Canada will almost certainly not meet its international greenhouse gas emission reduction target by 2020 and doesn’t even have a plan showing how the nation might achieve its climate change goals, according to a blistering new report released Tuesday.

Julie Gelfand, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, said a climate change audit found current federal measures will have little effect on emissions by 2020, the year Canada committed under the Copenhagen Accord to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions 17 per cent below 2005 levels.

Gelfand said in her report that the government has introduced regulations in the transportation and electricity generation sectors.

She noted, however, that regulations in the oil and gas sector — where emissions are growing the fastest — are still not in place eight years after the government first indicated it would regulate this area.

“There is strong evidence that Canada will not meet its international 2020 greenhouse-gas-emission reduction target,” she said. “The federal government does not have an overall plan that maps out how Canada will achieve this target. Canadians have not been given the details about which regulations will be developed, when, nor what greenhouse gas reductions will be expected.”

"Canadians are being grossly misled if they think that this government has even the remotest intention of ever trying to achieve any greenhouse gas targets, let alone join the realm of civilized nations," Liberal environment critic John McKay said in response to the audit.

As DeSmog Canada has previously reported, Canada’s total lack of national climate legislation became international news after a major report highlighted its absence.

Gelfand added the federal government has also not provided the necessary coordination so that all levels of government, working together, can achieve the national target in six years’ time.

The report plays into the growing impression that Canada, often seen as a pariah internationally for its lack of climate change leadership, is too-heavily invested in the fossil fuel industry, especially in Alberta.

The Harper Government, which currently came under fire after Prime Minister Stephen Harper declined to attend the UN Climate Summit in New York City, recently released a public document to highlight Canada’s climate achievements. Critics called the document “Orwellian” for suggesting Canada had made climate progress.

Another audit found that joint Canada-Alberta monitoring projects looking at air, water and biodiversity need to be better integrated to understand the long-term environmental effects of oilsands development, including cumulative impacts.

“Among other questions, the government does not know what Environment Canada’s role will be in oil sands monitoring beyond March 2015,” Gelfand said.

“It has not made clear the rationale for what projects will be subject to environmental assessments, and I am concerned that some significant projects may not be assessed.”

Gelfand’s comments are in line with concerns raised by First Nations in the oilsands’ region, many of which are currently embroiled in legal battles against government and industry for permitting new projects without addressing cumulative impacts that negatively affect treaty rights.

A third audit of the Canadian Arctic revealed that many higher-risk areas are inadequately surveyed and charted with some maps and charts over 40 years old.

“I am concerned that there seems to be no overall vision of what the federal government intends to provide in this vast new frontier, in terms of modern charts, aids to navigation and icebreaker services, given the anticipated increase in vessel traffic.”

Gelfand added this year’s audits show that, despite some initiatives and progress in certain areas, there remain many unanswered questions.

“In many key areas that we looked at, it is not clear how the government intends to address the significant environmental challenges that future growth and development will likely bring about.”

In conclusion, she said Canadians expect the government to prepare for the future and that the difficulty of addressing climate change will only increase as the nation delays.

The environmental footprint of oilsands development is steadily increasing, Gelfand concluded, adding that increased Arctic shipping routes due to melting sea ice will create higher environmental risks.

NDP environment critic Megan Leslie said the results of the audit are “disappointing,” especially given the resource push in the north.

"We have delicate ecosystems in the Arctic. Further to that, there is a really small window right now of when we could actually do that cleanup. We've seen a lot of discussion about drilling in the Arctic and that's one of the major concerns is that if something were to happen, the ice comes pretty quickly,” she said.

“Is there enough time to even clean up the damage that could be done?"

Gelfand also noted an absence of preparatory knowledge. “In each case it is likely that a lack of action today will translate into higher costs tomorrow,” she stated.

Image Credit: Prime Minister Photo Gallery.

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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.

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Provincial auditor general Merwan Saher has agreed to conduct an audit of oil pipeline safety in Alberta, responding to requests from a coalition of 54 public interest groups dissatisfied with the provincial government's third-party report released in August.

"We will be auditing the government's monitoring systems to ensure compliance with Alberta's pipeline regulations. Our audit would include inspection and enforcement processes," Saher wrote in a letter to Alberta's Opposition parties Wildrose and the NDP, which were among the groups demanding the review.

The government-commissioned pipeline safety review, conducted by Group 10 Engineering, was announced by Energy Minister Ken Hughes in July 2012 after several major pipeline oil spills in the province, including a 475,000 litre leak from a Plains Midstream Canada pipeline in Central Alberta in June. The final report was made public a year later, in August 2013.

