Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: Plenty of blame in the historic pipeline battle

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BC premier Christy Clark has a few harsh words for Ottawa as well about the lack of engagement with First Nations when it comes to the Northern Gateway pipeline plans. Meanwhile, a number of experts in the field and oilfield historians say that the current battle over the Northern Gateway pipeline is unlike any previous energy battles in our country’s history.

Charlie Angus is outraged – outraged! – that the Senate’s attendance records aren’t online, because it’s like a secret society! Err, except the Commons attendance records aren’t public at all, let alone being online and accessible, whereas at least the Senate has public records and will likely get them online as soon as they can devote the time and resources to getting that up and running. And seriously, a lot of the Senate web accessibility is actually better than that of the Commons. Sorry, but no sympathy for Angus until he gets his own Chamber in order.

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Roundup: Leadership on healthcare

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Day two of the Council of the Federation meeting in Halifax yesterday, and the topic was healthcare – specifically the report prepared by premiers Brad Wall and Robert Ghiz on common best practices, bulk buying certain pharmaceuticals, and such. (Hilariously, Leona Aglukkaq later insisted the federal government has played a leadership role in healthcare, which is especially funny when pretty much every single answer she gives in QP is about how nothing is her responsibility). As part of the day’s news, the premiers also invited Harper to sit down with them for their next meeting in November – to which Harper replied that he’ll totally get right on that. Really!

And no, the topic of pipelines was not omitted. Premiers like Ghiz and David Alward want an east-west pipeline so that refineries in the east can process bitumen from the west. Which is all well and good, but just remember that there is a heck of a lot more east-west distance in this country for a pipeline to cross (and possibly leak) than there is to go north-south to the pre-existing refineries in Texas, for example.  And longer pipelines mean a lot more cost, since reversing the flow of the existing east-west pipeline won’t have that much capacity to grow as oil sands operations ramp up.

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Roundup: The politics of gun violence

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I believe Colin Horgan said it best, so I’ll start off by quoting him: “Yes, never miss a chance for partisan shots. With senseless human tragedy comes political opportunity! Well done, everybody.” He is, of course, referring to the release put out by the government in the wake of the shootings in Scarborough, to which the government gave two lines of condolences and twelve lines of partisan salesmanship about how the opposition needs to support their tough-on-crime agenda. Because we all know that if the mandatory minimums that already exist on the books didn’t prevent this, well, then we need even tougher penalties for deterrence! It also didn’t help that Vic Toews took shots at those judges who struck down the mandatory minimums as arbitrary and inappropriate in some cases – and it was both in the cases in which they were struck down. And then Julian Fantino is the one to sound reasonable? How did that happen? (And just to note that Liberal MP John McKay, whose riding the shooting happened in, was also eminently reasonable, while NDP MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan, from the neighbouring riding, took to Power and Politics to suggest they talk to the critic another day. Oops).

The Federal Court shot down a challenge to the government’s decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol because, well, it’s actually the government’s right to do so. That’s the way executive powers work, even if you don’t agree with them – not that it seems to stop the civically illiterate from taking to the courts to try and change the foundations of parliamentary democracy on a whim because they lost a political battle.

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Roundup: Mulcair goes to the Stampede

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Now that he’s in Calgary for the Stampede, Thomas Mulcair says that they should open up access to the oil sands – but not with new pipelines. Um, okay, because the ones that exist have all that much excess capacity, apparently. (Hint: They don’t really). And he wants more east-west pipelines, but there really, really isn’t enough pipeline capacity there, and it’s way, way more expensive to build such an east-west pipeline than it is to build one to the refineries in Texas, or to the west coast to sell it to Asia. Oh, wait – we don’t want to refine oil in Texas, we want to do it in Canada, where we don’t have refinery capacity in the West, and it would cost billions of dollars to build upgraders and refineries (and would come with a major cost in terms of carbon footprint). And while Mulcair may want the shuttered Shell refinery in Montreal to process oil from the West, assuming they can get pipeline capacity to it, well, no word on how he’d convince them to go for it economically. So…yeah.

Mulcair also appears to be tone-deaf on the “white hatting” tradition of Calgary, for what it’s worth, seeing as he decided to wear a white hat to oppose Harper’s black hat. Seriously. The National Post’s Jen Gerson recounts Mulcair’s day here.

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Roundup: Etobicoke Centre appeal today

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Are you ready? The Supreme Court hears the Etobicoke Centre appeal today. This is going to be one to watch, considering how much attention is being focused on the way Elections Canada runs elections, and their training and operations are as much under the microscope here as any particular voter impropriety.

There is talk that the new seat redistribution in BC and in New Brunswick will disproportionately be beneficial to the Conservatives, in large part because new ridings in BC are going to the lower mainland suburbs, while in New Brunswick, Dieppe moves into a new riding, but on balance there shouldn’t be any loss of seats to Liberals or NDP even if the vote spread changes. I’m a bit torn on this assumption that these new ridings in the suburbs of BC will automatically go Conservative. Given that much of the redistribution has reduced the influence of rural ridings (which were over-represented to begin with), and that rural ridings were far more likely to vote Conservative than anything else, one could argue that it makes the ridings more volatile – especially as the “rurban” phenomenon of small urban area at the narrow end of a large rural riding is being blunted in a lot of places. This will create more representative urban and suburban ridings that might actually see their issues addressed rather than swamped by rural concerns. This could put those ridings into play far more, now that the more conservative rural population can’t be relied upon to carry the votes.

