Category Archives: Politics

Nov 05 2014
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Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

How howling from the edges of sanity is good for New Brunswick

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As voices in the wilderness, we raise our rhetoric to match the long, lonely howls that issue from the pits of our guts. We see the future from our perches at the peripheries of Main Street, Freddy Beach, Parliament Hill and, yes, even Wall Street.

And, from that vantage, the future of this province is (trust me) utterly howl-worthy.

We are the pundits of New Brunswick, whose opinions about such things as economic development, social sustainability, energy policy, and fiscal management are sometimes politely acknowledged, but more often violently rejected.

We’re used to it.

Our fellow citizens are, after all, entitled to the pabulum their elected representatives ritually spoon into their pie holes when said representatives promise that their gruel will, in the end, taste like filet mignon.

But when guys like David Campbell, writing for the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, and scribes like Bill Belliveau and Norbert Cunningham, penning for the Moncton Times & Transcript, are routinely vilified for pointing out the patently obvious, and necessarily important, about this province’s. . .um. . .let’s just say “challenges”, I am risibly motivated to whip out my formidable arsenal of wordy invective to level the decidedly unlevel playing field that is the blogosphere.

Then again, what would be the point of that when we have Donald Savoie in our philosophical corner.

The “great prognosticator” issued another in a long line of epistles from his mount at the University of Moncton the other day.

In this one, he wrote, “Whether one likes it or not, the global economy is here and it is highly competitive. New Brunswick has to compete with what it has, not with what it wishes it had. I was surprised (during the recent provincial election campaign) to hear aspiring politicians and observers making the case. . .that we can say no to development opportunities in the natural resources sector and that all we need to do (is) create new economic activities to diversify our economy. How can we do this?”

Good question (though, it is rhetorical).

Allow me, pundit-wise, to take a crack at an answer (though it be unrhetorical).

Posit the following: Natural gas is far less damaging to the environment than any other form of fossil fuel; its extraction technologies for both orthodox and unorthodox plays are proven, safe and reliable; its delivery infrastructure is far less likely to fail and, therefore, pollute than those for crude and refined oil and coal.

Now, acknowledge the following: There is enough shale gas lying beneath the surface of this province to power local economies for decades through extraction, transportation and refining activities, alone. But that is only the outline of the big picture (if we had big-picture thinkers at our various seats of government, they might have paid attention decades ago).

The true, long-term potential of this resource, should we choose to embrace our own economic interests, is technological and innovative leverage.

Even the most committed environmentalists must surely realize by now that transitioning to a fully sustainable, renewable energy future will only succeed when we finally learn how to deploy the relatively cheap energy we harvest from the ground and the sea beds.

Almost every component of a wind turbine, a tidal array, a solar facility, a hybrid automobile, a bloody, backyard greenhouse is a product, directly or indirectly, of refined petroleum, cracked into shape for re-manufacture into the building blocks of plastic, pure and simple. That’s the foundational reality of our industrial economy; it has been for 100 years.

Saying we wish it weren’t so won’t make it go away.

What might, though, over time, is a coordinated, comprehensive public-private partnership to transform New Brunswick into a think tank, industrial test site and centre of excellence for repurposing the world’s excess plastic as the building blocks of sustainable, renewable energy technologies.

From here, the province – with its surfeit of institutes of advanced education relative to its population – could pioneer a global standard for delimiting the use of petroleum products to, in effect, manufacture only those technologies that produce sustainable, renewable, in-situ energy (lamentably, planes, trains and automobiles must be off the table for the time being).

Off course, mine is just one voice in the wilderness of ideas.

Let the vilification commence.

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Nov 04 2014
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Business, Economy, Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

It’s time to get clear on natural gas

Welcome to the energy big leagues, Mr. Premier.

Wheels upon wheels, gears upon gears, the squeeze play against Brian Gallant’s determination to impose a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in New Brunswick – the preferred industry method for extracting natural gas, with water, sand and a proprietary soup of chemicals,  from sedimentary rock – has officially commenced.

Not that there’s anything especially surprising about Corridor Resources’ public insistence that 30 of its fracked gas wells supplies PotashCorp’s operations in the Sussex area of the province – to no ill effect on the water, soil and air – with a competitively priced, comparatively clean source of fuel with which to dry the fertilizer for market readiness.

Nor is their anything particularly shocking about PotashCorp’s addendum last week.

