The Dominion - Chris Arsenault

Catch and Release

Moira Peters — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 06:10:04 +0000

Hunt for oil patch bomber takes new twist

VANCOUVER—After a 15-month hunt for a saboteur who has blown up six natural gas installations in northern Canada, police, looking increasingly desperate, arrested an outspoken oil industry critic and then set him free a day later without pressing charges.

Wiebo Ludwig, an evangelical preacher jailed in 2000 for a series of attacks on the oil industry in Alberta, was arrested on January 8 and charged with extortion in connection with recent sabotage.

After 24 hours in jail, including a 10-hour interrogation by a top police officer, Ludwig was released without charge. He did not return calls requesting comment.

The catch and release of the high-profile activist and convicted saboteur adds another twist to a bizarre saga, which began October 12, 2008, with the bombing of a pipeline operated by EnCana, North America's largest natural gas company.

At a press conference last July, police labeled the attacks "eco-terrorism" after the Dawson Creek Daily News received a handwritten letter, allegedly from the bomber, demanding that EnCana cease operations in area.

"Return the land to what it was before you came every last bit of it... before things get a lot worse for you and your terrorist pals in the oil and gas business," read the letter, which was posted on the website of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team tasked with investigating the sabotage.

"We are confident after reviewing all of the information that is in our possession that we arrested the right person, for the right reasons and at the right time," Inspector Tim Shields told reporters on Janury 12, after Ludwig was released without charge and as more than 100 officers continued to search for evidence on the Ludwig family's sprawling farm.

"That police would make an announcement like that in the face of the Crown [prosecutor] saying there isn't enough evidence to go to trial is troubling," said David Eby, a lawyer with the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

"It is challenging when the police make an announcement of guilt or innocence before someone has been tried and convicted, especially in an issue like this when the community is sensitive and has spoken out against policing tactics," said Eby.

Police are treating people in northern British Columbia "like they're Taliban suspects," according to veteran environment reporter Andrew Nikiforuk.

Police have demanded DNA from residents under Canada's counter-terrorism act, barged into homes, interrogated husbands and wives in separate rooms and, in a crowded restaurant, accused a local businessperson of being the bomber. The BC Civil Liberties Association has received several complaints about aggressive policing tactics, said Eby.

Throughout the investigation police, company officials and local politicians have claimed their top priority is the safety of local residents, which the bomber is jeopardizing.

Tim Ewert, an organic farmer living near bombed pipelines, doesn't believe those claims in light of recent events.

"On November 22 we smelled gas on our property. EnCana's devices to pick up the leak didn't work and around 15 families had to self-evacuate the area," Ewert said.

Sour gas, or hydrogen sulfide, is extremely deadly—concentrations of 500 parts per million can be fatal.

The November 22 leak is not linked to sabotage.

"This leak probably released thousands of times more gas than what has been released by the bombings," said Ewert, adding that police and politicians are not speaking out against the incident, even though it was potentially more dangerous than so-called acts of terrorism.

In statements to the media, EnCana denied that its safety mechanisms failed.

Paul Joosse, a sociologist at the University of Alberta who studies radical environmental movements, thinks the nature of sour gas has exacerbated conflicts between farmers and industry in the region.

"It [sour gas infrastructure] is being put where people live and where children go to school; that really raises the stakes," said Joosse.

The Oil and Gas Commission (OGC), the provincial body tasked with regulating the industry, promised to release a report on the leak on January 11 with a public meeting scheduled for January 13. The report was not released and the commission cancelled the meeting, citing the ongoing police investigation of Wiebo Ludwig.

Local residents speculate that the OGC, EnCana and the police are working in cahoots to stall the release of a report which could raise unwanted questions about the industry's safety practices and the nature of gas extraction in the region as a whole.

"In many cases people feel that they haven't been given a proper say in how things develop and they feel—rightly—that they are stakeholders who should have a say," said Joosse.

Tim Ewert says his neighbours are equally worried about recent sour gas leaks but are afraid to speak out, fearing police harassment.

When asked why the authorities decided to arrest and then release Ludwig at this particular time, Joosse said, "It looks like police are going and shaking different trees," adding that police "may have decided this was the last chance before the Olympics to have so many officers available [to investigate the bombings]."

The Vancouver Olympics, requisitioning some 7,000 police, 4,500 troops and 5,000 private security guards under a security budget in excess of $900 million, begin February 12.

"From their perspective, it would be really great to have a charge and an arrest prior to the Games," said Joosse.

Today, that hope seems unlikely.

Chris Arsenault is a graduate student writing a history of sabotage and the oil patch. This article was originally published by Inter Press Service.

Arsenault Bomber Cropped

Arsenault Bomber

Greenwashing at the Games

dawn — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 06:19:22 +0000

Heavy polluters look lighter as Olympic sponsors

VANCOUVER—As the debate about global warming heated up on the road to climate talks in Copenhagen, companies with investments in Alberta’s tar sands were scrambling to clean up their image as dirty oil producers.

Sponsoring the 2010 Olympics—frequently proclaiming themselves the "Green Games"—has become a convenient branding tool for companies profiting from the increasingly controversial tar sands, according to a University of Toronto professor who has written several books on the Olympics.

“Big corporations can milk that green image, and they have an excellent venue to do so with the Games because there is so much world attention,” said Professor Emeritus Helen Lenskyj.

Petro-Canada, which recently merged with Suncor to create a tar sands giant, is one of only six national partners sponsoring the Games. After expressing interest in an interview, Petro-Canada spokesperson Dany Laferriere refused to answer questions from The Dominion about his company’s Olympic sponsorship.

Becoming a national partner cost Petro-Canada $62.5 million, but there is a payoff, according to Lenskyj. “I think companies have a fair amount of success in greenwashing, with light green corporate environmentalism,” she told The Dominion in a phone interview.

Companies such as Petro-Canada need all the greenwashing they can get. The Alberta tar sands has the highest carbon footprint of any commercial oil project on the planet, according a recent report written by award-winning business reporter Andrew Nikiforuk. If the world’s largest energy project continues on its current growth path, the tar sands alone will produce more greenhouse gas emissions than Ireland, Austria or Portugal by 2020.

“Petro-Canada has been involved with the Olympics for a long time, before it merged with Suncor,” said Harjap Grewal, a member of the Olympics Resistance Network. Petro-Canada sponsored the 1988 torch relay for the Calgary Winter Games.

The Lubicon Cree, an Indigenous nation still fighting for a Treaty recognition, protested the 1988 torch relay with a campaign called “Shame the Flame,” accusing Petro-Canada of stealing their land rights and resources, according to Lenskyj.

Today, Native rights activist Mike Mercredi accuses companies such as Suncor of committing a “slow industrial genocide” by poisoning the water supply of Fort Chipewyan, a native community downstream from the tar sands.

“Around 11 million liters of toxic chemicals, including carcinogens and other deadly poisons, are leaking into groundwater and the Athabasca and poisoning entire communities,” said a Greenpeace representative in a press release.

In 1988, Lubicon protesters and their allies were banned from Olympic venues and public spaces at the University of Calgary after protesting Petro-Canada. A similar scenario may occur in Vancouver, where the University of British Columbia is taking a prominent role in the Games, to the chagrin of some student activists.

The Royal Bank of Canada, another national Olympic partner, is the prime financier of the tar sands. Canada’s largest bank directly funds fossil fuel extraction with $15.9 billion per year, creating 198 million tonnes of climate changing carbon dioxide emissions, according to a 2008 report from Rainforest Action Network.

Promoters of the "Green Games" are not talking about the tar sands, however. The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) touts that some rain water from Richmond’s ice-skating rink, a prime venue, will be pumped into the building’s toilets and that waste wood from constructing the Whistler Creekside development will be chipped and reused on site.

“Organizers trot out a list of simple things [that seem green] for people who don’t know the difference between dark green and light green environmentalism,” said Lenskyj.

“The Vancouver Winter Games will be featuring more than just Gold, Silver and Bronze in 2010. Green will also be very much part of the mix,” explains General Motors, another national Olympic partner, on its website. The auto giant promises that 30 per cent of its Olympic fleet will be hybrids.

But activists have the power to turn Olympic greenwashing on its head, according to Grewal.

“Most of the world is aware that the development model practiced by these companies is causing the climate crisis,” he said. “The fact that they are pretending to be green gives activists a chance to highlight their actual policies.”

Chris Arsenault is the author of Blowback: A Canadian History of Agent Orange. He is currently writing a history of sabotage in the oil patch.

Greenwashing at the Games - tar sands

A Slippery Supply

Moira Peters — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 06:27:42 +0000

Oil and the market psychology of fear

VANCOUVER—Beyond the accord reached at the climate talks in Copenhagen this month, the world may have to cut its oil consumption, as geological and economic trends limit the availability and affordability of petroleum.

Back in the 1970s, Saudi Arabia's flamboyant oil minister Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani articulated what became conventional wisdom for policymakers around the planet: "The Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil."

Today, an increasing chorus of voices is challenging that prediction. While the world isn't running out of oil in any absolute sense, a daunting picture is beginning to emerge of the availability—and thus affordability—of supply compared with expected increases in demand.

"In 2015, the world's consumption of oil will likely be closing in on 100 million barrels per day [bpd], roughly 22 per cent higher than the current level—which is a relatively high annual growth for the oil industry," states a briefing marked confidential from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), obtained by a Freedom of Information request.

The censored briefings, created by the RCMP in collaboration with other Canadian government agencies, paint a troubling picture of future energy security that has recently been corroborated by other sources.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), the Paris-based multinational information centre created after the 1973 energy crisis, predicted in 2005 that world oil production could rise to 120 million bpd by 2030, up from 85 million in 2008.

The IEA "was forced to reduce" its predictions on possible world supply "to 116 million and then 105 million last year," according to a senior official in the organization, who spoke with The Guardian in early November, on the condition of anonymity.

