Do democracy and freedom begin at home for Prime Minister Stephen Harper?

Recently the Prime Minister told Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych he will be judged on his actions, not words, as violence against the country’s pro-democracy protesters steadily escalates. Harper signed a joint statement at the North American leaders summit in Toluca, Mexico, saying “[the leaders] agreed they will continue to monitor the situation closely to ensure that actions mirror words.”

The Prime Minister also called for an emergency debate in Parliament this week, saying “we understand that this violence is occurring because the majority of the population is very worried about the steps taken by their government that very much remind them of their anti-democratic and Soviet past.”

While Canadians will no doubt be relieved to see the country and its leadership take a meaningful stance against the oppression and violence of President Yanukovych’s regime, there’s sure to be some cognitive dissonance associated with Harper as a ‘democracy-for-the-people’ spokesperson here at home.

In fact, Harper has been throwing his political weight around a lot lately. Including during a trip to Israel.

In January Harper addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem during a high profile trip where he lavished praise on Israel as a bastion of democracy in a troubled region. (You can see the fully edited and polished Harper-esque version on the Prime Minister’s new newsfeed 24/7).

During his address Harper scattered the words “democracy” or “democratic” more than 10 times in the relatively short speech. The word “freedom” was also liberally applied as he lauded Israel’s leadership.

Interestingly, Harper threw in a little aside about political dissent when he said, “no state is beyond legitimate questioning or criticism. Indeed, Israel as a democratic state makes such criticism a part of your national life.”

It’s refreshing to see a Canadian leader sticking up for democratic values abroad and one can argue more leaders should do it. But wouldn’t it be nice if Harper also supported some of those high-minded values at home?

At least it would be good to know how Harper defines “legitimate questioning or criticism” here at home when it comes to, say, energy development or pipeline infrastructure in Canada. Are criticisms still legitimate if they come from environmentalists or First Nations groups?

Because when you look back over the past several years you can see all calls for democracy are equal when it comes to the Harper government; just some calls are more equal than others.

Harper has his own unique style of suppressing democratic dissent in this country, a particular flare for beefing up the executive and legislative branches of power in order to hold 'democracy' in check. All things in moderation, after all. 

Take the scaled-up attack on charities as an example.

Federal tax authorities are aggressively auditing some of the government’s most articulate and pointed critics, including the David Suzuki Foundation, Environmental Defence, the Pembina Foundation, and the Ecology Action Centre.

We now know that Ottawa is giving the Canada Revenue Agency a cool $13.4 million to investigate charitable organizations, a probe that will now extend beyond 2017, according to documents obtained by DeSmog Canada through Access to Information legislation. The investigation spending in an otherwise parsimonious budget is a sharp boost from the $8 million publically announced in the 2012 budget.

But it could pay off. Ottawa seems to have a new victim.

Environmental Defence, which has been “working since 1984 to protect Canadians' environment and human health,” is on the verge of losing its charitable status under the taxman’s probe. Another organization, Physicians for Global Survival, was the first organization to loose its charitable status – the one group out of over 900 investigated.

"They have told us that, yes, more or less that they consider that things that we've been doing for 30 years are things that they now feel are not charitable," Tim Gray, the executive director of Environmental Defence, said in a Toronto Sun report.

This haranguing against green groups has deep roots. Harper and his ministers have long worked to link environmental organizations to terrorism or to mischaracterize groups as fronts for well-funded American interests that threaten Canadian domestic energy supplies.

“I think we’ll see significant American interests trying to line up against the Northern Gateway project, precisely because it’s not in the interests of the United States. It’s in the interests of Canada,” Harper said in 2012, as recounted in the book, The Longer I’m Prime Minister.

“They’ll funnel money through environmental groups and others in order to slow it down,” he said.

The sentiment is strange when you consider the oilsands are important for American oil interests, as is evidenced in the drawn out battle for the Keystone XL pipeline, destined to supply U.S. refineries with Albertan oil. The resentment of foreign interests also seems misplaced when you consider growing Chinese ownership in the oilsands and significant Chinese state investment in the Northern Gateway pipeline.

