In December 2015, the world agreed to the Paris Accord; to slash greenhouse gas emissions to hold global average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C (over what it was before the Industrial Revolution), and, if we miss that target, to as far below 2 degrees as possible.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is not an environmental agency. It advises governments about demand and supply of energy. Since 2012, IEA has warned that to avoid going over 2 degrees C, two-thirds of all known reserves of fossil fuels must stay in the ground until 2050.

But that was to stay at 2 degrees. We have made a commitment to hold at 1.5 degrees. That half a degree is the difference between low-lying island states surviving, or Arctic ice remaining over the North Pole in summer, or increasing the risk of losing the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet or Greenland ice sheet (either one of which implies an eight-metre sea level rise.)

It is hard to get a fix on our carbon budget. One problem is that dangerous levels of climate change are exacerbated by positive feedback loops — changes that release more greenhouse gases from nature due to warming driven by humans. So forest fires, melting permafrost and loss of ice drive up the warming that itself speeds up the warming.

A group of European and Canadian scientists published their best estimates of our carbon budget in 2016 in Nature Climate Change. Their study set the carbon budget for global emissions from 2015 to forever at no more than 590 billion tons. That’s all we can emit.

In 2016, globally we emitted 49.3 billion tons, so now our global carbon budget is down to 540 billion tons. Do the math. At current emission rates, if we want to avoid disaster, we have approximately eleven years before we blow through the global carbon budget.

These are lines we cannot cross if we want to hold on to a functioning human civilization — not a collection of failed states, desperate environmental refugees and collapsing food systems.

So where is Canada in this? Canada’s climate target  — 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 — is described as our Paris target in national media and by the Trudeau cabinet. The problem is it is not our Paris target. Canada has yet to adopt a target consistent with 1.5 degrees or even 2 degrees. Canada’s target remains the same one set by Harper in May 2015 — seven months before the negotiations in Paris. The Harper target equates to 2030 emissions of 517 million tons (or megatonnes).

Unfortunately, we are currently on track to miss the Harper target by 187 million tons.

“We can plan our way to a transition away from fossil fuels, and still help the Alberta economy.” #abpoli #bcpoli #cdnpoli #oilsands https://t.co/E8TYbbcCFf

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 25, 2018

So where is there room for a pipeline? Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has committed to capping oilsands emissions at 100 megatonnes/year. Current emissions are less than the cap — approximately 70 megatonnes/year. So Kinder Morgan’s emissions don’t even fit into a plan to meet Harper’s emissions targets.

As Jeffrey Sachs wrote in the Globe and Mail earlier this month: “The truth is that Alberta oilsands have absolutely no place in a climate-safe world. Investing in them is almost surely to be investing in a future bankruptcy.”

What about the constant claim that our economy depends on the oilsands?

Baloney.

Even at the height of oilsands growth when oil sold for more than $100/barrel, oilsands amounted to less than three per cent of national GDP. We can plan our way to a transition away from fossil fuels, and still help the Alberta economy.

Alberta’s greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired electricity are roughly the same as from the oilsands. While Alberta has promised to end coal-fired electricity by 2030, and is building 5,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity, it will also allow some of those coal units to convert to using inefficient fracked natural gas. Instead, we should invest in an enhanced east-west electricity grid and bring in renewables from neighbouring provinces, while Alberta takes advantage of its huge potential in solar and wind.

But that still leaves the oilsands, which can’t be allowed to expand emissions by 30 per cent. Here’s a solution: cap the oilsands at 70 megatonnnes/year and create jobs in Alberta by providing federal assistance to build upgraders and refineries.

Yes, those will inevitably include greenhouse gas emissions, but far fewer than shipping solid bitumen overseas to refining elsewhere. This path means we ensure we are producing bitumen on a declining basis, but upgrading and refining in Alberta and keeping those jobs here.

Canada has been losing refinery jobs for decades. That’s why the major oilsands unions, like Unifor, oppose Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline. In the 1970s, Canada had 40 refineries. Now we have 16 and buy our gas, diesel and propane from refineries in the U.S. at higher prices.

We import approximately 700,000 barrels of foreign crude per day to Eastern Canada. Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion will increase exports by 590,000 barrels per day. Why not stop imports, process bitumen in Alberta and sell it across Canada?

The answer comes readily. Big Oil has decreed that Canada provide raw resources for export, not value added.

But what if we took a page from Peter Lougheed’s book? His first rule for resource development was “think like an owner.” Instead of bailing out an American company, let’s put federal support behind building upgraders and refineries in Alberta — in exchange for which Alberta agrees to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands to 35 megatonnes by 2050. We would end up with more jobs and a less volatile economy. There will also be lots of jobs in trying to clean up the tailings ponds and despoiled landscape of the Athabasca. Polluter pays.

That is the kind of bargain that makes sense. With this plan, you could say “the economy and the environment go hand in hand” without having to suspend disbelief.

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By Stan Proboszcz. This piece was first published on Policy Options.

Does Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s (DFOs) science advisory process have integrity when tasked with answering questions on salmon farming? If there is any hope of changing the trajectory of many iconic but endangered wild salmon stocks, there must be a resolution to political and industrial interference that continues to influence fisheries science advice at the federal level.

Since 2001, a scientific debate has been active in British Columbia around parasitic salmon lice from open-net salmon farms and their impacts on wild fish. Two “camps” of scientific opinion have been obvious.

On one side, academics and NGO scientists have published articles in peer-reviewed journals detailing the negative effects parasites from salmon farms can have on migrating wild salmon. On the other, government and industry-supported scientists have published papers that cast doubt on these conclusions, thereby fuelling the debate and encouraging the continued operation of salmon farms on wild fish migration routes.

It is well established that manufacturing a scientific debate on the impacts of smoking and climate change benefits tobacco and petroleum companies. Some believe the salmon-farming debate is not very different.

DFO’s mandate to promote salmon farming

The DFO is the regulator of the salmon-farming industry, but it also promotes the industry and their products.

These dual roles were identified by the 2012 federal Cohen Commission on the decline of B.C. salmon stocks as a potential conflict of interest that may impede DFO’s ability to protect wild fish stocks. Justice Cohen recommended that the federal government remove industry promotion from DFO.

An expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada reached a similar conclusion — that DFO’s conservation of biodiversity may be impeded by its relationship with industry.

More recently, DFO scientist Kristi Miller broke ranks and testified to a parliamentary committee, raising concern the agency’s science may be influenced by the industry. Despite this, and a commitment by the prime minister to implement all of Justice Cohen’s recommendations, no known action has been taken to remove the salmon-farming promotional mandate from DFO.

Meanwhile, the salmon-farming debate continues. Evidence uncovered by the Cohen Commission rekindled the feud around the impacts of the industry. The subject this time: viruses.