The US Department of Energy, through its International Energy Outlook (IEO), has also been quietly scaling down its numbers on possible supply. In 2007, the agency predicted the world would be able to pump 107.2 million bpd in 2030. This summer, it drastically reduced its supply predictions to 93.1 million.

In its latest forecast, released November 10, the IEA predicted world oil supply would hit 105 million bpd by 2030. Even with those figures, which many analysts, including some inside the IEA, consider overly optimistic, there is likely to be a shortfall of some 11 million bpd by 2030.

"Every year we lose four million barrels a day [of production due to depletion]," said Jeff Rubin, the former chief economist with CIBC World Markets.

"Over the next five years, we are going to have to find 20 million barrels a day of new production, just so that we can [continue to] consume what we consume today," said Rubin in June.

Rubin is a believer in the peak oil theory—the idea that oil production will reach a maximum point and then fall fairly sharply as demand outpaces supply.

Such a lack of supply, if perceived in the market, would drive up the price of oil, creating a positive feedback loop where fear keeps pushing prices higher, destabilizing both general oil and financial markets.

Gasoline and transportation oil can be manufactured from coal and other petroleum sources, meaning the world will not run out in any absolute sense, but the costs—both economic and environmental—will be far higher than those associated with conventional crude.

M. King Hubbert, a geologist formerly with Shell in the United States, correctly predicted that US domestic oil production would peak in the 1970s.

"Shell isn't a believer in the peak oil theory," said Shell spokesperson Janet Annesley during a 2008 interview with IPS at the company's Calgary office tower.

Other multinational oil companies are beginning to disagree with Shell's denial of the peak oil theory.

"Groups and individuals speaking out about forthcoming world oil supply challenges are frequently stereotyped as a fringe element with little knowledge about the oil industry," said the Sweden-based Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas in a November 24 news release. "But their warnings are increasingly supported by some surprising allies: senior petroleum industry officials, consultants and analysts."

Christophe de Margerie, CEO of Total SA, Europe's third largest oil company, believes the world will never be able to produce more than 89 million bpd.

ConocoPhillips' CEO Jim Mulva told a conference in London last month that he doubted producers would be able to meet long-term oil demand. Both oil executives challenged IEA predictions.

The senior IEA official who blew the whistle on the organization's tendency to overstate supply says the group is manipulating data in order to placate financial markets.

"Many inside the organization [IEA] believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90 to 95 million barrels a day would be impossible, but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further," a senior IEA official told The Guardian.

According to the confidential RCMP documents, "[censored]... a market psychology of fear will continue to place a 'geopolitical premium' on crude oil, keeping prices for oil products higher than market fundamentals alone would dictate."

It is this fear that the IEA is trying to placate.

However, many believe a binding deal at Copenhagen seems like a more reasonable approach to reducing oil dependency than the current practice of fudging the numbers.

An original version of this article was published by Inter Press Service.

Supply.Oil Barrels

Sabotage in Peace River

Tim McSorley — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:53:40 +0000

Bombings in northern BC/Alberta put spotlight on controversial pipelines

POUCE COUPE—The Peace River region, a rugged frontier on the Alberta-BC border, is anything but peaceful these days. Six hours from Edmonton, once serene cattle and canola country, the area is in the midst of a massive transformation, fueled by vast unconventional sour gas reserves lying some two kilometres under the earth’s surface.

Since October 2008, someone has blown up six sour gas pipelines operated by EnCana, North America’s largest gas corporation, in controlled acts of sabotage. In Wild West fashion, EnCana is offering a one million dollar bounty for information leading to a conviction. It is likely the largest reward in Canadian history.

The Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET), a mix of top law enforcement officials investigating the attacks, have sent some 250 officers to the region. The force includes masked officers with high powered machine guns who have been spotted in the woods by local residents, and a sniper flown back directly from Afghanistan. INSET labels the sabotage as “eco-terrorism” even though no one has been hurt.

The bomber apparently sees it differently. “Return the land to what it was before you came every last bit of it… before things get a lot worse for you and your terrorist pals in the oil and gas business,” wrote the bomber in a July 15 letter sent to the Dawson Creek Daily News. The badly printed hand-written letter demanded EnCana cease operations in the area. The alleged bomber promised to suspend attacks during a three-month grace period so “we can all take a summer vacation.”

At a July press conference, police accused the saboteur of “terrorizing these communities of Pouce Coupe and Dawson Creek.” But the mayor of Pouce Coupe, a village of 749 residents at the epicenter of Peace River gas activity, does not see it that way.

"I have discussed this [sabotage] with some pipeline workers," said Mayor Lyman Clark, a vocal supporter of the gas industry, during an interview at the village’s office. "One just frankly told me ‘I am more afraid of the bears.'" He added, "The whole area is in a boom right now, unlike the rest of the world economy."

While Alberta’s finance minister complains that low natural gas prices have been a “real kick in the head” to the provincial treasury, drilling activity continues at an almost frantic pace on the BC side of the border. Shiny new pickup trucks line the roads from Dawson Creek to Fort St. John. In 2008, the BC government collected more than $3.6 billion from selling drilling rights and reaping royalties. But some locals are unhappy with changes brought by sour gas.

“Sour gas is deadly; 500 parts per million will kill you dead,” says Woody Ewert, an organic farmer living near Pouce Coupe. Natural gas extraction “became the prime economic driver of the Peace River country just kind of overnight,” says Tim Ewert, Woody’s father, over cups of black coffee at the family’s farm house. “There were never any baseline studies done on air or water. They never checked to see what size or how deep the local aquifers were before starting the whole drilling program.”

Industry’s incursions into previously pristine land is “changing the way of life, our hunting, trapping, berry picking, even just going camping,” says Cliff Calliou, hereditary Chief of the Kelly Lake First Nation, an aboriginal community 30 minutes away from sabotaged sites with some 500 residents.

After the first attacks in fall 2008, police and media speculated—without evidence—that the bomber came from Kelly Lake. “They [police] threw two people in jail with no charges,” said Chief Calliou during an interview at Kelly Lake’s community centre. He describes police actions in the community as a “witch hunt.” In addition to the unwarranted jailing of Kelly Lake residents, which hadn’t until now been reported in the media, police also accused 76-year-old Regina Mortensen, a grandmother recovering from hip surgery, of sabotaging the pipelines.

The Kelly Lake First Nation, which maintains traditional governance structures outside of the Indian Act, has not surrendered its traditional land base via a treaty. Yet despite the region’s resource wealth many houses in Kelly Lake are ramshackle trailers. The community says the gas is being stolen from their unceded land and they have launched a $5.2 billion land claim for compensation.

Most people who live near sabotaged sites are not against extracting gas, per se. Rather, they say regulations favor corporations over landowners and the environment. Companies, with their teams of lawyers, engineers and experts, often understand the regulations better than the government who is supposed to be overseeing extraction.

Making laws less favorable to oil companies is not easy, especially for provinces dependent on petroleum revenues. An article in the Journal of Environmental Management argues that Alberta is a “first world jurisdiction” with a “third world analogue” in its lax environmental and political regulation of the oil industry. Farmers say BC is even worse than Alberta in its third world analogue.

Drilling rigs are moving from Alberta across the border to BC in record numbers, says EnCana’s Brian Lieverse. “The BC government has some excellent programs to stimulate their economy and oil and gas activity in the area,” he said during an interview at EnCana’s field office in Dawson Creek.

Critics of the current regulatory regime say gas companies can buy political support at their expense. EnCana, as one example, donated $255,470 to the governing BC Liberals between 2005 and 2008. The Liberals, in turn, have used monies from their economic stimulus to build roads and other infrastructure primarily to facilitate gas extraction in the region.

Ewert says EnCana has done a good job trying to deal with basic concerns such as dust from oil service trucks and speeding from contractors. But the company has not dealt with larger issues, such as potential water contamination or flaring from natural gas wells.

While not one Peace River resident, including harsh critics of the oil industry, supported sabotage, some were happy that complaints are finally being noticed.

“I don’t condone what this person [the bomber] is doing,” said Rick Koechl, a junior high school teacher living 40 minutes from the bombed sites and an activist pushing for sour gas wells to be set back at least a kilometre from houses and schools. “But at least it’s bringing attention to the situation up here; we’ve had legal organizations help us with this fight, but that’s not very sexy, is it?”

Sabotage, as a means of demanding action, is nothing new. Nor is it exclusively a tactic of environmentalists and the marginalized. In an interview with Al Jazeera, leading Republican Newt Gingrich recently advocated for American sabotage against Iran’s gas facilities in order to create social unrest.

Nor are the attacks in northeastern BC the first case of high profile sabotage against Canadian sour gas pipelines. On April 20, 2000 an Alberta court convicted Wiebo Ludwig, a farmer and preacher, of bombing gas wells owned Alberta Energy Co. Ltd. (AEC). Ludwig claimed his wife miscarried a child because of sour gas exposure. During their investigation of Ludwig and his associates, police admitted to blowing up a gas well themselves in order to gain credibility for an informant.

In 2002, AEC merged with PanCanadian to form EnCana, initially valued at $30 billion dollars. EnCana reps refused to comment on what, if anything, the company learned from the Ludwig saga.

In Alberta alone there were “more than 160 incidents of sabotage” against resource industries (oil, gas, hydro and forestry) between 1997 and 1999 causing “millions of dollars in damages,” according to documents released from a freedom of information request to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). The heavily censored documents do not provide figures for 21st century sabotage. Sources familiar with the issue say the numbers are far higher than 160 incidents.

Sucking unconventional gas from the ground is expensive: up to $10 per well compared with $1 dollar for conventional shallow wells. World gas prices have fallen drastically in recent years, but drilling continues in the Peace River region due to a combination of low royalties, new technologies for accessing gas, and political stability.

