Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Tar Sands Pipeline Critics Hit Back at 'Radical' Claims
Canadian Minister blames environmental, other "radical" groups for blocking Enbridge pipeline
In an open letter on Monday, Canada's Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver railed against "radical" groups for trying to stop Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline, which would deliver tar sands oil from Alberta to Kitimat, British Columbia, for shipment to Asia.
"Environmentalists want to 'live within our means,' 'save some for tomorrow,' think about the 'legacy we leave for our children.' That strikes me as a pretty conservative approach," environmentalist David Suzuki said in a statement sent to CBC's Evan Solomon. (photo: CTV) In his letter yesterday, a day before the first public hearing on the pipeline proposal, Oliver stated the "radical" environmental groups were set on hijacking Canada's economy.
CBC News reports:
"Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade," Oliver said in an open letter.
"Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydro-electric dams."
Oliver says the groups "threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda," stack the hearings with people to delay or kill "good projects," attract "jet-setting" celebrities and use funding from "foreign special interest groups."
Oliver continued his message in an interview with CTV. They note:
In an interview with CTV's Power Play on Monday, Oliver said he's concerned that some of the pipeline opposition groups are using American funds to further an "ideological" agenda.
Those groups are "attempting to game the system and create so much delay that the economic viability of the project would be undermined," he said, adding that Canada must expand its oil export market beyond the United States to take advantage of international prices.
Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki reacted to Oliver's messaging:
"Environmentalists want to 'live within our means,' 'save some for tomorrow,' think about the 'legacy we leave for our children.' That strikes me as a pretty conservative approach," Suzuki said in a statement sent to CBC's Evan Solomon.
"We have become so powerful and demanding that we are negatively impacting air, water, soil and biodiversity, the very source of our lives and livelihood," the scientist and broadcaster said. "That's what environmentalists are concerned about and the minister's diatribe prevents us from having this important discussion of values and balance."
John Bennett, Sierra Club Canada Executive Director, scoffed at the charges of radicalism. In an open letter in response to Oliver's letter, he wrote:
Mr. Oliver says “environmentalists and radicals” just want to delay the scheme until it becomes economically unviable - an interesting charge. But is that really what’s happening – is that really what we do? Is asking government to make sure development is economically and environmentally sustainable and in the best interest of local residents and Canadians just a delay tactic? Of course not.
Haven’t we already learned the hard way that NOT asking tough questions can lead to devastating unintended environmental consequences? Last week I saw a news report on the reestablishment of eagles in New Jersey. They had dwindled to one pair by 1980. Back then there was no environmental assessment of DDT - just assurances from industry and government that it was safe and good for the economy. The eagles, falcons and other birds of prey are thankfully recovering because of “environmentalists and radicals” like Rachel Carson who used their democratic right raise the alarm and ask tough questions. Thankfully the government listened to, rather than attack, environmentalists and acted before it was too late.
Mr. Oliver’s other point is that foreign foundations are influencing Canadian public dialogue. We are preached to every day that we are in a global market where goods and ideas no longer have borders. Soliciting foreign investment, we are told in the sermons of CEOs and government ministers, is key to our future. The oil industry certainly seeks foreign investment ($100 billion and counting), including from the government of China through its state-owned oil companies.
It’s interesting how Mr. Oliver failed to raise concerns over revelations that Alberta secretly worked with the oil industry to develop a PR campaign and joint messaging to counter Canadians’ well-justified concerns about fracking. Further, recent press reports indicate that oil executives and their lobbyists have had the greatest number of meetings with ministers and government officials (including Mr. Oliver).
I guess that’s why we don’t see any feigned indignation from Mr. Oliver about big oil influencing Canadian policy.
25 Comments so far
Show AllJust wait and see, the rumbling over Iran is nothing more than an excuse to push through the pipeline for national securuty reasons.
Mr. Oliver: " Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs".