Following the release of the report last month, a coalition representing 54 environmental, First Nations, labour and landowner groups wrote to Premier Alison Redford requesting another review. The letter stated that "Albertans deserve to know the real scope of the province's pipeline problems and they deserve real solutions," leaving the group "no choice but to begin to petition the Alberta auditor general to take on such an examination."  

Eriel Deranger, Communications Coordinator for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation said “Oil spills pose a major threat to our community, which depends on clean air, water and soil to sustain our way of life. We are pleased that the Auditor General will be looking into pipeline safety, as we feel the provincial government hasn’t been doing enough to prevent spills from happening.”

“It’s been a long road pushing for this review but hopefully the Auditor General will finally give Albertan’s some answers to Alberta’s pipeline woes because the Redford government definitely hasn’t,” said Mike Hudema, Greenpeace Canada’s climate and energy campaigner. “Groups from across the political spectrum joined together to push for this review because of the growing threats pipeline spills are posing to Alberta’s communities and environment. I hope this review will give the government time to pause on its pipeline-pushing ways because all is not well in Alberta.”

Jennifer Grant, director of the oilsands program at the Pembina Institute, applauded Saher for "showing leadership on this important issue," saying that the "audit presents an opportunity to restore Albertans' confidence in the provincial regulator's ability to manage pipelines and the associated risks."

"With 400,000 square kilometres of pipelines crisscrossing the province, and an average of two crude oil spills a day for the past 37 years, ensuring the integrity and safety of Alberta's pipeline network is absolutely critical and could set an important precedent for other jurisdictions," Grant said in a news release.

Global News reports that the auditor general "has been considering a pipeline safety audit for much of the past year" according to spokeswoman Kim Nishikaze. Nishikaze added that they "will be looking at pipeline safety in the foreseeable future" but "can't say when."

Saher wrote in his letter that the pipeline safety audit would be undertaken "as soon as reasonably possible."

Image Credit: Jasonwoodhead23 / Flickr

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Last week it was revealed that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office created an "enemy list" to include in briefing books for newly appointed Cabinet members. 

Pundits were quick to point out that US President Richard Nixon also had such a list of enemies that his office maintained.

However, the enemy list was only a small part of a much larger strategy that Nixon dreamed up and, as history shows, he was never able to fully execute his plan. Unfortunately for the many Canadians on Harper's list, the Prime Minister and his office are now fulfilling Nixon's dream. 

Nixon's list was dubbed the "opponents list" by his political staffers and was part of a larger strategy they called the "Political Enemies Project." This disturbing strategy came to light during the Senate Committee hearings looking into the Watergate scandal that eventually forced President Nixon to resign in disgrace in August, 1974.

But the comparison between the Harper and Nixon lists goes much further than this enemy list business. In fact, the strategies being employed by Harper against his opponents are virtually indistinguishable from Nixon's. Harper is fully executing Nixon's strategy – but with greater success.

Nixon's "Political Enemies Strategy" was to create a list of political opponents and people unfriendly to his administration and then go after those people and organizations via tax audits by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Nixon and his staffers knew that an audit by the IRS has the power to bring an organization to its knees. Audits take up massive amounts of staff time, and expensive lawyers and accountants usually have to be hired to meet all the requests of the auditors.

An overview of the strategy is contained in a memo between two Nixon White House staffers:

"This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration; stated a bit more bluntly—how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies."

The enemy list was handed over to the IRS by the White House, but luckily for those on the list, the head commissioner refused to cooperate with the Nixon enemy plan.

Nixon's presidency would go down as one of the lowest points in US political history, and it would have been even lower if Nixon was able to fully execute his audit-the-enemy strategy.

Flash forward to Canada today. Not only do we now know that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office maintains a political enemy list, we also saw an extra $8 million dollars in new funding directed to Revenue Canada last year "to audit charities suspected of receiving foreign funding to finance political advocacy beyond the accepted 10% of overall activities allowed under CRA codes."

The audit funds became available after the Harper government named environmental groups and First Nations as 'adversaries' in a campaign to increase exports of tar sands bitumen to Europe and after an open letter from Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver characterized prominent environmental groups and citizens as 'foreign funded radicals' and ideological extremists.

Today full-blown audits are being executed against environmental and progressive organizations – the same groups that have been critical of Harper and his government policies. Right-wing, industry friendly groups, like the Fraser Institute, who receive large sums of cash from US sources, have not been the subject of audits by Revenue Canada. 

These Revenue Canada audits have had their intended effect and are bringing groups who oppose Conservative government policies to a screeching halt with endless amounts of paperwork and information requests from Revenue Canada staff. Groups subjected to an audit also experience a chilling effect and are reluctant to speak out aggressively against the government for fear of being audited again.

Almost 40 years after Nixon resigned his presidency, Harper is picking up where the disgraced US president left off.

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