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Editorial: Harper wants to cut off funding for JRP intervenors. Conservatives allow hate speech, while curbing green speech.

The Conservative Party of Canada are sickening hypocrites on free speech.

Hate speech is OK. Green speech is not.

Hate speech is permitted, for it is “free speech.” “Green speech,” on the other hand, is under constant attack from the Conservatives and their followers. While not subject to legal curbs (for now), we are seeing increasing pressure on those who advocate for the environment to shut up.

The Conservatives today repealed sections of the human rights act concerning “hate speech” delivered by telephone and the Internet. There was a free vote, the Conservative MPs supported the repeal by 153 to 136. It was a private members bill from Alberta Conservative MP Brian Storseth that repealed Section 13 of the human rights code, which covered with complaints regarding “the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet.”

On the same day, in SunMedia, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper says his government will no longer fund any organization that comes before the Northern Gateway Joint Review opposing the pipeline.

According to Sunmedia story Taxpayer Funding Oil-Sands Activitists

The taxpayer tap pouring cash into the coffers of oilsands opponents could be turned off.

“If it’s the case that we’re spending on organizations that are doing things contrary to government policy, I think that is an inappropriate use of taxpayer money and we will look to eliminate it,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Paris on Thursday.

Harper was responding to reports by Sun News Network that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency has showered more than $435,000 on groups participating in the review of the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal, that would connect Alberta’s oilsands to a tanker port in northern B.C.

So there we have it, a prime minister who heads a government elected by just 30 per cent of the Canadian electorate, who now decides who can afford to come before a public quasi-judicial body, the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel. Support the government and the bitumen sands, fine, we’ll give you taxpayers’ dollars, even if you don’t need it. Oppose the government, and you do it on your own dime.

Transnational energy companies have millions to spend to support their views on the oils sands, whether before the JRP or in a multi-million PR campaign. A poor community that could be devastated by an oil spill off the BC Coast doesn’t count.

In the age of the web, Facebook, Twitter and other social media, all speech is hard to control, as despotic governments around the world are finding. Hate speech on the Internet is impossible to control. All someone has to do is have a server in a country like the United States, where the First Amendment permits it. Green speech will continue to be free on the Internet. The difference is that Conservatives are making every effort to make green speech ineffective in the political and public spheres in Canada.

The change in the Canadian hate law means little in a practical sense. So why did the Conservatives change the law? Like their efforts to crush “green speech,” repealing those hate speech clauses has absolutely nothing to do with free speech. The repeal is all about ideological control, the very opposite of free speech.

Behind this vote is the fact that conservatives have made it clear over the years that they despise human rights codes. Today’s act of repeal is nothing more than part the Conservatives wide-ranging plan to incrementally, millimetre by millimetre, (probably through other private member’s bills) to dismantle all the progress that has been made in this country over the past 70 years.

The right wing media loves to promote the far out wacko cases of people who use the human rights law process, stories the right-wing repeats again and again. There have been wackos who use other legal procedures, including the civil courts and other judicial and quasi-judicial bodies. But the conservatives and their media allies only emphasize the wacko cases before a human rights tribunal.

Of course, the majority of comfortable (and most of whom are, as far as we know, white, male and straight) conservatives are never going to have to use a human rights tribunal to redress a grievance. They were never beaten up on the school yard, never denied a job or housing. Most of the people who go before human rights tribunals are on the margins of society.

At the same time, we see the ongoing campaign by conservatives to demonize “green speech,” speaking out for the environment. Conservatives, in politics and the media, are trying to curb the funding of foundations that support the environment, the government routinely calls environmentalists “radicals” and even “terrorists.” Now we have Harper saying, yet again, don’t you dare oppose government policy on the bitumen sands.

The right-wing media routinely heaps their scorn and yes, even hatred, for those who believe that life on this planet is threatened. Those right wing columnists will, of course, fight to death to protect their own free speech but most won’t even put in a single sentence of objection in their columns or reports about the conservative campaign against “green speech.”

Which brings us to the man, who while claiming to be a free speech advocate, is actually now the self-appointed head of Canada’s thought police, Ezra Levant of Ethical Oil. (Ethical Oil today triumphantly tweeted Harper’s statement @EthicalOil Taxpayers funding anti-oilsands activists #EthicalOil #Cdnpoli… fb.me/V1AS7Tg2 )

Writing in the National Post, Jonathan Kay is full of praise for Levant:

a vigorous network of right-wing bloggers, led by Ezra Levant, began publicizing the worst abuses of human-rights mandarins…. In absolute numbers, the readership of their blogs was small at first. But their existence had the critical function of building up a sense of civil society among anti-speech-code activists, who gradually pulled the mainstream media along with them. In this sense, Mr. Levant deserves to be recognized as one of the most influential activists in modern Canadian history.

Influential activist, yes. Free speech advocate? No. It is time the media stopped calling Levant a champion of free speech. He is not. Levant is a champion of causes he himself approves of, especially the bitumen sands. Free speech for anyone who opposes his agenda is subject at very least to attack and ridicule.

In his columns, Levant advocated the curbing of the free speech of the thousands of people of British Columbia who are defending their back yard from the energy industry. Levant is, of course, free to disagree with them, but don’t you dare oppose Ezra Levant or the bitumen sands,

Levant, rather than calling for more free speech in his columns, as his personal PR spin maintains, advocated cutting off the people who live here in northwestern British Columbia from the hearings of the Northern Gateway Joint Review panel, by saying too many people had signed up to testify.

Writing in SunMedia on December 10, 2011, Levant let off a broadside at the thousands of ordinary Canadians living and working along the route of the Northern Gateway pipeline who signed up to comment on the project, calling on Stephen Harper to fire chair Sheila Leggett for permitting too many people to speak at the hearings

[A]s of Friday, 4,453 people had typed in their names into Leggett’s website, signing up for the right to make a presentation.

[The JRP] allows anyone in the world — literally any person, any child, any foreign citizen — to simply type their name and address and get the right to testify before her panel.

It’s as trivial as clicking “like” on a Facebook page. That’s why Leggett needs another year. If another 40,000 people click on her website, will she delay things 10 years?

Skimming through the names is like reading petitions where wiseacres sign up as “I. P. Freely” or “John A. Macdonald.” Much of it is just junk, to jam up the system.

The website allows people to write a comment. Many of them are word-for-word replicas of each other. It’s a form letter campaign, arranged by professional environmental lobbyists. And it’s working. The only question is whether Leggett is naive, incompetent or biased against the pipeline.

Some of the forms have been faxed in. They helpfully have the fax signature stamp at the top of the page, showing which foreign-funded lobby group is working to gin up names. Like the Sierra Club, which received a $909,000 contract from the U.S. Tides Foundation and their Canadian affiliate to gin up opposition to the “tar sands.”

Those foreign billionaires are getting their money’s worth — they’ve managed to delay the hearings by a year before they’ve even started.

