By Tria Donaldson
We live in a country whose leaders appear willing sacrifice our collective future to appease the short-term needs of Big Oil.
Take, for example, Stephen Harper's recent declaration that he wants the Enbridge pipeline to go ahead, despite the overwhelming First Nations and public opposition in B.C. In a recent Global TV interview, Harper adamantly declared that the Enbridge pipeline is in best interests of Canada. He went on to say "American interests would line up against the Enbridge pipeline," and would "funnel money to environmentalists and others to delay the project."
read full article http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/tmdonaldson/2011/12/fighting-pipelines-un-canadian-harper-thinks-so
Stumble It!
Diefenbaker said
"We Tories have a tradition of, at the first hint of trouble, circling the wagons and shooting inward." Harper's Hitler style iron grip is the only reason they have not embarrassed themselves into the opposition benches. They are still a party made up of what are basically,loose cannons at heart. Oliver's incredibly stupid comments about the environmentalists being a foreign influence (which the oil industry isn't ) was the start of this control beginning to crumble. Expect that crumble to accelerate before the next election.
Joe Oliver?s Desperate Hour
Canada?s Minister of Natural resources is running scared. He knows the truth is out there.
It is human nature that when someone is hiding the truth they often resort to overstating their case. Joe Oliver claims in an open letter to Canadians that our regulatory system is broken. It has been hijacked by radicals and we cannot afford, ?slow, complex and cumbersome hearings.?
But what if Oliver?s real fear is that hearings and the ensuing controversy surrounding the Northern Gateway pipeline might take a different course and reveal the real truth that Canada is not an ?energy super power? as the Prime Minister claims and that we can ill-afford to liquidate our energy resources in a reckless manner.
Oliver would no doubt like to suppress the fact the tar sands are our last major oil reserve. The easily extracted tar sands oil has been cherry-picked and the remaining reserves are subterranean and will be even more expensive to extract.
Eastern Canada is already heavily dependent on foreign oil imports.
Canada has exhausted most of our conventional oil reserves.
What Oliver and a lot of other politicians no doubt fear is that the focus might turn on the even larger and more critical issue. We, like all countries, are rapidly approaching ?peak oil? (the point at which all known reserves have been identified and the supply is diminishing.) This will inevitably be followed by the ?end of oil.?
To date our energy crisis has been kept outside the realm of public debate but it has for years been written about, discussed and researched. Politicians by their silence, in collusion with corporations and a corporatized mainstream media, have managed to stall this debate.
But when it comes to the end of oil we have two choices: Hit the wall or manage the descent. Denialism reigns supreme and it appears we are determined to hit the wall dead on. Managing the descent first of all requires that we face the stark reality the end of oil is coming. Subsequently, we must rigorously manage the remaining reserves which mean cutting consumption as a starting point.
Oil producing countries list their reserves in billions of barrels. But in a world where global consumption is almost a hundred million barrels a day and demand is increasing a billion barrels does not go far.
As numerous experts have pointed out there is a lot of dishonesty when countries state their known reserves as it is in their best interests to overstate them. Therefore, we don?t really know just how much oil is left.
That pipelines leak is not some fatuous claim but a fact of life. As oil becomes scarcer and less accessible the environmental impact of getting it out of the ground and from under the oceans is going to grow dramatically.
Are we willing to recklessly devastate the environment to extract a resource that is non-renewable and will be scarce by the end of this century?
There are four thousand interveners scheduled to testify at these hearings. This number testifies to the urgency these interveners feel. Mr. Oliver?s open letter is a scurrilous attempt to vilify the process and the very legitimate concerns of the interveners.
He is about to be clobbered with some inconvenient truths.
By his open letter Oliver has been so foolhardy as to undermine his integrity as a minister of the Crown, shown himself to be an insolent corporate toady and unwilling to address Canada?s energy security on a sound and factual basis.
This is a government trying to out run it critics, the truth, and suppress due deliberation on very urgent issues.
Robert Billyard
Mission BC
Wouldn't it be far more logical to build the pipeline to eastern Canada ,to fulfill their needs with Canadian oil first?
Fortunately , the Haisla have launched a constitutional challenge to the tanker traffic. If a Ruwandan Genocide campaigner can use the courts to stall an issue for 17 years, then this challenge could stall the pipeline for 20 years.
If they take up a collection to fund their challenge, then many will donate.
With 55% of our oil being imported from Venezuela, Nigeria and the middle east, why would we even consider building a bigger export infrastructure?
Who is this 'we' of which you speak? Quebec imports North Sea crude. But Canada is a net oil exporter, and that's why we'd improve our export infrastructure.
Surely you can see why having a single customer for your product isn't the best way to do business.