Tag Archives: Catherine McKenna

Propaganda? Well yes

23rd March 2018

Just by chance today I happened to watch part of a panel session on CPAC called: INVESTING IN CANADIAN INNOVATION.

 One of the members of the panel (an American scientist) asked Justin Trudeau to explain the Kinder Morgan Pipe Line and what emerged was the usual total bullshit about carbon taxes and the meeting of mythical targets set in Paris.

 Once again there was the spectacle of our PM stating that we had to find new markets around the Pacific for our Alberta Bitumen.   In theory that may be fine but in practice that is simply not possible.

 As I have pointed out to Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Trade, Fisheries and Oceans, Natural Resources, Justice and the Environment as well as Trudeau himself, we are controlled by NAFTA in particular Article 605 which states:

“Article 605: Other Export Measures

Subject to Annex 605, a Party may adopt or maintain a restriction otherwise justified under Articles XI:2(a) or XX(g), (i) or (j) of the GATT with respect to the export of an energy or basic petrochemical good to the territory of another Party, only if:

  1. the restriction does not reduce the proportion of the total export shipments of the specific energy or basic petrochemical good made available to that other Party relative to the total supply of that good of the Party maintaining the restriction as compared to the proportion prevailing in the most recent 36month period for which data are available prior to the imposition of the measure, or in such other representative period on which the Parties may agree;

Clearly, we have no room to send any bitumen anywhere except to the USA.   Rachel Notley told the Economic Club of Canada in November of last year that the USA was a monopoly buyer of Alberta’s bitumen, and she should know.  This being the case how can we bypass the above article?   Even sending one thimble of bitumen anywhere except to our southern neighbour will trigger a NAFTA tribunal claim.  What this means is that we would construct a pipeline to Burnaby, ship that thimble, to say Malaysia, for the benefit of Alberta and then all of Canada will have to pay a NAFTA tribunal claim by the US based on Article 605.

 None of the above Ministers have offered any explanation of how they will avoid this issue, and I do not expect to hear from them until 2019, based on the timing of the occasional and eventual previous answers.

At the same time, Trudeau expounded again in vague terms about the money to be invested in ocean, fish and whale protection against a spill.   Once again, I am amazed and annoyed at his total ignorance of the fact that we are talking bitumen here, not oil, and any attempts at a cleanup in the event of a supertanker mishap such as recently happened in the south China Seas is doomed to failure.   Bitumen is heavier than water and will sink in clumps to the ocean floor, and the gases that make up the dilutant will escape into the atmosphere and depending on the site of the mishap will cause harm to all living things that breathe downwind.

I live on the southern tip of Vancouver Island and know that the winds in the Georgia Strait and the Strait of Juan da Fuca blow in all directions.  Thus, again depending on the site of the collision, Vancouver, Richmond, White Rock, Bellingham, Everett, Seattle, Port Angeles and Sequim not to mention Victoria and the San Juan Islands could all be devasted.  Whales, sea lions, seals, gulls, eagles and many more flying birds and bees etc., will all suffer or perish as well.

I was refused permission to attend and address the so-called public hearings on the basis that I would not be affected.  This was to be expected from the Harper regime, but we were promised sunny days and sunny ways and what it appears we are now being promised is the possibility of mass poisoning.  From one who came to Canada to raise a family and now have 4 generations established here on Vancouver Island I thank you for your complete indifference to our health and wellbeing Prime Minister.

Is it worth it?  Are we willing to sacrifice all this and those living creatures simply to donate some extra money to the USA through a NAFTA tribunal claim, and a couple of bucks to Alberta?

Today two MPs from the area were arrested at Burnaby doing what they believe is right and supporting their constituents and first nations of the area in their refusal to grant permission to have this pipeline do irreparable damage to this beautiful land and coast which we are here to protect for our children and grandchildren and generations to come.

There are many things Canada has done which shame us such as the residential schools and the complete destruction of Libya; our undying support of The State of Israel no matter who they kill and our incompetence in managing our own financial affairs since 1974 and now this wanton act of submission to corporate greed is another example of where we could have done soo much better.

Sunny days – my aunt fanny!