Levant was giving a completely inaccurate account of the Joint Review process. His column which echoes the ideological blindness of most his conservative columnist colleagues, speaks of foreign influence, repeating the big lie being propagated by the Conservative party, started largely by blogger Vivian Krause, that there is an International California Conspiracy to undermine the Canadian energy industry.

Dealing with a pipeline coming through some of the most geologically unstable country on the planet is not “trivial.” The threat of a major oil spill on the British Columbia coast is not “trivial.”

I’ve attended, listened to the remote webcast or read the transcripts of much of the hearings. None–none– of the testimony can remotely be considered: “Much of it is just junk, to jam up the system.”

A fair estimate would say that 95 per cent of people who registered to comment live along the pipeline route or the BC coast. At least a dozen or more letters of comment are posted on the JRP site every day, which means thousands since Levant wrote the diatribe, and it is clear that they are written by individuals with valid concerns, and none in recent months are form letters. (I check them, I doubt if Levant does)

In that column, Levant goes on about JRP chair Sheila Leggett:

She’s Stephen Harper’s bureaucrat, but she’s taking direction from foreign meddlers. For “whatever time it takes.”

What a fool. No court would permit such a gong show. And Leggett has court-like powers.

Last month, when Barack Obama delayed the Keystone XL pipeline from the oilsands to the U.S., Harper was appalled.

But Leggett was appointed by Harper. And she just pulled an Obama on our own country.

Leggett must be fired. Her job is not to listen to everyone in the world with an Internet connection. It’s to make the best decision in Canada’s interest.

Her Oprah-style hearings are unacceptable, and Harper should make that clear by sacking her.

Leggett was not fired. In fact, over the past six months, she has had a difficult time confining testimony to the narrow rules of evidence that do not permit someone to actually say they oppose the pipeline. An intervenor had to testify “from personal knowledge” or if First Nations “from traditional knowledge.” So no hearings came close to being “a gong show.”

There hasn’t been a single “foreign meddler” testify in the past six months (although some intervenors, including the energy companies themselves, use experts from outside Canada).

In a later column, on January 7, 2012, the weekend before the hearings began here in Kitimat, Levant again toed the conservative party line in Pipeline review hearings allowing foreign input is ridiculous — we don’t need another country’s permission. It’s all Canada, Levant again repeated his big lie.

Those who testified at the Kitamaat Village hearings in the following days were from the Haisla Nation as well as Douglas Channel Watch and the Kitimat Valley Naturalists (both groups consist of mainly retired Kitimat residents). There wasn’t a foreign billionaire in sight. Same with the hearings in the days and weeks that followed, First Nations, fishers, hunters, guides, birders, and yes environmental groups. (How dare those BC NIMBYs get in the way of an Alberta pipeline and its manifest destiny?)

In today’s SunMedia article, Environment Canada cautioned:

A spokesman for Environment Minister Peter Kent tells QMI Agency while that funding is often legally required, Kent wants to make sure “common sense prevails” in how it’s awarded.

With its majority, it is likely the Conservatives will change the rules, just as they are by abolishing DFO fisheries protection for salmon spawning streams. Again bottom line, if you support the government and you are rich, you can testify. If you are poor, even if you are “directly affected,” tough luck.

The sad fact is that Levant has won, for now, his fight against free speech in BC, probably without knowing it.

More and more people are dropping out of the Joint Review Panel process, hearings scheduled for days now last just a day or an afternoon. That’s because given the position of Stephen Harper, Joe Oliver and Peter Kent, that the pipeline is going ahead no matter what, many of these people who signed up to comment now see no reason to testify for 10 minutes on a subject that is a foregone conclusion. Here in the northwest, where long distance travel is concerned, it takes time and money to make the effort of participate. Why testify, if the government is going to ignore the concerns of the people who live here?

No wonder Ethical Oil sent out the celebratory tweet this afternoon.

The Conservatives have won a major in battle in their war on free speech in this country by making it not worth their while for many ordinary citizens, those who don’t have deep pockets for research and lawyers, to speak on the Northern Gateway Pipeline, at least before the Joint Review Panel. Now Harper government wants to cut off funds for the poorer intervenors. If that happens, more opponents will drop out of the proceedings.

Kay, in his attack on the hate law calls it a “system of administrative law that potentially made de facto criminals out of anyone with politically incorrect views about women, gays, or racial and religious minority groups.”

The National Post’s conservative friends (in its own newsroom and both in and out of Parliament) are now looking for ways to make “defacto criminals out of anyone with the politically incorrect” view that the Northern Gateway Pipeline is not a new version of the “national dream.” After all, Stephen Harper’s statement today means “that doing things contrary to government policy” is now politically incorrect.

Of course, if the pipeline breaches along the Kitimat River and the town is without a drinking water system for up to four years (in the worst case scenario), it will be Kitimat’s nightmare, not Canada’s. (In Don Mills, columnists will still be able to drink Toronto’s water or, perhaps, run to the corner store for a Perrier.) If a bitumen tanker hits the rocky coast and sinks in the deep cold-water fjords, it will largely be BC’s nightmare, and the BC taxpayers’ nightmare, not Edmonton’s or Toronto’s. If a pipeline buried under nine metres of west coast snow in a remote valley has a small–undetectable by computer– breach in the darkest days of January and the ongoing oil leak isn’t discovered for weeks or months, by that time it might also be “politically incorrect” for anyone Canada to object. (Of course, people in the region will object and strongly).

The fact is that these small c and large C conservative campaigns against hate laws in terms of “free speech” are nothing more than the rankest hypocrisy. What most (not all) conservatives want is free speech for their ideas and only those ideas, especially if they want to shout their own hatred of certain groups from the rooftops or on the world wide web, while at the same time, many conservatives have been trying to shut down anyone with opposing views.

To a conservative, the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion that still drives too many numbers of gay teenagers to suicide, is always protected free speech, no matter the body count.

On the hand, to the same conservatives, free speech in Canada doesn’t include protecting the environment of the only planet we live on, especially if a small portion of the funding that speech comes from California. In conservative Canada, free speech belongs to American (that is foreign) oil billionaires like the Koch brothers. To conservatives, free speech does not apply to local BC groups, coalitions of often left-wing environmentalists and often conservative anglers and hunters, trying to protect wild salmon.

Where’s George Orwell when we need him? In the Canada of Stephen Harper, the National Post and Sunmedia, homophobic hatred is protected, preserving the planet is not protected. In Canada in 2012 (or I should I say 1984+), the only acceptable political speech is support for the bitumen sands and the pipeline projects.

And you wonder why the public has such contempt for majority of politicians and most of the media?

Joint Review media analysis Part one: Calgary Herald columnist advocates curbing free speech on the Northern Gateway Pipeline hearings

(Deborah Yedlin of the Calgary Herald was another columnist who advocated limiting the number of people appearing before the Joint Review Panel. Perhaps this is another case of free speech for Albertans, but not people in BC?)

From Pro Publica: North Dakota’s Oil Boom Brings Damage Along With Prosperity

Northwest Coast Energy News is republishing this story on spills and other waste from the North Dakota shale oil and gas boom from the U.S. investigative site Pro Publica. Of most interest to readers here in northwest BC is ProPublica’s map of the spills in North Dakota, which is linked to in the story but not part of the republication package. You can find the map at this link or in the body of the story. That spill map, of course, could be a model for anyone tracking similar events in British Columbia.

