Search Results for: pipeline

Thursday September 9, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday September 9, 2021

Lacklustre second leaders debate short on emotion, heavy on talking points

With less than two weeks before election day and an increasingly tight race between parties, Canada’s political leaders had a largely flat debate Wednesday, where each participant mostly served viewers pre-packaged lines on hot-button issues such as the deficits, the environment, healthcare and Indigenous policy.

August 8, 2015

One of the few lively clashes occurred between Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet, not on a substantive policy issue, but rather on if Trudeau was Quebecer or not.

“You do not have a monopoly over Quebec,” Trudeau said to Blanchet, nearly yelling. “You don’t get to accuse me of not being Quebecer enough.”

On stage with Trudeau and Blanchet during the debate Wednesday night were Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Green Party of Canada Leader Annamie Paul.

July 11, 2019

The Peoples’ party’s Maxime Bernier did not meet the independent commission’s criteria for participation.

The debate was moderated and covered five themes: climate, cost of living and public finances, Indigenous peoples, cultural industries and cultural identity, justice and foreign policy, and pandemic and healthcare

“I’m sorry Mr. Trudeau, but this is an undesired election,” moderator Patrice Roy said to begin the debate, following up with a question to leaders on whether they’d respect a four-year mandate regardless of the outcome (minority or majority) of the Sept. 20 election.

August 14, 2021

Trudeau did not answer the question, but O’Toole, Singh, Paul and Blanchet each in vague terms seemed to say they would.

“The fact that we are in an election is a consequence of the fact that people are not looking to work together, that things have become hyper partisan,” Paul said.

Just like during the first debate last week, Trudeau was repeatedly grilled by opposition leaders about his decision to call a “selfish” election, a question that already seemed to annoy him just minutes into the debate.

September 2, 2021

“Viewers can see how deep the differences are in our positions as to how the pandemic should be handled,” Trudeau retorqued at one point. “Canadians should have a say in that.

In addition to moderators Patrice Roy and Noémi Mercier, four francophone reporters were also chosen to quiz the leaders during rapid-fire question periods that were praised on social media for not pulling any punches.

For example, political analyst Hélène Buzzetti asked O’Toole, whose party released its platform costing just before the debate, how he would balance the budget and reduce deficits. “Is it the “O’Toole magic,” she asked after the first half of his response.

O’Toole disagreed while repeating once again that he “has a plan.”

Shortly after, she grilled Singh on his plan to fill the government’s coffers by taxing the rich and multinational companies. How will you do it, she asked, is it “magic thinking?” Singh also disagreed, reiterating his promise to go after the ultra-wealthy.

April 9, 2021

The first leaders’ faceoff was between Singh and Paul on mandatory vaccination policy. Both leaders agreed that it was important to push for vaccination, but Paul dodged a question on whether she supports mandatory vaccination.

Eventually, the moderator asked Trudeau if by pushing people to get vaccinated more, he wasn’t pushing some to rebel further and avoid vaccination. Trudeau said it was a “false debate” and that it was time to get people vaccinated to return to normal life.

The moderator then asked Trudeau how much Canada paid for all our vaccines, which Trudeau once again avoided. “We paid competitive prices, but for competitive reasons, I cannot tell you,” he said.

On the topic of labour shortages that are rampant across the country, leaders were divided on solutions, where O’Toole and Blanchet argued that COVID-19 benefits like the Canada Recovery Benefit needed to be phased out. Singh, Trudeau and Paul disagreed, with the latter challenging others to replace those benefits with universal basic income.

April 22, 2021

Just like in last week’s debate on TVA, O’Toole face some difficult moment when he was criticized by both Trudeau and Blanchet for his plan to replace the Liberal’s bilateral agreements with most provinces to fund $10 per day daycare spots with a tax credit directly to parents.

Trudeau accused O’Toole of “not even understanding” Quebec’s daycare system, noting that low-income Quebecers “don’t even pay for daycare.”

The topic of environment was launched by a question from 11-year-old Charles, who said that he was already concerned for his children’s future due to the “climate crisis.”

In their responses, Trudeau pointed to the government’s net-zero legislation, O’Toole touted the Conservative plan to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, and Paul argued that on climate, the Greens are the only choice. Singh criticized Trudeau for increasing GHG emissions during his time as prime minister.