DFO’s scientific stance seems to diminish the relevance of a particularly worrisome virus — piscine reovirus (known as PRV) — as a risk to wild salmon. As in the salmon lice debate, DFO appears to favour Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods (SCAMs).

Environmental sociologist William Freudenburg, who coined the term SCAMs and studied their use in the climate change debate, wrote:

“Given that most scientific findings are inherently probabilistic and ambiguous, if agencies can be prevented from imposing any regulations until they are unambiguously ‘justified, most regulations can be defeated or postponed, often for decades, allowing profitable but potentially risky activities to continue unabated.”

Within the context of SCAMs, we can compare three conclusions from DFO’s 2015 Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat report on PRV with more recent published conclusions from academics, NGO scientists and Kristi Miller’s lab.

• 2015 DFO conclusion 1: “There is no evidence from laboratory studies in British Columbia and Washington State that PRV infection is associated with any disease state, including HSMI [heart and skeletal muscle inflammation]”
  • 2017 Wessel et al.: PRV can cause heart and skeletal muscle inflammation
• 2015 DFO conclusion 2: “HSMI has not been reported on B.C. salmon farms”
  • 2017 Kristy Miller’s lab: HSMI was reported on B.C. salmon farms in 2017
• 2015 DFO conclusion 3: The information suggests “a low likelihood that the presence of this virus in any life stage of farmed Atlantic and Pacific Salmon would have a significant impact on wild Pacific Salmon populations.”
  • 2017 Morton et al.: Salmon farms may spread PRV to wild salmon and impede their ability to migrate upstream and spawn.

Mirroring the salmon lice debate, DFO’s PRV conclusions appear to exploit the uncertainty around the evidence and steer away from exercising precautionary action to protect wild fish.

The 2015 DFO report ends with unsubstantiated platitudes about B.C.’s “robust” disease surveillance program that purportedly minimizes the threat of diseases spreading from farms to wild fish. It appears DFO’s premier peer-review science advisory process, CSAS, produced premature conclusions that coincidently aligned with industry conclusions, but that are now in question.

This raises the question: Is the salmon-farming industry influencing DFO’s Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat?

Independence of federal science advisory body in question

DFO is responsible for three oceans and thousands of lakes, rivers and species, and its decisions need to be informed by sound science.

The Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, established in the early 2000s, is headquartered in DFO and coordinates science review processes throughout the country with the goal of providing high-quality scientific advice to the minister of fisheries and oceans, managers and other interested parties.

CSAS coordinates over 100 science advisory processes a year and responds to specific questions on various subjects, such as the state of fish stocks, species at risk and other fisheries issues. Federal scientists from DFO and other agencies typically comprise a significant segment of each advisory process; however, external experts are also invited to participate in the peer reviews.

The Cohen inquiry had significant implications. It identified pathogens from salmon farms as a risk to wild fish and made several related recommendations. Two of particular interest state that salmon farms located along a key wild salmon migration bottleneck should be removed unless the minister of fisheries is satisfied they do not pose more than a “minimal risk of serious harm” to wild fish.

The minister is also required to summarize the information relied on and include detailed reasons for the department’s decision.

Cunningly, these recommendations shift the burden of proof and place them firmly on the federal government, if it insists on allowing farms to operate.

When the minister needed “detailed reasons,” a new series of CSAS processes was initiated, examining the risk of various pathogens from salmon farms on wild salmon. The first examined the risk of infectious haematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV), another salmon virus.

I was asked to sit on the steering committee as a representative of the conservation community. I accepted.

This CSAS meeting was held December 5-8, 2016, in Vancouver. It examined five technical papers.

The first four covered oceanography, salmon-farm disease management practices, Fraser sockeye salmon biology and IHNV. The fifth drew on information from the other four and purported to examine the risk to wild sockeye salmon from IHNV arising from salmon farms. The final Science Advisory report was published days before Christmas 2017, over six months late.

How to improve independence in aquaculture science in Canada

After participating throughout DFO’s CSAS process, I developed some recommendations for its future conduct.

1. Separate CSAS from DFO.

During the process, I witnessed several instances that suggested DFO scientists were hesitant to freely express views that might be unfavourable to industry. During the peer-review meetings, two DFO scientists quietly urged me to raise concern about the use of a confidential memorandum of understanding (MoU) among several salmon-farming companies.

Allegedly, the MoU detailed voluntary industry disease management practices. The shocking thing was that this MoU was being used to substantiate a final conclusion in the CSAS report that there is reasonable certainty that an IHNV outbreak on salmon farms in the Discovery Islands is very unlikely.

Yet an author of the report refused to provide access to review the MoU. The inability to review the details of substantiating information is contradictory to the fundamental principles of transparency and peer-reviewed science.

In another instance, a report author deferred to DFO aquaculture management staff several questions about possible constraints that may arise in their research due to the use of summarized farm data. I think that serious concerns arise when scientists do not feel free to answer questions about their research, whether it aligns with industry or not.

These two problems give rise to questions around political interference impeding good science advice, similar to those raised over the mismanagement and collapse of east coast cod stocks.

CSAS professes to follow the Government of Canada’s Science Advice for Government Effectiveness guidelines, yet seems to violate a stated core principle around transparency and openness.

Having a science advisory process that is at arm’s length from DFO could improve the integrity of the science advice produced on fisheries issues. Good advice is critical at a time when many salmon stocks are in decline.

2. Make potential conflict of interest disclosure explicit and mandatory.

After I experienced the CSAS process, it was apparent to me that some steering committee members, participants, report authors and reviewers had current or recent connections to the salmon-farming industry.

Unlike many scientific journals, CSAS does not have explicit requirements for the disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. As a steering committee member, I requested that it include explicit conflict-of-interest criteria but was assured by the chair and lead organizer (who both held current and recent high-ranking DFO aquaculture management positions) that this was unnecessary. I was also assured that all steering committee members and participants would be listed in the final reports. No such list was published that I can see.

CSAS is supposedly based on DFO’s Values and Ethics Code, which states government will take “all possible steps to recognize, prevent, report, and resolve any real, apparent or potential conflicts of interest between our official responsibilities and any of our private affairs.”

I witnessed no explicit steps during the process.

Aside from direct financial benefits, there are many potential sources of conflicts of interest in science communication. The CSAS process should immediately integrate strong conflict-of-interest disclosure requirements for all participants, authors and steering committee members.

The long-standing scientific debate around salmon farming and around CSAS and DFO’s potential conflicting interests requires immediate resolution.

In February 2018, it was announced that Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan has asked Canada’s chief science adviser, Mona Nemer, to lead an independent expert panel on the appropriate use of scientific evidence in decision-making around protecting the marine environment, as it relates to salmon farming. More recently it was revealed that the “independent” panel will be substantially supported by DFO staff.