Stability: an asset Canadian petroleum producers seem to value above all else. But stability is what is under attack in northeastern BC. Pipelines can be repaired, bounties offered, elite police sent in, but once investors loose confidence in stability, Canada’s petroleum industry will change drastically. This is what worries EnCana and the rest of western Canada’s oil patch: that fear will trump greed in the psyche of investors thus reversing the current market paradigm. Costs will increase; investment will drop. The market will demand the same thing environmentalists in both Alberta and BC have been demanding: slow down.

Chris Arsenault is a graduate student writing a history of sabogate and the oil patch.

School teacher Rick Koechl

Oil Crisis was a Peak into the Future

dru — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:44:14 +0000

Former CIBC Chief Economist predicts end of globalization, promotes local food

VANCOUVER—Jeff Rubin doesn't fit the typical profile of an interview subject for The Dominion. For more than a decade, he was Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets, one of Canada's largest investment banks. Rubin recently broke ranks with the financial crowd to publish his book, Why Your World is About to get a Whole Lot Smaller. The man once touted as Canada's top economist now predicts the end of globalization because of triple-digit oil prices.

"The same economics that compelled the mass exodus of manufacturing abroad will compel [the] return [of manufacturing to North America] because distance will cost money," he says between sips of San Pellegrino, as we watch container ships move through Vancouver harbour. This end point isn't far away; Rubin predicts that a barrel of oil will hit US $225 by 2012.

Forecasting the price of oil, or anything for that matter, has long been considered a fool's game. And plenty of respected analysts think the former CIBC guru has gone over the top. But, when it comes to looking into the crystal ball of global capitalism, Rubin has a far better track record than most other pin-striped sages. In 2000, Rubin correctly predicted that oil would top $50 per barrel by 2005. And in 2005 he got it right again, forecasting prices would top $100 per barrel in 2007.

The basis of Rubin's predictions—the peak oil theory—is nothing new. However, according to his analysis of oil markets, humanity is going to hit the wall a lot sooner than previously expected. Rubin spoke with journalist Chris Arsenault at the posh Fairmont Hotel on Vancouver's waterfront, before beginning the US leg of his book tour.

The Dominion: Some analysts estimate that 25 per cent of the world's hydrocarbons are located in the Arctic and will soon be open to exploitation due, ironically, to global warming. Won't this new supply nullify the severity of price rises?

Jeff Rubin: The stuff in the Arctic is a drop in the bucket. You are losing sight of what the Cambridge Energy Research Associates and Exxon don't tell you about. They hold big press conferences to talk about, 'Oh we just discovered the Jack Field—10,000 feet under the hurricane-ravaged waters of the Gulf of Mexico, isn't that fantastic.'

They don't hold press conferences [to announce], 'See this field here? It has been producing for 50 years. It's about to run dry.'

Every year we lose four million barrels a day [of production due to depletion]. Over the next five years, we are going to have to find 20 million barrels a day of new production, just so that we can [continue to] consume what we consume today.

The Canadian tar sands have become a major new source of crude; Canada is now the number one foreign exporter to the US. Won't these massive, unconventional reserves around Fort McMurray offset depletion from older fields in Mexico or Saudi Arabia?

The attractiveness of Fort McMurray is not just what is under the ground; it's where it is [located]. In Fort McMurray, all Exxon has to do is sponsor a minor hockey team and they are 'good corporate citizens.' In most places in the world, they're starting to believe oil and natural gas resources should be owned and operated by the state. The world has already gotten a lot smaller for Exxon. Outside of Canada, the US and a handful of other countries, it is the state companies who control access to hydrocarbon resources.

As far as Fort McMurray, there are 165 billion barrels of oil trapped in those sands. To produce one barrel of synthetic oil, you have to burn 1,400 cubic feet of natural gas, schlep two tons of sand [and] pollute 250 gallons of water. The very prices that will be needed to bring that oil out of the ground are the same prices that will take you off the road. Sure, at $200 a barrel of oil, we can produce four million barrels per day out of Fort McMurray. But, at $200 for a barrel of oil, you are talking seven dollars for a gallon of gasoline.

At what point does the price of oil make export-driven globalization untenable?

The model as we know it peaked in 2007. If we measure globalization by the percentage of world GDP that is an export or an import, 2007 will mark the peak of a past age.

You are going to see less and less container ships. All of those containers are about one thing: a wage ark. Moving your factory from someplace where you pay folks 30 bucks an hour to somewhere where you pay folks 30 bucks a week is great, if it's just about wages.

But what moves those container ships is oil. At $150 to $200 per barrel, the wage ark becomes penny wise and a pound foolish because what you save on a wage bill you more than spend on bunker fuel.

If free markets worked as the economics textbooks say they should, high oil prices would lead companies to invest in green technologies. Why aren't we seeing viable alternatives to petroleum?

It is all a question of time. Higher prices will light the path. And I am sure in 20, 25 years we will have new fuel technologies.

Unfortunately, our rendezvous with triple-digit oil prices isn't in 25 years, it's in 12 months. We have to figure out a way of engineering our economy and our lives to use less energy.

If the market can't create viable alternative energy technologies, what role do governments have in ending fossil-fuel dependency?

I don't believe in government, I believe in the market, I believe in prices. I believe prices will show us what to do. Sure, we need to be more efficient. But the emphasis has to be on conservation, so peak oil doesn't have to equal peak GDP.

Couldn't increased energy efficiency make up for shortfalls in production?

We think that efficiency leads to conservation, but history has shown that is not what happens.

The average engine today is 30 per cent more efficient than the engines produced before the OPEC oil shocks [of the 1970s]. Yet, the average [North American] vehicle consumes just as much gasoline in the course of a year.

Back in the 1970s, we [North Americans] used to drive about 9,000 miles a year; now we drive 12,000. Back in the 1970s, we weren't living in the far-flung suburbs. All those gains in efficiency have led us to, ever more efficiently, consume more and more oil.

How will triple-digit oil prices affect politics?

The US steel workers should be at the forefront, arguing to Obama for a price on carbon emissions. I think you'll find that when unions go through the math, Archie Bunker is going to get into bed with Al Gore.

We [North America] can produce a ton of steel and emit one-third less CO2 than steel producers in a developing country like China. Right now, that is totally irrelevant. There is no price advantage to [producing with less greenhouse gas emissions], so it doesn't flow to the bottom line and it doesn't affect where steel jobs are. But, if you are one-third more efficient, you want the price of emissions to be as high as possible—the higher the price of emissions, the greater the economic advantage.

By putting a price on carbon emissions and making our trading partners pay the same price, going green is going to bring jobs home instead of sending them away.

Won't those proposed duties, either though a carbon tax or a cap and trade system, come into conflict with World Trade Organization rules?

I would argue that is a market failure. The only reason that those steel plants went to China in the first place is because we didn't put a price on carbon emissions. In an efficient, functioning market we would have allocated resources much differently.

The carbon-spewing industries of the world should not be in the places that have the cheapest labour, but rather in places [with] the cleanest technologies. That's not where these industries are located today.

You don't seem too upset about globalization coming to an end.

I don't think this story has to be as apocalyptic as peak oil is usually displayed. It is apocalyptic if we insist on having the lifestyles we had when oil was cheap and abundant, if we insist on commuting 40 miles back and forth to work in our SUVs and importing steel from China and flatscreen TVs from Korea or Taiwan.

But I'm hopeful. I'm not hopeful because of governments; I'm an economist, I believe in prices.

I understand that there are folk who have already adopted the local paradigm for cultural or ecological reasons. But whether you think that way or not, you are going that way for the very simple fact that you won't be able to afford any other way.

When gas is seven dollars a gallon, no one is going to have to buy my book to know what to do. Folks are going to get off the road because they can't afford to drive. When there is no bus to get on, they will get their politician's attention. Why are we bailing out Detroit when 50 million vehicles are likely to head off the road in the next ten years? We should be investing in public transit, not cars.

It's now widely accepted that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was primarily about oil. Just ask former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. A lot of analysts are predicting a violent scramble for the last remaining resources. Where do you think these conflicts might happen?

Let's understand that when we are talking about hydrocarbons, we aren't just talking about moving cars or powering container ships. We are talking about food. Modern agriculture is really the massive transformation of hydrocarbons into food [through] fertilizer, irrigation and mechanization. If you look at arable land under cultivation, it hasn't grown in the last 10 to 15 years. All the increases in world food production have come from increasing the yield per acre. All of those increases have come about by adding more fertilizer to the land and using more tractors.

The real challenge is: does peak oil equal peak food? If there are going to be wars, I suggest that will be the fault line.

Take countries like Saudi Arabia; they are buying land in Pakistan and Africa to grow food. The countries that rent the land? None of that food is going to their populations. What happens when their population starts to starve and they see their land being used to grow food for people in other countries? Is that a sustainable model?

Are you growing a garden?

[Laughs] No, but where I live [in Toronto], and a lot of places, have artisanal food stalls every weekend. It's organic food, basically grown around [the local area] and it's happening more and more.

At first, [organic local food markets] might be a yuppie thing to do. But soon it's going to be mainstream because that's going be the only kind of food we can afford to eat. That is going to mean changes to our diet. When I was a kid, there were no blueberries and raspberries in January; we are going to have to go back to local diets.

Chris Arsenault holds the Phil Lind Fellowship at the University of British Columbia's Department of History. He is currently writing a history of sabotage and the Alberta oil patch.

Jeff Rubin

Five-Fold Increase in Oil Sands Production

Moira Peters — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:05:38 +0000

Tar sands could produce 6 million barrels of oil per day by 2035: report

VANCOUVER–"The oil sands have moved from the fringe to the centre of energy supply," notes the report "Growth in the Canadian Oil Sands: Finding a New Balance," released by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) on May 18.

Environmentalists and some aboriginal groups want the oil sands to stay on the fringes because extracting heavy oil produces more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional crude.

On May 22, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) issued a report entitled "The Canadian Oil Sands: Energy Security vs Climate Change," which argues that the negative environmental impacts and benefits to US energy security from Canada’s tar sands are both overstated.

