“When a government calls its own citizens enemies, you’ve lost your moral authority to govern.”

I’d really like to talk more on this. To point out that if Frank’s accusation is true the Harper government is going way beyond rhetoric. To point out parallels to the funding being swept out from under Franke James’ European art tour. To point out the synchronicity of Frank’s and Franke’s names (what is it with Harper and people with “Frank” in their names?) Unfortunately I’ve spent too much time on this today already. ForestEthics had a dial-in press conference this afternoon but I missed it. Am looking forward to hearing what they said.

Here’s some links;

http://www.scribd.com/doc/79228736/Whistleblower-s-Open-Letter-to-Canadians

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/greenpage/affidavit-accuses-prime-ministers-office-of-threatening-environmental-charity-137994418.html

Thanks to the Facebook group “Pipe Up Against Enbridge” and other wonders of the Internet, it did not take long to satisfy myself that the tanker exclusion zone does in fact exist. I count it as one of our country’s treasures.

Here is the evidence I found in an hour or so of looking. You be the judge, is there a BC Tanker Exclusion Zone?

This Canadian Coast Guard web page says there is.
http://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/e0003909

This Natural Resources Canada web page says there is.
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/sources/offshore-oil-gas/1265
(You might want to read your own website Minister Oliver)

This BC Marine Transportation map (PDF) shows one.
http://www.empr.gov.bc.ca/OG/offshoreoilandgas/OffshoreMapGallery/Documents/Coastal_Ports_Medium.pdf

This 1989 report to the Premier (PDF) talks about one.
http://www.empr.gov.bc.ca/OG/offshoreoilandgas/ReportsPresentationsandEducationalMaterial/Reports/Documents/ReporttothePremieronOilTransportationandOilSpills.pdf

This search result from the BC government website suggests one, but I get server errors about not being able to connect to the database when I try to get the web page. Perhaps someone is busy shredding documents.

Links
… Centre for Energy – Oil and Natural Gas; Canadian Coast Guard – Information on the Tanker Exclusion Zone for Canada’s West Coast. …
http://www.empr.gov.bc.ca/OG/offshoreoilandgas/Pages/Links.aspx

I have screenshots of the web pages (other than that last one) and copies of the PDFs in case the originals go the way of those White House emails and the socks from the dryer.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says it’s just like the information listed in the phone book. That might be true if the phone book also listed all the calls you make and receive. With IP and MAC address information from ISP’s all of your internet activity can be traced.

The government of course says they’re going after child-pornographers and the like. Who would be against that?

But is the threat to Canadian’s privacy too great? Suppose you were a volunteer for some grass-roots political party. And suppose there were people in the governing party who were not entirely ethical. Might people in government know people in policing who might be willing to put the request to your ISP and pass the info to their friends in government?

Could that happen in Canada? If these laws pass, what would prevent it?

Learn more at http://openmedia.ca/StopSpying

Would those producers of ethical oil exclude Canada? A country where government;

- has closed 12 of 16 offices of Status of Women Canada, and dropped the Status of Women Independent Research Fund.

- responds to labour disputes with back to work legislation which in the case of the postal workers imposed wages lower than Canada Post had offered in bargaining.

- has been dealing with and extending debt to the Gitxsan Treaty Society to the tune of $20 million. The same Gitxsan Treaty Society that has been ruled by the BC Supreme Court to have been operating illegally? (Now who is stuck with that debt?)

- is lead by a Prime Minister who once said “You have to remember that west of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from Eastern Canada; people who live in ghettos and are not integrated into Western Canadian society.”

- collected licence fees (provincial) for non-resident same-sex marriages but now say (federal) those marriages are not valid? (Where does that leave Canadians who have joined in same-sex marriages with foreign residents?)

Ethical Oil’s website also says “We are a registered non-profit NGO and do not accept money from any government agency. We are non-partisan and believe that the Canadian values reflected in Ethical Oil appeal to people from all walks of life and across the political spectrum.“

Which makes interesting the two screenshots here…

Note the PO Box, used previously for Tony Clement’s campaign for Conservative Party leadership and now for donations to EthicalOil.org. Tony Clement, President of the Treasury Board and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario. Tony Clement of $50 million border infrastructure gazebo fame.

Hmmm. Non-partisan. OK.

Canada should be on the edge of an historic choice. In fact we are twenty years or more behind on it. The choice to look at energy and other challenges of the 21st century and make Canada the go-to country for solutions.

We do need to diversify. It is long past time for Canada to get beyond the hewers of wood view of ourselves. A Canadian high-tech company like Arise Technologies Corp should not have to build it’s manufacturing in Germany. The Canadian government should not subsidize fossil fuel industries $1.38 billion per year while dropping funding for the EcoEnergy Renewable Power Program from the 2011 budget.

Knowing what we know about tobacco smoking, most of us don’t smoke. Knowing what we know about atmospheric carbon, most of us want to change our ways. Unfortunately we have a government that are to CO2 as chain-smokers are to the tobacco industry. A government that encourages mega-projects funded by foreign corporations that undermine Canada’s public interest. A government that shows an utter lack of respect for a regulatory process that is barely under way and a government that lacks a vision for the 21st century.