Time will tell what Canadians will get from yet another investigation into the salmon-farming industry. Canada’s commitment to science-based decision-making and to iconic wild salmon are at stake.

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Kinder Morgan’s decision to suspend work on its controversial $7.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline looks like a another corporate attempt to blackmail Canadian governments.

On Sunday the Texas-based company, which emerged from the ashes of scandal-ridden Enron, abruptly announced it was suspending all “non-essential” work on the export pipeline.

Steve Kean, CEO of Kinder Morgan Canada, blamed the B.C. government for the suspension — even though the National Energy Board has not approved construction for any portion of the project but the Westridge marine terminal in Burnaby.

Even Kinder Morgan has repeatedly acknowledged the reality of setbacks in presentations to investors, citing “a potential unmitigated project delay to December 2020” as recently as last month.

Still, Kean blamed B.C. “What we have is a government that is openly in opposition and has reaffirmed that opposition very recently,” he said.

But aren’t democracies supposed to challenge projects that impose unprecedented economic and environment risks on their citizens?

Wouldn’t a tanker spill of diluted bitumen in the Salish Sea, where one-third of western Canada’s population lives, be an economic and environmental catastrophe, devastating tourism, property values and marine life?

Wouldn’t the doubling of tolls on the expanded pipeline, as approved by the National Energy Board, raise gas prices for British Columbian motorists by $100 million a year? The pipeline now supplies southern B.C. with most of its petroleum.

Won’t Alberta, by exporting diluted bitumen to Asian refineries, repeat the original Canadian sin of failing to add value to resources at home, giving up thousands of jobs and billions in revenue?

How can exporting one of the world’s most carbon intensive fuels help fight climate change?

And can’t corporations with viable projects accommodate citizens, courts, First Nations and economists who think such costs and liabilities should be properly accounted for?

But Kinder Morgan prefers bluster and blackmail instead of the reality that the project was never a sound venture because it was about privatizing gains and socializing costs.

Economist Robyn Allan has repeatedly argued that Kinder Morgan is no ordinary company and the Trans Mountain expansion project has been uneconomic since day one.

She told The Tyee that “Kinder Morgan is looking for an exit strategy, but it likely includes a need to demonize Ottawa in order to set the stage for a suit under NAFTA.”

The drama begins with the biased workings of the National Energy Board, which refused to look at downstream and upstream climate impacts of the project and even failed to scrutinize its commercial viability during public hearings.

The best evidence from experts shows that Kinder Morgan, the Canadian government and Notley have misrepresented the pipeline’s illusory benefits.

A pipeline to the coast will not raise bitumen prices, because all global markets discount junk crude due to its poor quality.

The ill-conceived project will export refining jobs and great clouds of climate-changing emissions to China. In addition tanker traffic place southern resident orcas at risk.

The Houston-based firm that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley now salute as a defender of Canada’s national interest is the spawn of Enron, found guilty of accounting fraud and corruption. The energy trader’s collapse cost shareholders $74 billion and killed 20,000 jobs.

Kinder Morgan, a dirty and unsexy mover of gas and oil, began as Enron Liquids Pipeline in 1997. Enron alumni continue to populate the senior ranks of Kinder Morgan.

They include Richard Kinder, a Texas billionaire and Kinder Morgan’s chair. He worked at Enron for 16 years. Jordan Mintz, the chief tax officer, served as the vice-president of Enron’s tax division from 1996-2000.

Kean, the man now baiting Canadian governments, worked as Enron’s senior vice-president of government affairs. And so on.

These Enron alumni probably think Canadian politicians are the ultimate pushovers and dimwits.

During the 2014 NEB Trans Mountain hearings the U.S. parent firm vowed to provide 100 per cent of the debt and equity for the pipeline.

But after a Wall Street analyst suggested the third largest energy company in North America wasn’t spending enough to maintain its pipelines or returning value to investors, the company’s share price fell. Kinder Morgan’s stock value plummeted in 2015 and continues to languish. Lower oil prices and rising debt put its largest capital project on shaky ground.

Allan says investors recognized a year ago that the Trans Mountain project didn’t make commercial sense. As investor interest waned, Allan said, Kinder Morgan couldn’t raise debt or equity in the U.S. markets or find a joint-venture partner.

The job of raising money for the project then fell to Kinder Morgan Canada. But $1.6 billion it raised in 2017 went to pay off debts of its parent company.

Richard Kinder explained the move in a conference call with investors: “So we were able to strengthen KMI’S balance sheet using the IPO proceeds to pay down debt… ”

Kinder Morgan Canada has arranged $5.5 billion in construction facility loans from Canadian banks — but only if Kinder Morgan raises $2 billion in equity for the project.

“And now we learn from Premier Notley and Kinder Morgan Canada CEO Steven Kean that conversations with Alberta for financial support have taken place,” says Allan.

Rachel Notley, Canada’s leading petro politician, apparently can’t wait to pour taxpayers’ money into a project that the market views as high risk and that British Columbians regard as a threat to their best interests.

“Alberta is prepared to do whatever it takes to get this pipeline built — including taking a public position in the pipeline,” Notley said Sunday.

So corporate blackmail works like a charm in Canada.

Allan says Kinder Morgan is looking for a way out.

“The project is not commercially viable and, even before it’s built, Kinder Morgan is looking for a bailout,” she said. “If Kinder Morgan’s long-term contracts for moving 700,000 barrels of bitumen and oil on a controversial pipeline were solid, would Kinder Morgan now be blaming the government of B.C. for its problems?”

In a normal world governments concerned about fiscal prudence and the public interest would let Kinder Morgan abandon a non-viable project. (Some analysts have already said cancelling the project would be a “significant blow,” but not “the end of the world for Kinder Morgan.”)

In a moral world Canadian governments would admit that pipelines and tankers export refinery jobs and greenhouse gas emissions on a disastrous scale.

In a just world Alberta would have to admit it has allowed industry to overproduce bitumen due to low royalties and bad governance. The province has no strategic plan for bitumen other than screaming for pipelines.

But Canada, like its southern neighbour, is having trouble behaving normally, morally or justly these days.

But Trudeau and Notley think it’s OK to embrace a debt-ridden U.S. company so it can export, via tankers, unrefined bitumen to Chinese refineries where the upgraded resource can enrich the authoritarian Communist party.

Canadians should be more than ashamed.

They should be alarmed.

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By Amy Lubik, Ben Parfitt and Grand Chief Stewart Phillip

Just two days before B.C. Energy Minister Michelle Mungall announced a completely inadequate “independent scientific review” of fracking in our province, an international team of scientists issued a stark warning about the human health risks associated with the natural gas industry’s rampant use of this brute force technology.

“Our examination…uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health,” concluded the scientists, who were affiliated either with the Concerned Health Professionals of New York or the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group, Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Tellingly, the scientific review just announced by the B.C. government will expressly not investigate the human health impacts of fracking.