"Smart regulation can place a fair and reasonable price on the oil sands’ greenhouse gas emissions, providing the right incentive to reduce them," said Michael Levi, an author of the CFR report.

In a phone interview, Levi said lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands are 17 per cent worse than conventional US oil imports. Environmentalists dispute this claim, stating oil production from the tar sands is at least 300 per cent worse than conventional oil.

"The development of Canadian oil sands encapsulates the complexities that the world faces on energy, environment and security," said IHS CERA Chairman Daniel Yergin.

Yergin won a Pulitzer Prize for his book The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, which details the history of the oil industry. CERA did not respond to interview requests.

Oil today accounts for 35 per cent of the global energy supply—the largest share of any form of energy. In 2008, worldwide oil demand was 85.2 million barrels per day (mbd). CERA estimates global oil demand in 2035 could range from 97 to 113 mbd.

If the global economy stays in recession or a slow-growth scenario, production from Canada’s tar sands will reach about 2.3 mbd by 2035—an increase of about one mbd from present levels—according to CERA's report, which posits three possible scenarios for the future of tar sands development. In a high-growth scenario, the figure will reach six million mbd.

In 2008, Canada supplied the US with 19 per cent of its oil imports. That figure could rise to 37 per cent by 2035, according to CERA.

Canada's dependence on oil exports to the US worries Gordon Laxer, Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta. "We need 21st-century public interest ownership [of oil reserves]," he said in an interview.

Relying on exports to the US rather than the domestic market puts Canada in a weak position if there is a supply crisis, warned Laxer. Unlike the US, Canada does not maintain a strategic petroleum reserve.

In contrast to Canada’s private ownership structure, the vast majority of world oil reserves are controlled by government-owned companies which can, in theory, use oil wealth to finance national development, according to Laxer.

While arguing for a price on carbon emissions, the CFR report is not concerned with other environmental problems, including water contamination.

"Local impacts are not the concern of US policy-makers," said Levi.

Environmentalists say that exponential increases in water extraction from the Athabasca River could destabilize the North American water cycle.

Most water used in tar sands extraction is not returned to the natural water system. Instead, wastewater containing toxins is dumped into what the industry calls tailings ponds. As outlined in CERA’s report, Staten Island, New York, could fit inside the tailings pond operated by Syncrude, the largest tar sands consortium.

"It takes a huge amount of energy just to melt the tar sands and then you have to use a huge quantity of water: that's a cost which has to be internalized [by industry]," said environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki.

Environmentalists like Suzuki, along with some economists, believe industry should pay for the water it uses and the air it pollutes. With these costs, the economic viability of tar sands development would be questionable. "Right now the oil industry is getting away scot-free," said Suzuki in an interview.

The CFR report supports adding a cost or externality to carbon emissions. The report estimates that a carbon price of $20 per tonne of CO₂ equivalent—the average price in the European Union's Emission Trading Scheme—would add only $2.21 per barrel to production costs of the oil sands.

"The US will have a large market for emissions; Canada will benefit from that stability," said CFR’s Levi, extolling the benefits of a carbon pricing system that is being debated by legislators on both sides of the Canada-US border. Environmentalists say these cost estimates for carbon are too low to stop runaway climate change, a scenario many scientists agree would destroy life on Earth as we know it.

CERA maintains a list of the world’s top 15 countries that have the potential to increase oil production over the next decade. Canada ranks fourth and Brazil is the only other country in the Western Hemisphere to make CERA’s list.

Critics of CERA’s methodology say this accounting neglects Venezuela’s massive and virtually untapped heavy oil reserves in the Orinoco belt.

A version of this article appeared on Inter Press Service. The author is currently studying rural opposition to oil development and sabotage in Canada. He can be reached at arsenault_chris@hotmail.com.

Tar Sands Production

Rhetoric and Reality Clash

Moira Peters — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 06:54:24 +0000

Obama's first foreign visit

VANCOUVER–On his first foreign visit as US President, Barack Obama's rhetoric of "hope" and "change" came face-to-face with the hard, divisive policy realities of climate change from Canada's tar sands, a growing insurgency in Afghanistan and the sputtering world economy.

Some 2,500 spectators lined the streets of Ottawa to watch the President's motorcade make its way to Parliament Hill, a marked contrast to the thousands of protesters who greeted former-President George W. Bush during his last Canadian visit. While the Canadian public catches Obama fever, environmentalists and some aboriginal groups say they've been left in the cold by his energy policies.

"Obama must ask Canada to clean up its tar sands and to respect the rights of our aboriginal First Nations," said Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, a community near the Alberta tar sands, the world's largest energy project.

While promising to press ahead with "carbon reduction technologies," Obama did not mention the tar sands directly during his visit. Extracting oil from the tar sands creates three times more greenhouse gas emissions than the production of conventional crude.

At the press conference following closed-door meetings between President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the two leaders promised a "Clean Energy dialogue," focusing on plans to trap carbon dioxide underground, as well as improvements to North America's electricity grid.

Standing in front of Canadian and US flags, as the pomp and circumstance of international diplomacy dictates, Obama called climate change and the need to develop clean energy sources "the most pressing challenges of our time."

The Natural Resources Defense Council dubs tar sands crude "the world's dirtiest oil." Canada is the largest foreign supplier of oil to the US, sending more than 1.2 million barrels per day to its southern neighbour.

Trade between the two countries is worth more than 1.6 billion dollars per day, making it the world's largest trading relationship. In addition to energy and the environment, the two leaders discussed bailouts for North America's auto industry and the general economic downturn.

"How we produce and use energy is fundamental for our economic recovery and also for our security and our planet," said Obama at the press conference.

Prior to Obama's Canadian visit, aboriginal and environmental groups placed a full-page ad in the newspaper USA Today, stating that the tar sands "stands in the way of a new energy economy." The day before the presidential visit, activists from Greenpeace scaled a bridge in Ottawa to hang a banner that read "Climate Leaders Don't Buy Tar Sands."

During his election campaign, Obama vowed to end the US's addiction to "dirty, dwindling and dangerously expensive" oil. His campaign's energy guru, Jason Grumet, said greenhouse gas emissions from Canada's tar sands were "unacceptably high."

In an apparent about-face from his campaign promises, Obama refused to characterize tar sands crude as "dirty oil" in a pre-summit interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. While acknowledging that the sands create "a big carbon footprint," Obama argued that technologies, including a plan from Alberta's provincial government to store carbon dioxide underground, could solve the problem.

The idea of sequestering and storing greenhouse gases underground, known as carbon capture, has yet to be implemented at any tar sands operations and critics are skeptical that it can work. The tar sands are Canada's fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, tar sands oil extraction pumps 29.5 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year, equivalent to the exhaust output from more than 5 million cars.

Even if carbon capture technology does prove to be effective, the sands create a host of other environmental challenges, water depletion being the most significant. Producing one barrel of tar sands oil requires at least three barrels of water; there is enough toxic water in tar sands tailings ponds to fill 2.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

"The devastation of our homelands in this short period of time is perplexing to my people," said George Poitras, former Chief of the Mikisew Cree, another aboriginal community close to the tar sands. He explained that the impacts of tar sands development have occurred in "a fraction of the time...compared to the thousands of years we have inhabited these lands."

In addition to energy and the economy, Obama and Harper discussed the increasing violence in Afghanistan, where Obama has pledged to send 17,000 more US troops as part of a "surge." Canada currently has 2,500 combat troops stationed around Kandahar, set to leave in 2011.

Obama stated explicitly that he was not requesting more troops or money from Canada for the Afghan occupation.

Prime Minister Harper recently stated in an interview with CNN that foreign troops would not be able to defeat an insurgency in Afghanistan.

The original version of this article was published by Inter Press Service.

Chris Arsenault holds the Phil Lind Fellowship at the University of British Columbia's Department of History. He is currently writing a history of sabotage and the Alberta oil patch. Anyone (anonymous or not) who can provide information about this should contact him at arsenault_chris[at]hotmail.com. His first book, Blowback: A Canadian History of Agent Orange and the War at Home, will be released in March.

Bitumen Obama

Obama at the White House

Paper Mill Seizure Boosts Populist Premier

dawn — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0000

"Canada's Hugo Chavez" to be challenged under NAFTA

VANCOUVER – Danny Williams, the Progressive Conservative Premier of sparsely populated Newfoundland and Labrador, recently expropriated the assets of a paper mill, AbitibiBowater, which had announced hundreds of layoffs in December. The mill had just received generous perks from the provincial government.

"In 100 years of operating in Canada we have never seen anything like this," said Seth Kursman, Vice-President of communications and government relations for Abitibi.

"We are working on filing [legal documents] as we speak," Kursman told this reporter. The mill is scheduled to close on March 28, 2009, and the government will assume control of its assets on March 31.

"For 100 years, Abitibi and its predecessors have enjoyed the privilege of Newfoundland and Labrador's natural resources," said Williams when he announced the expropriation on December 17. "It simply makes sense that if Abitibi are not going to continue the operation of a pulp and paper mill and renege on their commitment to our province they will no longer have access to our natural resources."

The threat of legal action because of the expropriation, in Canadian courts or before a tribunal convened as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), doesn't worry Gary Healey, a tradesman who has worked at Abitibi's mill in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, for most of his adult life.

"Abitibi had a covenant with the government from 1905 to make paper at Grand Falls. If they no longer want to make paper here, that covenant has been broken," said Healey, who also serves as a spokesperson for the Canadian Energy and Paperworkers Union.

The 1905 agreement between the province of Newfoundland and the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company Limited - the firm which preceded Abitibi in controlling the paper mill and connected hydroelectric power generators - said the paper company could "use and enjoy" the province's land and water resources "for its milling and logging business."

The assets, including forested land, the pulp mill itself and the valuable hydroelectric generating stations, are worth at least $200 million, according to articles in the business press. "We aren't talking about small-time dollars here," said Kursman.