Jeremy

Kinder Morgan TransMountain Pipe LIne

An Open Letter to Canadian Minister of Natural Resources,

The Honourable Jim Carr,

“ That, given the Trans Mountain Expansion Project is in the national interest, will create jobs and provide provinces with access to global markets, the House call on the Prime Minister to prioritize the construction of the federally-approved Trans Mountain Expansion Project by taking immediate action, using all tools available; to establish certainty for the project, and to mitigate damage from the current interprovincial trade dispute, tabling his plan in the House no later than noon on Thursday, February 15, 2018.”

During a speech you made in the House of Commons on Monday 12th February 2018 concerning the above Conservative motion on the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipe Line you said this and I quote from Hansard and make some comments in italics after the statement:

“…….The project represents a $7.4 billion investment and thousands of good, middle-class jobs, a project that stands to benefit Canadians across the country, just as the existing pipeline has done since 1953, creating new access for Canadian oil to global markets and world prices.”

 

It pains me to have to remind MPs, especially Ministers who should know better, that the goop to travel through this pipeline IS NOT OIL.  It is something called Dilbit – diluted bitumen or diluted tar – from the Alberta Tar Sands.   Once again, I remind you of Article 605 of NAFTA which does not allow us to decrease the percentage of our bitumen production to be exported to the USA or Mexico, and as Rachel Notley stated in November to the Economic Club of Canada, the USA is a monopoly purchaser – which means that they take 100% of our bitumen.  How then are you going to export even I barrel of dilbit anywhere else, even to Mexico, without causing the USA to take us to a NAFTA tribunal for breaking Article 605?    Are you in essence saying that the benefits that Alberta might accrue by this ‘illegal’ exporting will outweigh the price the whole of Canada will have to pay for that inevitable tribunal fine?  How can you with a straight face say that this fine will be good for Canada?  By the way it is also estimated that after the line is built there will be 40 full-time jobs in BC, so where will the rest of the “thousands of good jobs” be?   Unwelcome memories of Joe Oliver and his promise of ‘hundreds of thousands of jobs’ from Northern Gateway come flooding back.

 

*

“We understand that one of the biggest concerns on everyone’s mind is the potential oil spill. We share that concern, which is why we have developed a plan that puts in place every safeguard against a spill happening in the first place.

Through the oceans protection plan, the Canadian Coast Guard now has more people, more authority, and more equipment to do its vital and necessary work. For the first time, two large tow vessels will be on call on the B.C. coast. Several Coast Guard vessels will be equipped with specialized toe kits to improve capacity to respond quickly. Primary environmental response teams, composed of specially trained personnel, will further strengthen the Coast Guard’s existing on-scene operations.”

This may be the case for an oil spill, but again this is not oil so do you really believe this for bitumen?  You claim that the Coast Guard will have a greater capacity to tow damaged vessels should a collision happen, but make absolutely no mention of how the bitumen will be cleaned from the floors of the Georgia Strait or the Strait of Juan da Fuca   You do not even mention that as it is not oil but heavier than water tar it will sink to the bottom, and that the dilutant consists of toxic gasses which will be released into the atmosphere.  Depending on the winds at the time, and there are always winds in both of those Straits, and the location of any crash those toxic fumes could have a very damaging affect upon the people of Vancouver, the Lower Mainland, Victoria and the Lower Vancouver Island, the San Juan Islands, or even Bellingham, Seattle, Port Angeles, Sequim or the US Military base at Whidbey Island in Washington State.

Obviously, you haven’t thought of that nor have the other members of the so-called environmental protection ministries, or do you simply not care and are the people of Washington State aware of that same lack of concern for them as you have for the people of coastal BC?

Naturally, our air-breathing friends from the ocean, whales, seals, sea lions, otters and coastal birds along with the fish which will be unable to swallow the bitumen clumps do not factor into your reasoning either.   It’s all to do with corporate money and profit isn’t it Mr. Carr?

*

After your speech there were, as usual, some questions two of which stand out:

Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC): 

Madam Speaker, I listened attentively to the minister’s intervention and, again, it was all flowery rhetoric. The Liberals govern by saying yes, but in truth they actually govern with a no. Every act they take leads to less investment in our communities. It has been estimated that just in one week, because of the price differential Albertans, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia are experiencing, one school and one hospital are being built in America and are not being built in Canada, all because the Liberals will not do anything about it. The minister talked about borrowing the land and environment from future generations. Absolutely the Liberals are borrowing huge, vast sums of money to finance their deficit spending and then not replacing it with investments.