Fracking involves pressure-pumping immense quantities of water, sand and chemicals underground with such force that earthquakes are frequently triggered. Northeast B.C. has the dubious distinction of being home to some of the most powerful fracking operations on earth, and much of the resulting damage occurs on Indigenous territories.

The evidence reviewed by the scientists included nearly 1,300 peer-reviewed articles. That fact alone tells you something. The “science” on fracking is already in.

And here’s just a smattering of what it says:

People living near gas drilling and fracking operations are more prone to asthma. Pregnant women living near drilled and fracked gas wells face elevated risks of giving birth to newborns with congenital heart defects. Workers servicing gas well sites are exposed to high levels of silica, diesel exhaust, and volatile organic compounds that raise concerns about higher incidence of occupational lung diseases, including silicosis, asthma, and lung cancer.

For Indigenous people living in fracking zones, the impacts of fossil fuel industry operations only add to the disproportionately poor health statistics they already face.

A preliminary scientific study published this January by health scientists at the University of Montreal, for example, found that pregnant women in northeast B.C. have elevated levels of benzene metabolites (benzene is a carcinogen) in their blood. The 15 pregnant Indigenous women in the study had levels six times higher than the Canadian average.

For these reasons and others, the organizations we represent and 14 others last fall called for a full public inquiry into all aspects of fracking operations in our province. We made that call because of abundant evidence that fracking in northeast B.C. was intensifying and that B.C.’s energy industry regulator, the Oil and Gas Commission, was failing to provide reasonable checks on fossil fuel industry excesses.

In issuing our collective call we said then — and we restate now — that a scientific “review” will not deliver meaningful changes. The people who live in the northeast, who drink the region’s water, who breathe its air, deserve nothing less than a full public inquiry into all aspects of fossil fuel industry operations.

It must also fully addresses the question of free, prior and informed consent, a cornerstone of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Michelle Mungall and all her Cabinet colleagues are tasked by Premier John Horgan to implement.

Now, sadly, we have even more reason to oppose a “scientific review.” Here’s why.

The review will be extremely narrowly focussed. Minister Mungall has tasked three scientists to look at water usage in fracking operations, examine earthquakes triggered by such operations and determine what methane may be vented into the atmosphere during fracking operations themselves. The panel is to make “recommendations” on how to “minimize” environmental risks.

Troublingly, at least one senior member of Mungall’s ministry (an assistant deputy minister) communicated with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) well before the panel was struck. Consequently, the association, which represents the very companies that are fracking in the province, received generous forewarning that the review would not look at the human health impacts associated with fracking or at the fossil fuel industry’s ballooning greenhouse gas emissions.

(A recent study in Alberta found emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, were 15 times greater than what fossil fuel companies operating in the Red Deer area were reporting to the provincial government).

Not only was CAPP forewarned about the limited B.C. fracking review, but it was encouraged well in advance of anyone else to get going on lining up its “expert” witnesses.

The public interest is clearly not being served here. Instead, the interests of an industry with a vested stake in maintaining the status quo are.

In just two years, Encana, one of the major companies drilling and fracking for natural gas in northeast B.C., says it will double its natural gas production and quintuple its gas liquids output, much of which will be destined for Alberta’s tarsands. That translates directly into increased health risks for the region’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents.

British Columbians deserve better. What’s needed are comprehensive changes to public policy. A full public inquiry could provide a needed roadmap. The government’s science panel most certainly will not.

Amy Lubik is a health researcher with the B.C. Chapter of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip is president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs.

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Last week gasoline prices soared in southern B.C., with the price at the pump in Vancouver hitting over $1.55 per litre. This was not due to a restriction of supply, although Alberta Premier Rachel Notley jumped on the opportunity to once again misrepresent reality in order to draw erroneous conclusions supporting the need for Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion.

“There are a lot of ways in which the province of B.C. can assure an adequate supply of gasoline in order to combat the ridiculous prices that they pay,” Notley said in Calgary last week.

If B.C. wanted to keep gasoline prices low, she said, it should stop opposing the Kinder Morgan oil pipeline expansion as it would increase “the ability of Alberta to ship more product to the West.”

Notley assumes B.C. needs more crude oil to supply the Parkland refinery in Burnaby and more refined petroleum product to supply the retail outlets that Parkland’s refinery does not. She also assumes that building Trans Mountain’s expansion means Alberta’s oil producers and refiners will ship more product to B.C. Neither assumption is correct.

Let’s review the facts.

High gas prices are not due to a shortage of supply.

Gas prices are not high because of a lack of supply. There is plenty of supply to serve the B.C. market.

High gas prices are the result of a decades old strategy in Alberta to charge what the market will bear, not charge based on the costs of production and delivery (including a reasonable return on investment) as would be the case in a well-functioning market. This unfair or predatory pricing is sometimes referred to as price gouging. This reality exists to varying degrees all across Canada, although it is more prevalent in Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island markets.

Every time the pain at the pumps from this inappropriate pricing practice becomes obvious, it appears industry apologists are standing at the ready to trot out phoney “reasons” for the increase in gas prices.

The facts show B.C. exports more gasoline than it imports. Port of Vancouver statistics reveal that during 2017, exports to the U.S. exceeded imports by almost 70 per cent, giving rise to net gasoline exports of 6,000 barrels a day. There is no supply shortage in B.C. — chronic or otherwise.

Kinder Morgan’s new pipeline will not increase the shipment of product to B.C.

Trans Mountain’s expansion is intended to ship 540,000 barrels a day of diluted bitumen — heavy oil — to the Westridge dock for offshore export. None of this crude is destined for B.C.

The Parkland refinery already receives all the light crude oil it can refine from the existing pipeline so there is no shortage there. Further, the refinery is not configured to use heavy oil like diluted bitumen from the oilsands. This is why a heavy oil pipeline through B.C. is of no benefit to B.C.

As far as refined product is concerned, Kinder Morgan’s business case for the Trans Mountain pipeline is explicitly based on no increase in crude oil or refined product supply to B.C.

Kinder Morgan told the National Energy Board (NEB) that “refined product shipments will not increase as a result of [the Trans Mountain Expansion Project].”

Unfair pricing at the pump will not change no matter what happens with the Trans Mountain expansion because it is not due to a scarcity of supply. Addressing the failure of the market to fairly determine gasoline prices requires policy direction from government and meaningful regulation.

If the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is built, B.C.’s gas prices will increase. https://t.co/htqlwYcGeC

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 28, 2018

If the Trans Mountain expansion is built, B.C.’s gas prices will increase.

We know regional gas prices will rise if Trans Mountain’s expansion proceeds because the NEB approved an increase in toll rates on the existing pipeline that guarantees it. The board gave Kinder Morgan permission to more than double the cost of delivering a barrel of gasoline or diesel to B.C. motorists on the existing pipeline in order to help pay for the new one.

