. The best long-term protection against oil spills from trains (and pipelines) is to reduce and eventually eliminate the shipment of such hazardous materials.

This brief was originally delivered by Ken Stone to the General Issues Committee of Hamilton city council during its 2014 budget deliberations, on behalf of the Hamilton 350 Committee.

Hamilton Spectator, March 6th, 2014

National Energy Board Decision on Line 9

It has been announced that the National Energy Board (NEB) decision on Line 9 will be released late Thursday afternoon (March 6, 2014). In response, the Hamilton 350 Committee has called a rally for noon Friday, anticipating that approval will be granted to Enbridge’s controversial plan to expand the flows in the Sarnia to Montreal pipeline and include bitumen in the products being shipped through it.

It’s already clear that the NEB decision won’t address many of our most significant concerns including the effects on climate change of increasing both the extraction and transport of fossil fuels, and the economic impacts on manufacturing of additional oil exports.

In the Line 9 review and hearings, the NEB categorically refused to even consider “the environmental and socio-economic effects associated with upstream activities, the development of oil [tar] sands, or the downstream use of the oil transported by the pipeline.”

So the climatic effects of the expansion of flows in Line 9 have not been considered by the NEB. The climatic and other environmental impacts of expansion of the Alberta tar sands to supply the bitumen being sent through Line 9 have also not been examined.

And while the current federal government claims to be focused on the economy, not even the economic impacts of exporting more oil were examined. The increasing reliance of Canada on the export of fossil fuels has already done great damage to manufacturing, especially in Ontario and Quebec, by driving up the exchange rate of Canadian currency and making export of manufactured goods less competitive.

It is clear that we must wean our society off fossil fuels. The minimum first step is stop making things worse. When you find yourself in a hole, the first rule is to stop digging. Therefore, at minimum, no increase in the extraction or transportation of fossil fuels should be contemplated.

The science is beyond doubt. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has confirmed that human burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of global climate change. Great harm has already resulted and even the best case scenarios promise much greater damage ahead. We are very likely seeing some of that harm here in Hamilton in the form of extreme events such as torrential rain, ice storms, flooding and other increasingly unusual and disruptive weather.

The NEB is incapable or unwilling to deal with these key issues. In addition, its requirement that individuals and organizations apply in writing to even hope to obtain permission to submit written reviews is clearly undemocratic.

The transparency of this so-called regulatory agency must also be questioned after it quietly approved expanded flow in an Enbridge pipeline parallel to Line 9 without even requiring notification of the affected First Nations or municipalities including Hamilton, or the individuals across whose private lands the pipeline runs.

Join us on Friday, March 7, 2014, at 12-noon at Hamilton City Hall for a Line 9 rally.

Hamilton 350 Blog