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Senate QP: Focus on the disaster, not the funding

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As Orders of the Day got underway in the Senate, Senator Vivienne Poy rose to announce that after fourteen years in the Upper Chamber, she has decided to resign her seat to move onto other pursuits. Poy, who was appointed by Jean Chrétien and was the first Asian Canadian to be appointed to the Senate, wasn’t due to retire until 2016. She was also instrumental in getting May recognised as Asian Heritage Month in Canada. Senators from all sides gave her a standing ovation when she was finished, and many went over to speak to her personally afterward.

When Question Period came around, Senator Poulin was first up asking about the tragedy in Elliot Lake, and whether the government would be providing any compensation for the economic repercussions the region would be facing. Senator LeBreton, the government leader in the Senate, who gets to answer all questions, first gave a brief tribute to Senator Poy and her contributions to the Senate before saying that she will express Poulin’s concerns to the government and take the question as notice (by which she means that she’ll provide a written response once she has more information).

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Roundup: Entirely proper backbench complaints

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Conservative backbencher Brent Rathgeber complained publicly about Bev Oda’s expenses, the use of cabinet minister limousines. “Oh noes! Harper can’t control his caucus!” We The Media, decry, when really we should be saying, “Hey, look – backbench MPs are doing their job and holding the executive to account!” It also emphasises how much of a problem Oda has become for Harper, and that she will need to be shuffled – if not out of Cabinet (and likely to a Senate seat or other patronage appointment), then certainly a major demotion to something innocuous like National Revenue.

Senator Patrick Brazeau, the youngest Senator in the Upper Chamber, has the lousiest attendance record over the past year. In fact, he was four days away from being fined for it. (Note that Senators have attendance taken and can be fined after too many absences, as compared to MPs who self-report attendance, and those reports are not made public). So what did Brazeau do? Call the journalist who wrote the story a bitch (and did, eventually, apologise). Because that’s class. You can read the Storified Twitter Machine exchange here.

In a speech at Queen’s University, former senator Lowell Murray decries the fact that PMO and PCO – the political and the civil service sides of the Prime Minister’s staff – has become one and the same, and that’s detrimental to parliamentary democracy.

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Roundup: Green infrastructure dollars diverted

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It looks like the Conservatives have been using their billion dollar “green infrastructure fund” to help fund pipelines and forestry projects. Liberal John McCallum has asked the Auditor General to investigate the fund, but hasn’t received word yet.

The government has also spent over $86,000 in rebranding the “Harper government” in government communications. It’s not really a big number in context, but age of austerity, and all of that.

Thomas Mulcair defended his comments on the resource sector at the provincial NDP convention in Saskatchewan last weekend. According to Mulcair, people from Saskatchewan believe the polluter should pay, which is what he’s trying to say. Mulcair, meanwhile, joined forces to Pauline Marois to slam Harper as being anti-Quebec in the wake of the “secret meeting” with Mulroney. Harper’s Quebec lieutenant, Christian Paradis, says his government is ready to work with the PQ if they get elected. Oh, how I wish there was a QP today for this to come up in.

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Roundup: Secret meeting with Mulroney

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With a need to bolster his public image in Quebec, and the real sense of how much trouble he could be in should the PQ get elected in the province, Harper apparently had a secret meeting with Brian Mulroney last week for advice. (I’m still trying to figure out when that might have happened, given that Harper’s been a pretty busy PM of late, between international travel and vote-a-thons in the Commons). Nevertheless, necessity can make for strange bedfellows. Paul Wells dissects what it all means here.

The Rio+20 summit has ended with little in the way of agreed upon targets or timelines. Peter Kent says it’s a good thing, and that big conferences like that end up being counter-productive, and that binding targets are “inappropriate” and “unrealistic.”

Despite the requests to waive solicitor-client privilege in the investigation of a soldier’s suicide, Peter MacKay says no.

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QP: All over the map before the summer

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The last QP of the sitting could be described in a single word: Scattershot. Apparently everyone was looking to get as many YouTube clips for their MPs’ websites to sustain them through the summer on a variety of topics, so there was very little coherence to any of the debate. Thomas Mulcair asked about F-35s (Harper: We’re rebuilding the Canadian Forces with the equipment our men and women in uniform need!), the cut in funds to minority francophone newspapers (Harper: There’s this funding formula in place, and hey, you ran all kinds of unilingual Anglophone candidates in francophone ridings), and about the myriad ethical lapses of the Conservative front bench (Harper: This was one of the most legislatively productive periods in Canadian history, and you’re an ineffective opposition!). So there. Nycole Turmel then took a turn batting away at those ethical lapses (Paradis: Our government’s done a good job on the economy!) before Bob Rae got up and went after Flaherty’s mortgage announcement earlier in the morning, noting that the new changes return the policy back to where it was in 2006 when the government took office (Harper: We’re being prudent after listening to the experts!). For his final question, Rae noted that it was National Aboriginal Day, and given all of the 1812 celebrations, why hasn’t the government resolved the Six Nations land claims dispute that has been going on since said war. Harper assured him that they were in negotiations, and hey, they have new land claims legislation.

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