One this is certain: it was after these anti-environmental group statements that the Harper government directed the Canada Revenue Agency to target the legitimate dissent of some of Canada’s most prominent and respected environmental charities.

Columnist Mitchell Anderson, writing in the Tyee, opened a recent column with a pointed question: “Is Canada getting creepy?”

Mitchell outlined the CSIS affair, including Chuck Strahl’s resignation as chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, watchdog for the country’s powerful spying apparatus. Strahl resigned after his role as a lobbyist for the Northern Gateway pipeline project came to light. As Mitchell wrote, this was “an obvious conflict given that CSIS was spying on anti-pipeline activists – in partnership with the RCMP and private oil companies.”

At the same time as the crackdown on the environmental NGO sector, the Harper government has also vanished some of Canada’s most crucial environmental laws, expedited approvals for major energy projects and defanged the National Energy Board, which now has strict limits on how the public can participate in the project review process.

Critics have accused the Harper government of engaging in undemocratic politics. This lengthy list, compiled by Lawrence Martin, outlines all the times this government was found to behave in anti-democratic ways (contempt of Parliament, prorogation of Parliament, weakened watchdogs, abuse of process, suppression of research, document tampering and more) at a time when 62 per cent of Canadians felt the country was in a state of crisis.

That was in 2011, before the Harper government won its majority. By all accounts things have only gotten worse.

So while we’re working hard to protect civil dissent and promote democracy worldwide, let’s not forget to fight for the same at home.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

U.S. President Obama is again signaling he’s in no rush to approve the Keystone XL pipeline and that offers a sliver of hope for Canadians hoping to put the brakes on the pell-mell development of the Alberta oilsands.

Ahead of Super Bowl weekend the U.S. State department released the final environmental assessment of the pipeline project and mainstream media was quick to declare the report gave Obama the cover he needed to finally approve it.

Kate Shepherd at the Huffington Post wrote that the assessment "increases the likelihood" the pipeline, a great superhighway to deliver Alberta bitumen to thirsty U.S. Gulf coast refineries, would finally get the green light.

The report, in fact, stated, “approval or denial of any one crude oil transport project, including the proposed project, remains unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands, or the continued demand for heavy crude oil at refineries in the United States."

That statement is so easily refutable. Indeed, there is much in this massive report that is, at best, suspect.  Look at this line on the potential damage from a large oil spill: "The potential impacts from a large spill would be similar to the impacts from the medium-sized spill, but on a much larger scale." You know: a big snowstorm is like a small snowstorm, except there is more snow. Wow, thanks for the insight.

It’s this kind of filler that should give policy makers in Washington pause, including on the main point that Keystone won’t increase the rate of extraction of oilsands bitumen.

In its foggy style, the report asserts that if Keystone was not approved, oilsands companies could turn to rail to get the product out the door or would simply build a pipeline across the Rockies and ship the bitumen to China.

This is a crucial point because Obama said he would have neither truck nor trade with a pipeline that adds to the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

But we know Keystone really is a great “enabler” of the oilsands. Without pipelines oil executives are quite clear in saying that billions of dollars of projects would be stranded for decades. We know from a Reuters report that rail poses severe limitations in the shipment of bitumen to those Gulf Coast refineries.  

And the Northern Gateway pipeline that aims to ship the gunk to China is hardly a sure thing. There will be major battles over that line from First Nations and it won’t even go beyond the drawing board if the Harper government is voted out of office next year, as polls seem to indicate now.

So this brings us back to what Obama will do. Obama’s top aid, Denis McDonough, was on the Sunday talk shows last week to say that everyone should hold off on firing up those welding torches because that report was only "one of many important inputs into the process."

"What the president's role is now is to protect this process from politics, let the experts, the expert agencies and the cabinet secretaries make their assessments both of the study that was put in on Friday as well as its impact on the national interest," McDonough said.

One of the expert agencies will be the Environmental Protection Agency and it sharply criticized the previous environmental assessment from this consulting firm, which is facing conflict-of-interest allegations. It is hard to see how they will be any more enamoured with this ‘final’ version.