On the TMX, the Trans Mountain expansion application was put in on December 16, 2013. We are five years and the line is still not built. I blame the government for doing this. I blame the government’s delays, talking a good game, but not doing anything. Another generation, the greatest generation, was able to almost fight World War II and win it and we are still waiting for a pipeline to be built, all because of the current government.

What does the minister have to say to my constituents about the government’s absolute failure to get energy infrastructure in the national interest built in Canada?

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Hon. Jim Carr: 

Madam Speaker, I would say to the hon. member’s constituents that the Government of Canada believes we strike a balance between energy infrastructure development to job creation and environmental stewardship. We believe we have struck that balance through the approval of very important pipelines. The point should not be lost that it is very important to Canada to expand its export markets, that 99% of our exports in oil and gas go to one country, the United States. That is not good for our country, which is why, for a variety of other reasons, we think TMX is in Canada’s interest.

It is true in other sectors of the economy. We know that 99% of our exports of softwood lumber from Quebec go to one country, the United States. Therefore, I think the hon. member’s constituents would feel that the Government of Canada recognizes the importance of expanding in those markets, creating good jobs, and also of doing it in a way that is sustainable in the long term.

Quite apart from the sheer partisan nonsense posed by this eventual question –(“ Another generation, the greatest generation, was able to almost fight World War II and win it”… does that mean we were almost able to fight it or almost able to win it?) – and yet your answer was equally ambiguous referring to 99% of natural resources going to the USA with no reference to Article 605 of NAFTA and the problems that causes, and Minister Freeland has not even bothered to tell me if that is up for the re-negotiation of a Trade agreement which should be scrapped.   How can we export anywhere if we have already committed 99% of our production to the USA?  The Canadian Action Party has believed that NAFTA is good for the USA but not for Canada and Mexico, and we would signal our intent to scrap it immediately, and trade as we can with who we can at a mutually beneficial pace.

 Then a question with implications of grave concern:

Mr. Kennedy Stewart (Burnaby South, NDP): 

Madam Speaker, the minister said, irresponsibly, to a group of business leaders that he would use military defence and police forces to push this pipeline through. Will he stand in the House today and say that he will never do this, that it would never be considered, that he would not use the army and the police forces against British Columbians in their own communities, on the reserves, and in their municipalities? I would like him to stand today and say that is not an option on the table.

(1255)

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Hon. Jim Carr: 

Madam Speaker, I am glad to respond to that. I am both confused and disappointed as to why the hon. member continues to bring that up since I have apologized and said I had misspoken. Within a few days of having said it, I realized it would invoke images that were not healthy to the debate, and I apologized to indigenous leaders. I will say again, as I have said many times over many months, that I apologized and misspoke.

A question which asked for a yes or no answer and neither was given.  An apology for having “misspoken” – a phrase coined by Peter Van Loan in defense of Brad Butt’s outright lies to the House in the last parliament – though perhaps required at another place was not an answer to this question  very  much on the minds of all BC as we possible are facing a recurrence of what happened at Standing Rock right here at home from our own army and the rent-a-cop RCMP.   The assumption here is that you cannot answer with either a yes or no and that the people of BC should be prepared for any eventuality.

War Measures Act over a pipeline anyone?

I am sure that the good people of Winnipeg must be wondering how safe Lake Winnipeg might be under this government’s carefree blindness to the realities of their health and indeed even their lives.

 

Jeremy Arney

ps  a copy of this was sent to Jay Inslee, Governor of the Washington State and was replied to immediately

Pipelines, Albertan tar and NAFTA

Premiere Rachel Notley of Alberta.

13th January 2018

 I was cruising CPAC the other day and I came across your address to the Economic Club of Canada from 21 November 2017 concerning amongst other things the need for pipelines from the Alberta tar sands to tidewater.

 You said and I quote:

 “…..we need to be able to sell that energy from that energy industry to more than just one client.

Right now, all our energy infrastructure is built for export to the United States.  They are a monopoly buyer.”

 I will not argue with that at all, but there is a catch to what you are saying.