“Access to a secure, stable and sustainable gas supply is critical to our. . .longterm success,” New Brunswick General Manager Jean-Guy Leclair told the Telegraph-Journal. “While there are alternate fuel sources for our facility, they would have profound implications on our current and future operational costs.”

Read between the lines, Mr. Premier. That’s a palpable threat. By now, you must know this. What’s mystifying is why you apparently didn’t see it coming.

Or, perhaps, you did, and your hard line in the sand during the election campaign was merely a political gambit to win over some voters.

Maybe your strategists advised you to hold that line for as long as you could and then capitulate only when major industrial players left you no choice.

If I had been one of your back-room boys, I would not have counselled this: Stay true to your principles until such time as the oil and gas lobby intimates major job losses; then reverse course in the broader interests of economic development.

And, in the process, blame the big, bad bogey man of corporate Canada for forcing your hand. “The devil made me do it, folks,” you might plead. “What can I say?”

Whatever is the case, all of it has been poor politics, poorer public policy and a fundamentally bad start for a new government.

And it’s getting worse.

Cabinet solidarity is one of the rocks that grounds leadership in a parliamentary democracy. It tells the electorate that the men and women the premier has chosen has his or her back, and, in the process assures the great, voting unwashed that they haven’t made a colossal mistake at the ballot box.

So, under these circumstances, what are we to make of Mines and Energy Minister Donald Arseneault’s freelance, off-playbook commentary last week?

“I was the minister back in 2007 who struck the deal to attract that investment of $2.2 billion (PotashCorp’s expansion) to New Brunswick,” he told the Telegraph-Journal last week. “We do know that Corridor feeds gas to the potash mines, and for me that is a very important component. . .For me, PotashCorp is a major player in New Brunswick. . .The last thing we want to do is potentially put certain operations in jeopardy.”

Now, we cut to a Page 3 story in the same organ on the same day.

“No,” declared Premier Gallant, “for us, it is a hydraulic fracturing moratorium, and we’re certainly willing to meet with different operations, different businesses, all stakeholders and New Brunswickers to understand the best way to implement this moratorium.”

None of which actually clarifies anything, except that the young premier of this province understands practically nothing about energy politics and, far more troubling, he seems oblivious to the worries of at least one of his important lieutenants – the one in charge of, arguably, the most important economic portfolio.

What now shall we expect? Will a great muzzling commence?

There is a way, of course, to safely and responsibly frack for gas in New Brunswick. We’ve been doing it for years. As long as we adhere to the tightest regulations our democracy provides — with the most comprehensive environmental oversight common sense produces — we have an even chance to reduce our reliance on far dirtier forms of fossil fuel and maybe, just maybe, generate the economic incentive to fully transition into a renewable, sustainable society. There is nothing new in any of this.

What is new is that we, in this fine, elegant, innocent part of the world must face the fact that we need the hard, tough, clear leadership to get us where we need to be.

Welcome to the energy big leagues, New Brunswick.

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Nov 03 2014
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Humour, Politics

The Big Smoke is now under Bruce management (sort of)

I never really got to know my distant cousin John Tory. Though we share an antecedent (my great-grandmother, Sarah Jane Tory Bruce was his great-great-aunt. . .I think), he became a wildly successful lawyer, corporate executive and fundraiser for charitable, good works, whilst I, in contrast, became a curmudgeon.

Last week, Cousin John ascended on a wave of strategic voting to the position of Mayor of Canada’s largest metropolis.

Last week, I wrote five columns for the Moncton Times & Transcript, walked 28 miles, and wondered when Damon on “The Vampire Diaries” would finally push the veil between dimensional plains and re-enter the “real world”.

All of which is to say that Toronto, the city of my birth, got the better product of the Tory-Bruce issue to lead it.

Then again, that’s actually not saying a whole helluva lot.

John prevailed, with 40 per cent of the vote, in the municipal election last week; but that was just seven points ahead of Doug Ford, who ran on his brother Rob’s behalf.

Rob, we should never forget, is the man – four years the mayor – who appeared in public as “tired and emotional” as he explained why his incessant drinking led to his recreational fondness for crack cocaine, racial and sexist slurs, and bizarrely bad, almost ritualistically suicidal behaviour.

That his older brother Doug should have come within single digits of electoral success, without any platform for change or progress – indeed, without any ideas at all – is all anyone needs to know about politics in The Big Smoke.

Call it Tammany Hall, Canadian-style.

