Having rammed through two controversial bills Tuesday night, one opening the door to more health care privatization and the other eliminating workplace fairness and declaring war on unions, the Alberta Legislature wrapped up its business just after 8 o’clock yesterday morning. United Conservative Party social media spent the afternoon bragging
Continue readingTag: Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
Alberta Politics: Strange bedfellows: UCP and Tzeporah Berman both praise Justin Trudeau’s oilpatch bailout!
Tzeporah Berman, the high-profile Vancouver environmentalist, on Friday lauded the oil-sector provisions of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s COVID-19 bailout package as a sensible way to begin winding down the Canadian fossil fuel industry. “This bailout announcement is a major turning point for oil and gas politics in Canada,” Ms. Berman
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Federal election results show why abandoning ‘social license’ was a dumb idea for Alberta’s oilpatch
Seeking “social license” for Alberta’s fossil fuel industry was said by the NDP government of former premier Rachel Notley to be a way to win approval for more pipeline capacity to Canada’s ocean ports. This was true enough as far as it went, and the idea getting such approval required
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Environmental Defence study concludes Canada’s emissions would soar if CAPP’s wish list were granted
Research published this morning by Environmental Defence Canada concludes adoption of the powerful Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers lobby group’s election wish list would increase Canadian greenhouse gas emissions by 116 million tonnes of CO² by 2030. “In that scenario, Canada’s oil and gas sector would be emitting 311 million
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Corporate Mapping Project names top fossil-fuel emitters, enablers and legitimators, unlocks online database
“The fossil fuel industry … is the biggest obstacle to real action on climate change today,” says the co-director of the Corporate Mapping Project, which this morning published an eye-opening list of the 50 most influential players in the industry and a publicly accessible database with information on more than
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Left by the pope with a choice between glory to God and death to the carbon tax, what will Jason do?
Turns out you really can’t serve God and Mammon! Who knew? Tout le monde Conservative Alberta was reeling over the weekend at Friday’s news from Rome that Pope Francis, leader of 1.3 billion Catholics, has declared global warming to be a real thing and putting a price on carbon to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Crib notes: Understanding yesterday’s United Conservative Party Throne Speech
As the documents that lay out the government’s policy agenda for the next couple of years, Throne Speeches are by nature tendentious. In the service of making what is a curse to many citizens appear to be a blessing they tend to be faintly Orwellian as well. That is, they
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Keep your eyes on the story of Jason Kenney’s ‘War Room’ – it’s going to be a boondoggle!
The discovery last week Postmedia was trying to cash in on Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s promised $30-million anti-environmental “war room” at the same time it has its hand out to Ottawa for a federal bailout has rather surprisingly turned out to be a story with legs. The irony of a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Albertans, in their ‘bitumen bubble,’ may have missed the significance of West Coast Green goings on
We Albertans have been living in a bit if a bubble – a bitumen bubble. As a consequence, we may not all have noticed what’s been happening on Canada’s West Coast. So the potential significance of the victory in a federal by-election Monday by Paul Manly of the Green Party
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘A disservice to our nation’ – Tzeoporah Berman fires back at Jason Kenney’s ‘crass, simplistic narrative’
In a blistering broadside on social media yesterday, prominent B.C. environmentalist Tzeporah Berman fired back at Opposition Leader Jason Kenney for his continuing effort to reduce her to a figure of hatred, ridicule and contempt as a way to undermine Alberta’s NDP government. “You keep simplifying what I am saying
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Documents show B.C. ‘Climate Leadership Plan’ was cooked up in Calgary boardroom of powerful petroleum industry lobby
PHOTOS: British Columbia’s beautiful Legislature Building in Victoria – not, as it turns out, where the province’s climate policy is set! Below: CCPA-BC’s Shannon Daub, former B.C. Liberal premier Christy Clark (Photo: Wikimedia Commons), B.C. NDP Premier John Horgan, and environmentalist Tzeporah Berman. Using documents obtained through a Freedom of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Opposition focuses its fury on Tzeporah Berman, ignores oilsands advisory group’s consensus recommendations … why?
PHOTOS: Environmentalist Tzeporah Berman. Below: Former Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers president Dave Collyer, who worked successfully with Ms. Berman to produce the recommendations of the Alberta Government’s Oil Sands Advisory Group, and Opposition leaders Jason Kenney of the Progressive Conservative Party and Brian Jean of the Wildrose Party, who
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Who needs old-time climate change deniers when we’ve got the ‘New Climate Denialism’?
PHOTOS: Shannon Daub, associate director of the CCPA’s British Columbia office and co-director of the Corporate Mapping Project, at the mapping project’s 2017 Summer Institute at the University of Victoria this week. Below: CCPA B.C. Director Seth Klein (Twitter) and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. VICTORIA, B.C. Just because there are
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: CAPP And The Museum Of History
Will you sign this petition? I did. Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Fox In The Henhouse: Alberta’s School Helpers
In response to a recent blog entry that discussed Rex Murphy’s most recent oil-shilling efforts, The Salamander alerted me to a Desmog Canada story going back almost two years. It is a story with profoundly disturbing implications, dealing as it does …
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta Politics: Who said what about the NDP’s ambitious Made-in-Alberta Climate Change Plan
Pigs continued to fly in Alberta politics today as energy industry leaders and environmental groups joined Premier Rachel Notley and Environment and Parks Minister Shannon Phillips at a press conference to release Alberta’s much anticipated plan…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Fireworks notably absent during final Edmonton royalty review public consultation
PHOTOS: Royalty review chair Dave Mowat, top left, addresses the small and polite crowd that showed up in Edmonton for the panel’s open house last night. Below: Mr. Mowat again and committee members Peter Tertzakian and Leona Hanson. The biggest challenge the Notley Government’s royalty review committee faces may turn
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Now that CAPP’s president has called for quick energy royalty review, Wildrose and PC leaders can be expected to fall into line
PHOTOS: Never mind the Opposition parties, guys like these want Alberta’s energy royalty review to get cracking right now! Below: CAPP President Tim McMillan, Wildrose Opposition Leader Brian Jean, Progressive Conservative Party Leader Ric McIver and NDP Labour Minister Lori Sigurdson. While Alberta’s New Democratic Party government has been pushing
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Lobbyists, agencies, government-funded ideological front groups face setbacks in wake of Alberta’s Orange Wave
PHOTOS: The Alberta Legislature Building as it transitions to Orange from Blue. Whatever will the lobbyists do? Below: NDP-connected federal lobbyist Robin Sears and Conservative-associated Alberta lobbyist Hal Danchilla. WANTED: Someone – anyone! – willing to work for major national lobbying firm in Alberta. New Democratic Party connections essential! Orange
Continue readingEnvironmental Law Alert Blog: Who writes Canada’s Environmental Laws?
Wednesday, September 17, 2014 We’ve written before about the apparent and unacceptable influence of the oil and gas industry on Canada’s environmental laws, which may have extended to a suggestion that the Canadian government roll multiple amendments into omnibus budget bills (as it did in 2012). Two documents obtained recently
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