North Dakota’s Oil Boom Brings Damage Along With Prosperity
by Nicholas Kusnetz, Special to ProPublica June 7, 2012

Oil drilling has sparked a frenzied prosperity in Jeff Keller’s formerly quiet corner of western North Dakota in recent years, bringing an infusion of jobs and reviving moribund local businesses.

But Keller, a natural resource manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, has seen a more ominous effect of the boom, too: Oil companies are spilling and dumping drilling waste onto the region’s land and into its waterways with increasing regularity.

Hydraulic fracturing 2014 the controversial process behind the spread of natural gas drilling 2014 is enabling oil companies to reach previously inaccessible reserves in North Dakota, triggering a turnaround not only in the state’s fortunes, but also in domestic energy production. North Dakota now ranks second behind only Texas in oil output nationwide.

The downside is waste 2014 lots of it. Companies produce millions of gallons of salty, chemical-infused wastewater, known as brine, as part of drilling and fracking each well. Drillers are supposed to inject this material thousands of feet underground into disposal wells, but some of it isn’t making it that far.

According to data obtained by ProPublica, oil companies in North Dakota reported more than 1,000 accidental releases of oil, drilling wastewater or other fluids in 2011, about as many as in the previous two years combined. Many more illicit releases went unreported, state regulators acknowledge, when companies dumped truckloads of toxic fluid along the road or drained waste pits illegally.

State officials say most of the releases are small. But in several cases, spills turned out to be far larger than initially thought, totaling millions of gallons. Releases of brine, which is often laced with carcinogenic chemicals and heavy metals, have wiped out aquatic life in streams and wetlands and sterilized farmland. The effects on land can last for years, or even decades.

Compounding such problems, state regulators have often been unable 2014 or unwilling 2014 to compel energy companies to clean up their mess, our reporting showed.

Under North Dakota regulations, the agencies that oversee drilling and water safety can sanction companies that dump or spill waste, but they seldom do: They have issued fewer than 50 disciplinary actions for all types of drilling violations, including spills, over the past three years.

Keller has filed several complaints with the state during this time span after observing trucks dumping wastewater and spotting evidence of a spill in a field near his home. He was rebuffed or ignored every time, he said.

“There’s no enforcement,” said Keller, 50, an avid outdoorsman who has spent his career managing Lake Sakakawea, a reservoir created by damming the Missouri River. “None.”

State officials say they rely on companies to clean up spills voluntarily, and that in most cases, they do. Mark Bohrer, who oversees spill reports for the Department of Mineral Resources, the agency that regulates drilling, said the number of spills is acceptable given the pace of drilling and that he sees little risk of long-term damage.

Kris Roberts, who responds to spills for the Health Department, which protects state waters, agreed, but acknowledged that the state does not have the manpower to prevent or respond to illegal dumping.

“It’s happening often enough that we see it as a significant problem,” he said. “What’s the solution? Catching them. What’s the problem? Catching them.”

Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, a lobbying group, said the industry is doing what it can to minimize spills and their impacts.

“You’re going to have spills when you have more activity,” he said. “I would think North Dakotans would say the industry is doing a good job.”

In response to rising environmental concerns related to drilling waste, North Dakota’s legislature passed a handful of new regulations this year, including a rule that bars storing wastewater in open pits.

Still, advocates for landowners say they have seen little will, at either the state or federal level, to impose limits that could slow the pace of drilling.

The Obama administration is facilitating drilling projects on federal land in western North Dakota by expediting environmental reviews. North Dakota’s Gov. Jack Dalrymple has urged energy companies to see his administration as a “faithful and long-term partner.”

“North Dakota’s political leadership is still in the mold where a lot of our oil and gas policy reflects a strong desire to have another oil boom,” said Mark Trechock, who headed the Dakota Resource Council, a landowner group that has pushed for stronger oversight, until his retirement this year. “Well, we got it now.”

Reaching ‘the Crazy Point’

Keller’s office in Williston is as good a spot as any to see the impacts of the oil boom.

The tiny prefab shack 2014 cluttered with mounted fish, piles of antlers and a wolf pelt Keller bought in Alaska 2014 is wedged between a levee that holds back Missouri River floodwaters and a new oil well, topped by a blazing gas flare. Just beyond the oil well sits an intersection where Keller estimates he saw an accident a week during one stretch last year due to increased traffic from drilling.

Keller describes the changes to his hometown in a voice just short of a yell, as if he’s competing with nearby engine noise. Local grocery stores can barely keep shelves stocked and the town movie theater is so crowded it seats people in the aisle, he said. The cost of housing has skyrocketed, with some apartments fetching rents similar to those in New York City.

“With the way it is now,” Keller said, “you’re getting to the crazy point.”

Oil companies are drilling upwards of 200 wells each month in northwestern North Dakota, an area roughly twice the size of New Jersey.

North Dakota is pumping more than 575,000 barrels of oil a day now, more than double what the state produced two years ago. Expanded drilling in the state has helped overall U.S. oil production grow for the first time in a quarter century, stoking hopes for greater energy independence.

It has also reinvigorated North Dakota’s once-stagnant economy. Unemployment sits at 3 percent. The activity has reversed a population decline that began in the mid-1980s, when the last oil boom went bust.

The growth has come at a cost, however. At a conference on oil field infrastructure in October, one executive noted that McKenzie County, which sits in the heart of the oil patch and had a population of 6,360 people in 2010, required nearly $200 million in road repairs.

The number of spill reports, which generally come from the oil companies themselves, nearly doubled from 2010 to 2011. Energy companies report their spills to the Department of Mineral Resources, which shares them with the Health Department. The two agencies work together to investigate incidents.

In December, a stack of reports a quarter-inch thick piled up on Kris Roberts’ desk. He received 34 new cases in the first week of that month alone.

“Is it a big issue?” he said. “Yes, it is.”

The Health Department has added three staffers to handle the influx and the Department of Mineral Resources is increasing its workforce by 30 percent, but Roberts acknowledges they can’t investigate every report.

Even with the new hires, the Department of Mineral Resources still has fewer field inspectors than agencies in other drilling states. Oklahoma, for example, which has comparable drilling activity, has 58 inspectors to North Dakota’s 19.

Of the 1,073 releases reported last year, about 60 percent involved oil and one-third spread brine. In about two-thirds of the cases, material was not contained to the accident site and leaked into the ground or waterways.

But the official data gives only a partial picture, Roberts said, missing an unknown number of unreported incidents.

“One, five, 10, 100? If it didn’t get reported, how do you count them?” he said.

He said truckers often dump their wastewater rather than wait in line at injection wells. The Department of Mineral Resources asks companies how much brine their wells produce and how much they dispose of as waste, but its inspectors don’t audit those numbers. Short of catching someone in the act, there’s no way to stop illegal dumping.