Higher transportation costs on the existing line will ratchet up pump prices. Producers and refiners consider increased transportation costs a cost of doing business and they get passed onto end-users.

Trans Mountain’s expansion — a heavy oil pipeline Notley maintains is for the benefit of offshore markets in Asia — is not commercially viable unless B.C. consumers and businesses subsidize it through higher gas prices here at home.

Big Oil needs B.C.’s market demand more than B.C. needs Alberta’s refined product.

Notley has threatened B.C. with an ultimatum — stop resisting the expansion or face serious supply restriction. But her threat to “turn off the taps” is idle.

Kinder Morgan and Alberta’s oil producers and refiners will not allow this kind of behaviour. It would send shock waves through the international business community and will fundamentally cost Alberta’s oil sector more than it will cost B.C.

B.C. is an important market for Alberta’s refiners and light oil producers.

If supply from Trans Mountain is shut off, the Parkland refinery can turn to offshore crude while other retail distribution systems can seek imported refined product — likely at lower prices if existing supply agreements are rendered invalid through Alberta legislated restrictions. A marine terminal to deliver jet fuel to the Vancouver International Airport is in the process of being constructed with the expressed purpose of being able to access jet fuel supply at lower cost from numerous markets.

Turning off the taps in B.C. would flood the Prairies and end up costing Alberta’s refinery sector.

Since the Trans Mountain pipeline delivers gas from Edmonton refineries to B.C., if supply were to be curtailed, downward pressure on retail prices in Prairie markets would mount because of a corresponding over-supply there.

That would mean every barrel supplied in Alberta would take some hit — not just the barrels diverted from B.C.

In order to limit supply in one market without a corresponding loss, there needs to be demand in another. The demand is not there.

Which companies are poised to take the hit in Alberta? Suncor, Imperial and Shell.

Suncor is poised for a double whammy. Suncor is the major shipper of refined gasoline and diesel product to B.C. along Trans Mountain for sale in Petro-Canada stations, but also under agreement with other retail outlets.

There is little likelihood Suncor will break contracts and destroy long-term business relationships with others in B.C. undermining not only its short-term, but long-term profitability in order to support Notley’s political posturing.

Kinder Morgan has too much to lose if shipments along its pipeline are curtailed — including the ability to finance its project.

Notley has not connected the dots between Kinder Morgan Canada Limited’s (KML) revenue stream and the company’s ability to proceed with the Trans Mountain expansion, either.

Current toll rates charged on the existing pipeline provide a significant portion of the company’s cash flow. It is not trivial.

Interrupting Kinder Morgan Canada’s revenue stream by limiting supply impedes the company’s ability to pay dividends to its shareholders. This not only hurts Canadian investors, it particularly hurts Kinder Morgan’s ’s Texas-based parent Kinder Morgan Inc. (KMI) in Houston.

Kinder Morgan senior still owns 70 per cent of the Canadian company. KMI needs dividends from the Canadian operations to support its ongoing financial challenges. An interruption of Trans Mountain’s existing revenue stream would get in the way of KMI’s cash flow needs .

Interruption of Trans Mountain’s existing revenue stream, by limiting pipeline shipments, would also impede Kinder Morgan Canada’s ability to pay dividends on its $550 million in outstanding preferred shares.

As well, Kinder Morgan Canada still needs to raise more than $2 billion in equity capital to help finance its expansion. Try going to financial markets to raise risk capital while revenues are impaired because of a legislated election ploy.

Finally, if reduced cash flow from “turning off the taps” — even just a little bit — causes a credit rating downgrade for the Canadian operations, Canada’s big banks could pull their $5.5 billion construction loan facility. Without the credit facility keeping the expansion afloat, the Trans Mountain expansion sinks.

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By Melina Laboucan-Massimo, David Suzuki Foundation Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change Fellow. This piece originally appeared on the David Suzuki Foundation website.

On International Women’s Day, I doubt industrial projects like Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline are top of mind for most. But there is a direct link between natural resource extraction and violence against largely Indigenous women and girls, which serves as an important reminder: violence against the land begets violence against women.

Along with pipelines and the extractive economic engines they support — like Alberta’s oilsands — come so-called “man camps.” Located near extraction sites, these are where mostly male workers live in close quarters for weeks or months at a time.

Most are outsiders to the region, lured in by the prospect of making a lot of money in a short time. Many must leave their families and communities to find work in the oilsands, when their preference would be to stay put, due to economic downturns at home. They seldom have ties to neighbouring First Nations communities.

It’s not surprising that some workers turn to drugs, alcohol and sex to blow off steam during days off. Studies show that demand for sex work accompanies intensive resource development due to the high number of male workers with excess income. This creates a dangerous mix for women in nearby communities, as the transience of the mostly male workforce means few are held accountable for what they do in or near camp.

A recent Amnesty International study confirms what I and many other Indigenous Peoples have known for a long time: Indigenous women living near these camps suffer disproportionately high rates of violence.

In 2016, Amnesty’s Out of Sight, Out of Mind report found that resource extraction in northern communities puts women at risk. It spoke to women in B.C.’s Peace River region, like Helen Knott, who has experienced gender-based violence by workers serving Canada’s resource economy.

In the report, Knott alludes to the sense among many workers that their economic power allows them to express sexist and racist beliefs they would otherwise withhold. To justify violence, Knott adds that some workers would assume Indigenous women and girls were “drunk, easy and wanted it anyway.”

The problem plagues Indigenous women and their communities wherever resource extraction takes place. In North Dakota, a 2010-13 oil boom resulted in a dramatic increase in gender-based violence toward Indigenous women living in and around the Fort Berthold Reservation.

Research compiled by Honor the Earth found that the number of reported rapes increased as man camps more than doubled the region’s population, supporting the Bakken oil boom.

Indigenous women and girls already suffer the highest rates of violence in Canada. Development of environmentally destructive projects like pipelines only heightens the risk.

A 2015 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report on murdered and missing Indigenous women documented how, “the police have failed to adequately prevent and protect indigenous women and girls from killings, disappearances and extreme forms of violence, and have failed to diligently and promptly investigate these acts.”

Violence against Indigenous women has systemic causes that are colonial in nature, dating back to racist policies that included separating Indigenous children from their parents and forcibly placing them in residential schools.

We need to unpack the patriarchal, racist and colonial mentalities of Canadian society to ultimately address the reasons why Indigenous women’s lives are not valued in Canadian society as much as the lives of non-Indigenous women. This was so clearly exemplified in the recent court case regarding the murder of Tina Fontaine.

As tensions flare in British Columbia, Alberta and across Canada around the future of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, the largely ignored consequence of further injustice and abuse toward Indigenous women and girls is yet another reason — on a growing list — to shelve the project once and for all.

