bitumen

Wednesday April 11, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday April 11, 2018

Kinder’s Pipeline Pause Puts Pressure on Trudeau to Act, Somehow

Justin Trudeau has a lot riding on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. But the Canadian prime minister has few viable options to save it.

June 27, 2013

Kinder Morgan Inc. halted most work on the project Sunday, ramping up pressure on the federal government to somehow deter provincial opposition and protests from environmentalists before a May 31 deadline. Trudeau’s energy strategy is at stake, along with overall business confidence and the price of Canadian oil landlocked in neighboring Alberta.

His problem is that opposition from British Columbia has been mostly talk, leaving Trudeau essentially in a war of words that’s been enough for the Houston-based company to warn the uncertainty has become too great. Trudeau’s team backs the pipeline and flatly promises it will be built, though with the project already approved its options are few beyond trying to cajole the Pacific coast province.

June 8, 2017

“The consequence of their indirection has created a problem of certainty for the proponent. That problem is real,” Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said Monday in an interview at his Ottawa office. “We will look at every option available to the government of Canada — financial, regulatory, legal.”

Shares of Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd. fell 13 percent Monday, the biggest decline since its initial public offering last May.

While cross-border pipelines are under federal jurisdiction, provinces have asserted themselves in recent years, muddying the outlook and allowing new challenges to pop up. In this case, British Columbia’s New Democratic Party government — whose razor-thin command of the provincial legislature relies on support of Green Party lawmakers — has dug in its heels. (Source: Bloomberg) 

Published in the Western Star, Corner Brook, Newfoundland

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Thursday June 8, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 8, 2017

Personality politics emerge as pipeline dispute pits Alberta against B.C.

British Columbia NDP Leader John Horgan and Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver were clearly on a roll last week at a celebratory news conference that formalized what they promised would be a four-year collaboration.

May 31, 2017

And it was the tag-team response to questions about the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion that most revealed how Horgan and Weaver might handle the political problem with Alberta and fellow NDP Premier Rachel Notley.

“I haven’t spoken to Rachel directly,” said Horgan, whose past dealings with the Alberta premier put the two on a first name basis.

Horgan said the Alberta premier, who is pushing hard for Kinder Morgan, is rightly waiting until the new government in B.C. is in place before reaching out.

“When that happens, we’ll have that conversation,” he said.

December 1, 2016

It was all very nice. But the gentle tone and tenor didn’t last very long.

For her part, Notley spent a good deal of time challenging the premise that a Green/NDP government in B.C. can stop the pipeline.

On Tuesday, the Alberta premier vowed at a news conference: “Mark my words, that pipeline will be built, the decisions have been made.”

When a reporter asked later that day about Notley’s pronouncement, Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver laughed out loud as Horgan lobbed the hot potato his way. (Source: CBC News)

 

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Tuesday, January 14, 2014By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Neil Young blasts Harper government for allowing development of Alberta oilsands

Neil Young is accusing the Canadian government of “trading integrity for money” when it comes to Alberta’s oilsands.

Speaking at a news conference Sunday, the rock legend suggested the Canadian government is “killing” First Nations people by pushing forward with rapid development of the oilsands.

“The blood of these people will be on modern Canada’s hands,” he said.

Young was speaking in Toronto ahead of the first of four benefit concerts aimed at raising money and awareness for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation’s legal fight against Shell Canada’s Jackpine oilsands mine expansion plan.

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator -The federal government approved the project last month despite a review panel’s conclusion that the project would result in severe and irreversible environmental damage.

Shell has said it will double its bitumen production in the region to 300,000 barrels a day and the project will create 750 jobs.

Young, who said he recently visited one of the oilsands sites, was joined at his press conference by a panel of anti-oilsands activists. The panel was moderated by environmentalist David Suzuki.

The “Honour the Treaties” concert will take place Toronto’s Massey Hall Sunday night, and moves to Winnipeg, Regina and Calgary later this week.

“I want my grandchildren to grow up and look up and see a blue sky,” Young said, noting he instead only sees a government “out of control.”

“Money is number one, integrity isn’t even on the map,” he said.

Jason MacDonald, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, countered that “projects are approved only when they are deemed safe for Canadians and (the) environment.” He added that the resource sector creates “economic opportunities” and “high-wage jobs” for thousands of Canadians. (Source: CTV News)

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Wednesday, March 20, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Thomas Mulcair’s anti-Keystone rhetoric

Tom Mulcair got himself elected leader of the federal New Democratic Party on a promise he would bring hard-headed realism and a centrist political ethic to the job. He was to be, it was murmured at the time, the NDP’s Tony Blair.

As it turns out, there’s little indeed of Blair’s famous economic pragmatism in Mulcair. He talks the talk but, when push comes to shove, quacks like a duck. Currently, the NDP leader is tromping with big, gnarled feet all over the delicate buds of the Keystone XL pipeline. Criticism of his criticisms, while on a recent Washington D.C. trip, he dismisses as Conservative hypocrisy. All opposition leaders attack the governing party’s positions when travelling overseas!

Except, that Keystone and the issues tied to it are not just political baubles to be toyed with. These are fundamental, shared economic problems – the greatest Canadians now face. The Obama administration’s pending approval or rejection will affect us all from coast to coast to coast, for many years to come. And much of Mulcair’s rhetoric about Keystone is either poorly researched, half-true or spun-up by ideological assumptions that do not hold up for a second in the cold light of day.

First let’s address the idea that Alberta’s nefarious Big Oil oligarchs are foisting oilsands development on a reluctant Eastern Canada, whose citizens will only suffer as the resultant global warming turns James Bay into a gigantic hot tub. This is the putative value proposition: Albertans benefit economically from the oilsands, but the rest of us are harmed. Why should their interests subsume ours? (Source: National Post)

Wednesday June 1, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday June 1, 2012

Federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair tours Alberta oilsands

Thomas Mulcair came close to dropping the T word here Thursday, but on a day devoted to conciliation he saved himself at the last second.

In his first-ever visit to the Alberta oilsands as NDP leader, Mulcair was about to substitute “tar” for “oil” when he hastily corrected himself.

Mulcair smiled as he recovered from his almost slip of using the word “tarsands.”

“They’re bitumen sands because the chemicals are neither oil nor tar,” he said at a news conference hours after being taken on a tour of the mine and tailings pond reclamation process by Suncor Energy of its site in northern Alberta.

“If removing that linguistic impediment can make the conversation easier, I’m not going to keep it in place intentionally,” he said after the near slip of the tongue. “Unfortunately a linguistic cleanup doesn’t change anything about what we’re talking about in terms of the ecosystems.”

Mulcair created a furor among three Western premiers with his view that the resource-driven economies in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia — most notably the massive oilsands projects — have inflated the Canadian dollar. That in turn, he said, hurts other sectors in different regions of the country, particularly manufacturing in Quebec and Ontario.

Mulcair has come under fire for using the phrase “Dutch disease,” which explains how a country’s currency rises when there is high international demand for natural resources. The three Western premiers have condemned Mulcair’s comments, saying that he is using wedge politics to divide the country. (Source: Toronto Star)