The state also has no real estimate for how much fluid spills out accidentally from tanks, pipes, trucks and other equipment. Companies are supposed to report spill volumes, but officials acknowledge the numbers are often inexact or flat-out wrong. In 40 cases last year, the company responsible didn’t know how much had spilled so it simply listed the volume of fluid as zero.

In one case last July, workers for Petro Harvester, a small, Texas-based oil company, noticed a swath of dead vegetation in a field near one of the company’s saltwater disposal lines. The company reported the spill the next day, estimating that 12,600 gallons of brine had leaked.

When state and county officials came to assess the damage, however, they found evidence of a much larger accident. The leak, which had gone undetected for days or weeks, had sterilized about 24 acres of land. Officials later estimated the spill to be at least 2 million gallons of brine, Roberts said, which would make it the largest ever in the state.

Yet state records still put the volume at 12,600 gallons and Roberts sees no reason to change it.

“It’s almost like rubbing salt in a raw wound,” Roberts said, criticizing efforts to tabulate a number as “bean counting.” Changing a report would not change reality, nor would it help anyone, he added. “If we try to go back and revisit the past over and over and over again, what’s it going to do? Nothing good.”

In a written statement, Petro Harvester said tests showed the spill had not contaminated groundwater and that it would continue monitoring the site for signs of damage. State records show the company hired a contractor to cover the land with 40 truckloads of a chemical that leaches salt from the soil.

Nearly a year later, however, even weeds won’t grow in the area, said Darwin Peterson, who farms the land. While Petro Harvester has promised to compensate him for lost crops, Peterson said he hasn’t heard from the company in months and he doesn’t expect the land to be usable for years. “It’s pretty devastating,” he said.

Little Enforcement

The Department of Mineral Resources and the Health Department have the authority to sanction companies that spill or dump fluids, but they rarely do.

The Department of Mineral Resources has issued just 45 enforcement actions over the last three years. Spokeswoman Alison Ritter could not say how many of those were for spills or releases, as opposed to other drilling violations, or how many resulted in fines.

The Health Department has taken just one action against an oil company in the past three years, citing Continental Resources for oil and brine spills that turned two streams into temporary toxic dumps. The department initially fined Continental $328,500, plus about $14,000 for agency costs. Ultimately, however, the state settled and Continental paid just $35,000 in fines.

The agency has not yet penalized Petro Harvester for the July spill, thought it has issued a notice of violation and could impose a fine in the future, Roberts said, one of several spill-related enforcement actions the agency is considering.

Derrick Braaten, a Bismarck lawyer whose firm represents dozens of farmers and landowner groups, said his clients often get little support from regulators when oil companies damage their property.

State officials step in in the largest cases, he said, but let smaller ones slide. Landowners can sue, but most prefer to take whatever drillers offer rather than taking their chances in court.

“The oil company will say, that’s worth $400 an acre, so here’s $400 for ruining that acre,” Braaten said.

Daryl Peterson, a client of Braaten’s who is not related to Darwin Peterson, said a series of drilling waste releases stretching back 15 years have rendered several acres unusable of the 2,000 or so he farms. The state has not compelled the companies that caused the damage to repair it, he said. Peterson hasn’t wanted to spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would take to haul out the dirt and replace it, so the land lies fallow.

“I pay taxes on that land,” he said.

At least 15 North Dakota residents, frustrated with state officials’ inaction, have taken drilling-related complaints to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the last two years, records show.

Last September, for example, a rancher near Williston told the EPA that Brigham Oil and Gas had plowed through the side of a waste pit, sending fluid into the pond his cattle drink from and a nearby creek. When the rancher called Brigham to complain, he said, an employee told him this was “the way they do business.”

A spokeswoman for Statoil, which acquired Brigham, said the company stores only fresh water in open pits, not wastewater, and that “we can’t remember ever having responded in such a manner” to a report about a spill.

Federal officials can offer little relief.

Congress has largely delegated oversight of oil field spills to the states. EPA spokesman Richard Mylott said the agency investigates complaints about releases on federal lands, but refers complaints involving private property to state regulators.

The EPA handed the complaint about Brigham to an official with North Dakota’s Health Department, who said he had already spoken to the company.

“They said this was an isolated occurrence, this is not how they handle frac water and it would not happen again,” the official wrote to the EPA. “As far as we are concerned, this complaint is closed.”

Salting the Earth

Six years ago, a four-inch saltwater pipeline ruptured just outside Linda Monson’s property line, leaking about a million gallons of salty wastewater.

As it cascaded down a hill and into Charbonneau Creek, which cuts through Monson’s pasture, the spill deposited metals and carcinogenic hydrocarbons in the soil. The toxic brew wiped out the creek’s fish, turtles and other life, reaching 15 miles downstream.

After suing Zenergy Inc., the oil company that owns the line, Monson reached a settlement that restricts what she can say about the incident.

“When this first happened, it pretty much consumed my life,” Monson said. “Now I don’t even want to think about it.”

The company has paid a $70,000 fine and committed to cleaning the site, but the case shows how difficult the cleanup can be. When brine leaks into the ground, the sodium binds to the soil, displacing other minerals and inhibiting plants’ ability to absorb nutrients and water. Short of replacing the soil, the best option is to try to speed the natural flushing of the system, which can take decades.

Zenergy has tried both. According to a Department of Mineral Resources report, the company has spent more than $3 million hauling away dirt and pumping out contaminated groundwater 2014 nearly 31 million gallons as of December 2010, the most recent data available.

But more than a dozen acres of Monson’s pasture remain fenced off and out of use. The cattle no longer drink from the creek, which was their main water source. Zenergy dug a well to replace it.

Shallow groundwater in the area remains thousands of times saltier than it should be and continues to leak into the stream and through the ground, contaminating new areas.

There’s little understanding of what long-term impacts hundreds of such releases could be having on western North Dakota’s land and water, said Micah Reuber.

Until last year, Reuber was the environmental contaminant specialist in North Dakota for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees wetlands and waterways.

Reuber quit after growing increasingly frustrated with the inadequate resources devoted to the position. Responding to oil field spills was supposed to be a small part of his job, but it came to consume all of his time.

“It didn’t seem like we were keeping pace with it at all,” he said. “It got to be demoralizing.”

Reuber said no agency, federal or state, has the money or staff to study the effects of drilling waste releases in North Dakota. The closest thing is a small ongoing federal study across the border in Montana, where scientists are investigating how decades of oil production have affected the underground water supply for the city of Poplar.

Joanna Thamke, a groundwater specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Montana, started mapping contamination from drilling 20 years ago. She estimated it had spread through about 12 square miles of the aquifer, which is the only source of drinking water in the area. Over the years, brine had leaked through old well bores, buried waste pits and aging tanks and pipes.

In the Poplar study and others, Thamke has found that plumes of contaminated groundwater can take decades to dissipate and sometimes move to new areas.

“What we found is the plumes, after two decades, have not gone away,” she said. “They’ve spread out.”

Poplar’s water supply is currently safe to drink, but the EPA has said it will become too salty as the contamination spreads. In March, the agency ordered three oil companies to treat the water or to find another source.