 I am referring to NAFTA, and in particular Article 605 which I quote below:

 

NAFTA

Article 605: Other Export Measures

Subject to Annex 605, a Party may adopt or maintain a restriction otherwise justified under Articles XI:2(a) or XX(g), (i) or (j) of the GATT with respect to the export of an energy or basic petrochemical good to the territory of another Party, only if:

  1. a)the restriction does not reduce the proportion of the total export shipments of the specific energy or basic petrochemical good made available to that other Party relative to the total supply of that good of the Party maintaining the restriction as compared to the proportion prevailing in the most recent 36month period for which data are available prior to the imposition of the measure, or in such other representative period on which the Parties may agree;

 

From this, it is clear from what you are saying that we are exporting 100% of the bitumen from the Alberta tar sands to the US and we cannot reduce that percentage without the approval of the US.  As long as that Article of NAFTA, or indeed NAFTA itself, remain in effect there is no way that even a “barrel” of tar can be shipped anywhere except to the United States, which in essence owns 100% of your tar.

It is also clear that you are suggesting that the disputed Kinder Morgan pipeline to Burnaby is to transport that diluted tar intended for export by super oil tankers to, amongst others, China.

Clearly, Minister Freeland, to whom I have written numerous times on this very Article 605 with absolutely no response, chooses to ignore this important NAFTA  article even if it must be clear to her that we have a serious problem.

What both of you are suggesting is that a claim in front of a quasi-legal trade tribunal is of no importance to you as the people of Canada will be happy to pay the millions in lost profit which the US importers of this Canadian tar will claim against us as soon as you ship so much as one kilogram of tar somewhere else.

Perhaps you have a way around this?

If so I would be very pleased to hear it.

What I personally hope is that President Trump does actually go ahead and cancel NAFTA and you can then at least contemplate exporting your tar elsewhere in the world and, I would suggest, through a port in Alaska.

Incidentally the concept that supertankers do not get into trouble, never accepted by the coastal people here in BC, is under a black cloud of smoke right now as there is one on fire in the China Seas after a collision, and there is no way that any spill of diluted bitumen in either the Vancouver Harbour, Georgia Strait or the Strait of Juna Fuca can be cleaned up any more than was that mess in Michigan. 

It is unfortunate that in your desire to make things better again for Alberta, you should choose to trample over British Columbians in the same way our original settlers did to the then long-time inhabitants of what we now call Canada. 

Strange how history repeats itself isn’t it Ms Notley?

Jeremy Arney

 

Ps,

We are a long way from this and getting further away each day

 

When the Landscape is Quiet Again.

Governor Arthur A. Link, October 11th, 1973.

We do not want to halt progress; we do not plan to be selfish and say North Dakota will not share its energy resources. We simply want to ensure the most efficient and environmentally sound method of utilizing our precious coal and water resources for the benefit of the broadest number of people possible.

And when we are through with that and the landscape is quiet again, when the draglines, the blasting rigs, the power shovels and the huge gondolas cease to rip and roar and when the last bulldozer has pushed the spoil pile into place and the last patch of barren earth has been seeded to grass or grain, let those who follow and repopulate the land be able to say, our grandparents did their job well. The land is as good and in some cases, better than before.

Only if they can say this, will we be worthy of the rich heritage of our land and its resources.”

On Open letter to PM TRudeau

Open letter to Prime Minister Trudeau

 

Well Prime Minister I watched your presentation of your summer cabinet changes and I must say I was disappointed.

 

Obviously, there is lots of talk and no action with your Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women Inquiry and so your previous Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs needs help.    She needs money, real mental health doctors and some action by the RCMP, none of which she is getting.  To give her the help of Jane Philpott, who was unable to get Health Canada to abandon their ties with big pharma’s profits and help Canadian people will only muddy the waters so to speak.   Action not words PM.  Does the new relationship with our First Nations, Inuit and Metis mean nothing to you?  Perhaps they are just empty words just like 2015 will be the last FPTP election.

 

Do you really imagine that the new Minister of Health will be able to handle Health Canada?  No minister has yet, so to throw another woman under that particular bus is rather a waste of talent.

 

The veterans need more than a sympathetic ear, they also need action.   Re-opening a few offices has achieved nothing as the suicides continue because there are no professionals who understand what these men and women have gone through to supposedly protect our/their country from perceived harm.   They have been indoctrinated by the forces and now need a means of recovering and a way to lead a life with meaning instead of having nightmares over what they have been asked to endure.   We are well aware that Stephen Harper wanted to shirk any responsibility towards them and we do not see any change with your administration.

 

These changes you have made are superficial at best and the real culprits are still practicing complete disregard toward Canadians and their needs.