After all the twists and turns of this project, it’s nearly impossible to decipher what Obama will do now. You could make a reasonable guess he might go for a quick approval over the next few months to help a couple of Democrats in the Senate under pressure in the November elections.

Or perhaps Obama, with an eye on his climate change legacy, may wait until after November to make a considered decision. Free of the ballot box as a second-term president, he could even take the bold move of rejecting it.

And now back to Canada. Oilsands development has already disturbed 715 square miles of boreal forest – or more than the area of Toronto. A doubling of production has been approved – but can only come to pass with new access to markets.

The development has contributed to the rise of the Canadian dollar in the past decade, thereby helping gut the country’s once thriving manufacturing base. We are using vast amounts of natural gas and water to develop the resource, while producing huge lakes of toxic waste that could leave taxpayers on the hook for clean-up costs. Now a University of Toronto study is saying the air pollution from the oilsands is worse than feared.

Calgary Herald political columnist Don Braid recently called for “a pause on approval of new projects until the province can catch up with problems stemming from development and rising emissions.” It’s true — there’s no hope for Canada’s oilsands producers to rein in their environmental impact while proceeding full steam ahead. And for that reason alone, a delay on Keystone XL would be a good thing for Canada.

Image Credit: tarsandsaction via Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

It was April, 2011 and Michael Ignatieff, then leader of Canada's opposition Liberal Party, was addressing an election rally in Sudbury, Ontario. “Why do we have to put up with this? Rise up! Rise up! … This goes beyond partisan politics! This goes beyond the Liberal Party! This is about our country! This is about our democracy! Rise up! Rise up!”

The scene, as penned by Paul Wells in his new book, "The Longer I'm Prime Minister," captures all the futility of battling the quiet juggernaut of Stephen Harper, possibly one of the most confounding prime ministers ever to inhabit the dull, grey landscape of Ottawa. Ignatieff led the Liberals to the party's biggest ever defeat that year while the Conservatives under Harper secured its first majority government.

It's easy to underestimate Harper, or resort to caricature as Wells notes in his book. It is obvious Harper is deeply conservative, loves the oil industry and all things oilsands. He doesn't seem to give a fig about the environment. Harper is all that, but in his book Wells, a veteran journalist, brings clarity to the 'why' of it all.

At first glance Harper looks very much the accountant he was trained to be: dull and lacking in passion. But don't be fooled, he has a determined, even subversive, vision for the country. Harper is bound to American-style conservatism, yet his battles are not fought in the open. He is no Ronald Reagan making the charming speech, cajoling Canadians along a brave new path. He instead moves with "arch-incrementalism," as a Harper aid tells us in the book.

The very title of the book, "The Longer I'm Prime Minister," refers to his plan to shift Canada to the right through small steps achieved over time and under the radar. In one of the most telling parts, Wells writes how Harper edits his own speeches to dull them down. "He works at removing memorable turns of phrase and identifiable ideas from his speeches," Wells writes. "He puts great effort into flattening the prose."

Have you ever known a politician who didn't love to draw attention and even exaggerate his policies? It's all part of the penetrating picture the author draws of Harper who first took power in 2006. "His goal was to ensure that Conservatives governed as frequently and as durably in the twenty-first century as Liberals had in the twentieth." He wants to "re-legitimize" the right and obliterate all traces of so-called leftish thinking. The plan includes tax cuts to de-fund the government and an all out effort to gut environmental protections to ensure rapid expansion of Canada's oilsands reserves.

So how did Harper, the man who helped unite Canada's two conservative parties — the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservatives — get to this point? While the book is a little skimpy on early biographical details, Wells pens an important chapter on Harper's major influences. Early on, Harper embraced a 1986 book called "The Patriot Game," which argued that Canada's successive Liberal governments were not only far to the left politically, but they also worked to serve central Canada, at the expense of the resource rich west. That, in part, goes a long way to explain Harper's drive to right the wrongs of the past and to free up the west's resource riches.