North Dakota officials are quick to point out that oversight and regulations are stronger today than they were when drilling began in the area in the 1950s. One significant difference is that waste pits, where oil companies store and dispose of the rock and debris produced during drilling, are now lined with plastic to prevent leaching into the ground.

New rules, effective April 1, require drillers in North Dakota to divert liquid waste to tanks instead of pits. Until now, drillers could store the liquid in pits for up to a year before pumping it out in order to bury the solids on site. The rule would prevent a repeat of the spring of 2011, when record snowmelt and flooding caused dozens of pits to overflow their banks.

But Reuber worries that the industry and regulators are repeating past mistakes. Not long before he left the Fish and Wildlife Service, he found a set of old slides showing waste pits and spills from decades ago.

“They looked almost exactly like photos I had taken,” he said. “There’s a spill into a creek bottom in the Badlands and it was sitting there with no one cleaning it up and containing it. And yeah, I got a photo like that, too.”

Keller has grown so dispirited by the changes brought by the boom that he is considering retiring after 30 years with the Army Corps and moving away from Williston. He runs a side business in scrap metal that would supplement his pension.

Still, determined to protect the area, he keeps alerting regulators whenever he spots evidence that oil companies have dumped or spilled waste.

Last July, when he saw signs of a spill near his home, Keller notified the Health Department and sent pictures showing a trail of dead grass to an acquaintance at the EPA regional office in Denver. The brown swath led from a well site into a creek.

If the spills continued, he warned the EPA in an email, they could “kill off the entire watershed.”

EPA officials said they spoke with Keller, but did not follow up on the incident beyond that. The state never responded, Keller said. The site remained untested and was never cleaned up.

“There was no restoration work whatsoever,” Keller said.

Analysis: The Murdoch inquiry’s lessons for the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel

The members of the Northern Gateway Joint Review panel and Stephen Harper’s cabinet, especially Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, should take a lesson from the Mother of Parliaments at Westminster and today’s parliamentary debate on the Leveson inquiry into the phone hacking scandal centered around Rupert Murdoch’s News International.

Fortunately for the United Kingdom, by and large, the House of Commons there still features rigorous debate by (mostly) intelligent Members of Parliament, unlike the current Parliament in Ottawa, where it appears that the members on the government benches are not even the “trained seals” they used to be, but mindless robots reading scripts prepared by operatives in the prime minister’s office.

(Although as the honourable Speaker at Westminster observed today, like Ottawa, debate can get out of hand at times. “Whatever strong views Members hold on this subject—as on many others—let me just remind them of the importance… of moderation in the use of language in this House. )

So what is the connection between Rupert Murdoch and the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel? Simple. The debate in the UK House of Commons on Wednesday, April 25, 2012, was all about inappropriate political interference in a “quasi-judicial” proceeding.

In the case of the UK, we’re talking about inappropriate political interference in Rupert Murdoch’s application to own all of the the satellite broadcaster, BSkyB.

In Canada, we’re talking about the ongoing interference by Stephen Harper and Joe Oliver and other members of the Conservative cabinet in the proceedings of the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel, which is also a quasi-judicial proceeding and should be independent of the government and should hear all sides of a debate, and come to a fair recommendation for the government.

Yet it is increasingly obvious, that up until now, the Joint Review Process is pre-determined to find the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline in the “national interest” and even if the Joint Review Panel puts a large number of environmental restrictions and conditions on the pipeline, it is highly likely that the Harper cabinet will overrule those conditions. If the members and staff of the JRP read today’s UK Hansard, (See note on links below) perhaps it will give them some motivation and backbone to come up with an independent ruling and recommendation or if they can’t, they should do the honourable thing and resign.

So what happened in the UK? Yesterday’s testimony at the phone hacking inquiry by Lord Justice Brian Levenson showed that the UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt had a series of meetings in the United States with News International executives prior to the Murdoch announcement that company was going to bid for full control of BSkyB. A special assistant to Hunt, a man named Adam Smith, also had meetings with News International officials and exchanged alleged “back channel” information. Smith has resigned. Hunt, for now, remains UK cultural secretary, with the Opposition demanding his head (not on London Bridge as a few centuries ago, just his resignation)

In a statement to the Commons, Hunt said

As part of this process, my officials and I have engaged with News Corporation and its representatives, as well as other interested parties—both supporters and opponents of the merger. Transcripts of conversations and texts published yesterday between my special adviser, Adam Smith, and a News Corporation representative have been alleged to indicate that there was a back channel through which News Corporation was able to influence my decisions. That is categorically not the case—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker:
Order. The House must calm down a bit. The statement must be heard. There will be a full opportunity for questioning of the Secretary of State, as he would expect. Whether he expects it or not, that is what will happen. That is right and proper, but it is also right and proper that the statement should be heard with courtesy.
Mr Hunt:
However, the volume and tone of those communications were clearly not appropriate in a quasi-judicial process, and today Adam Smith has resigned as my special adviser. Although he accepts that he overstepped the mark on this occasion, I want to set on record that I believe that he did so unintentionally and did not believe that he was doing anything more than giving advice on process. I believe him to be someone of integrity and decency, and it is a matter of huge regret to me that this has happened.

So the volume and tone of communications between News International and the minister responsible for looking over the BskyB bid were “not appropriate.”

Here in Canada, Enbridge has been lobbying the Conservative government for years to tilt the process in their favour. As exposed by reporting by both PostMedia News and Canadian Press, Enbridge lobbying occurred just before the government pulled out of the PNCIMA– the Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area, which was to safeguard the environment of the Pacific coast of BC.

At the same time the government continues to attack the other side, the environmentalists, as “radicals.” Hardly a fair approach.

Just today, Post Media News pointed to a report from the lobbying commission of a meeting between Enbridge and Fred Nott, chief of staff for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and Pat Daniel, outgoing CEO of Enbridge, on Dec. 8, 2011 and now we have changes to the Fisheries Act that are clearly in Enbridge’s favour.

Back to the Mother of Parliaments. In response to Hunt, Harriet Harman of the Labour Party talked about ministers making up their minds on a major economic issue before a report is finished.

Everyone recognises that the £8 billion News Corp bid for BSkyB was of huge commercial importance and that it had profound implications for newspapers and for all of broadcasting, including the BBC. The Business Secretary had been stripped of his responsibility for deciding on the bid because he had already made up his mind against it, but the Culture Secretary too had made up his mind, in favour of the bid, so how could he have thought it proper to take on that decision? Of course he could take advice, but the decision as to whether he should do it, and could do it fairly, was a matter for him and him alone.

The Secretary of State took on the responsibility, and assured the House that he would be acting in a quasi-judicial role, like a judge, and that he would be transparent, impartial and fair. However, is it not the case that James Murdoch was receiving information in advance about what the Secretary of State was going to do and what he was going to say—information that was given to only one side, which had not been given to those who were opposed to the bid, and before it was given to this House…

When it comes to the transparency that the Secretary of State promised, there appears to have been a great deal of transparency for Murdoch, but precious little for opponents of the bid or for this House. If, as suggested on the right hon. Gentleman’s behalf in the media, he was negotiating with Murdoch, why did he not tell the opponents of the bid and why did he not tell the House? Will he tell us now whether he believed himself to have been negotiating? Is that what was going on?