I covered that city’s politics when Mayor Art Eggleton was in power. At the time, in the 1980s, the late, great Jack Layton was a progressive member of council. He would routinely fomate against the “power” of the “man”, not noticing that, somewhere, back in the far green belts of northern Etobicoke, Scarborough and Mississauga, the power of the “common man” was quietly forging “Ford Nation” from an unlikely consortium of disaffected white folks, and transplanted Jamaicans, Indians and eastern Europeans.

This is the city that Cousin John inherits.

And yet, he says this in his giddy acceptance speech: “Tonight, we we begin the work of building one Toronto – a prosperous, fair, respected and caring Toronto. Together, like never before, we begin building Toronto the Great.”

Meanwhile, Rob Ford still manages to nail it from his political hospice: “If you know anything about the Ford family, we never, ever, ever give up. . .I guarantee, in four more years, your going to see another example of the Ford family never, ever, ever giving up.”

I believe him. Does my Cousin John?

The ill-mannered, the crazy, the utter buffoons have always been able to purchase our attention (and our votes) cheaply. In the grips of their handlers, they become not the maniacal outliers of our society, but the mainstream managers of our democracy. They become, inexorably, the normative value to which we lend our faith, our hope, our dreams.

Toronto, the city of my beginnings, where I was raised for the first, formative years of my life – where I learned to read, calculate, think, emote, dress myself, tie my own shoes, eat my own supper, make my own friends, avoid bad guys, embrace good guys, know the difference between the dark and the light – give this cousin of mine a chance.

I can almost guarantee that this 60-year-old man will not list here and there, speaking poor West Indian patois, whilst sucking from a water-bong. I can almost guarantee that “cuz” will be as diligent and boring as the largest city in this great nation now needs in its leader.

But Canada, also know this: The Ford empire is far from done. It may be temporarily disenfranchised in The Big Smoke, but its ideological tendrils extend everywhere – to the big cities and small towns of the shield, plains, prairies and coasts of this nation.

It’s the small mind writ large by ambition and cynical determination.

Good luck, oh cousin of mine.

You’re going to need some.

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Oct 22 2014
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Energy, Politics

Fighting a bad case of pipeline paranoia

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Time was when the Energy East Pipeline proposal was the least controversial and troublesome of all of New Brunswick’s options for fossil-fuel-based industrial development. In fact, it was a no-brainer.

Encourage line builder and operator TransCanada to reverse the flow in one of its existing pipes, build a bunch of extensions, including one into the Saint John refinery and, hey presto: instant construction jobs for at least a few years.

Those, of course, were the good, old days. Times change.

Last spring Maude Barlow, national chairperson for the Council of Canadians, told the North Bay Nugget in an extensive interview, “I want to let communities know not to be pressured to make a decision or risk not getting the benefits of the pipeline. I can tell you there are no benefits. There’s no argument for this pipeline. It’s an export pipeline and we don’t need it. . .We get the risk and (oil companies) get the reward.”

What’s more, she added, “I would like to know what are the big jobs, because this pipeline is for export. It’s about greed. They’re playing with a potential environmental catastrophe that environmentalists have been warning about. . .It’s so much more dangerous (than any other oil) and it’s crossing watersheds and many waterways around the Great Lake Region that are already being threatened. We certainly don’t need to add to that threat.”

To which TransCanada, ever sensitive to bad press, of which it sees a lot these days, replied on its own website:

“Quebec and New Brunswick currently import more than 700,000 barrels of oil every day – or 86 per cent of their refinery needs – from countries such as Algeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. At current oil prices, this is over $75 million drained out of the Canadian economy – every single day. Energy East proposes to connect Western Canada’s resources to Eastern Canada’s needs. Greater supplies of domestic crude would improve the financial viability of eastern Canadian refineries by giving them access to less-expensive, stable domestic supplies.”

That’s not all: “Once this primary purpose is served, Energy East will supply export markets. TransCanada has always been open about this and it is not something we are shying away from. Exports are a good thing for our country. They provide economic growth. They create jobs. They generate tax revenue that helps our provinces build new universities, resurface hundreds of kilometres of highways or provide our seniors with home care.”

None of which has prevented environmentalists from legally delaying the work in sensitive habitats along the St. Lawrence River.

Meanwhile, some major natural gas customers in central Canada want TransCanada to assure them they won’t be ripped off when (if?) the project is completed.