If we are serious about social equity for all women and girls — especially Indigenous mothers and sisters — then this International Women’s Day, we must recognize that violence against Earth is violence against women. The path toward a cleaner, safer and more just world means reconciliation with all women, girls and Mother Nature alike.

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This piece originally appeared on Policy Options.

Windows of opportunity for transformative change are rare and can close suddenly.

The saga of Bill C-69 is a case in point.

The Trudeau government swept into power with a broad mandate to fix the environmental assessment (EA) policy train wreck. Public cynicism about how we assessed and approved major resource projects was at an all-time high. In part, this was due to Harper-era reforms aimed at appeasing industry interests at the expense of scientific rigour, public participation and due process. But it was also due to a broad sense that these processes, in place long before the Harper era, were profoundly out of touch with public expectations about how such decisions should be made.

The Paris Agreement on climate change and the Trudeau government’s commitment to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples ratcheted public expectations up even higher. Many speculated that a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform environmental assessment had arrived.

Last summer’s impressive report by the expert panel on environmental assessment processes, charged with advising government on ways to restore public trust in our federal environmental assessment and decision-making processes, reinforced a sense that transformational change remained a real possibility.

A more sombre mood has now descended. Bill C-69, the major overhaul announced on February 8, offers little for those hoping for a bold and creative next-generation assessment regime. While it was engineered to reinforce the theme of change and renewal — by deservedly retiring the National Energy Board and establishing a new, better-resourced federal assessment agency — on closer inspection it becomes abundantly clear that the architects of Bill C-69 have no transformative aspirations.

The weight of evidence in support of this conclusion is overwhelming.

Exhibit 1: Independent science.

Deficiencies and gaps in the scientific evidence marshalled in recent pipeline reviews has fuelled calls from the scientific community and beyond for greater scientific rigour and independence in the assessment process. A key concern, underscored by the EA expert panel, was the extraordinary weight these federal assessments typically place on proponent-controlled science. Yet, on this key issue, Bill C-69 is virtually silent. The Bill scarcely mentions the word “science” and does nothing to ensure that the science put forward by project proponents is subjected to rigorous and independent peer review.

Exhibit 2: The need for a sustainability-based decision test.

The legal test that conventional environmental assessments apply is whether a project under assessment is likely to cause “significant adverse environmental effects.” This test has been roundly criticized by leading EA practitioners as entrenching an assessment model that, at best, operates to make “bad projects a little less bad.” In the run-up to Bill C-69, there was broad support for requiring projects to meet a new legal test. Under this test, a proponent would need to show that its project makes a net contribution to sustainability, a potentially game-changing metric that the EA expert panel endorsed.

Here again Bill C-69 disappoints — and potentially makes things worse. It jettisons, for most projects, the current “significance test.” Future assessments will not need to determine whether a project’s adverse effects are “significant”; instead, they will be required only to “set out” whether the effects of a project are “adverse.” In doing so, assessments must consider a long laundry list of factors, including whether a project “contributes to sustainability.” To secure approval, however, the only legal test a project will need to satisfy is that it is in the “public interest.” The result, perhaps intended, will be to make such assessments more immune than ever from public and judicial accountability.

“On closer inspection it becomes abundantly clear that the architects of Bill C-69 have no transformative aspirations.” https://t.co/l7IliaiE3H

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 14, 2018

Exhibit 3: Our international climate commitments.

Our current federal assessment law is entirely silent on this topic. After the Paris Agreement, many argued that this blind spot urgently needed to be remedied by requiring future assessments to ensure that project decisions did not thwart our ability to meet our Paris commitments. The EA expert panel agreed and offered a host of sensible recommendations as to how a new law could be drafted to do exactly this. Alas, on this front too, Bill C-69 disappoints. The lengthy bill barely alludes to the relationship between our climate commitments and project assessments.

Where it does, it simply exhorts assessors and decision-makers to “consider” such commitments but provides no guidance, let alone binding rules, as to how these commitments should be weighed against a raft of other factors.

At the press conference to introduce the new legislation, Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, opined that if Bill C-69 had been in force during the assessment of the Kinder Morgan pipeline review, the result would have been the same: her government would still have approved the project.

This remarkable observation is telling. Given the glaring deficiencies in the National Energy Board’s assessment of the Kinder Morgan project, enabled by a broken federal assessment regime that her government came to power by promising to fix, only one conclusion can be drawn from her counterfactual claim: Bill C-69 changes little and will be rightly judged as a lost opportunity.

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Protected bike lanes are a favourite punching bag for Canada’s pundits and politicians.

Lawrence Solomon recently called for Toronto to “ban the bike” in one of his three columns on the subject in the span of a month. Rob Ford made a career out of condemning the “war on the car” and ripping out bike lanes. Loren Gunter of the Edmonton Sun accused the city government of inflating its usage statistics in favour of elite bike riders, then arbitrarily cut the number of riders in half to make the point that they were a waste.

Fortunately, while they may be entitled to their opinions, that privilege doesn’t extend to facts. Countless studies have been published over the years to test the impact of bike lanes — and the results are pretty clear.

So, what do we know?:

• There’s been a reduction in cyclist injuries, even while cycling volumes have increased dramatically.

• Women especially are more likely to commute by bike if they have access to protected bike lanes.

• Everyone — cyclists, pedestrians and motorists — reports feeling safer on the road.

One user group, though, is benefitting even while frequently being the most opposed to the lanes: drivers who don’t bike.

Study after study has shown the ways that drivers benefit directly or indirectly from bike lanes, and yet drivers are the most likely to disapprove of bike lanes: in Toronto, 57 per cent of drivers who don’t bike do not support the Bloor Street project.

But they should. Here’s why.

Bike lanes mean fewer conflicts

Not only do bike lanes make the roads safer for cyclists, but they also reduce crashes and near-misses between cars. In Toronto, there was a 71 per cent decrease in car/car conflicts. That’s an even bigger reduction than there was in conflicts between cars and bikes and between cars and pedestrian, both of which fell by more than half.

“The overall tenor of the street changes,” says Tom Babin, a Calgary cyclist and author of the book Frostbike: The Joy, Pain, and Numbness of Winter Cycling.

“It’s a little less car-dominated, a little more human scaled. All of that improves safety for everyone using it.”

In Toronto, there is one caveat: there was a 61 per cent increase in conflicts between bikes and pedestrians, but those tend not to be as serious (a similar study in New York found pedestrian injuries actually fell by more than a fifth)  — and crashes overall went down by 44 per cent.

One user group that is benefitting from — even while frequently being the most opposed to — bike lanes? Drivers who don’t bike. https://t.co/KIf47fY03A

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 23, 2018

Bike lanes mean less traffic

Even accounting for the traffic that diverted to neighbouring corridors, in the Bloor Street study the city found overall traffic went down. Driving times at rush hour increased by between two and four minutes.