Chris Bryant, Labour member for Rhondda, could perhaps give the Canadian House of Commons, or at least the Canadian Conservative members, a lesson in the meaning of “quasi-judicial.”

Chris Bryant
Every councillor in the land knows what “quasi-judicial” means. They know that it means that if they are on the planning committee, they cannot tip the wink to anybody on one side or the other, and that they have to be cleaner than clean, whiter than white.

In the United Kingdom, as in Canadian Parliament, the underlinings take the fall for the Minister, but in a quote widely reprinted in the media today, one honourable member from the UK objecting to the minister’s action put it much better than anyone in Canada.

Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab):
The Culture Secretary’s adviser has now lost his job. Does that not prove the theory that when posh boys are in trouble, they sack the servants? Why doesn’t the Secretary of State do the decent thing: tell dodgy Dave and Gideon, and get out and resign?
Mr Hunt:
Adam Smith’s resignation is a matter of huge regret to me. I believe him to be a person of integrity and decency, but my responsibility to this House is to the integrity of this process—the objectivity and impartiality with which this process was conducted—and I believe I have presented evidence to the House that demonstrates that I behaved in a judiciously impartial way throughout.

One other key difference between the House of Commons in Ottawa and the House of Commons at Westminster is that the Speaker actually tries to get ministers to answer the questions put to them by the Oppositon and also comes down hard on irrelevancies.

Mr Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman is asking a question that is completely irrelevant to the terms of the statement. [Interruption.] It is simply not relevant. The hon. Gentleman should go and do his homework.

Jeremy Hunt asked to testify before the Leveson inquiry to tell his side of the story, so to be fair, until he has completed his testimony, the public will not know all that transpired between the Murdoch’s News International and the Conservative government in the UK.

It also should be noted that Hunt had a dual role, both as a cabinet minister and the quasi-judicial action of deciding on the BskyB application, which certainly seems to be a conflict of interest, while the Joint Review Panel is made up of three nominally independent individuals.

However, the fact remains, that statements from Stephen Harper, Joe Oliver and Peter Kent, with their open support for the Enbridge Northern Gatway pipeline while the JRP proceedings continue, are in the words of a much more honourable member than they are: “the volume and tone of those communications were clearly not appropriate in a quasi-judicial process.”

This also means that Canadians, especially the people of British Columbia, and the national media, should, from now on, be paying closer attention to the Leveson Inquiry. As of this week, the inquiry goes beyond the Shakespearean nature of the Murdoch clan, the titillation of the scandal of hacking the phones of Royals, celebrities, footballers and murder victims, not to mention the excesses of the British tabloids. Political interference in supposedly independent quasi-judicial proceedings is a threat to the checks and balances of any democracy and we should watch the testimony in London and be on guard for the future of Canada’s already shaky democracy.

Hansard Links

I have taken the debate from Today’s Debates. It does not yet appear on the main menu

After April 25, you can search UK debates by date

Official site: Leveson Inquiry Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press

Kinder Morgan announces plans to increase capacity of Trans Mountain pipeline to Vancouver

Trans Mountain pipelne — The Trans Mountain Pipeline (Kinder Morgan)

Kinder Morgan, of Houston, Texas, said Thursday, April 12, 2012, it plans to proceed with expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline system from Alberta to the BC Lower Mainland. The company made the announcement after what the energy industry calls an “open season,” a search for customers where it received “strong binding commitments” from existing and new shippers. They pledged commercial support to an additional 660,000 barrels per day of bitumen sands crude from the pipeline. Demand has been high and reports say Kinder Morgan has had to ration petroleum products for its existing customers.

The 20 year commitment from the customers means the pipeline capacity would increase to 850,000 barrels per day from 550,000 barrels. That would make the eventual capacity of the Kinder Morgan pipeline much larger than Enbridge Northern Gateway’s proposed 525,000 barrels per day.

In a release, Ian Anderson, president of Kinder Morgan Canada said, “We are extremely pleased with the strong commercial support that we received through the open season, which reinforces the appeal of our project and our approach. This strong commercial support shows the market’s enthusiasm for expanding market access for Canadian crude by expanding an existing system.”

Now Kinder Morgan has to get approval from the National Energy Board and acceptance from the local communities along the pipeline route from the Alberta bitumen sands to the terminals and refineries in Vancouver and in Washington state and for tanker export.

“This support from the market better defines the project and enables Kinder Morgan Canada to fully engage the local communities. We are still early in the engagement process of the project,” Anderson said in the release. “We share respectful, open relationships with many communities and organizations interested in our business. We are committed to an 18 to 24 month inclusive, extensive and thorough engagement on all aspects of the project with local communities along the proposed route and marine corridor, including First Nations and Aboriginal groups, environmental organizations and all other interested parties. We will also consider providing financial support to local communities for environmental initiatives. We have been planning for this day for many years and we are keen to start in depth engagement this summer.”

Kinder Morgan says the preliminary scope of the proposed project includes:

Projected capital cost of approximately $5 billion.
Twinning the existing pipeline within the existing right-of-way, where possible.
Adding new pump stations along the route.
Increasing the number of storage tanks at existing facilities.
Expanding the Westridge Marine Terminal.

Anderson added, “We anticipate filing a facilities application initiating a regulatory review with the National Energy Board in 2014. If our application is approved, construction is currently forecast to commence in 2016 with the proposed project operating by 2017.”

In addition to extensive engagement, the company will conduct traditional land use and environmental and socio-economic studies, and undertake detailed engineering and design studies, the release says.

The Trans Mountain proposal, like the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline is a “facilities application,” and one uncertainty facing the company will be the highly controversial decision by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government to speed up all future project applications of that type. Environmental groups have already expressed strong opposition to the speed up, while the energy industry has said faster application approval is long over due.

As well as the facilities application, Kinder Morgan says it will file “a commercial tolling application to review the company’s proposed commercial structure for the expansion. This filing, which is anticipated in summer 2012, will seek National Energy Board approval on how the company will charge its customers for transporting their product through the proposed expanded pipeline.”

Kinder Morgan says that for almost 60 years, the 1,150-km Trans Mountain pipeline system has been safely and efficiently providing the only west coast access for Canadian oil products, including about 90 percent of the gasoline supplied to the interior and south coast of British Columbia.

However, the continuing controversy over the Enbridge Northern Gateway and other pipeline projects, together with some accidents including the spill of 100,000 barrels of light crude near Abbotsford, has raised the profile of the Kinder Morgan line and therefore will likely bring more public scrutiny. Any increase in the capacity of the pipeline will also mean more tanker traffic in the already crowded waterways of the Vancouver harbour system and along the west coast.

Last June, Kinder Morgan also proposed the building of second pipeline from the bitumen sands to the west coast, roughly following the route of the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat. There was no mention of that project in today’s announcement.