Abitibi may be compensated for power-related infrastructure, according to the provincial government. No figures have been released and a spokesperson for Newfoundland's Department of Natural Resources refused to comment on the dispute.

With an international recession hindering the market for paper products, Abitibi exported power from the mill's hydroelectric station for a tidy profit. "They [Abitibi] invested money on their hydro assets, but they allowed their paper-making assets to deteriorate," said Healy.

"They were never a power company. The charter that they operated under was under the premise that they'd make paper," Healy emphasized.

An industry town built around the paper mill, Grand Falls will no doubt experience devastating economic impacts from the closure. The provincial government has not announced plans to re-open the mill as a public company or in partnership with another forestry firm.

"If Abitibi wanted to run the mill, we could have found a restructuring deal," said Healy, who believes the company wanted to exploit cheap hydropower to sell back to consumers.

While business commentators condemn the expropriation as a reckless threat to future investments, Williams and his take-no-prisoners attitude are wildly popular with average Newfoundlanders.

The historically marginalized province is currently experiencing an offshore oil boom and Williams, a multi-millionnaire cable TV magnate prior to entering politics, is credited with a knack for negotiating favourable deals with oil companies. This is where the "Danny Chavez" nickname originated.

"Williams has done well playing hardball with companies," said Steven Shrybman, an influential trade lawyer with Ottawa-based firm Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP.

"Canadians don't want to be just hewers of wood and drawers of water. The province gave water and timber rights to the company on the condition that they invest and produce paper," Shrybman told this reporter, adding that Abitibi's legal case is "anything but a slam-dunk if Canada vigorously defends its interests."

Other legal scholars dispute Shrybman's claim, arguing that the company will have the upper hand if the issue goes before a trade tribunal.

Abitibi plans to sue the federal government under NAFTA, Chapter 11, a controversial clause designed to mediate disputes between states and investors. Critics allege that corporations use Chapter 11 to target legislation that favours human health, workers' rights and the environment over private profit.

The federal government, rather than Newfoundland's provincial government, will have to fight the court battle because only national governments can sign foreign trade deals. Ironically, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a political enemy of fellow conservative Williams, will be forced either to defend the expropriation, or to pay Abitibi hundreds of millions of dollars from federal coffers.

Along with preparing lawsuits, Abitibi is "lobbying the highest levels of government on both sides of the [Canada-US] border," according to Kursman. Political manoeuvring from the world's eighth largest integrated paper company has included meetings with US Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, Canada's Minister of International Trade Stockwell Day, US Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins and other senior officials in the Prime Minister's office.

While Kursman says his company will do "everything possible to protect shareholders," lumber-worker Healy thinks the corporation should accept its fate.

"Just because a big company didn't have things go their way, doesn't mean [the seizure is] wrong," he said. "The Premier had to take some action to protect these assets; these assets belong to the people."

The original version of this article was published by Inter Press Service.

Chris Arsenault holds the Phil Lind Fellowship at University of British Columbia's Department of History. He is currently writing a history of sabotage and the Alberta oil patch. Anyone (nameless or not) who can provide information about this should contact him at arsenault_chris[at]hotmail.com. His first book, Blowback: A Canadian History of Agent Orange and the War at Home, will be released in March.

Danny

Canada's Tar Lobby

dawn — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:50:45 +0000

Tar Sands Lobbyists Focus on US Democrats

As the US election campaign kicks into overdrive, Canadian politicians and oil executives are stepping up lobbying efforts to make sure whoever controls the White House keeps purchasing notoriously dirty oil from the Alberta tar sands.

Executives from energy company Nexen Inc., which has major investments in northern Alberta's heavy oil industry, and Tony Clement, chair of a Canadian cabinet committee on energy security, met with Democratic candidate Barack Obama's top energy advisor Jason Grumet in late August to cement the "energy partnership" during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.

The closed-door meeting comes on the heels of comments made by Grumet and other Obama officials – comments that sent shivers through board rooms in Calgary and backhoes in Fort McMurray, the epicentres of Canada's oil industry.

In June, Grumet told reporters, "The amount of energy that you have to use to get that [tar sands] oil out of the ground is such that it actually creates a much greater impact on climate change."

"We [Obama's team] are going to support resources...that meet our long-term obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And I think it's an open question as to whether or not the Canadian resources are going to meet those tests," said Grumet prior to meeting the Canadian delegation at the DNC.

Currently, Canada is the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States, sending more than one million barrels of oil per day to its southern neighbour. About half of this supply originates from Alberta's tar sands.

"Clearly the oil sands is the most high-impact oil available," said Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute, an environmental watchdog.

"The oil sands are three times as greenhouse gas-intensive as regular oil," said Dyer, adding that roughly three barrels of water are required to process one barrel of heavy oil.

Tar sands production is set to increase from its current 1.2 million barrels of oil per day, to three million barrels per day by 2018, most of which is slated for export to the United States.

Tony Clement, the Canadian minister of health, told reporters at the DNC, "We [the Conservative government] have to be more aggressive in representing Canadian values and interests in the American political scene."

Neither Nexen Inc., nor Minister Clement's office returned phone calls requesting comment.

"The Canadian government is trying to deal through the back room rather than dealing with the environmental impacts of the oil sands," Dyer told this reporter. "Emissions from the oil sands are going to triple [by 2020] and that's inconsistent with the world's desire to lessen climate change."

In addition to official political pressure from Canadian cabinet ministers attempting to force Obama's hand on the tar sands, the oil industry has hired high-powered lobbyists of its own. Gordon Giffin, a former US ambassador to Canada, is now a registered lobbyist in Washington for the energy firm Nexen Inc.

Canadian oil executives attending the Democratic National Convention issued thinly veiled threats to the Obama campaign, stating that tar sands oil would be shipped to China if a new administration in Washington imposed restrictions.

"If you don't like the oil sands oil, what companies will do [in Canada] is build a bigger pipeline to the west coast and export it to China and India," stated Nexen Inc.'s Dwain Lingenfelter, the company's vice-president of government relations and a former deputy premier of Saskatchewan.

"If the US didn't want the oil, it'll go into the oil market anyway...So they have to be very careful about looking at the whole picture," Lingenfelter, the politician-turned-oil lobbyist, told the Toronto Star.

As competition for energy resources between China and the United States intensifies, Lingenfelter's lobbying may sound convincing, but his analysis shouldn't be taken seriously, according to the Pembina Institute's Simon Dyer.

"A potential pipeline to Asia [though the port of Kitimat] would have to cross the territory of 40 First Nations, where land claims and treaty rights are still hotly contested," said Dyer. "There is growing opposition to pipelines and growing oil sands opposition across the country, so those pipelines [to China] are by no means a done deal."

While pipeline routes out of Alberta will be a major topic of controversy for years to come, there is no doubt that Canadian oil is among the world's most climate-unfriendly fuels.

During his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, Obama promised to end US dependence on Middle East oil within 10 years, while stating that "government must lead on energy independence."

Environmentalists in Canada and the US contend that closed-door meetings with oil executives are not the best way to foster energy independence.

The current Canadian government, which draws its political and financial support from petroleum-producing regions in the West, is not seen as independent from oil interests. In July alone, oil sands companies held a total of 36 meetings with Canadian ministers and government officials, according to recently disclosed lobbying reports.

Meanwhile, environmental groups only held seven lobbying sessions and these were usually with ministerial assistants and other lower-level officials.

Chris Arsenault holds the Phil Lind Fellowship at University of British Columbia's Department of History. He is currently writing a history of sabotage and the Alberta oil patch. Anyone (nameless or not) who can provide information about this should contact him at arsenault_chris[at]hotmail.com. A version of this article was originally published by Inter Press Service.

Tar Sands Lobby

Free Trade will not Lift All Boats

Moira Peters — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:48:30 +0000

Trade deal with Colombia criticized by Canadian labour leaders

Paul Moist, the President of Canada's largest union, expressed concern about a free trade deal between Canada and Colombia during a recent meeting with Fabio Valencio, Colombia's Minister of the Interior.

"[Valencio] listed off the numbers of unionists murdered in Colombia like he was reading a report on the weather channel," said Moist, President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). Since the beginning of 2008, 32 Colombian trade unionists have been assassinated.

Moist and three other Canadian labour leaders, representing some 1.1 million workers, returned to Canada on July 25 from a weeklong fact-finding mission in Colombia. They were tasked with examining the potential effects of a free trade deal inked on June 7 between the executive branches of the two countries.

"Our overwhelming conclusion is that a free trade agreement will not help the Colombian people," said the Canadian labour leaders in a statement.

According to the Colombian Network in Response to Free Trade (RECALCA), based on the precedent set with the Canada-Peru agreement, the Colombian government "calculates that overnight, the emaciated and already under-protected agricultural and industrial sectors in Colombia will be capable of competing with their Canadian counterparts." However, RECALCA notes that farmers as well as Colombian manufacturers of "textiles, footwear, plastic products, industrial metals, chemicals and paper as well as machinery and automotive equipment" are threatened by the ratification of the agreement.

The Canadian labour delegation met with various sectors of Colombian society, including government officials, the United Central of Workers (CUT) and other trade unions, opposition leaders, non-governmental organisations, groups representing indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples as well as the Canadian ambassador. "Colombia continues to be the most dangerous country on earth for trade unions and civil society activists," they said upon return to Canada.

"From what we have learned, 95 per cent of Colombian workers do not have an enforceable collective agreement," Moist explained. "We cannot accept a free trade agreement until this changes."

While Colombia is a signatory to International Labour Organization (ILO) protocols, which should guarantee workers the right to organise independent trade unions, the protocols have not been codified into domestic legalisation, making them practically irrelevant.

"It is easier to form a paramilitary gang than it is to form a trade union in this country," CUT President Tarisco Mora told reporters at a press conference with his Canadian counterparts.