To some extent, this is part of national pattern of pipeline paranoia. Both the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway initiatives, which would send Alberta crude west to the sea and south to the United States, are mired in controversies and concerns about leaks and spills.

But the larger, existential issue is what these pipes represent. As the Green Party of New Brunswick’s election campaign platform explicitly stated: “Discourage increases in the production and use of fossil fuels by denying permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure such as the Energy East pipeline.”

That’s all well and good, but not especially practical. Our essential paradox is that we still need dreaded fossil fuels if only to help power our shift away from them – to drive many of the engines of ingenuity that will generate durable solutions to our sustainability problems.

Premier Brian Gallant should be commended for his sturdy support of Energy East. “I am quite confident we can do (this) in a very sustainable way,” he told a news conference in Saint Andrews, N.B., last week. “I’m also convinced the economic benefits are very exciting for our country and our province. So I am going to go around and speak to other provinces and within our province, to New Brunswickers, as to why this is important.”

Indeed, it’s a no-brainer.

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Oct 20 2014
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Politics

How the Grits are crashing their own party

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In politics, like comedy, timing is everything. In timing, like comedy, politics is everything. That said, welcome to the strange, recent displays of young Justin Trudeau, Leader of the federal Liberal Party, aspiring Prime Minister of Canada.

What persuades him to characterize the Government of Canada’s decision to commit planes and troops against the latest incarnation of Middle East violence as a genitally influenced decision is anyone’s guess.

But to say, as he did last week, that his Tory nemeses “whip” out the nation’s aging fleet of fighter jets to illustrate just how well they still work in the ugly business of killing people and decimating far-flung enemy states is the apex of juvenility. It is, as one commentator correctly adjudged, the sign of “an unserious mind.”

Of course, it can be argued that Canadians have endured far too many serious minds since the world went to hell In 2008.

On the Liberal side, there have been those of Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, each spewing their self-referential brand of national purpose and pomp.

On the NDP side, there have been those of Jack Layton and Thomas Mulcair, each scolding, in their own tiresome ways, Canada for its disengaged, anti-progressive tendencies.

Then, there’s been the true pater familia of all political dads – none other than Prime Minister Stephan Harper, himself – who has done his reformist best to convince the country that he’s a benign, hands-off father-figure who won’t interfere in the business of his constituents if, and only if, his constituents utterly subjugate themselves to his politically crafted ideology.

Into this absurd company marched Justin Trudeau, the son of legends, promising a more sensible and respectful form of leadership. In him, scores of citizens saw a new hope, a new mandate, and a “back-to-the-future” apparatus for a fully engaged, skilled, educated, and largely independent public bureaucracy.

Certainly, it was his candour that caught the devoted attention of the mainstream media. He was the first, major federal political figure to support decriminalizing marihuana. He was among the first to publicly support a woman’s right to choose abortion, despite stiff opposition within his own caucus. And he was out front, first and centre, with a pledge to introduce universally accessible early childhood education.

On the latter issue, he has squandered his mojo in the face of Mr. Mulcair’s announcement last week of a comprehensive daycare plan. On soft drugs, he seems to have ceded some of his leadership to, of all people, Justice Minister Peter MacKay, who now says he’s willing to consider parts of what is, in effect, Mr. Trudeau’s original proposal.

And now, young Justin has this to say about foreign policy:

“Why aren’t we talking more about the humanitarian aide that Canada can and must be engaged in?,” he freelanced to journalist Don Newman at a conference last week.

So far, so good; but then there was this: “Rather than. . .trying to whip out our CF18s and show them (the Islamic State) how big they are” why don’t we. . .well, do the other thing?

To which, government attack dogs replied in predictable fashion.

“Mr. Trudeau’s comments are disrespectful of the Canadian Armed Forces and make light of a serious issue,” PMO spokesperson Jason MacDonald told CTV News. “Our involvement in the fight against (the Islamic State) has been motivated by a desire to do our part in fighting a group that has made direct terrorist threats against Canada and Canadians, in addition to carrying out atrocities against children, women, and men in the region. As the Prime Minister has said: ‘we take that seriously and will do our part.’”

Game, set and match.

Is Mr. Trudeau in danger of screwing up his free lunch with Canadians? Major polling agencies have confirmed that the young politico is still running well ahead of his arch-rival Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Still, that could change in a heartbeat. It’s a long way to the ballot box next fall, and in politics, like comedy, timing is everything.