“If you feel there’s too much congestion on the roads, you should be supportive of bike lanes,” Babin says, pointing to a city planning phenomenon known as “induced demand” in which extra car lanes, once built, quickly fill with more cars as people adjust their commutes.

“You can’t build your way out of congestion,” he says, and the opposite is true as well. When car lanes are reduced, people find other ways to get to work, and traffic is alleviated.

After the bikes lanes were built in New York, travel time at peak hours decreased.

Bike lanes improve public health

Canada’s socialized medical system means we all bear the costs of large-scale choices. Nudging people to be more active can save us all money.

An enormous British health study of more than a quarter million people found those who commuted by bike reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and all other causes of death by nearly half. Cardiovascular disease and cancer alone cost the Canadian health care system over $25 billion per year.

Another British study, this time looking at bike lanes in New York, estimated that the lanes, at a cost of more than $8 million, may have increased the probability of riding bikes by nearly 10 per cent. That’s a good deal, it concluded: “Investments in bike lanes are more cost-effective than the majority of preventive approaches used today.”

Bike lanes grow retail sales

Business owners along bike lanes have often rebelled against the idea of building them in front of their stores and restaurants. In Vancouver businesses along Commercial Drive actually collected 5,000 signatures to oppose a plan to put in a bike lane along that street.

But evidence indicates that concern is misplaced.  Establishments along the Bloor Street bike lane and the bike lanes in New York actually saw an increase in spending. In San Francisco, after four and a half years, two-thirds of businesses thought bike lanes had improved their sales. A Portland State University study found cyclists spend more money overall (except at grocery stores) than car-driving customers do — because they visit more frequently.

“When you’re riding a bike, especially in a dense urban area, it’s much easier to stop and pick up something on your way home,” Babin, who also runs a cycling website called Shifter, says.

The same goes for parking. An Australian study found that a parking spot used for a single car as opposed to the six bikes it could otherwise accommodate would only generate about a quarter as much revenue for nearby businesses.

In Vancouver, a 2011 report to the mayor from the West End Mayor’s Advisory Committee prominently featured criticisms of the bike lanes being built in the neighbourhood. But today, the West End Business Improvement Association boasts on its website that it is “one of Canada’s premier urban cycling destinations.”

Bike lanes make streets look good

In New York, bike lanes added an additional 110 trees to the streets. They also shortened crossing distances for pedestrians. In San Francisco, three-quarters of business owners thought their streets looked more attractive.

Bike lanes can also be taken to the next level, like this glowing Van Gogh-inspired Starry Night pathway in Eindhoven in The Netherlands. But, you know, one step at a time.

A Halifax survey found the most popular choice by far for a divider between the road and the bike lanes were planter boxes, adding visual appeal to what had formerly been just a lane of pavement.

Some respondents in that last survey opposed the project entirely based on what they saw as a lack of demand. That’s an argument that’s also rearing its head in Victoria. The first phase alone of Victoria’s downtown bike lane project (5.4 km of separated bike lanes, nearly as much as Vancouver and Calgary) will cost the city $14.5 million. That’s a lot of money to spend — but it’s also less than a fifth of the $85 million spent on the McKenzie Interchange on the highway out of town.

But will it be used, many people ask? Currently one in six Victoria residents walk or bike to work, and that’s the highest proportion in the country.*

“I’ve heard this comparison before that making decisions on bike lanes based on the number of people riding their bikes is like building a bridge based on the number of people swimming across the river,” Babin says.

To Babin, one of the biggest benefits of bike lanes is making biking accessible to more people.

“It gives drivers a chance to get out and ride their bikes.”

* Corrected Feb. 2, 2018, at 1:20 p.m. to indicate that one in six  Victorians walk or bike to work. The article previously incorrectly stated that one in six Victorians bike to work. According to 2016 census figures, 6.6 per cent of Victorians bike to work.

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Nobody could ever accuse Chief Jim Boucher of being anti-oilsands.

First elected to lead Fort McKay First Nation in northeast Alberta more than three decades ago, Boucher has made a name for his cooperative relationship with industry, which includes launching a sizable oilsands service conglomerate, denouncing environmentalists and purchasing a 34 per cent stake in a $1 billion Suncor bitumen storage terminal.

But now, a proposed 10,000 barrel per day oilsands project is threatening to infringe on a nearby sacred region called Moose Lake that serves as the First Nation’s “key cultural heartland” and is shared with the local Métis community for traditional activities. And Boucher is speaking out against the project — specifically targeting the provincial NDP for failing to finalize a management plan that would restrict development in the area prior to the regulatory hearings.

“This government does not want to do an agreement with Fort McKay,” said Boucher in an interview with DeSmog Canada, during a break in the Alberta Energy Regulator hearings. “We’ve had discussions with them. As a result of these discussions, we have gone nowhere in terms of trying to resolve our issues with respect to the integrity of Moose Lake.”

A spokesperson for Alberta’s environment and parks department didn’t provide a response before deadline.

‘It’s the last refuge for Fort McKay’

The Moose Lake reserves are actually made up of two lakes — Gardiner and Namur — located about 64 km northwest of Fort McKay. Moose Lake is very important for the First Nation because it’s where the community originated and gravesites are located there.

“This is the one area where it’s pristine,” Boucher said. “People trust the environment, they trust eating the fish, they trust eating the wildlife. It’s the last refuge for Fort McKay. It’s why it’s really important for us to try to maintain some of the integrity that the land will have for our people to continue practicing our traditional activities in the future.”

Land use management plan promised in 2016

In late 2013, Prosper Petroleum — a small company led by veterans of BlackRock Ventures and Koch Exploration Canada — started drilling evaluation wells near Moose Lake, on leases obtained from Koch Oil Sands Operating. Shortly after, Fort McKay First Nation and Fort McKay Métis Community Association appealed the decision to grant the well licences, contending that further exploration activities should be halted until a land-use management plan was in place.

The Alberta Energy Regulator gave the company the go-ahead to continue exploratory drilling in November 2014. But only a few months later, then-premier Jim Prentice signed a letter of intent with Boucher to establish the Moose Lake Access Management Plan under the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan (LARP) in 2016.

“When Chief Boucher asked for our support to protect the small parcel of land near Moose Lake for his community, I didn’t hesitate to say yes,” Prentice said in a government press release.

The Alberta NDP was elected only two months later. The plan still hasn’t been released. In April 2016, then-minister of Indigenous relations Richard Feehan said “we’re still fully behind it and we’re moving ahead quite well on it.”

There are 42 recommendations in the still-unreleased access management plan.

Boucher said the government agrees with all but two, which both relate to the strict regulation of industrial development within a 10 kilometre buffer zone around Moose Lake. That would mean things like carefully coordinating roads and other linear disturbances to help protect caribou and other wildlife. A central processing facility, used for steam generation and production, wouldn’t be allowed within the radius.