The CUT had 1.5 million members at its founding, Mora told the Canadians. Today it is down to 460,000 due to a combination of legal hurdles to unionisation and violence against union members.

Colombia's National Trade Union School documented 2,245 killings, 3,400 threats and 138 forced disappearances of trade unionists between January 1991 and December 2006. Broken down, that's one unionist killed every three days and one unionist forcibly disappeared every month, for 15 years.

According to a statement by David Emerson, Canada's foreign affairs minister, the deal will expand "trade and investment, and will help solidify ongoing efforts by the Government of Colombia to create a more prosperous, equitable and secure democracy."

Union leaders, including CUPE's Paul Moist, dispute these claims. "In Colombia's current climate, increased foreign investment will not lift all boats," said Moist, citing the case of sugar cane workers with whom he met.

Even a decade ago, most of Colombia's 22,000 cane workers were unionised, according to Moist. Today, the industry has been contracted out and workers receive less money per pound of cane than they did ten years ago.

These trends exist not only in the sugar sector, but across a rapidly industrializing and concentrated agricultural sector. Free Trade Agreements undermine small-scale producers and food sovereignty, encouraging the export of cash crops and increasing the likelihood of dumping by countries with highly subsidized agricultural sectors.

In 2007, two-way merchandise trade between Canada and Colombia amounted to 1.14 billion dollars.

Some analysts believe Colombia is seeking a deal with Canada to win a public relations battle in the US, rather than to increase trade flows.

"Colombia is offering Canada an FTA because it really wants the US Congress to reconsider its opposition to such a deal," wrote Pablo Heidrich, senior researcher at the North-South Institute, a development policy watchdog based in Canada. Congressional Democrats are stalling a similar deal between the US and Colombia because of human right concerns.

With the recent collapse of World Trade Organization talks in Japan due in no small part to opposition from the global south, developed countries are likely to pursue bilateral deals, such as the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, with renewed vigour.

It is unclear what happens now with the Canada-Colombia bilateral deal. Buoyed by high popular approval ratings, Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe has the necessary congressional support and political capital to enact the trade agreement.

The same cannot be said for Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who does not have the parliamentary majority needed to pass legislation without support from other parties.

Canadian opposition parities, including the Liberals and the New Democratic Party, have expressed concern about the deal, especially given the human rights situation in Colombia. "We are not clear where this legislation will go in Canada," Moist told The Dominion.

While opposition parties in both countries remain skeptical of the agreement, business lobby groups support the deal.

"Colombia imposes tariffs averaging 11 per cent on industrial goods, 17 per cent on agricultural and 15 to 20 per cent on cotton yarns and paper products," said Thomas d'Aquino, leader of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) in a May presentation to a parliamentary committee. "The elimination of these tariffs would greatly benefit Canada," said d'Aquino.

In particular, politically influential Canadian mining firms want access to the vast natural wealth under Colombia's soil. "The proposed agreement would benefit companies and workers in a wide range of industries, including the automotive sector, steel, chemicals, public infrastructure development, oil drilling... mining and advanced manufacturing such as mining machinery and equipment," d'Aquino told Canadian politicians.

While a lack of collective bargaining rights may hurt average workers, foreign interests seem content with the current labour situation in Colombia, taking advantage of the inability of most workers to organize to demand fair pay for fear of extermination. "No Canadian mining operations are unionised in Colombia," says Moist.

A version of this article was previously published by Inter Press Service.

Canadian labour leaders in Bogotá

Native Leader Serving Six Months for Opposing Mine

hillarybain — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:22:36 +0000

Supporters call Algonquin leader a "political prisoner"

Algonquin community leader Robert Lovelace had never been charged with an offence, but when a uranium company began prospecting for radioactive ore on unceded First Nations land without engaging in consultation, he decided to take action and organized a non-violent blockade.

On February 15, Judge Cunningham of Ontario's Superior Court sentenced Lovelace to six months in jail for contempt of court and fined him $50,000 for his involvement in the peaceful protest.

Chief Paula Sherman, elected leader of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, a small community about 110 kilometres southwest of Ottawa, where the controversial uranium prospecting is taking place, calls Robert Lovelace "a political prisoner."

"It seems like a very heavy sentence," said Jamie Kneen of Mining Watch Canada, a non-governmental watchdog. "If the court had issued a trespassing charge, there could have been an argument about who was really trespassing."

The territory in question involves mainly Crown land that is subject to ongoing land-claim negotiations between First Nations and the provincial and federal governments.

In September 2007, an Ontario provincial court issued Frontenac Ventures, the mining company, an interlocutory injunction ordering protestors from Ardoch and Sharbot Lake First Nations, along with their non-native allies, to vacate the Robertsville camp. The camp is the only feasible entry point to a 30,000-acre wilderness tract in Frontenac County, where the company has its prospecting license. Lovelace and other activists violated that order.

"The source of this conflict is the Ontario Mining Act, which allows companies to stake land and prospect without consultation with private land owners or other users, including First Nations," said Kneen. Lovelace and other activists argue their constitutional rights were violated by the lack of consultation.

People living on or near the exploration site discovered their land was being taken almost two years ago. There were no community meetings or information sessions about the uranium exploration. "It started on private land when a cottager saw trees being cut and started protesting the development," said Kneen. A few months later it became clear that some of the land being staked was disputed territory.

"Uranium mining has no record other than environmental destruction and negative health issues," said Doreen Davis, chief of the Shabot Lake First Nation. "Uranium can't be stored safely," said Davis, who will be sentenced on March 18 for participating in the blockade. She is under court order not to talk about the dispute with Frontenac.

"I do know that we have communities from Kingston to Ottawa on our side against uranium mining in this district," said Davis. "A huge group of settlers, that's what they call themselves, have been working with us, pounding the pavement and educating people about this. I think it is unique to have aboriginal and non-aboriginal people standing shoulder-to-shoulder like this."

The federal government has yet to get involved in this case and Ontario's provincial government has only been reluctantly and peripherally involved, according to Kneen.

Not much is known about the company at the centre of the dispute. "Frontenac is a private company, so they don't have to file any disclosure," said Kneen. "Aside from the president and their lawyer, no one knows who they are or where they get their money."

The company's website has only one page and a press release. Frontenac's president, George White, did not return calls. The website says the company "is committed to participating in any efforts of Ontario and the First Nations' to consult in good faith," but Ardoch Chief Paula Sherman isn't convinced.

"No consideration was given to the circumstances leading to our actions," said Sherman in a statement following Lovelace's sentencing. "The testimony given under oath by Robert Lovelace outlined Algonquin Law and the corresponding responsibilities of Algonquin people with respect to human activity in our territory," wrote Sherman, who was fined $15,000 during the court case for breaking the injunction that prohibited protests on land being explored by Frontenac.

Because the company obtained a court order against protestors rather than filing trespassing charges, the judge was not required to consider arguments regarding historical precedent or Algonquin legal codes when making the decision. "It's a way of avoiding the core issues," said Kneen.

After a decade of low prices, the spot price of uranium has increased drastically in recent years, from $43 per pound in 2006, to $75 today.

As oil prices rise, countries have re-started old nuclear reactors and countries like South Africa, India and China have ambitious nuclear-power plans on the horizon. UBS, a financial services company, predicts uranium will hit $110 per pound by 2010.

These developments don't sit well with Dr. Mark Winfield, a Canadian nuclear expert. "Existing [uranium] mines in northern Saskatchewan have caused severe contamination through heavy metals like arsenic, and long-lived radionuclides, along with conventional pollutants," said Winfield.

In 2004, Health Canada concluded that effluent from uranium mines meets the definition of a toxic substance under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

Canada is the world's largest supplier of uranium and Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants to increase exports in his bid to transform the country into an "energy superpower."

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was very clear that nuclear [energy] can't compete economically," said Winfield. "The potential health and environmental impacts of uranium mining are not worth the risks."

A version of this article appeared on Inter Press Service

Blockade Gates

Veterans Say Agent Orange Settlement Falls Short

Stuart Neatby — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:56:18 +0000

Government compensation a diversion, say former Gagetown veterans

Notorious for its devastating use by the U.S. military in the Vietnam War, the toxic defoliant Agent Orange was tested and sprayed extensively in Canada by both the Canadian military and its U.S. counterpart in the 1950s, '60s and '70s

Recently, some Canadian veterans received a long-awaited compensation package, but veterans' advocates say the reparations do not go nearly far enough.

In 1966, Ken Dobbie and thousands of other young men spent summers hacking foliage soaked in Agent Orange while clearing forests at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown in the province of New Brunswick.

'We never had any protection; we would handle this stuff [brush covered in Agent Orange] with our bare hands,' Dobbie told The Dominion.

'We were never told these chemicals were dangerous, and now I am living in constant pain,' said Dobbie, 58, who is sick with brain atrophy, neurological disorders, thyroid growths, toxic hepatitis, and type 2 diabetes he blames on the time he spent working and living at Gagetown.

In 1966-67, the U.S. military, invited by the Canadian government, tested Agent Orange and Agent Purple on 83 acres at Base Gagetown.

The term 'Agent Orange' originated from the 45-gallon orange-striped barrels Monsanto and Dow Chemical used to market and ship the roughly 1:1 chemical mix of dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T). Dioxin, a known carcinogen linked to cancer and other ailments, is a component of Agent Orange and Agent Purple.

Last week, Canada's Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson announced a 94.5-million-dollar compensation package, offering lump sum payments of 19,700 dollars to some veterans and civilians who were at the base in 1966-67. 'We are proud to announce a plan that is fair and shows compassion to the thousands of Canadians whose lives have been so affected,' said Thompson in a statement.

'We may never fully know what happened when Agent Orange was tested at the Canadian Forces Base in Gagetown in 1966 and 1967, but our government has always stood firm,' said Thompson, a member of Canada's ruling Conservative Party. The federal government reportedly expects about 4,500 people will qualify for the package.