While Harper is often cast as the brilliant tactician, Wells illustrates how the prime minister could be his own worst enemy. After the Conservatives won in 2011 there was a period in which both opposition parties were in transition to new leaders, theoretically giving Harper even more room to manoeuvre. Alas, no. "The strange interlude during which Harper faced no real opposition had come to an end. And not a moment too soon. He had spent months slapping himself silly."

Many of the mistakes Harper makes in his current term revolve around the lack of concern for the environment. Since 2011, Harper has been aggressively promoting the Keystone XL pipeline, which aims to sharply increase the flow of oilsands oil to the big U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. Yet in his aggression, he has made mistakes, including not knowing how to deal with the more green-minded Obama administration.

"But his instincts, including a deep suspicion of anyone who challenged the resource-producing base of Alberta power, would often get in the way." Wells wrote. "Affecting a blasé attitude toward greenhouse gas emissions seemed a cost-free position to Harper. And then the bill came due." 

Harper was furious with Obama's decision to delay the approval of Keystone. But after seeing the writing on the wall, Harper realized he must take decisive action. Energy exports were the government’s new top strategic priority and Asia, specifically China, was now the most important region to target. Harper moved to open up markets at all costs, deciding that environmental reviews must be streamlined and roadblocks by aboriginal groups obliterated. Henceforth, environmentalists were now seen as opponents, even redrawn as traitors under the influence of American money.

"In a lot of ways, the angry orders Harper barked to his ministers after the Keystone delay weren't out of character. But they kicked off a long arc of activity, lasting until the spring of 2012, that he would come to regret." Whether Harper is still in regret mode is hard to say — the polls do show his hold on the electorate is slipping and he took a beating in the recent by-elections.

Wells, a veteran of Maclean's magazine, is a political journalist and not an environmentalist. His book is an engaging and sometimes hilarious take on what Harper is all about, digging into areas where other Canadian political writers fear to tread.

That is why the book is so useful: it's a lifting of the curtain on a government seeking to do things in secret rather than in the open. So, the Liberal leader's words at the beginning of this review are prescient: “Why do we have to put up with this?" Rise up, Canada — at least to read this book so you can decide for yourself whether one man's rigid adherence to his own philosophy, nursed by a regional grievance, will lay waste to our environmental heritage and to some of its least protected citizens.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Canadians are losing confidence that governments will take the lead in battling climate change, all the while becoming more certain that humans are behind global warming, according to a new poll by the Environics Institute, in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation.

The belief that governments will take a lead role battling changes has dropped to 53 percent from 59 percent in a year, according to the poll, which comes as Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government faces rising criticism at home and abroad for inaction concerning greenhouse gas emissions.

"Canadians have for decades looked to their governments for leadership on addressing climate change and other environmental problems," Keith Neuman, executive director of Environics, said in a statement. "This latest survey shows a noticeable drop in the public's confidence in governments' capacity to play this role, and this may well be because citizens haven't seen any evidence of leadership, especially at the federal level."

The survey found that a majority of Canadians accept that climate change is the result of human activity while the number of people that believe in the conclusiveness of climate science continues to grow. "Most Canadians believe something can be done to address climate change, including shifting energy requirements from fossil fuels to cleaner renewable forms of energy," that survey found.

Some 60 percent of Canadians say that climate change is real and caused by human activity, up marginally over the past year but part of an upward trend dating back to 2010. "Those not yet certain about the science remain divided on whether it is best to take action now or wait until we know more," it said.

The relatively large poll of more than 2,000 adult Canadians was taken in early October, ahead of the new global climate talks underway in Poland this week and also before this month's devastating cyclone in the Philippines. Cyclone Haiyan struck earlier this month, leaving massive destruction and death in its wake, while also raising concern that global warming was behind the world's increasingly erratic weather.

The survey also comes as the Canadian government, which pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2011, delays rules to rein in growing greenhouse gas emissions. The Harper government is strongly backing the development of the Alberta oilsands, considered one of the world's most environmentally destructive fuel sources.

Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq told the Globe and Mail that Canada remains committed to meeting its 2020 target for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, promising the Conservative government will introduce long-delayed regulations to tackle emissions in the oil and gas sector.

