British Columbia’s salt water fishery is controlled out of Ottawa by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. That’s the same bunch that bungled the east coast fishery leading to the severe collapse of the once bountiful cod stocks. Now DFO is screwing up the west coast, starting with our herring
Continue readingTag: Trans Mountain Pipeline
The Disaffected Lib: About that Kinder, Gentler, Cleaner Fossil Fuel Industry
Petro-states tend to become lap dogs for the fossil fuel giants that feed them revenues. They wind up, to some degree, in bed together. Canada is no exception. The federal government is so in thrall to the fossil fuel industry that it has bought a multi-billion dollar pipeline just to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Will Alberta conservatives blame Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau for Line 3 delays in Minnesota? Of course they will!
Will Alberta’s conservatives find a way to blame Premier Rachel Notley and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the delays in construction Enbridge Inc.’s Line 3 Expansion announced yesterday? Why not? Given the credulity demonstrated by Alberta’s mainstream media when it comes to such stories, such an effort should get plenty
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh wins Burnaby South by-election, clearing key hurdle ahead of federal campaign
Jagmeet Singh will soon take his place as leader in the House of Commons. This is where the puck hits the sidewalk. With Trudeau on the ropes over the SNC Lavalin controversy, and Read more…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: About the cost of operating that truck convoy: Was it a political donation, and was it strictly legal?
I have questions about that massive truck protest convoy in south Edmonton yesterday, the one that tied up commuter traffic and prevented people from reaching Edmonton International Airport and just happened to take place at the same time as a visit to the neighbourhood by federal Opposition leader Andrew Scheer.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta politicians need to tread carefully when they comment on the coming job losses at GM Canada in Oshawa
We don’t yet know why General Motors Corp. has decided to walk away from its last auto-assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., which CTV reported last night the Detroit-based company will announce it is doing at 10 o’clock this morning. I’m sure there will be plenty of suspects. I have one
Continue readingAlberta Politics: No apologies: Rachel Notley sure didn’t sound as if she were conceding anything at campaign-style speech Sunday
In what was probably the first speech of the 2019 Alberta provincial election campaign, if not quite officially, Premier Rachel Notley was comfortable, confident, funny, hopeful, energized, charismatic, fiery and, yes, inspiring. She sounded, in other words, like a winner. By any measure, it was a terrific speech. And the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Stand by for renewed attacks on Tzeporah Berman as UCP tries to change channel on ‘Soldiers of Odin’ embarrassment
After a difficult weekend doing damage control about how members of an anti-immigration group with white supremacist links were welcomed to a United Conservative Party beer-and-selfies night last Friday by an Edmonton constituency association, expect the right-wing Opposition party to dip into its strategic playbook to try to change the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Carbon taxes are the Obamacare of Canada: invented, then cynically abandoned, by the right
“Putting a price on carbon” was always going to be unpopular with people who use fossil fuels out of necessity and for fun – viz., a large portion of the population in a well-off northern country that, climate change notwithstanding, still gets pretty cold in the winter. In other words,
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: Another weekend in Alberta politics: A new chapter for an Orange politician, and a Green one too
A new chapter? Using those words as a headline, Michael Connolly, the youthful NDP representative for Calgary-Hawkwood and one of the few openly gay MLAs in the provincial Legislature, announced Saturday in a Facebook post he’ll be quietly stepping out of politics when a provincial election is called next year.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Notwithstanding common sense, no one should be surprised by Doug Ford’s use of Section 33 to shore up his lousy law
No one should be astonished Ontario Premier Doug Ford plans to use the Canadian Constitution’s Notwithstanding Clause to wiggle out of a judge’s scathing ruling declaring his hurried and sloppy legislation to cut Toronto City Council from 47 to 25 members to be unconstitutional. Mr. Ford and a lot of
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Verbal Tap Dance
Talk, as they say, is cheap. Watch the following clip to see Environment Minister Catherine McKenna further debase its value by her non-answer regarding the now-stalled Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the threat West Coast oil tanker traffic poses: Recommend this Post
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: The Trans Mountain Pipeline Court Decision
Ms Soapbox spent the long weekend poring over the Federal Court of Appeal’s decision nullifying the Order-in-Council that approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX). Mr Bumble’s comment in Oliver Twist comes to mind. Mr Bumble said if the court thought he could control his domineering wife, the law was
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Pattern We Cannot Ignore
As I write this on the morning of Labour Day, it is already 38 degrees Celsius with the humidex in Southern Ontario, another day of oppressive heat and humidity in a long line of them this summer. Scientific consensus points to the ever-increasing effects of climate change as the chief
Continue readingMontreal Simon: The Trans Mountain Pipeline and the Great Distraction
I haven't written much about pipelines because quite frankly I got pipelined out during the Harper years.And also because I have always considered the fuss over the Trans Mountain pipeline to be just a distraction from the real war on climate change.But now that a court has halted that project.I
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: About That Odour In The Air
While The Great Pretender and his faux Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, continue to utter platitudes about climate-change action while visiting formerly Beautiful British Columbia, smoke is not the only pollutant in the air. The unmistakable stench of a steaming pile of bovine excrement is also becoming
Continue readingAlberta Politics: U.S. and Canadian right-wing politicians march in lockstep as they dismiss facts as conspiracy, disagreement as criminality
Apparently infected by the decline of political discourse in the United States, the Canadian right is increasingly moving toward defining the use of facts that run counter to its narrative as conspiracy and policy disagreement criminality. If you doubt this, consider recent Tweets by the likes of Calgary Conservative MP
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Hothouse Earth
Hot on the heels of the news that Justin’s folly will now cost taxpayers at least another $1.9 billion comes widespread acknowledgement that we may indeed be reaching the climate-change point of no return. For specific details about this, check out The Guardian and The Mound’s post yesterday. As well,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Will Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic tantrum provoke a moment of cognitive dissonance for Canada’s ‘ethical oil’ crowd?
Saudi Arabia has given the Canadian ambassador 24 hours to pack his bags and go home because, the Saudi Foreign Ministry complains, Canada is meddling in the internal affairs of the oil-soaked feudal theocracy by expressing concern in Tweets about its arrests of human rights activists, clerics and journalists. Last
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