Big oil never mentions the cost to their elite, which is what really hurts them finacially. Just like the XL pipeline, they use the red herring and half truth that it will cost jobs, when they are nothing but the greedy oil people, that actually could care less about creating a few thousand, mostly temporary jobs, in fact, if they could figure out a way to build their pipelines without creating jobs and especially; if it saved big oil $$$$$.....you know they would do it in a heartbeat!
And nevermind about the thousands of families hurt by displacement, loss of livelihood due to the pipeline itself, and pollution caused by sloppy planning, cost cutting, poor quality work, and the process itself of transporting the oil..
Right on target !
Canada is luckiest country on earth willing to destroy the planet for a buck. Canada will be one of the last viable places to live on earth once the equatorial regions become inflamed with violence and natural disasters. Before that time, the word radical will be substituted with terrorist. Good thing Canada is building a massive new prison system in the face of declining crime rates. Things won't remain so sanguine forever. Terrorism will come home to this country once the sleeper cells of our conscience awakens to the mother of all existential threats. In the meantime we can watch Canadian television networks make superheroes of police and troops in a fetish orgy of human rights abuse. We Canadians may feel superior to Syrians now, thinking it can never happen here, but that is what the OWS will become. Last year OWS was merely the genesis of the great unwashed tide of humanity and radicalism in the years to come.
Check his bank account !
It needs to be made clear that Canada is run by a government of radicals elected by 39% of the population. Conserving the environment is a conservative value. The Conservative Party which forms government has been taking their cues from one Frank Lutz, a Republican strategist. They came out swinging regarding this pipeline after being caught off guard over the Keystone pipeline. Their propaganda goes something like this: our oil, our jobs, our country. Shouldn't it be: our environment, our future, our values? The one %ers are well represented by the Canadian government. The 99%ers are called names, denigrated and vilified.
As a BCer, I think you have that right. Enbridge might be a huge donor to the BC [faux]Libs, and have $$$$$ tied to lobbyists, but the people who love the land and the coast and their incredible wilderness will never allow the fouling of our lands and waters for it and its subsidiaries profits. Also, they have to pass this pipeline through the unceded territories of the BC First Nations [most of BC is unceded territories, btw.]. Most First Nations peoples who have for decades fought the colonial powers will not allow this and rightly so! We must support them and the environmental groups.
As an aside, the CBC also reported today that Syria's Assad claimed "foreign influence" for the unrest in that country and many of the comments compared this to what Oliver had claimed is "foreign influence." Too funny! I guess all dictators use this phrase.
Harper et his thugs & thuggets, aka as the Conservative Reform Alliance Party i.e. CRAP for short, pulls out the old jim crow battle cry: "it's them outside agitators causing all the problems for docile god fearing true blue salt of the earth Albertan Canadians, eh".
Sucking up & spitting out the filthiest, most expensive fossil fuel on the planet still has the end result of the contamination & destruction of the atmosphere needed to support all life on this planet.
This statement doesn't make me a radical. It makes me a Canadian who stands in opposition to the devastation of my glorious country for corporate greed.
Without clean air, water & land - you have nothing to breathe, nothing to drink and nothing to eat. There will be no jobs and no economy.
Harper's Canada™ is a soft dictatorship getting harsher.
Evangelical Harper employs propaganda tactics worthy of Turd Blosssom and Goebbels; in fact he has consulted the former. In smear tactics that resonate well with the thickies and with even supposedly educated people he is a master, at anything else he is useless and on foreign policy takes his direction directly from Israel.
Harper is a petty, control-freak photo-opper who sulks in world stage toilets if he doesn't get his way. He very likely would have a high score on the Hare psychopathy scale (PCL-R)
Why Canadians voted for a deluded religious wackjob dictator with no experience or abilities beyond smear campaigns and fulfilling distorted biblical prophecy is a mystery to me.
But Harper doesn't like any disagreement. Anyone who disagrees with his policy is labelled a dissenter or an "Islamicist" or a lefty, commie, hippy -even (gasp!) a socialist. A parasite to hard-working right-wingers, blah, blah.
Dissent and dissenters are dealt with increasingly harshly in Harper's Canada™.