Minister issues non-denial denial on taking habitat protection out of the Fisheries Act

On Friday, March 16, Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield released a brief statement denying that the government had made a decision to take habitat protection for fish out of the Fisheries Act (Earlier in the week reports had leaked saying that government intended to take protections for fish habitat out of the act, as way of clearing the way for industry.)

Ashfield’s statement, which came at 4:40 p.m. Eastern Time appeared to be the classic buried government news release issued late on a Friday. The release actually did not deny facts of the leak, making it also a classic non-denial denial.

Ottawa (Ontario) – The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans today issued the following statement:

“The government is reviewing fish and fish habitat protection policies to ensure they do not go beyond their intended conservation goals. Recent speculation about the current review is inaccurate. No decision has been made.

“The government has been clear that the existing policies do not reflect the priorities of Canadians.

“We want to focus our activities on protecting natural waterways that are home to the fish Canadians value most instead of on flooded fields and ditches.”

It is clear that Conservative policy, such as proposed changes to the Environmental Assessment Act and budget cuts at Environment Canada, is to eliminate as many environmental protections as possible, and so the sentence that policies “do not go beyond their intended conservation goals” must be interpreted in light of the environmental record of the Conservative government.

On March 13, media including The Globe and Mail Ottawa wants to bow out of regulating fish habitat, documents show and The Vancouver Sun, Canada poised to ‘gut’ fish protection laws, biologist claims reported that the Conservatives want to get government out of the job of regulating fish habitat, so projects such as the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline can be fast tracked.

Otto Langer, an aquatic ecologist who worked for the federal government for 32 years, obtained the documents and made them available to the media.

He said the documents show that the government intends to remove the requirement in the Canada Fisheries Act to protect fish habitats for any fish that is not of “economic, cultural or ecological value.”

Langer told The Globe and Mail: “Probably the main reason why the oil industry, especially in the Prairie provinces, wants it out of the act is its use triggers [a review under] the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. If you are going to do harm to habitat, you have to do an environmental review and that takes time and money.”

Speaking to The Vancouver Sun Langer asked how the government could define
“what is a fish of economic, cultural or ecological value?”

Documents obtained by PostMedia news, as reported in The Vancouver Sun story, say that energy and other industries consider the Fisheries Act a irritant that holds up projects. One of the documents say:

“Some of the largest and most complex natural resource and industrial development projects across the country are affected by Fisheries Act requirements, which are consistently identified as one of the top federal regulatory irritants by stakeholders across the country,”

In his bi-weekly conference call with northwestern reporters, earlier Friday, before Ashfield issued his statement, Skeena Bulkley Valley NDP MP Nathan Cullen said he has heard the “the government is planning to take the word ‘habitat’ of Section 35 of the Fisheries Act and then ram that potential change into a budget bill.

“This is what the fisheries act is for, to protect habitat,” Cullen said. “Protecting habitat is one of the most crucial factors in protecting fish stocks. If you can’t protect habitat, then how do you protect fish?

If they do this,” Cullen said, “They’ll rip the very heart out of the Fisheries Act. The heart and soul of the act is that if you want to protect fish, you must consider habitat. You don’t have to be a genius or a fish biologist to know that if the fish don’t have anywhere to spawn, you’ll kill the fishery.”

Cullen said if the government does go ahead with the changes, “it will further compound all the problems and stresses we’ve been putting on the fishery. Essentially the government is saying that wild fish populations will not matter, that oil and gas is going to trump them every single time.

He went to say, “They did this with the Navigable Waters Act a few years ago They killed off a one hundred year old act that was designed to protect waterways in Canada. You know who it upset, and this is something the government is going to have to be paying attention to is the BC Wildlife Federation, the anglers and hunters associations, any of those groups that likes the go out into nature and actually see some nature. All of those groups got upset last time and now its going to be that times ten.“

Ashfield’s statement about flooding referred to a couple of incidents where the Department of Fisheries and Oceans would not allow draining of flooded areas. He told the House of Commons “Last year in Saskatchewan, a long-running country jamboree was nearly cancelled after newly flooded fields were deemed fish habitat by fisheries officials. In Richelieu, the application of rules blocked a farmer from draining his flooded field.”

In response, The Globe and Mail quoted Adam Matichuk, fisheries project co-ordinator for the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, said that, during high-water events, many fish species move into flooded areas to feed and reproduce.

“The Craven area is basically a flood plain,” he said. “It doesn’t flood every year, but, when it does, fish take advantage of it. There were hundreds of thousands of young fish, mostly pike and walleye, in there when they turned on those pumps,” he said.

Links Enbridge lobbying, Enbridge pipeline, Gateway hearings and more

Smithers council votes to oppose Northern Gateway, fourth council within a month

Smithers has become the third northwestern British Columbia municipal council to vote against the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, joining Prince Rupert and Terrace. Earlier, one regional district, Skeena Queen Charlotte, also voted against the controversial pipeline and tanker project.

The vote in Smithers was 5-1.

Smithers Councillor Phil Brienesse, in a statement posted on his Facebook page, said

I brought forth a new motion to oppose the Enbridge Northern Gateway project. The motion passed 5-1 after careful and considerable debate by council. My decision was based in part on new information that came out from recent decisions made in Terrace, SQCRD, and Prince Rupert that made it clear that local governments had the right and are clearly permitted to provide information to the Joint Review Panel. Since the previous motion was tabled with the reasoning being that it was felt we should not be influencing the JRP it seemed appropriate to bring forth a new motion at this time taking into consideration that we made the decision based on the information currently available.

Brienesse was quoted by CFJW on Tuesday night: “I hope this really brings our community together and in particular what it does, is it brings the north together so now we have Smithers, Terrace, Prince Rupert, and the Skeena Queen Charlotte Regional District all opposing Enbridge, in their own unique ways that makes sense to their community,” said Brienesse, adding “we have a united North, so I am very positive about this.”

CFJW said the only vote against the motion was from Councillor Charlie Northrup, who noted not all councillors were present for last night’s meeting — and he wanted to table it until everyone was there.

Enbridge spokesman Paul Stanway, speaking on CBC Radio, repeated what he said to Northern View after the Prince Rupert vote, that it was better for all communities to wait until the Joint Review Panel had finished the hearings and then make a decision based on all the evidence.

Enbridge won’t offer better deal to First Nations, may be considering alternate Gateway routes: Reuters

David Ljungren of Reuters, with the Canadian delegation now in Beijing, reports in Enbridge CEO says company won’t offer natives better terms on pipeline (as published in the Globe and Mail) that:

Enbridge Inc. will not offer better financial terms to aboriginal bands standing in the way of a major oil pipeline from energy-rich Alberta to the Pacific Coast, the firm’s chief executive officer said on Thursday.

Pat Daniel also told Reuters that while he was prepared to look at alternate routes for the Northern Gateway pipeline – which is crucial to Canadian plans to export oil to China – he felt the current routing plan [to Kitimat] was the best.