February 6, 2020

Each leader was eventually asked what they would do with the TransMountain pipeline that the Trudeau government purchased to develop. The Liberal leader said Indigenous communities needed the money from the project, O’Toole said that it was necessary for Western Canadian workers, and Blanchet noted that he would use the money from it to help fund Alberta’s “much needed” transition away from oil.

Paul said that she was opposed to the pipeline and that she does not expect anyone to draw a profit from it, whereas Singh said he was opposed to the project, but when pressed, said an NDP government would considering keeping it.

Trudeau said that “every other leader’s plan here relies on magic thinking”.

To open questions on Indigenous issues, leaders were asked if they would make First Nations’ languages as well as Inuit and Metis as official languages of Canada. Most leaders skirted the question all the while emphasizing the importance of preserving those languages and making sure their speakers can use them when accessing government services. (The National Post)  

 

Thursday April 22, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 22, 2021

Government Tall on ideas, short on attention span

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s expansive budget mentions a “pipeline for vaccines,” a “talent pipeline,” an “innovation pipeline,” and a “pipeline of personal protective equipment.” But there is not a single mention of a pipeline that delivers oil or gas.

June 13, 2019

Along with a lack of concern for workers in the oil-and-gas industry, the budget undersells defence priorities. And the Liberal pledge to move toward a national pharmacare program is, to put it charitably, unconvincing.

The budget, in other words, tells us what Liberals do care about, but also what they don’t.

The Liberals’ 2019 election manifesto promised “to take the crucial next steps to implement national universal pharmacare,” while last September’s Throne Speech declared “the government remains committed to a national, universal pharmacare program and will accelerate steps to achieve this system.”

March 6, 2018

But the budget, while repeating its commitment to a national pharmacare program, offers no new funding for it. There is simply the previously announced $500-million to assist provinces in support of those forced to pay extremely high prices for drugs needed to combat rare diseases.

The Liberals could respond that their ambitious new child-care program makes it impossible to move on pharmacare right now. And it would be a fair defence. A national $10-a-day child care program would be a major new commitment and a major federal expense, at $8-billion a year.

December 21, 2016

Before committing to it, however, provincial governments might wish to remember previous programs, especially in health care and housing, in which Ottawa seduced the provinces into joining on an equal shared-cost basis, only to later withdraw funding when some shiny new public policy bauble came along, leaving the provinces holding the fiscal bag.

This budget offers billions to accelerate progress toward a strategy to reach net zero carbon emissions and to help green-tech businesses scale up. There are major tax breaks for companies that invest in green technologies.

But while future tax breaks are promised for industries that deploy carbon-capture technology, the commitment is vague and based on future consultations and legislation. The budget appears determined to ignore the reality that natural resources, and in particular the oil and gas sector, are crucial both to this country’s economic future and to fighting climate change.

November 17, 2015

National defence is another area singled out for neglect. When Mr. Biden met Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in February, both leaders committed to modernizing the North American Aerospace Defence Command. But the budget allocates a paltry $50-million a year or so for five years as Canada’s commitment to a modernizing program, a tiny fraction of the many billions of dollars that defence experts estimate it would cost to install the satellites, radar and other technologies needed to detect hypersonic missiles and other new weapons that the Russians and the Chinese possess or are developing.

Whatever happens on the child care front, the budget’s virtual silence on pharmacare suggests that program, like NORAD and oil and gas, is something this government doesn’t plan on spending real time and money on any time soon. (Globe & Mail) 

 

Tuesday February 23, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday February 23, 2021

Biden to meet virtually with Trudeau on Tuesday in first meeting with a foreign leader

U.S. President Joe Biden’s first official meeting with a foreign head of government will be a virtual encounter on Tuesday with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

January 26, 2021

“The president will highlight the strong and deep partnership between the United States and Canada as neighbours, friends and NATO allies,” the White House said in a statement on Saturday.

The Prime Minister’s Office said meeting agenda items include the COVID-19 pandemic, economic recovery, job creation, maintaining cross-border supply chains, climate change, energy, defence and security, and diversity and inclusion.