 

Your Minister of Finance is determined to sacrifice Canada’s commons and sovereignty by giving them away through an asinine Canadian Infrastructure Bank owned and operated by international banks, corporations and investors, while the Bank of Canada already owned by Canadians and mandated to do this work anyway remains as a simple inflation watchdog.  Crazy?  Yes.

 

Your Minster of Fisheries and Oceans, along with the Minister of Resources and Minister of Environment  continue to approve LNG plans such as the one that has been abandoned by Petronas as a bad business case, and what about the hundreds of illegally built dams in BC? or the mad dream of the Howe Sound Woodfibre LNG project when the tankers are too big for the Sound and will interfere with ferry traffic vital to the Island and coastal communities; a dam (Cite C) which is now even less needed than when Petronas was a possibility, and which was condemned by the BC Utilities Commission as unnecessary and unsafe before being silenced and made impotent  by Christy Clark; fish farms continue to poison our wild salmon, and the KM pipe line twinning project is facing opposition from First Nations and the new BC government; yet all is well in your mind and the minds of those Ministers.   Most people in BC simply laugh at your suggestion that dilbit spills in the ocean will be cleaned up in a world class fashion as we are aware that is impossible. 

 

Let us not forget the Minister of Foreign Affairs and her hatred of Russia combined with her love for investment agreements disguised as free trade agreements, which have and will continue to cost the Canadian taxpayer dearly.   She has yet to explain to me how we can export a raw material to Asia when both FTA and NAFTA clearly state that we can increase our supply but not decrease our percentage of that supply to the USA.   Is that in her mandate with the NAFTA negotiations?  Of course not!

 

What Canada desperately needs is a government that listens to the Canadian people and not solely to big corporate interests and as each day goes by it is more and more obvious that we do not have such a government.  What we have instead is a totally dysfunctional Parliament in which lies are more common than the truth and the people of Canada are treated with arrogance and contempt. 

 

Clearly “Sunny days and sunny ways” was never intended for us as Canadians but was intended for the profit seekers among your friends.

 

In this year, when 4 provinces celebrate their creation of Canada 150 years ago, the rest of us are feeling more and more ignored and abandoned.

 

Is it too late to realise that you are more and more like the emperor with no clothes every day Prime Minister?

 

Jeremy Arney

What kind of a crock are we being sold now?

19th October 2015,    

The New Prime Minster of Canada, Justin Trudeau:

Welcome back Canada!   Sunny days and sunny ways! We will enter a new partnership with First Nations, Inuit and Metis, we will consult with and listen to the Canadian people. No more first past the post elections.

 

                                                                          BUT

 2017:

The next election will be first past the post.  

Our First Nations, Inuit and Metis are still waiting, mostly in third world conditions or worse with youth suicide increasing, and education and health issues such as clean drinking water almost nonexistent.  The one sitting I watched on CPAC of the new Commission into the murdered, missing aboriginal women seems to be stuck in repeating what has already been said, and what is needed is action not talk.

The Prime Minister holds town hall meetings around the country and answers questions the way he thinks is meaningful and valuable, but are all total BS.  If he or his Ministers actually listened to Canadians, there would already be preparations for the next election to be some sort of PR; there would not be an absolutely unnecessary and destructive Infrastructure Bank of Canada; BC would not be planned to be the cesspool of Canada where environmental protection is abandoned for corporate profit; there would be real efforts made to merge into new energy and keep oil and bitumen in the ground.

The Foreign Minister would actually try and get on with other countries not support US war efforts, we are Canadian not Americans and we can and should stand by our own standards.  It is time to give love and peace a go, and leave other countries to decide their own ways, hopefully more sunny than ours.

Fisheries and Oceans would actually protect all our shores and seas, lakes and rivers instead of simply bowing to corporate pressure to allow such things as the Quesnell Lake being now a direct tailings pond for the Mount Polley Mine, drilling off the Maritimes for a product we should be getting away from not endangering our east coast, and the fish farms in the Salish Sea which are killing the wild salmon. Worse yet approving a LNG project in BC which has now been abandoned as inpractical because their daming all moving water has been found out, and a Cite C dam being built for that project!

Preparations should already be under way to make the now privately owned wheat board prepare rail cars for the summer crop, good luck with that one !   We no longer have a national railroad which if history serves me well was a prime reason BC joined with Canada! 

We have nothing left to sell now as international corporations have been given the right to everything so we have to mortgage our children’s futures to the needs of international corporate profit, and of course the obvious eventual benefit of those giving the country away.