Veterans, however, say the Canadian government is using the compensation, which is only available to victims of U.S. spraying in 1966-67, to divert attention from a larger issue.

Between 1956-1984, the Canadian military sprayed 1,328,767 litres of chemical defoliants on 181,038 acres (an acre is slightly smaller than a football field) of Base Gagetown, including Agent Orange, Agent White and Agent Purple, according to a 1985 declassified briefing to the New Brunswick provincial government obtained by The Dominion through Canada's Access to Information Act.

'Restricting [compensation] payments to a few weeks in 1966-67 is dishonest,' said Tony Merchant, a lawyer representing some 3,000 veterans and civilians in a class action lawsuit against the companies who manufactured Agent Orange, including Dow Chemical and Monsanto, and the Canadian government.

'If the companies created dangerous products that hurt people than those companies are responsible,' Art Connolly, a military veteran and vice president of the Agent Orange Association of Canada, told The Dominion.

Connolly says the recent compensation package is 'part of a government campaign to bewilder, bedazzle and confuse.'

Veterans groups are pushing for a full public inquiry into the spraying of defoliants and compensation for all affected people, not just those who were sprayed in 1966-67.

In 1985, Dow Chemical and other firms paid 180 million dollars to U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War, settling a class action lawsuit. However, both Monsanto and Dow still deny Agent Orange is dangerous.

'When we allowed Americans to spray Agent Orange on a Canadian Base in 1966, the U.S. Congress had passed a law barring the spraying of Agent Orange on military bases in the U.S.' Merchant told The Dominion. 'The problems with these defoliants were known and appropriate care wasn't taken.'

In April 2007, the British government awarded a special pension to Keith Pilmoor, a British solider, who said exposure to Agent Orange at Canada's Base Gagetown in 1966 left him sick for decades.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) in the United States compensates U.S. service members who may have been exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War for health conditions including chloracne, Hodgkin's disease, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, respiratory cancers (lung, bronchus, larynx and trachea), soft-tissue sarcoma, type 2 diabetes and prostate cancer.

Peter Stoffer, Veterans Affairs critic for Canada's New Democratic Party (social democrats), called the compensation package 'political perjury'.

'It is unconscionable that you can treat veterans and civilians in this manner,' Stoffer told The Dominion. 'Spraying took place in the 50s, 60s and 70s, not just in 1966-67.'

Canadian Agent Orange survivors have been in close contact with their Vietnamese counterparts.

In a 2006 interview in Vietnam, Le Duc, manager of the Ho Chi Minh City Agent Orange Association, told The Dominion, 'I call on the Canadian people to work with the Vietnamese people to take on the American chemical companies.'

An earlier version of this article appeared at Inter-Press Service

Declassified Documents

Whitewashing Agent Orange

hillarybain — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 17:05:52 +0000

Green Party Leader decries CANTOX Report

The leader of Canada's Green Party is accusing consulting firm CANTOX Environmental of “whitewashing a major health scandal” after the firm released a report on the effects of Agent Orange spraying at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown.

“The so-called health risk assessment released on June 21 is not useful as a guide to governmental responsibilities to compensate workers and bystanders,” said Elizabeth May in a July press release.

The report by CANTOX is part of the ongoing CFB Gagetown fact-finding initiative, a federally funded project hoping to determine the health risks of chemicals sprayed at the base.

While some facts about chemical spraying are still unknown, it is public information that the Canadian military sprayed 6,504 barrels (1,328,767 litres) of chemical defoliants on 181,038 acres of Base Gagetown between 1956 and 1984. These chemicals included Agent Orange, Agent White and the extremely toxic Agent Purple.

On June 21 of this year, CANTOX Environmental concluded that people who lived or worked at CFB Gagetown, including most soldiers, were not at risk for long-term health effects from the active ingredients in herbicide applications.

The Green Party leader and some veterans say CANTOX's findings are not to be trusted. The company “has a reputation of never finding a risk when conducting health risk assessments,” said Elizabeth May.

According to May, “CANTOX found no risk in an area near the coke ovens site in Sydney that later was found to have arsenic levels high enough to be an acute health hazard. CANTOX ruled no risk to health in expanding the St. John Irving refinery and no risk in adding caffeine to children’s soda pop.”

The goal of CANTOX's June 21 report was to determine if exposure to the active ingredients in the herbicides used at CFB Gagetown from 1952 to the present day may have posed any potential risks to human health.

The potential for groundwater contamination from Agent Orange was excluded from CANTOX's study. For veterans and people who live near the base, this is a major cause of concern.

“There are 65 lakes and 251 streams on the base, all the residue of which runs into the St. John River and our well water,” said Gloria Paul, a retired nurse whose property borders CFB Gagetown. Unhappy with omissions in the fact-finding process, Paul wants to test her own water for chemical poisons, but “it costs $900 for one well test.”

The most comprehensive recent research on the long-term effects of Agent Orange contamination was conducted in Vietnam by Hatfield Consultants, a Canadian company. “We did a number of soil samples and followed [chemicals comprising Agent Orange] through the food chain into ponds, fish and then into humans,” said Dr. Wayne Dwernychuck, a lead researcher from Hatfield Consultants.

The recent CANTOX study didn't look for Agent Orange in fish or other animal life.

According to Elizabeth May, “CANTOX assumed a rapid rate of decomposition in the environment, essentially assuming that each year’s dose of herbicides had vanished from the environment before the next year’s spray program.”

This aspect of CANTOX's research methodology is problematic because, based on the findings of Hatfield Consultants, Agent Orange stays in ecosystems for long periods. “We found [Agent Orange] in children who had been born long after the [Vietnam] war ended,” said Dr. Dwernychuck, who concluded that the children were sick because of water, food and other substances poisoned with Agent Orange decades before they were born.

Some suggest that CANTOX has a conflict of interest when it comes to studying Agent Orange contamination.

More than 20 years ago, one of CANTOX’s founders, Dr. Len Ritter, was personally responsible as a civil servant for providing advice to the federal government that 2,4,5-T (a component of Agent Orange now banned in Canada) was safe when the US banned it.

The general attitude of the Canadian government when it comes to veterans who say they were poisoned by the chemicals officials once told them were “safe enough to drink” is markedly different from how the British and Americans have dealt with the issue.

In April, the British government awarded a special pension to Keith Pilmoor, a British solider from Bradford who said he was exposed to the defoliant sprayed at CFB Gagetown in 1966 and was sick for decades afterward.

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs compensates American service members who may have been exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam war.

Agent Orange in Vietnam

Uranium rising

hillarybain — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 13:21:42 +0000

Plan to mine radioactive ore generates controversy in Moncton, New Brunwick

One of the largest and most profitable mining companies in the world -- a company that received a failing grade on the Globe and Mail's corporate social responsibility survey -- is prospecting for the radioactive ore near Moncton, New Brunswick.

CVRD-Inco spent roughly $4 million to buy exclusive uranium prospecting rights for the next year on a 136,000-hectare area between Sussex and Moncton. The area includes land bordering the city of Moncton's watershed, which supplies drinking water for 100,000 residents.

New Brunswick Health Minister and Moncton MLA Mike Murphy has stated unequivocally that there will be no mine in the watershed, but according to Department of Natural Resources spokesman Brent Roy, Minister Murphy doesn't have the legislative authority to make that call.

"Prospecting just happens to intersect with the northern tip of the watershed and this is a legal legislative activity," said Roy in an interview. "In order to say 'no' [to mining in the watershed], we would have to change the law."

"The mining industry isn't in the business of taking 'no' for an answer," said Dr. Mark Winfield, a nuclear analyst with the Pembina Institute.

But they're hardly alone. Despite Health Minister Murphy's assurances that CVRD-Inco will not open a mine, Roy feels otherwise.

"The price of uranium is really high right now and we should be looking for it if we want to be in business," Roy said.

"Existing mines in northern Saskatchewan have caused severe contamination through heavy metals like arsenic, and long-lived radionuclides, along with conventional pollutants," said Winfield. In 2004, Health Canada concluded that effluent from uranium mines meets the definition of a toxic substance under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

"There's no such thing as 100 per cent safe," said Moncton City Councillor Steve Boyce. "We've been assured [of environmental safety] by CVRD-Inco, the same company that has been charged with dumping mine tailings into a brook in Ontario."

In an interview, CVRD-Inco spokesman Cory McPhee stated the obvious: "The ultimate goal is to explore for resources and open a mine."

So, it looks like two camps are digging in for a good old-fashioned showdown. Elements within the provincial government, and of course the mining company, are on one side pushing for the project, while Moncton City Council and environmental groups are hoping to bury it.

On the surface, it looks like the impending showdown could be characterized by what some corporate consultants call a NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) campaign. But CVRD-Inco's mining plans, and government support for them, dig at something a little deeper in New Brunswick provincial politics.

In early June, Premier Shawn Graham received a standing ovation during an address to the Canadian Nuclear Society when he stated that the "possibility of a second nuclear unit at Point Lepreau is very interesting to us and will be closely examined."

It seems as though power and the desire for it, specifically nuclear power, runs in the Graham family. Alan R. Graham, father of Premier Shawn Graham, sits on the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB), the federal agency responsible for enforcing health, safety, security and environmental standards related to nuclear energy.

As a member of the AECB, Alan Graham, a Liberal party stalwart appointed to the board in 1998, is responsible for issuing licenses for nuclear activities, one of which may come from the N.B. government, led by his son.

Unearthing a little more toxic bureaucracy, the Atomic Energy Control Board reports to Parliament through the minister of natural resources, rather than the minister of the environment.

"The Department of Natural Resources is not in the business of protecting the environment; they're in the business of development," said Councillor Boyce. Thus, if the AECB is making a tough decision between a potentially dangerous mine and economic development, the board has political interest in siding with development, due to the mandate of the department it reports to.

Nova Scotia enacted a formal moratorium on uranium mining in 1982.