The U.S. president’s Keystone XL pipeline cancellation is expected to come up but will not likely be a main focus of the meeting. 

June 24, 2020

The detention of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in China is also expected to be raised by Trudeau, according to a source who spoke to CBC News confidentially.

Biden has already had a series of phone conversations with a number of leaders, starting with Trudeau, shortly after his Jan. 20 inauguration.

The new administration has signalled its desire to improve relationships with traditional American partners by scheduling his first calls, and now a first meeting, with the country’s democratic allies. 

Biden has already had a series of phone conversations with a number of leaders, starting with Trudeau, shortly after his Jan. 20 inauguration.

June 22, 2019

The new administration has signalled its desire to improve relationships with traditional American partners by scheduling his first calls, and now a first meeting, with the country’s democratic allies. 

Conversely, Biden has de-emphasized relationships with non-democratic figures that had been cozier during the Trump era.

The White House has said Biden would not deal directly with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman because the crown prince is not officially the country’s ruler. It also said Biden planned to speak with allied leaders before figures such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, though he did eventually talk to Putin in the second week of his presidency. (CBC) 

 

Friday February 19, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 19, 2021

Texas, Land of Wind and Lies

Politicians are neither gods nor saints. Because they aren’t gods, they often make bad policy decisions. Because they aren’t saints, they often try to evade responsibility for their failures, asserting either that they did as well as anyone could have or that someone else deserves the blame.

October 3, 2014

For a while, then, the politics surrounding the power outages that have spread across Texas looked fairly normal. True, the state’s leaders pursued reckless policies that set the stage for catastrophe, then tried to evade responsibility. But while their behavior was reprehensible, it was reprehensible in ways we’ve seen many times over the years.

However, that changed around a day after the severity of the disaster became apparent. Republican politicians and right-wing media, not content with run-of-the-mill blame-shifting, have coalesced around a malicious falsehood instead — the claim that wind and solar power caused the collapse of the Texas power grid, and that radical environmentalists are somehow responsible for the fact that millions of people are freezing in the dark, even though conservative Republicans have run the state for a generation.

This isn’t normal political malfeasance. It’s the energy-policy equivalent of claiming that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a false-flag Antifa operation — raw denial of reality, not just to escape accountability, but to demonize one’s opponents. And it’s another indicator of the moral and intellectual collapse of American conservatism.

The underlying story of what happened in Texas appears to be fairly clear. Like many states, Texas has a partly deregulated electricity market, but deregulation has gone further there than elsewhere. In particular, unlike other states, Texas chose not to provide power companies with incentives to install reserve capacity to deal with possible emergencies. This made power cheaper in normal times, but left the system vulnerable when things went wrong.

Texas authorities also ignored warnings about the risks associated with extreme cold. After a 2011 cold snap left millions of Texans in the dark, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission urged the state to winterize its power plants with insulation, heat pipes and other measures. But Texas, which has deliberately cut its power grid off from the rest of the country precisely to exempt itself from federal regulation, only partially implemented the recommendations.

And the deep freeze came.

January 31, 2019

A power grid poorly prepared to deal with extreme cold suffered multiple points of failure. The biggest problems appear to have come in the delivery of natural gas, which normally supplies most of the state’s winter electricity, as wellheads and pipelines froze. Nor was this merely a matter of the lights going out; people are freezing too, because many Texas homes have electric heat. Many of the homes without electrical heat rely on, yes, natural gas. We’re looking at enormous suffering and, probably, a significant death toll.

So Texas is experiencing a natural disaster made significantly worse by major policy errors — and the officials who made those errors should be held accountable.

Instead of accepting responsibility, however, officials from Gov. Greg Abbott on down, backed by virtually the entire right-wing media complex, have chosen to lay the blame on green energy, especially wind power.

November 29, 2018

Now, it’s true that the state generates a lot of electricity from wind, although it’s a small fraction of the total. But that’s not because Texas — Texas! — is run by environmental crazies. It’s because these days wind turbines are a cost-effective energy sourcewherever there’s a lot of wind, and one thing Texas has is a lot of wind.

