I, like most Canadians, don’t like it when a member of the family misbehaves in public and I feel it’s necessary to apologize on their behalf (for the good of the family name).
Well this is one of those occasions. So here goes:
On behalf of Cana…

“We do not believe any proposal should transform Vancouver into a major port for oil export.” With these words, B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix marked Earth Day on Monday by explaining his party’s opposition to Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion plans.

 This announcement was welcome news — a nice Earth Day Kinder (Morgan) surprise. Unfortunately, the B.C. Liberals and Christy Clark have yet to make their position on Kinder Morgan and the Enbridge Northern Gateway proposal clear at all.

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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

grassroots environmental group 350.org celebrated the more than one million comments submitted to the U.S. State Department by opp…

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- George Monbiot discusses the fallout from decades of corporate-controlled governments abdicating their responsibility to consider the public interest:In other ages, states sought to seize as much power…

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- George Monbiot discusses the fallout from decades of corporate-controlled governments abdicating their responsibility to consider the public interest: In other ages, states sought to seize as much power as they could. Today, the self-hating state renounces its powers. Governments anathematise governance. They declare their role redundant and illegitimate. They launch furious assaults on their own branches, seeking wherever possible to lop them off.

This self-mutilation is a response to the fact that power has shifted. States now operate at the behest of others. Deregulation, privatisation, the shrinking of the scope, scale and spending (Read more…) the state: these are now seen as the only legitimate policies. The corporations and billionaires to whom governments defer will have it no other way.

Just as taxation tends to redistribute wealth, regulation tends to redistribute power. A democratic state controls and contains powerful interests on behalf of . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links

On this Earth Day I am urging you to take a moment and help us fight for the protection of people living downstream of the Tar Sands. The health and well-being of these downstream communities, including Fort McMurray and Fort Chipewyan, has been…

Monday, April 22, 2013

Instead of supplying domestic, conventional oil to eastern Canadians as part of a national eco-energy plan to transition Canada off f…

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Daniel Cohn theorizes that the only real problem with RBC’s outsourcing of Canadian jobs is that they called attention to the government policies which facilitated that outcome. But for those of us who think there’s actually a problem with an economy designed around minimizing wages and employment, Susan McIsaac and Matthew Mendelsohn offer some suggestions to turn the tide. And Tavia Grant points out that the Cons’ preference for cheap, disposable foreign labour might help employers, but certainly doesn’t produce positive results for Canada as a whole.

- In the same vein, Andrew Jackson discusses how the last great set of attacks on workers in the name of economic efficiency proved an utter failure in producing any policy outcome other than increased inequality:

Thatcherism did not provide an enduring solution to the problem of how to attain stable growth. Business profitability was indeed restored, but this did not flow though into much higher levels of productive investment. In both Britain and the United States (especially the former), finance expanded as a share of the economy at the expense of industry, which has collapsed.

London has become the most important global financial centre and home base to much of the global oligarchy, leading to great wealth for a few and many low-paid jobs catering to their needs. Meanwhile, much of the rest of the country, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, has never fully recovered from massive de-industrialization.

In Britain, as in the United States, “flexible” labour markets and the erosion of unionization led to the decoupling of wages from productivity growth, making growth dangerously dependent upon an unsustainable inflation of house prices and the growth of household debt.

A hands-off approach to regulation of business also set the stage for the growth of a speculative and destructive financial system, which would have collapsed in 2008 if the government had not come to the rescue.

Thatcherism did nothing to raise the living standards of the great majority. In the Britain, as in the U.S. and Canada, the incomes of the great majority have stagnated in real terms since the early 1980s, as most of the fruits of economic growth have gone to the top 1 per cent. Economic security was undermined by deep cuts to unemployment insurance and public pensions, and by the erosion of public services.

Margaret Thatcher was indeed a pivotal historical figure. But her legacy is one of heightened inequality, economic stagnation and instability.

- Chantal Hebert points out the limitations on the Cons’ attack strategy:

If the Conservative black ops against Trudeau succeed, a significant chunk of those voters could be as likely if not more to turn to a centrist-led NDP as to want to help Harper secure a fourth mandate.

That trend is not based strictly on a cyclical tide for change. At this juncture an overwhelming majority of Canadians — around 70 per cent — agree as to the prime minister that they do not want, even if it means replacing Harper with an untested Liberal leader or an untried federal NDP.

Harper’s predicament is more akin to a multiplication of slow leaks than a major puncture. That could make it harder to fix. To reduce the current battle to a personality contest that can be won with attack ads is to miss the central point that it is also unfolding on the field of values.

Polls suggest that despite sustained Conservative efforts, Canadians are more likely to identify with Liberal- or NPD-inspired policies such as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and medicare than with the favoured icons of the Canadian right. 

- And Bruce Johnstone notes that the Cons’ attacks on Justin Trudeau are far from the first inaccurate ads of their majority tenure:

In the Machiavellian world of politics as practised in Ottawa these days, the end justifies the means. If defeating Justin Trudeau or NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair can be achieved by attack ads, so be it.