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Oct 15 2014
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Business, Economy, Politics

How to tempt a global downturn

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One of the great, not entirely discreditable, boasts of the current federal government has been its masterful handling of both the national economy and the public books during and after the Great Recession of 2008-09.

And, indeed, the world looked on in envy, as a piece in The Economist this past May reminded readers: “In the government’s retelling of the crisis, it alone stood between Canadians and doom.

“(The country) weathered the financial crisis well. No bank needed to be rescued: the World Economic Forum anointed Canada’s banking system the soundest in the world. Mark Carney was exported to the Bank of England in large part because of his work at the Bank of Canada. Stephen Harper, the prime minister, took to describing Jim Flaherty, who died on April 10th just weeks after leaving the cabinet, as “the best finance minister on the planet’.”

Of course, as The Economist writer, and many others, point out, Canada’s performance during the downturn owed as much to the sturdiness of its financial traditions and institutions than to the foresight of the sitting government.

But whichever successful combination of policy and regulatory fiat did the trick, the timing of Canada’s financial fortitude was inarguably auspicious.

Is it so today, 62 months into the recovery?

The question is more than merely academic. Lately, the dreaded ‘r’-word has been making rounds, if not yet headlines, in the world’s increasingly turbulent capital markets, leaving many economists to ponder when the dominoes will again begin to fall, and which nations are most vulnerable when they do.

According to London-based economist Philip Pilkington, writing in Aljazeera America last month, “The current consensus among American policymakers and commentators, including Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, is that the U.S. economic recovery is well underway. But not everyone agrees with this assessment. One firm in particular, the Jerome Levy Forecasting Centre a New York–based economic consultancy, warned that the world economy might plunge into another recession in 2015 that will take down the U.S. economy with it.”

What makes this all the more troubling is that these guys are no Chicken Littles. When they say the sky is falling, they’re always right. Mr. Pilkington notes: “Levy economists. . .use The Profits Perspective forecasting model developed by Jerome Levy in 1908. . .(and) have accurately predicted every major financial event in the past few decades, including the financial crisis, which many mainstream economists said was unforeseeable.”

All of which leads Mr. Pilkington to conclude that U.S. policymakers continue to underestimate the impact emerging economies, whose growth rates have substantially slowed in the past couple of years, have on developed ones.

“They have once again become hypnotized by their overly simplistic, abstract models, which exposed their failure in 2008,” he writes. “This generates a rather bizarre argument about what constitutes slow wage growth. Meanwhile a storm that could tip the world back into recession seems to be gathering in the emerging market economies. It is perhaps time to listen to and engage with the economists who saw the last crisis coming. If these self-reinforcing tendencies within the profession continue, it seems unlikely that we could effectively face down future economic problems.”

Has any of this showed up on the radar in the war rooms of Ottawa’s economic planners?

Certainly, Parliamentary Budget Officer Denis Frechette and his researchers wonder what justifies collecting billions-of-dollars more in Employment Insurance premiums than are required to pay for the system over the next two years – a circumstance that, they insist, will likely suppress job creation.

“PBO estimates that the Small Business Job Credit will create 200 new full‐time equivalent jobs in 2015 and 600 new jobs in 2016,” their report to Parliament stated last week. “PBO estimates the premium rate freeze will reduce full‐time equivalent employment by 2,000 jobs in 2015 and a further 8,000 jobs in 2016.”

Just in time, perhaps, for the next great, jobs-devouring recession.

Brilliant, boys and girls!

That’s how the onetime envy of the world becomes its laughingstock.

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Oct 10 2014
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Government, Humour, Politics

An open letter to Brian Gallant, the new leader of Eastern Canada’s la-la land (AKA New Brunswick)

Surf, baby, surf!

Surf, baby, surf!

Dear Mr. Premier,

Allow me to congratulate you on your recent victory at the polls, you poor bastard.

Why anyone would subject himself to the slings and arrows of the New Brunswick electorate, only your political forebears and God Almighty knows.

But here you are, taking names and numbers, dropping the small-business tax rate by 50 basis points on your first day in office, promising a $900-million-dollar infrastructure build over six years (two years longer than your current mandate), and vowing to steer this ship of state around the shoals and sandbars that have sunk previous governments, both Grit and Tory, for nearly a generation.

Good for you.

Here’s the excellent news: You are young, educated, smart, and perfectly bilingual.

Here’s the less excellent news: You are young, educated, smart, and perfectly bilingual. Naturally, people will expect you to hand them the world on personalized pewter platters.