Mr. Oliver, I am a trades person with a small business, a mortgage and 3 good kids. I don’t feel very radical and if there are any “studied lines” as you mentioned on CBC’s As It Happens, I haven’t seen them. But for me the choice is clear: I can not stand for foreign corporations undermining my children’s future and the future of generations to come. I must oppose projects that demand too great a price while further delaying our advance to better ways of doing things. I must stand before the Northern Gateway review committee and say my piece.

Knowing what we know about the global challenges ahead, I believe Canadians deserve better and can do better. I believe it is the duty of every one of us to work toward that. I hope that after the next election we will have a government that has at least as bold a vision of Canada as I do. The future does not wait.

Update: A reply to Joe Oliver from the always thoughtful and well-spoken Elizabeth May

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,000 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 50 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

My current main computer is due for an OS upgrade. I’ve had inconsistent results with upgrades in the past so prefer to do new installs with a fresh drive. Not having a large enough drive to do the job, I went to a local computer store to ask about hard drives. The fellow there told me $120 for a 500 GB SATA drive. I didn’t think that was a terrible price. $20 more than the nearest big box store price, but supporting the small local business is perhaps worth $20.

Apparently he didn’t like his own price though, because he went on to explain that hard drive prices are high due to the flooding in Thailand!

Of course I had heard of the flooding in Thailand, but I hadn’t heard there was a shortage of hard drives. Looking online I see things like;

“retailers are rationing hard drives in an attempt to deal with shortages caused by the closure of flooded factories.”

Damn. Had to happen just when I want one!

Now, in interviews I’ve read or heard, scientists are always careful to say that no particular weather event can be linked to climate change. However, they also always say that climate change will bring us more and worse extreme weather events. More and worse like the flooding in Thailand. The oceans near Thailand have been 0.3C warmer than normal so rains have been freakishly heavy. The resulting floods have affected (among other things I’m sure) car manufacturing, the computer and camera industries and rice production (also badly hit this year by the droughts in the U.S.), as well as outright killing 600 Thai people by the latest numbers I’ve seen.

My personal experience of shopping for a hard drive is of course trivial, even within just my own life. And it had a bright side in that I wound up buying a used computer instead. It is more powerful than my old main computer and cost not much more than the new hard drive would have. Not having Windows on it saved me about $45.

It struck me though that while my federal government is in Durban vigorously trying to prevent any progress in combating climate change, here I was at home experiencing in a very small but concrete way how climate change is impacting and increasingly will impact us all.

It looks like the flooding in Thailand is going to cost the insurance industry around eleven billion dollars. The insurance industry is really taking a kicking this year so you know they’ll be kicking us next year.

Conservatives aren’t known for their sensitivity to human costs in whatever situation. But they are the ones everyone expects to be champions of the economy. How does the Harper government dismiss the economic impacts of climate change? Isn’t preventing action on climate change and turning Canada into Saudi Arabia North, with the emissions growth that entails, kind of like taking a job where you get one dollar today to tie a plastic bag over your head and if you survive it the boss will dock you two dollars tomorrow?

Fighting climate change, on the other hand, is like putting money in an RESP for your kids.

You’d think Harper would get that.

Turns out that with the reserve system the surrounding forest is Crown land. The people of Attawapiskat are not allowed to cut logs, nor to mill them if they did.

Here’s a link to an excellent blog post that answers a good many other questions on Attawapiskat.

http://apihtawikosisan.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/dealing-with-comments-about-attawapiskat/#comment-467

“A Partnership For Progress” it says. It would be nice if we could partner with other countries for progress at the Durban talks. It is regrettable that Canada goes to those talks represented by a government that vows to oppose action on climate change. Ours is the only government to ratify Kyoto targets and then publicly reject those targets.

Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 and ratified in 2002 with a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012. With 2012 almost upon us and no real action taken to reach that target, the Harper government changed the goalposts, setting a new target of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. This target lowers the bar by 90%, yet the 2011 report by the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development says that it is doubtful that Canada will reach even that weak target.

Canada goes to Durban having stated that it will not support an extension of the Kyoto agreement and will only support a new agreement that is ratified by all major emitters, something that is widely thought to be near impossible at these talks.

Canada is not entirely without action on climate change though. Environment minister Kent recently pledged $150 million over five years for climate change adaptation. $150M/5 = $30 million per year.

Meanwhile, Canada has announced that it will purchase 65 F-35 fighter jets. According to the airforce website the F-35 is an “affordable, sustainable, multi-role and stealthy fighter aircraft”. Ottawa’s cost estimates put these aircraft at $70 to $80 million each. These numbers are controversial with current unit costs of F-35′s over $100 million and concerns that the U.S. might reduce the number they order thereby raising unit costs. Compare Canadian estimates to the Israeli budget of $137 million each and $80 million seems rather optimistic. Let’s call it an even $100 million per aircraft. That puts Canada’s commitment for these fighters at $6,500 million with delivery over the years 2016 to 2023. $6,500M/8 = $812.5 million per year.

Canada also recently awarded a $25 billion contract to Halifax’s Irving Shipbuilding to build 21 new warships. The minister of public works and government services stated that this contract would provide jobs over 30 years. $25B/30 = $833.3 million dollars per year.

We can spend over $800 million a year on fighter jets and over $800 million a year on warships, but only $30 million a year on adapting to climate change? (Note the change of language from the days when they used to talk about ‘fighting’ or ‘preventing’ climate change. Now we talk about ‘adapting’.)

The latest weapons are considered affordable and sustainable while action to fight climate change is not.

We really need to redefine “progress”.