"Politicians were responding to public outcry," said Rick Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nova Scotia Department of the Environment. Notice, it's the Department of the Environment, rather than the Ministry of Natural Resources that now administers uranium mining policy in Nova Scotia.

"CVRD-Inco didn't put the uranium there," said Corey McPhee, who has worked at Inco for the last 17 years. "We have a 100-year history of mining and mining responsibly."

'Responsible' is the last word Tracy Glynn, a staffer at the New Brunswick Conservation Council, would use to describe Inco.

Glynn wrote her masters thesis in Indonesia, where Inco operates a major mining complex.

In 2005, Glynn found that Inco was providing local communities with bacteria-contaminated water. Inco's senior employees, mostly from Canada and Australia, were given clean, filtered water.

"No local people were employed as managers at the company's Indonesian operations," said Glynn, who spent time with affected communities. "The young people would have frequent protests calling for employment at the mine."

When giving Inco a failing grade in its 2005 Corporate Social Responsibility Survey, the Globe and Mail noted that company policies had led to "strained community relations at nickel projects in New Caledonia [an island in the South Pacific] and Guatemala."

"Inco has been trying for about 10 years to get the huge Goro Nickle mine up and running in New Caledonia," said Catherine Coumans, a policy expert with Mining Watch Canada, a union-funded, non-governmental organization based in Ottawa.

"The mining permit they were granted in 2004 was yanked," said Coumans, who said Inco has been more or less ignoring the order. Many of New Caledonia's residents are indigenous people who have been "fighting Inco tooth and nail; taking them to court, blocking roads and burning equipment," said Coumans.

New Caledonia has some of the highest biodiversity on Earth. Inco's operations there have already destroyed eco-systems that may have included previously undiscovered plant and animal species, said Coumans.

"We think we are improving, in terms of corporate social responsibility," said CVRD-Inco spokesman Cory McPhee. "An example of that might be seen in our New Caledonia project where we have begun sitting down and talking with the community." Coumans agreed that community relations have improved in New Caledonia since Inco was bought out by CVRD of Brazil in 2006.

However, New Caledonia is but one of the company's trouble-spots. In Montreal, on November 13, 2006, Mining Watch Canada brought together a panel made up of community leaders from Indonesia, Guatemala, New Caledonia and Canada, who discussed their struggles against Inco. Those fighting against the mine worry that New Brunswick may have a delegate at events like this in the future.

And according to Dr. Winfield, the potential health and environmental impacts of the mine are not balanced out by any positive ones.
"The inter-governmental panel on climate change was very clear that nuclear [energy] can't compete economically," he said. "New Brunswick has better options for energy: a lot of coast line, a lot of wind, tidal power.

"They should be pursuing these options before going down this [nuclear] path."

Inco in Sudbury

Where is Atlantic Canada Heading?

hillarybain — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 12:20:06 +0000

An interview with Maude Barlow on Atlantica

From June 14-16, corporate executives, the think-tanks they fund, and some government officials from Eastern Canada and Northeastern United States will gather in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to discuss Atlantica; “a broad social project” according the initiative’s leading intellectual architect Brian Lee Crowley.

“There are a lot of people with an interest in seeing Atlantica proceed,” said Crowley, former director of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies and now a senior economics adviser to Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Others, including unions and community groups in Eastern Canada and Northeastern United States, have an interest in stopping Atlantica. The economic and political project has identified several “public policy distress factors”, including “minimum wage legislation (a measure of labour market flexibility)” and “union density.”

Maude Barlow, author of more than a dozen books on politics and economics and chairperson of the Council of Canadians, has been following Atlantica and other neo-liberal initiatives closely.

She most recently won Sweden’s Right Livelihood Award -- similar to the Nobel Prize-- for her “exemplary and long-standing worldwide work for trade justice.” Her latest book is Too Close for Comfort, Canada’s Future Within Fortress North America.

She spoke with Chris Arsenault from her home in Ottawa.

In your recent book, you talk a lot about ‘Fortress North America’ and ‘Deep Integration.’

Can you describe those concepts a little bit? How do they relate to the Atlantica initiative?

Maude Barlow: One should look at the Atlantica project within the larger move towards creating one North American security block. It started post-9/11 with the creation of a task force on recommendations from the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), the country’s largest corporate lobby group…who saw, frankly, an opportunity with 9/11 to push their agenda of deregulation of the border and deregulation of trade. That moved very quickly through senior political levels to the Prime Minister at the time, Paul Martin. He signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America in Waco, Texas, in March, 2005 with George Bush and Vicente Fox. This commitment to building a kind of European Union in North America, but without the environmental, social and human rights safeguards that were in the original European Union, dramatically increased under Harper.

There would be one trade block, harmonizing: immigration, visas at entry level -- you name it. Some of them [CCCE leaders] are talking about a customs union; certainly a common market. Some are even talking about a common dollar and existing as one trade block in the WTO (World Trade Organization). So Canada would be negotiating as one with the United States, as opposed to being concerned about what the Americans are demanding from us and trying to protect ourselves.

It would require more integrated foreign policy, security policy, military policy and so on. We call it ‘Fortress North America’ basically because it’s based on the viewpoint and ideology of big business, big security, and big defence.

When you move into what’s happening with Atlantica, it’s important to have that as a backdrop; to realize what they are talking about with Atlantica is kind of an Atlantic version of this larger ‘Fortress North America,’ based on what’s good for big business, the big defence industry, the big security industry and so on.

As with Atlantica, ordinary Canadians, people with different kinds of concerns, were entirely left out of the negotiation and the debate about the Security Partnership for North America. So here we see the same thing happening: the corporate, trade and defence industries getting together and promoting an agenda that’s good for them but not for the majority of Atlantic Canadians.

In a Moncton Times & Transcript article, one columnist scoffed at critics, stating that “the Atlantica agenda is preoccupied with the hard, mundane work of facilitating trade and cross-border business relationships.” What do you think about this assessment?

This is always what they fall back on, like we’re just too silly to understand such important issues as cross-border trade. We’re not at all opposed to trade or rules to promote trade or even trade agreements.

We are opposed to agreements like NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] that expose Canada to the whims of US bureaucracy and corporate interests.

With NAFTA and Atlantica, you’re getting into an agreement with a much larger partner and it’s going to be the interests of the larger partner that will prevail.

When the US wants to abide by NAFTA, it does; when it doesn’t, it just doesn’t. If nobody but the corporate sector is welcome in these talks, then what does that say about democracy?

What does that say about the environment? Human rights concerns? The concerns of working people? Women’s groups? Faith based groups? There are many groups who would have some things to say about how we might have closer co-operation.

Nobody is against better communication and even better transportation. But if you want to see what it’s like when that gets out of hand, go to Windsor, Ontario, and take a look at the eight-lane so-called NAFTA Highway that goes 24-7, all through the day and night It’s just this horrible strip of highway that takes the trade back and forth across that border. It’s polluting. It’s horribly noisy. There are downsides to constant growth.

Yes, prosperity is important, but so are social rights, maintaining environmental, health and safety standards and quality of life. All these elements need to be taken into account.

In your travels and meetings with social movements around the world, can you talk about some alternatives, some independent economic policies that really work?

I think you can look right here in Canada, with some flaws of course. We tried in the past to mix public and private in a really innovative way.

That’s because there were so few people living in this great big, cold, harsh, beautiful country, this huge geographic space. Our ancestors decided they needed to share with each other. I call it our Canadian founding narrative: Sharing for survival. It’s different from the American founding narrative: Survival of the fittest.

We said yes to the private sector; yes, people can make money, yes to entrepreneurship and all that stuff, but there also has to be a strong public sector. The private sector won’t deliver mail to small communities; it won’t take the railroad to the north. The private sector has to make money and it won’t provide the services and the connections to poorer communities.

In Atlantic Canada, for people who wanted to make those East-West links, ribbons of interdependence as I call them, this equalization concept is enormously important.

At the same time, the problem is that Atlantic Canada really was invaded by other parts of the country and its bounty was taken and that part of the model was not good. So the question is: how can we re-balance confederation so more of the resources of Atlantic Canada benefit the people there, while still benefiting from this great partnership called Canada?

So, I think in many respects, we can look favourably on the model we have created ourselves. The whole world, however, not just Atlantic Canada, is going to have to reconfigure our relationship with nature.

The notion behind Atlantica is unlimited growth which one American environmentalist compared to the logic of a cancer cell; it eventually turns on its host in order to survive. We are killing the Earth. The Earth cannot sustain more growth, more destruction of meadows and wetlands, cutting down more forests, damming more rivers or burning more fossil fuels.

The earth is saying, ‘I’ve reached my limit.’ We’re running out of fresh water, energy and minerals. We’re releasing too much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We’ve got to stop.

One of the major answers is something called ‘subsidiarity,’ where you can grow or produce something closer to home. You have economic policy that promotes that practice: food grown locally, not shipped in from across the world, where farmers are working for next to no wages. You stop this horrible head-to-head competition; you support locally produced goods. You cut down on trade, I don’t mean no trade, but the average North American dinner plate has travelled 1,900kms to get to you. That’s insane.

In Atlantic Canada, before life gets out of hand and everything becomes like it is in Toronto, people need to slow down and think about whether that is what they want.

There is a beautiful way of life in Atlantic Canada. I know; I come from there. This notion of supporting local communities, building something together, and being careful about our ecological footprint is what the whole world has to turn to. It would be really wrong for Atlantic Canada to give up what it has right now; that beauty, that way of life. It can still be prosperous, but not the model they are looking at with Atlantica. [Following that model],I see a zone where it will be US money and US corporations. It will be a free trade zone on the Canadian side with much lower wages -- a Canadian sweatshop.

They’ll deny this and say I am being alarmist, but there is a Third World in this country now.

We’ve created a poverty class that didn’t exist 15 years ago through these neo-liberal policies and free trade agreements. Atlantica wants to take this a whole step further.

Highway