A few things going in your favour include a radically curtailed cabinet, the semblance of a ‘right-sized’ public bureaucracy, and cuts in everything except front-line services in health care and social programs. There’s also your avowed commitment to educational attainment in New Brunswick, an ambition that, heretofore, has continued to disappoint educators in this province. All of which should leave the impression in the minds of all but the most vested interests and partisan individuals that you are serious about the commonweal.     

The many things going against you include a $400-million deficit and $12-billion debt that, for all the world, looks like a permanent feature of the fiscal landscape; a moribund economy (apart from some recent, positive signs from the mining and forestry sectors) that’s still far too reliant on seasonal and part-time positions in rural areas; a mismatch between highly skilled jobs and training in urban areas; and a steady flow of talent (what economists like to call ‘human capital’) to points west, notably Alberta.

Then, of course, there are the lobbyists.

There is, for example, the Coalition for Seniors and Nursing Home Residents Rights, whose executive director Cecile Cassista told the CBC this week, “Right now, we have about 57 agencies and basically getting money from the government, which really doesn’t actually meet the needs of the workers that are doing the work.”

There’s the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, whose director of provincial affairs Denis Robichaud also told the CBC, “We see positive measures, I think, in the Liberal program on (taxation). . .But the new Liberal government also plans to return business property tax rates to the levels in place in 2012 so that worries some of our members also.”

And this doesn’t begin to scratch the surface.

Still, you correctly assess the dimension of your challenge when you say, as you did recently in an interview with the Telegraph-Journal, “The whole point of why I embarked on this adventure was to try to make a difference. Now, I really do feel I have the capability and the responsibility to make a difference. . .We have some rocky roads ahead of us as a province to get over these challenges. But we will take it very seriously, and we will make the right decisions so we can get over that hump and make sure we have better says as a province.”

Mr. Premier, I will leave you with two thoughts.

The first is: be bold right away. Make all your dramatic, radical moves within your first year. Your job is no longer to win friends and influence people. That one terminated on election day. Your job is to slay the beast and save the girl (metaphorically speaking about New Brunswick as a damsel in distress may not, however, serve your interests as you are the province’s minister responsible for women’s equality).

That brings me to my second point: keep your sense of humour. You’re going to need it. Remember what Groucho Marx once said (“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies”), or Ambrose Bierce (“a vote. . .is the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country”)

Good luck, you poor bastard.

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Oct 09 2014
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Climate, Government, Politics

Opposing lessons in crisis management

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If single-minded attention to a gathering emergency is the measure of leadership in government, then Stephen Harper’s Torytown manages to both pass and fail in spectacularly simultaneous fashion.

This week, a deeply ambivalent House of Commons issued its imprimatur for Canadian combat operations to commence in the treacherous reaches of northern Iraq, where the Islamic State (IS) currently wreaks havoc. The mission is modest (it includes nine airplanes and about 600 military personnel), but the purpose is definitive.

“We are undertaking a range of actions, and we are very fortunate to have men and women who are prepared to put their lives on the line to undertake those actions on our behalf,” the Prime Minister said on Tuesday. “What the world understands very clearly is that in the absence of any response, (the Islamic State) was growing like a cancer over the summer, over an entire region. This constitutes a threat and not just to the region, to the global community entirely and also to Canada.”

It’s the brand of tough talk and focussed reaction for which Mr. Harper has become justly famous. Posit a gun-toting enemy with sharp teeth and dastardly intentions, and you can count on Captain Canada to swoop into the fray, his six-shooters a-blazing.

Indeed, whether the evil-doers in our midst (or just over the horizon) are stalkers, cyber-bullies, pedophiles, or murderous jihadis, this prime minister has never let down his rhetorical guard whilst demonstrating his country’s determination to wipe out vicious hellions wherever he may find them.

Unfortunately, without an obvious, two-legged enemy at which he can shake his big stick, Mr. Harper – and, in fact, every one of his political lieutenants – appear, all too often, hopelessly distracted or, worse, mindfully disengaged from even greater threats than those IS now poses to the world’s well being.

“At the 2009 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, the Government of Canada committed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020,” writes Julie Gelfand, Canada’s Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development in her Fall 2014 report, her first since accepting the job last March.