Why do they have to transport this dirty slush all the way to the Gulf Coast? Why are they not refining it in Canada?
There is no refining capacity for this in Canada or sufficient market for the products which themselves would then have to be transported. To send to Eastern Canada is about the same distance as Texas.
This pipeline is apart from the Keystone XL though in the same category [same factotums]. The Northern Gateway is to run the same dirty sh*t to the BC coast to be then transported by tanker though some of the most dangerous coastal waters to go to China. Neither pipeline is environmentally palatable. Game Over!
When did "radical" become a dirty word? A radical is someone attacking the root of the problem. Regarding global warming, the root of the problem is exactly where our attention should be focused. We're running out of time for beating around the bush.
"...threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda..."
funny, I was thinking the exact same thing about King Steve and his minions.
I think there is another aspect to the environment that is being overlooked by the media on this topic. Its Global Warming.
According to James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA) and author of "Storms of my Grandchildren" the burning of our Tar Sands oil in China or elsewhere will emit enough carbon into the atmosphere to put the Earth past the "tipping point".
Even if there is not one oil spill from the pipeline or from the tankers outside Kitimat, we are introducing the possibility of unstoppable Global Warming toward an environment totally hostile to the survival of humankind.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has researched this topic and are unified on their concern for Global Warming. I think its time we started paying attention.
It's already too late.
I keep asking Mother Nature to drop baby krackatoa into the pacific, maybe the mother of all Tsunames would clean up D C and the political rats nest that harbors there. All those 300 foot yachts parked in the harbours won't be worth a damn if a hundred sixty foot wave comes romping in . seriously, i don't mean to make fun of this horrible future we are looking at, but what in the hell can we do to force folks to take glo-worm seriously. I see the signs, the garden hasn't frozen solid for years. If we get four inches snow, folks think we're having a terrible winter.
we used to get two to four feet of snow at a time. i live in Michigan, and it's damn near balmy. I think maybe we should get the history channel to run all those 'Story of The Environment" films again or whatever...Really, I'm Scared IT'S TOO LATE......Q
"Oliver stated the "radical" environmental groups were set on hijacking Canada's economy."
Such bullshit, Canada's economy was hijacked eons ago by NAFTA.
Canadian's know that depending soley upon resource extraction is just stupid, a return to diversification, support of farming, home grown manufacturing and industry would be far more sustainable and healthy for Canadian's and the planet.
It's the big foreign investers who have bought Canadian politicians and brainwashed Canadian citizens via a non stop media deluge of toxic sludge into thinking that Canada is only valuable as a source of raw materials for the world and Canadians are only valuable as hewers of wood and drawers of oil/water for said world.
BC is probably the most environmentaly conscious province in Canada thanks in large part to the voices of First Nations people who vigorously protest attempts to despoil what they see as a sacred trust to the earth and generouly share their insight with the rest of us. The proposed Enbridge Pipeline is a threat to watersheds in the mountains and a critically important passage between Vancouver Island and the mainland, it's simply not to be tolerated. Some things just cannot be bought.
100% in agreement.
Oh Canada, our home ON native lands, Lest we forget.
Funny how the government likes to cry foul when their own tactics are used to bring attention to what the environmental and long term economic consequences of tar sands exploitation....will do...
I think by now the vast majority are on to Harper's Conservatives ridiculous arguments...unfortunately with this "majority" in parliament...they can pretty much do as they please...including shutting down the hearings and pushing their agenda come hell or high water...I really mean sulphurous unbreathable gases and rising sea water from this assault on the environment....but hell and high water sound better!
The PR bullshit is starting to sound more and more like Turdblossom & Goebbels, as Sanctuary commented above. This strong polarization type of rhetoric is relatively new in Canada and most citizens are insulted by it. Mr. Oliver insulted all the First Nations people, environmentalists and most of the local citizens of British Columbia. The path of the pipeline and the waterways are like a landscape of jagged rocks and the pipeline and the oil tankers are like balloons filled with oil.