“We are committed to achieving Canada’s targets, and our leadership and our actions and our investment demonstrate this,” she told the Globe and Mail before leaving Ottawa for the climate talks. Environment Canada said in a report last month that Canada's emissions will total 734 megatons in 2020, or some 20 per cent higher than committed to at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.

The Suzuki foundation said the poll results show Canadians are looking for stronger action from the federal government. "The results underscore the need for the Canadian government to change its past practices and become a constructive global citizen at the UN climate change summit in Warsaw," said Ian Bruce, science and policy manager at the Suzuki Foundation. "Canada's job in Warsaw should be to collaborate with countries around the world to come up with an effective and binding international agreement to reduce global warming emissions."

The Environics survey was based on telephone interviews with 2,003 Canadians between October 1 and 17, 2013 and is considered accurate within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points in 19 out of 20 samples.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Canada’s vast resource wealth could become ‘stranded’ as the world’s carbon reserves become increasingly risky to develop.

A coalition of 70 investors managing some $3 trillion in assets launched an initiative last week petitioning the world's top oil producers to "assess the financial risks" of what will happen to their massive oil and gas investments in a carbon constrained world.

Ceres, which advocates for sustainable business practices globally, launched the initiative in tandem with another environmental advocacy group, Carbon Tracker. Carbon Tracker found in a recent report that 200 of the largest publicly traded fossil fuel companies invested $674 billion on developing new oil and gas reserves in 2012, raising the question of how many billions of those dollars would be left unused and stranded in the ground.

These organizations are arguing that after the latest U.N. climate report, oil and gas companies are investing in resources that are better left in the ground. They believe governments and environmentally conscious consumers are going to make these assets uneconomic and an eventual burden for shareholders.

Where does that leave Canada with its vast carbon reserves, most notably in the Alberta oilsands? Some believe Canada is "playing with fire" and could potentially strand massive investments while ignoring opportunities the rest of the world is seizing.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has no plan B, as he clearly indicated in his latest throne speech outlining the Conservative government's legislative plan for the coming months. “We must seize this moment,” according to text from the speech. “The window for gaining access to new markets will not remain open indefinitely. Now more than ever, our future prosperity depends on responsible development of these resources.” 

Yet Canada could pay the price when the carbon bubble bursts and Big Oil reduces oilsands investment.

Jeremy Leggett, author of the recently published book "Energy of Nations," told DeSmog that Canada is missing out on new opportunities by throwing all its efforts into expensive oilsands ventures:

"Given the emphasis they are putting on tar sands, they are playing with fire as these are exactly the type of high carbon, high cost assets where investors around the world are already starting to challenge capital expenditure plans or reduce exposure. Indeed, if a carbon-fuel stranded-asset risk debate takes off globally, and people start divesting en masse even ahead of regulation, as has already started to happen with insurance companies and pension funds in Norway, Sweden and Australia, Canada itself could wind up as some kind of stranded asset: a country with both significant actual stranded assets in the tar sands, and lost opportunity-cost potential assets in all those cleantech companies it could have incubated in the suburbs of Vancouver, and never did."

Canada’s commitment to developing its carbon reserves has led to a common petrostate plight: Dutch Disease.

Canada's currency has soared and is at near par with its giant neighbour to the south, the United States. The manufacturing sector has been hollowed out, severely reducing the breadth of Canada’s overall business sector.

"We have an endowment of a resource and we're just trying to spend it as fast as we can which is a pretty irresponsible," Tim Weis, Director of Renewable Energy at Calgary's Pembina Institute said in an interview. "You wouldn't run your personal finances that way."

Canada, once the envy of the world as an open democracy and protected natural spaces seems to be working hard to tarnish its own brand. The Harper government is gagging its scientists, upending environmental protections and missing targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, all in the name of keeping oilsands development on track.

"If the world ever takes climate change seriously, Canada will be revealed to all as a pariah nation," Bill McKibben, the author and founder of 350.org, said in an email. "I don't know what damage a bad brand can do to a country, but I fear that Canada (a country where I spent five years of my boyhood and that I love a good deal) is going to find out eventually."

Image Credit: Kris Krug via flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.