Case in point, Mulcair was vilified in Tory attack ads for his comments that Canada was showing symptoms of Dutch disease, in which the manufacturing sector suffers declining output and competitiveness as a result of high exchange rates caused by high energy prices.

Yet a recent study by Statistics Canada indicates that Central Canada saw the largest decline in economic output and labour productivity between 2000 and 2010. And the Ontario and Quebec manufacturing sectors bore the brunt of that decline. At the same time, there was a shift in capital investment from east to west due to increased investment in the natural resources sector. And what were the reasons for this shift in capital investment, economic output and labour productivity? Changes in exchange rates, commodity prices and global competition, the study said.

Sounds a lot like Dutch disease to me.

- Finally, Mike de Souza continues his run of important reports on the Cons’ environmental policy – first by highlighting the Cons’ willingness to give Exxon a veto over the terms of a new national park (featuring approval to drill horizontally under Sable Island), then by pointing out that tens of millions of dollars of public money are being used for research intended to do nothing but benefit tar sands operators.

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Daniel Cohn theorizes that the only real problem with RBC’s outsourcing of Canadian jobs is that they called attention to the government policies which facilitated that outcome. But for those of us who think there’s actually a problem with an economy designed around minimizing wages and employment, Susan McIsaac and Matthew Mendelsohn offer some suggestions to turn the tide. And Tavia Grant points out that the Cons’ preference for cheap, disposable foreign labour might help employers, but certainly doesn’t produce positive results for Canada as a whole.

- In the same vein, Andrew (Read more…) discusses how the last great set of attacks on workers in the name of economic efficiency proved an utter failure in producing any policy outcome other than increased inequality: Thatcherism did not provide an enduring solution to the problem of how to attain stable growth. Business profitability was . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links

Across Canada, provincial  and local governments have achieved great things in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the Harper government has grabbed as much undeserved credit for that as possible.Yet Harper and his slackjawed EnviroShill, Peter …

Across Canada, provincial  and local governments have achieved great things in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the Harper government has grabbed as much undeserved credit for that as possible.

Yet Harper and his slackjawed EnviroShill, Peter Kent, can’t hide the impacts of their bitumen-peddling policies, no matter how much credit they steal from others.

Canada’s annual heat-trapping greenhouse gases continue to level off or decline in most sectors of the economy, outside of Alberta’s oilpatch, says the latest annual inventory report submitted by the Harper government to the United Nations.   The government report, prepared by Environment Canada, noted (Read more…) country’s average temperatures were 1.5 degrees C above average in 2011, which makes it more likely to observe impacts such as rising sea levels and increasing extreme weather events that could intensify in the future.

“In some regions, the impacts could be devastating, while other regions could benefit from . . . → Read More: The Disaffected Lib: Canada’s Carbon Black Eye – Bitumen Peddling

Last month the federal government announced their new plans to increase safety as tankers carrying tar sands crude oil travel the B.C. coast. Eoin Madden says the plan is an insult. Madden is Climate Change Campaigner at the Wilderness Committee. He sp…

Harper’s public relations and spin team hit Vancouver in March claiming to have substantially revamped environmental protections for pipelines and tankers. Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver and Minister of Transport Denis Lebel descr…

Eeny, Meeny, Miny by Bill Helin

The Raincoast Conservation Foundation had a permit from the City of Calgary to display their travelling art exhibition, Artists for an Oil-Free Coast, at city hall. However, once the show opened, a backlash from conservative politicians caused the city to revoke the permit, arguing the show was too “political” and violated municipal bylaws banning demonstrations inside the building.

Despite the show’s unambiguous title, the city claims they “weren’t aware there was a specific political agenda or cause associated with the art exhibit,” according to Sharon Purvis, the city’s director with corporate properties and buildings.

While the city is allowing the work — largely comprised of landscapes and nature scenes — to stay up until Wednesday, they have banned exhibition organizers conducting media interviews or speaking about politics to the public.

In an interview with the Globe and Mail, renowned painted . . . → Read More: Art Threat: Calgary muzzles artists critical of tar sands

By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive: On Monday, three reporters from nonprofit online news site InsideClimate were honored with a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on Canada’s tar sands and rupturing oil pipelines. Elizabeth McGowan, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer were honored for their reporting on “The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You’ve Never Heard [...]

The post InsideClimate wins Pulitzer Prize for reporting on Canada’s tar sands appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.

I want to alert you to the most recent attack on environmental protection and democracy in this country and share with you a letter I wrote to Gaetain Caron, Chair and CEO, National Energy Board of Canada (NEB). I was spurred to write after a fr…

Canada’s economic development model is on a collision course with the urgent need for global climate action. Worldwide, extreme weather events from drought to floods to powerful storms and record-breaking temperatures are making a powerful state…

In response to Exxon Mobil’s disastrous tar sands spill in neighboring Arkansas, Oklahoma residents are engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience to halt construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline By: Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance | Press Release: ALLEN, OK – April 9, 2013 – Oklahoma grandmother Nancy Zorn, 79, from [...]

The post Oklahoma Grandmother Locks Herself to Keystone XL Heavy Machinery appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.