And yet here we were being sold the idea that 2017 is the glorious 150th year since confederation.  What are we celebrating again?  Oh yes 4  provinces Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Bruswick, got together to create Canada as a confederation (or seperate tax base) and eventually other provinces or territories were created and added to that.   As far as I am concerned BC didn’t join until 1871 so it’s a bit premature for us, and I am more convinced every day that we should be looking at 2021 as the year we separate BC from a country which plainly does not value us as a partner in our own environment..

I did not come to Canada with the idea of starting and raising a Canadian family only to hand them over into the clutches of those corporate buzzards which were destroying the UK when I left it.   Granted that under the reign of the BC Liberal Party (Teaparty/Libertarians) almost all our many commons were given away to corporate profit and our crown jewel (BC Hydro) had been made bankrupt, but we can rescue that situation here in BC, as long as big brother is no longer big brother but a trading partner.

Canada has already shown the way to prosperity and then abandoned it by using the Bank of Canada, and we can and should, when we separate, create our own Bank of BC – not the one previously created as a regular bank which was sold to HSBC –  but one owned by and designed to serve the people of BC in funding their municipal and provincial needs with a BC currency named by our longest time residents, and still return a dividend to BC.  As it is we have a monopoly called the BC Municipal Finance Authority which of course obtains funds through corporate banks and lenders at high interest rates.  We do not need to join the rest of Canada in the never-ending spiral of debt with compounding interest owed to international investors, banks etc., without any chance of ever paying it all off.   Sheer madness!

The more I think about it a sovereign country called British Columbia sounds pretty good to me right now.

Peace,

Jeremy

 

A great relief for BC?

So now things are bubbling and boiling so to speak in BC.

There has been a fiasco going on under Christy Clark who promised huge royalties and great wealth for BC from the NE Gas exploration, fracking and piping to the coast of cheap LNG for overseas consumption.  Anyone who really looked at this project could see it was put up job and would never really happen. Our federal environmental and resources departments as well as fisheries and oceans were supposed to examine the business case for such a development before giving approval but in typical pretty boy fashion they acted for the cameras and not the people of Canada or BC.   Not only did they approve this fiasco but they also approved the site C dam being built (without that approval anyway) designed to provide “free” power to Petronas.  Can you spell competency?

Fracking takes huge volumes of water and many times I have asked Rich Coleman, the “Minister” in charge, where this water was going to come from and he of course never replied. Now we find that almost every bit of moving water in northern BC has already been dammed by a Petronas offshoot.

CBC did a small incomplete report on this as well.

This has been done without approval of any regulatory body but with the obvious knowledge of Clark and Coleman. No wonder he wouldn’t reply to my requests.   Change of power and suddenly the provincial engineers can talk about what has been going on.

Now Petronas has pulled out.  What a relief for BC and for the people of NE BC who can think that maybe their drinking water will be safe to drink and the earthquakes will not increase.

Next ramification is that repulsive, unnecessary and dangerous site C dam.  What now is the point if that electricity is no longer needed solely for Petronas?  Can you imagine that anyone would deliberately bankrupt a crown corporation for the benefit of a corporation from Malaysia?    How much would be the bribe for that do you suppose?  A Board seat for both Christy and Hamish maybe?   Again the question must be asked why did the pretty boy ministers rush to approve this monster? was it because it was altready being built by one of their corporate heros, Ms. Clark?

Note to John Horgan:

It will take a lot of guts to cancel the site C dam and refurbish that whole area, but it would be welcomed by all of BC.  We do not need that power, never did, in fact our personal consumption of power is still falling.  If we did need more hydro power we could insert extra generators into our existing dams.  It is also time to stop paying all those run-of-the-river power companies for not producing any power as we do not need it (about $50 million a year in non-production profits), and stop BC Hydro buying from them at the absurd price gifted by one Gordon Campbell, let them sell what they can if they can on the open market.

The fact is that W A C Bennet built BC Hydro and dams that today would not probably be acceptable, with the idea that the people of BC would never be short of cheap efficient delivery of electric power. He even had an agreement with the seven western states to buy from us on a twenty-year fixed price.   He was not to know that a broken-down actor and a drunk from Quebec would get together and create an investment agreement (FTA) which would mean that his price would last as long as that investment deal.  You see there can be no increase in power costs across the border without both the President and PM agreeing so we are stuck, and NAFTA reinforced this.  California, being broke, still thinks we are gouging them!   Luckily it would appear that “The Donald” is determined to do away with NAFTA and we can then charge what our power is worth today.   Oh, by the way, run-of-the-river power is unacceptable to the Californians on the grounds that it is not environmentally green.