Analysis: Rumour that China, not Canada, will build Gateway adding to pipeline controversy

On the same day:

In Davos, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the World Economic Forum that his government consider it a “national priority” to ensure the country has the “capacity to export our energy products beyond the United States, and specifically to Asia…In this regard, we will soon take action to ensure that major energy and mining projects are not subject to unnecessary regulatory delays — that is, delay merely for the sake of delay.” (See Globe and Mail Harper vows ‘major transformations’ to position Canada for growth)
The New York Times in In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad exposes the horrendous, almost slave like conditions in China’s dark satanic mills that create and polish the shining iPads (that probably millions actually to use to read the Times.)
In The Ottawa Citizen, Terry Glavin writes Questions Canadians should be asking about China. The University of Victoria journalism professor takes a hard look at the growing power around the world of Sinopec, the Chinese state petroleum company, one of the biggest backers of the Northern Gateway pipeline, saying that “Sinopec became co-author of Stephen Harper’s new foreign policy and energy strategy.”
In the Vancouver Sun, Mark Jaccard, of Simon Fraser university, takes a wider view of the Northern Gateway pipeline and its effect on greenhouse gas emissions in Pipeline itself not the only problem we should worry about and also questions the role of China in oil sands and pipeline development.
A quiet rumour has been heard more and more in Kitimat for the past month, that China, not Enbridge, will build the Northern Gateway pipeline, bringing in thousands of Chinese workers, living in work camps for the pipeline construction.

You hear a rumour once, it’s just a rumour, not worth reporting.

You hear it three or more times; a couple times in quiet conversation with different people, then overhear it in a Shoppers Drug Mart lineup, it means that rumour, unlikely, in fact far fetched, as it would be in reality, shows that the pipeline debate is touching a raw nerve in northwestern British Columbia.

On its surface, the rumour could never be correct, Canada would never agree (as this country did when building the railways more than a century ago) to bring in thousands of Chinese workers to build the pipeline across the British Columbia wilderness.

On the other hand, one thing fuelling the rumour is that when China invests in other countries, often there are compounds full of workers and managers from China, who capture the best jobs in a project, leaving the low-level work to local labour. The media has reporting Chinese abuse of workers in Africa for the past few years. The latest in The Guardian on January 2, 2012, reported Workers claim abuse as China adds Zimbabwe to its scramble for Africa

Underlying the rumour is fear, fear of further loss of jobs to China.

In northwestern BC, the saw mills are closing, while raw logs are shipped to China. Each day CN hauls huge coal trains (coal, of course, one of the greatest contributors to greenhouse gases) to the port of Prince Rupert, returning with intermodal trains, averaging 170 cars, with containers full of cheap Chinese made goods destined mostly for the United States.

According to new poll, published in The Calgary Herald, 84 per cent of Albertans want the bitumen upgraded in the province. (Marc Henry The politics of upgrading Alberta bitumen )

At the same time, the Harper government continues to demonize the environmental objections to the Northern Gateway pipeline, which leads at least one columnist on The Calgary Herald, Stephen Ewart, to say Northern Gateway pipeline debate could stand better diplomacy quoting Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver as saying

“You wouldn’t hear from American special interest groups, celebrity environmentalists and champagne socialists that Canada’s oilsands are subject to the toughest environmental monitoring and regulation in the world,” Oliver said.

Ewart, who is pro-pipeline, goes on to say:

Canada needs an export pipeline to a location on the West Coast to sustain the economic impact on the national economy from oilsands development. What isn’t needed is more antagonistic comments from government ministers.

It will likely take a lot more than diplomatic niceties to calm the pipeline controversy.

The one promise from Enbridge, the Alberta bitmen sands and the Harper government that may have some traction in northwestern British Columbia is tens of thousands of temporary construction jobs. It is well known that there will be very few permanent jobs from the Northern Gateway pipeline in this part of Canada.

Now it appears that some people here in the northwest are starting to believe there won’t even be construction jobs along the Northern Gateway pipeline.

The Calgary oil-patch, who today cheered Environment Minister Peter Kent when he said he would fast track the regulatory process for energy development, should take note, the rumour about vast compounds of Chinese workers building a pipeline through the BC bush is not coming from “champagne socialists” but from working people who want solid, good, long-term, well-paying jobs. These are people who also fish, hunt, hike and boat and are worried about the environmental impact of the pipeline and trying to balance jobs and the environment.

The campaign against “foreign” environmentalists, fronted by Ezra Levant and Ethical Oil but likely originating in the inner circles of the Conservative political war room, may be backfiring.

Raise the question of foreign interference and that incites all kinds of political rumours, rumours unintended in the political bubble just inside the Ottawa Queensway.

The China worker rumour appears to have started just a short while after Ethical Oil’s campaign against the foreign environmentalists began to attract widespread media attention.

The China worker rumour doesn’t come from the political commentary set who published columns today, but from the coffee shops, drug store lineups and Legion Halls.

The China worker rumour shows a lack of trust in northwestern BC for Enbridge, for Sinopec, for the province of Alberta, for the Harper government.

As far fetched as the rumour is, the idea that Chinese workers will build the pipeline can only escalate the controversy over the Northern Gateway pipeline.

Flanagan suggests that Harper use constitutional override clause to force through Northern Gateway

According to the CBC Inside Politics blog, Tom Flanagan, a former advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a professor at the University of Calgary and a frequent guest on CBC’s Power and Politics is advocating the use of constitutional override clause to force the completion of the Northern Gateway pipeline. You can read Max Paris’s complete blog Hard advice on Northern Gateway pipeline here.

Flanagan also suggests using the same power to “settle” aboriginal land claims. On Power and Politics he said:

[T]oughness is needed right now. You’ve got to signal that you’re serious about this. No, no, I support that completely. Other advice I’d be giving if I were asked, I’d be researching the constitutional powers of the federal government…the declaratory power which will allow the federal government to declare something to be a work for the national interest. Also a possibility of a legislative settlement of aboriginal claims.

According to the blog “declaratory power” is in section 92(10)(c) of the Constitution Act of 1867. It reads thus:

Such Works as, although wholly situate within the Province, are before or after their Execution declared by the Parliament of Canada to be for the general Advantage of Canada or for the Advantage of Two or more of the Provinces.

The blog also quotes Bruce Ryder, a constitutional law expert and prof at Osgoode Hall, as saying: “It’s a valid legal power that Parliament possesses. To use it would raise an outcry and be intensely controversial from the point of view of constitutional convention or practices that have evolved to reflect contemporary understandings of federalism that treat the provinces and the federal government as equal.”

Ryder figures Flanagan considers B.C. a bit of a wildcard in this whole Northern Gateway Pipeline business. Using 92(10)(c) is his ham-fisted… but totally legal… way of getting around any potential problems with Victoria. It’s Tom’s version of how to crush political dissent and coerce provinces.

Even the hint of a constitutional override can only increase the skepticism and mistrust of the Joint Review Panel and the process. That skepticism and mistrust has been expressed at every single session over the first two weeks, despite the futile attempts by panel chair Sheila Leggett who tries to tell people to leave the criticism until the final argument sessions.