Realistically, though, “Environment Canada’s latest projections show that Canada will not likely meet its commitment.” That’s because “the federal government has chosen to reduce GHG emissions by establishing regulations on a sector-by-sector basis.” In this fashion, “it has introduced several such regulations to date, notably in the transportation and the electricity generation sectors.” At the same time, “in 2006, the government first announced its intent to regulate GHG emissions from the oil and gas industry but has not yet done so even though emissions are growing fastest in this sector.”

The bottom line is straightforward and chilling:

“If Canada does not honour its climate-change commitments, it cannot expect other countries to honour theirs. If countries fail to reduce their emissions, the large environmental and economic liabilities we will leave our children and our grandchildren – such as more frequent extreme weather, reduced air quality, rising oceans, and the spread of insect-borne diseases – will likely outweigh any potentially positive effects, such as a longer growing season.”

None of which should come as any great surprise to those who have kept a watchful eye trained on this federal government’s policies concerning the environment. Agents provocateurs of the blue zone on Parliament Hill routinely pillory critics of big oil and gas, drubbing them for their allegedly anti-business, anti-prosperity, anti-technology agitations. Meanwhile, the bigger picture goes deliberately unappreciated, with nauseatingly predictable results.

“While the Government of Canada has recognized the need to urgently combat climate change, its planning has been ineffective and the action it has taken has been slow and not well coordinated,” Ms. Gelfand concludes.

“The sector-by-sector regulatory approach led by Environment Canada has made some gains, but the measures currently in place are expected to close the gap in greenhouse gas emissions by only 7 per cent by 2020, and the actual effects of these measures have not yet been assessed.”

And likely never will. Unless we somehow manage to transform global warming into a sword-brandishing terrorist on which Mr. Harper can draw a bead, this is one crisis that will continue to loom.

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Oct 08 2014
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Economy, Energy, Environment, Politics

Fracking’s other, hidden challenge

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New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant did himself an enormous political favour during his recent election campaign by sticking to his guns, insisting that he would follow through with a temporary ban on hydraulic fracturing in the province until experts convinced him that the drilling practice is broadly benign.

After all, the one thing a lightly informed voter can get behind is a candidate for elected office who successfully appeals to the public’s expectation of clean water, air and soil.

But whether or not you believe fellows like Gywn Morgan, a former Canadian energy executive, who recently argued in a Globe an Mail commentary that the “technology. . .has one of the most impressive industrial safety records ever compiled,” that “in the United States, where some 1.2 million wells have been hydraulically fractured over the past 60 years, the Bureau of Land Management and the Environmental Protection Agency have found no supportable evidence of fracture-induced water contamination,” and that, “here in Canada, more than 200,000 wells have been fractured in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan with a similarly sterling record,” another problem emerges – one that’s not so cut and dry.

The chief argument for permitting the development of tight, onshore oil and gas plays in New Brunswick is economic. In fact, proponents routinely insist, it’s a no-braine:  the province needs jobs and the government needs new sources of money (i.e., taxes and/or royalties from production companies) to balance its books and pay down its accumulated debt. If fracking, girded by effective regulations, is safe, then what are we waiting for? Drill, baby, drill!

But what if the economics of shale gas extraction – at least to the host jurisdictions – are not always as attractive or predictable as they appear?

Jeremy Scott of Forbes magazine recently examined various U.S. state budgets, noting that, for the third consecutive year, overall tax revenues have risen. Referencing some enlightening numbers-crunching by Todd Haggerty, a policy specialist in the fiscal affairs department of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), Mr. Scott reported “state tax revenues went up 6.1 per cent in fiscal 2013 to a total of $846 billion, says the NCSL. Personal income tax revenues were up 10.3 per cent, while corporate collections surged 7.9 per cent.”

In fact, those states that opened their doors to frackers some years ago, have been leading the boom in tax dollars. Says the Forbes piece: “In 2004 North Dakota’s severance tax (a levy imposed on producers in the United States for mining or otherwise extracting non-renewable resources) raised $175 million a year. In 2013, it raised $2.46 billion. West Virginia’s boom hasn’t been as dramatic as North Dakota’s, but its severance tax revenue increased from $204 million in 2004 to $608 million in 2013.”

On the other hand, “in Kentucky, severance taxes raised $172 million in 2003, rose to $346 million in 2012, but then dropped back to $269 million in 2013.”

And herein lies the problem. The oil and gas industry is notoriously fickle and subject to its own pricing, supply and demand cycles. The industry can reliably guarantee a certain amount of economic activity accruing from its ministrations, especially at the outset of full, commercial production, but those assurances become less dependable as time goes on.    