BC, just like the rest of Canada, needs to make sure that those we elect to REPRESENT our needs do just that and maybe just maybe with this precarious situation in BC we might have that happen.    It’s up to us to see that it does.

Peace, but get involved as it is your life.

Jeremy

Trudeau and Bitumen Pipe Lines

Jeremy Arney on Bitumen Pipelines.

 After agreeing to the toxification of the Sacred Headwater Aquafer in NE BC  via the LNG fracking process, and a damn  (Site C ) being built on very unstable foundations and based on absolutely false need, Prime Minister Trudeau made three announcements on tar pipe lines and I offer these comments:

 Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline never an environmentally sound project either for the First Nations communities along it’s route or for BC’s interior and coast including the Great Bear Rain Forest, Douglas Channel or Hacate Strait, is now dead. Thus we can expect Enbridge to use Chapter 11 of NAFTA to claim perceived lost profits in the billions if not trillions of dollars in the near future.  What I can say is that the previous government would probably have just thrown taxpayers’ money in a large volume at them as they did with Abitibi Bowater. It remains to be seen what the Liberal government will do.

 Kinder Morgan’s twinning Project to Burnaby BC has been approved without the promised new improved revue panel and without the input of all people of BC, particularly those who will be affected by a spill, but with some oversimplified reviews by the same unqualified NEB.

This was supposedly balanced by the ‘promised’ Tanker Ban on the northern coast (way overdue and very welcome), and increased spill response capability from the coast guard.  Just what this later will be is anyone’s guess as at yet no method of cleaning up dilbitumen spills in the ocean is known; all that is known is that the dilutent used is toxic, and the bitumen will form into balls and sink. Oil spill booms will do nothing.  The effect this will have upon the ocean wildlife is completely unknown.

Until this problem is solved there should be no approval of this pipeline.  Yes, this product is already moving but with the 7 fold increase in supertankers the risk of a spill also increases by a factor of 7.

 The Enbridge Line 3 is another dilbit pipeline, with a lesser degree of hard terrain to cover and is supposedly a more up to date line into the USA, but again without the promised new review process. 

Question I am always asking is why are we not refining this tar in Canada?  We constantly ship this raw product south at a low price and buy back the refined products at a high price reflected in our pumps all across Canada.

The price of oil (or tar) has gone from $100 a barrel to $30 a barrel and the price of gasoline at the pumps in Victoria BC has stayed steady at $1.13 per liter with a change upwards in the summer.  Simple economics should show that refining in Canada would be a win win situation.  Our cheap exports would be down but so would our expensive imports. It seems to me that our trade imbalance is partially due to this current practice of sell low and buy high on our major export/import products.

 The simple measure of refining our gunk here would make a vaste difference to our economic situation and we could even export refined product at a price which would benefit us all.

 There is another aspect to this that should be taken into consideration.  The percentage of a product we can export to the USA,

 From NAFTA:

Article 605: Other Export Measures

Subject to Annex 605, a Party may adopt or maintain a restriction otherwise justified under Articles XI:2(a) or XX(g), (i) or (j) of the GATT with respect to the export of an energy or basic petrochemical good to the territory of another Party, only if:

 

  1. the restriction does not reduce the proportion of the total export shipments of the specific energy or basic petrochemical good made available to that other Party relative to the total supply of that good of the Party maintaining the restriction as compared to the proportion prevailing in the most recent 36month period for which data are available prior to the imposition of the measure, or in such other representative period on which the Parties may agree;

 

What this means is that we can not reduce our percentage of total Bitumen extracted from the sands and exported to the US, so in order to supply any bitumen to China, for instance, we will have to supply much more to the USA at a rock bottom price to maintain their percentage of our production

 On the other hand we have no history of supplying  refined product to the US as we buy it all from them,  so we are not tied by that percentage problem.   Win – win situation.

 Surely someone in the Canadian government has thought of this bitumen percentage because you can be sure that the US has it well under control, and are just waiting for us to try to export some of their percentage of our bitumen anywhere other than to them.

 Incidentally this was originally in the FTA as well, and obviously too good for the US to relinquish.

 What a mess!

 Jeremy