It’s also true that extreme cold forced some of the state’s insufficiently winterized wind turbines to shut down, but as I said, this was happening to Texas energy sources across the board, with the worst problems involving natural gas.

Why, then, the all-out effort to falsely place the blame on wind power?

The incentives are obvious. Attacking wind power is a way for both elected officials and free-market ideologues to dodge responsibility for botched deregulation; it’s a way to please fossil fuel interests, which give the vast bulk of their political contributions to Republicans; and since progressives tend to favor renewable energy, it’s a way to own the libs. And it all dovetails with climate change denial.

But why do they think they can get away with such an obvious lie? The answer, surely, is that those peddling the lie know that they’re operating in a post-truth political landscape. When two-thirds of Republicans believe that Antifa was involved in the assault on the Capitol, selling the base a bogus narrative about the Texas electricity disaster is practically child’s play.

And if you’re expecting any change in the policies that helped cause this disaster, don’t count on it — at least as long as Texas remains Republican. Given everything else we’ve seen, the best bet is that demonization of wind power, not a realistic understanding of what actually happened, will rule policy going forward. (New York Times) 

 

Tuesday January 26, 2021

 

January 26, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday January 26, 2021

Keystone pipeline decision was Joe Biden’s to make

No question, U.S. President Joe Biden delivered a gut punch to Alberta, and to a lesser extent Saskatchewan, when he used his executive authority to kill the previous president’s executive order allowing construction of the Keystone pipeline, which would have shipped oil from Alberta’s tarsands to refineries south of the border.

In the immediate aftermath, 1,000 construction workers were laid off, and the Calgary-based energy company that had unfronted much of the cost will now have to eat that expenditure. 

It’s about the last thing Alberta’s staggered economy and workforce needs, and regardless of what we think about fossil fuels and the tarsands, we should feel some empathy for average Albertans if not their hyperbolic government. 

January 8, 2014

But let’s talk about what the decision is not. First and foremost, it is not a surprise. Keystone has a tortured history. When he was president, Barack Obama was firmly against the controversial project, which was also opposed by climate change activists, environmentalists and Indigenous groups.

Then along came Donald Trump, who promptly reversed that decision and allowed construction to begin. And then along came Biden, who has promised all along to stop the pipeline. He was opposed as Obama’s VP, he was opposed as a Democratic leadership contender, and he ran in the presidential election with his opposition front and centre.

Reacting to Biden’s order, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney blew several gaskets. In a blustery response he lashed out at Biden, the U.S. and at Ottawa, demanding Ottawa impose sanctions in retaliation.

April 20, 2019

It was an embarrassing display, but under the circumstances not surprising. Kenney has been having a rough ride, having dropped the ball on Alberta’s pandemic response. He had a minister and several MLAs take off for sunny vacations while his government was urging Albertans to stay at home. He wants to reopen coal mining in an environmentally sensitive part of the province and is facing massive opposition. Oh, and he invested $1.5 billion into the pipeline, along with $6 billion more in loan guarantees.

He did that, knowing that Biden was leading in polling and predicted to defeat Trump. In effect, Kenney and his government were betting on a second term for Trump. Not smart.

Not surprisingly, Kenney’s approval ratings have taken a beating, and deservedly so. His bellicose demands for trade sanctions and threats of legal action are empty. Anyone who thinks this action alone will prompt the federal government to start off the new president’s term with sour relations probably also bet on Trump.

May 14, 2016

The financial impact of the decision is real, and no one should be surprised if some sort of legal action ensues to try and recover some of money lost. But no one can credibly argue Biden acted in bad faith. He didn’t. If Americans voted for Biden knowing his stance on the pipeline and green economics, that means they support the decisions that go along with that change. It’s not up to Canada to tell Americans what they should or should not do with energy projects on sovereign U.S. territory. We couldn’t do that with Trump, and we certainly can’t do it with a new president who has a strong mandate. Can you imagine how Canada would react if the U.S. tried to strong-arm energy policy over our sovereign interests? We wouldn’t stand for it.

Here is the bottom line Kenney doesn’t want to talk about. Even before the pandemic, the world was turning its back on fossil fuel consumption and production. The pandemic just accelerated that reality, and the trend is not likely to change regardless of Kenney’s ranting and raving. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)