“Kentucky illustrates the problem with relying on severance taxes and the fracking boom for revenue stability,” Mr. Scott writes. “As traditional energy states like Texas have shown, taxes on the extraction of natural gas can fluctuate wildly. Texas raised $974 million from severance taxes in 2004, $4.1 billion in 2008, $1.9 billion in 2010, and then $4.6 billion. That’s healthy growth, but it’s hardly consistent. Colorado is an even better example. Its severance tax revenue rose from $37 million in 2003 to $285 million in 2009, before falling back to $71 million in 2010.”

Of course, to fracking’s true believers in New Brunswick (and there are still a few), such revenue instability is better than no revenue at all.

But it could become a nightmare for any premier who, once convinced of fracking’s safety, relies too heavily on its proceeds to balance the public accounts.

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Oct 07 2014
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Humour, Politics

Muskrat love and Mountie wardrobe malfunctions

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It’s always heartening to see Canada’s elected officials prosecute the course of our democracy with assiduous attention to detail. And what could be more minutely meaningful to the future of our rights and freedoms than the sartorial decisions of our national police force?

New York’s Fashion Week has come and gone, so we’re on our own with this one. Well, not entirely. Fortunately, there is Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq, whom we can always trust to weigh in on the weightier matters of national security.

Commenting in the House of Commons last week about the RCMP’s policy change regarding the hats they issue to constables – that, henceforth, the traditional muskrat-fur toppers will be replaced with woolen toques to all but the most northerly, frostily bound units – the minister said, in effect, ‘no way.’

I wish I could get behind her.

After all, don’t fur trappers account for 95 per cent of the working population not already productively engaged making Leonardo DiCaprio’s life a living hell at Alberta’s tar sands?

And, considering that the trade in animal skins accounts for several gagillion dollars worth of national gross domestic product today (or was that in 1680?) doesn’t she make a point, and, perhaps, isn’t that all we can expect from our political leaders in these the last days of common sense and pragmatic wonder in 2014?

Still, I truly ponder the effects her declaration that the “RCMP decision, which is causing much glee among anti-fur activists, is being overturned” will produce among the voting public. Recent signs are not particularly auspicious for the reigning Tories.

As a recent EKOS Research public opinion poll makes clear, Harpertown has lost much of its mojo among average Canadians. “On a range of issues – law enforcement, legalization of marijuana, foreign policy, and the appropriate role and size of government – a majority of Canadians are offside with the government, the survey suggests,” Mark Kennedy writes in the Ottawa Citizen.

“The electorate is becoming rapidly polarized with a wave of Canadians declaring their political ideology to be ‘small-l liberal,’ regardless of which political party they support . . . Moreover, the poll finds deep discontent among Canadians in key areas: Middle-class anxiety about the economy, a gloomy prediction about the quality of life for the next generation, a dissatisfaction with the ‘direction’ of the government, and a growing distrust of the political system.”

According to EKOS president Frank Graves, “When you have a shrinking, pessimistic middle class, that could become a crisis if left untended.”

Spoken like a true pollster; from the mouth of a babe who loves his numbers. Courtesy of the Citizen, which tabulated the EKOS findings, to wit:

Twenty-four per cent of people surveyed in 2008 considered themselves left of centre. Today, the answer is: 47 per cent.

Sixty per cent in 2008 said police should be able to shove around the innocent if that meant snagging a better chance to protect the body politic. Today, the answer is 29 per cent.

Meanwhile, says the Citizen article, 40 per cent of people polled say “international development and aid should be the utmost in Canada’s foreign policy” . . . 64 per cent surmise that the “incentive systems” in the economy are “broken and hard work is no longer paying off” . . . 57 per cent believe that “the next generation in 25 years will be ‘worse off’ in terms of quality of life” . . . and 56 per cent “support compulsory voting in Canada,” presumably as the best possible method to stave off another long period of political malaise and hat malfunctions at the RCMP.

As to those garments that cops should wear on their heads, this government remains defiantly unapologetic. Apparently, no branch of federal authority has the right to choose how it micro-manages its employees – not federal scientists, not publicly supported museums and parks, and certainly not the Mounties.

The latter had better get with the program, it seems, and slap those muskrat hats on their beans and without complaint. If they’re lucky, their authoritarian masters in government will follow suit.

Or, perhaps, they’ll use them to cover their arses in the long, hard, cold political winter ahead.

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