Fort McKay First Nation also delayed Brion Energy’s Dover project by requiring a 20 kilometre buffer around Moose Lake. It eventually authorized the project in 2014 after certain restrictions on wellpads and industrial plants were agreed upon (the details are confidential).

But Prosper Petroleum intends to develop within four kilometres of the reserve. As reported by CBC News, the company’s vice-president of stakeholder affairs said during the regulatory hearings that requiring the company to move operations farther from the area would “result in unprecedented and undue hardship to Prosper in terms of additional costs.”

First Nation forced to take legal action

In an e-mail, Fort McKay First Nation executive director Jauvonne Kitto said that “Alberta has expressed concerns about managing the risk of proponents asserting financial losses arising from development management measures being proposed.”

Boucher said that as a result of the absence of a plan, the energy regulator won’t deal with Aboriginal treaty rights issues or Indigenous land-use management at all when deliberating on whether to approve the project.

“Their mandate is to consider the application and then come to a decision based on what they perceive to be in the best interest of Alberta,” he said.

This leaves only one option to Fort McKay: battling it out in the courts.

The First Nation first launched a lawsuit against the government over this issue in April 2016. Kitto said the litigation is ongoing and scheduled to return to court upon the conclusion of the regulatory hearing process.

Land use plans ‘only way reconciliation can be expressed on land’

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In an interview with DeSmog Canada, Valérie Courtois — director of Indigenous Leadership Initiative, an organization that advocates for Indigenous-led land management and the Indigenous Guardian Program — said there are some leading planning examples in the Northwest Territories, such as the Dehcho First Nations and Deline Got’ine Government.

Courtois noted the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision on the Peel watershed is a reminder to Crown governments that there’s a need for “honour” and “collaborative approaches” if the goal is good management, whether for development or conservation.

“I really see that these land-use plans and tools are the only way that reconciliation can be expressed on the land,” she said.

If the Fort McKay situation is any indicator, it may be some time before that is seen in northern Alberta.

The Alberta Energy Regulator will release its decision within three months. Prosper Petroleum plans to start production in 2020.

“The likelihood that the AER will deny Prosper permission to carry on with the Rigel Project based on objections from Indigenous communities seems, unfortunately, very low,” concluded a recent analysis by University of Calgary faculty of law research assistant Amy Matychuk.

But Fort McKay isn’t going down without a fight.

“We continue to hope that in any eventuality that Moose Lake will be protected, that we have a refuge,” Boucher said.

“We’ve lost 70 per cent of our land to the oilsands developers so far. We’d like to maintain a little piece of land so our people can continue to hunt, trap and fish and exercise our treaty rights on the lands we have available to us.”

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This piece originally appeared on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

There is no question that the new B.C. government’s decision to proceed with the Site C dam was a very difficult one. The previous government left them with a poison pill.

With $2 billion already spent, the Horgan government faced a no-win choice, with substantial political and economic costs for either terminating or proceeding with what is one of the largest and most expensive capital projects in B.C. history.

I don’t envy them.

But count me among those who believe the wrong decision was made.

In a difficult decision like this one, it matters who gets listened to, whose expertise wields authority and what considerations win the day. That’s why unpacking this decision matters — so we can consider how progressives might shake up the framework by which future decisions are made.

First things first, this decision does deep harm to the prospects for reconciliation with Indigenous people. It is fundamentally at odds with the government’s stated commitment — affirmed in the NDP-Green Agreement and in the mandate letters of each Minister — to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Fundamental to UNDRIP is the duty to secure consent before engaging in major projects that impact the land and title of First Nations people. Achieving that consent should be embedded in our decision-making process. And yet in this case it is absent.

For thousands of people who strongly oppose Site C for both environmental and Indigenous rights reasons, this decision feels like a political betrayal — and will for many years. And with every likely new announcement of a cost overrun in the years to come, more salt will be ground into the wound.

The CCPA’s Marc Lee, in his submission last summer to the B.C. Utilities Commission, outlined why he felt the electricity Site C will provide is not needed. Indeed, our contention for many years has been that what was truly driving the push for Site C was the natural gas industry’s demand for electricity — both for fracking operations and, down the road, to electrify the process of liquefying that gas. Meaning it was primarily about producing “clean” energy in service of dirty fossil fuels, and it still might be.

In the final years of the Clark government, the push to take Site C “past the point of no return” was, I believe, driven by a different but related political imperative.

Having failed to secure foreign investment for a new LNG industry (and the associated promise of thousands of jobs for B.C.’s northern regions), Premier Clark, ironically, beat a path back to the public sector and looked to BC Hydro to deliver those jobs through construction of the Site C dam.

“In a difficult decision like this one, it matters who gets listened to, whose expertise wields authority and what considerations win the day. That’s why unpacking this decision matters.” via @SethDKlein and @CCPA_BC https://t.co/UFcqbxEui2

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 18, 2018

Economic rationale doesn’t hold water

Notably, when Premier Horgan made the announcement that the government would proceed with Site C he appeared decidedly unenthusiastic. Make that downright miserable. He made clear that Site C was, at its outset, a wrong-headed policy choice, and not a project his government would have started. But with $2 billion spent and reclamation costs of termination pegged at $1–2 billion more (likely the low end), the Premier felt his government had “no choice” but to proceed.

Granted, the prospect of spending $3–4 billion and having nothing to show for it hurts.

But the government went further, stating that absorbing such a bill would put its progressive economic and social agenda at risk. Some ministers expressed the view that termination costs would threaten B.C.’s Triple-A credit rating and would consequently drive up our debt service costs.

Minister Mungall, in an email sent to those who wrote to her about Site C, stated, “To do anything but move forward would require British Columbians to take on $4 billion in debt that would have to result in massive cuts to the services people count on us to deliver. After witnessing the legacy of BC Liberal cuts, I can’t allow that to happen again” (emphasis mine).

This line of argument may sound compelling. But on closer inspection, it is not at all convincing.

Had the costs of termination remained on BC Hydro’s books, this would indeed have resulted in an increase in Hydro rates, but not to the degree stated by the government. And proceeding with Site C will also result in increases in Hydro rates down the road (quite possibly more so).

Given that the decision to green-light Site C was politically driven by the previous government, my view is that the costs of terminating the project should not have been borne by BC Hydro, but rather by the provincial government as whole (as it seems the government considered).

Some may say this makes no difference — taxpayers and ratepayers are one and the same after all. But it does make a difference. As the CCPA has noted in past research, Hydro rates are regressive — they impact lower-income households harder than upper-income ones. In contrast, provincial government debt is serviced from overall taxes, which are mildly progressive now that the new government has brought in an upper-income tax bracket and is phasing out MSP premiums. With further fair tax reform, the costs would be even more fairly distributed.

Relieving BC Hydro of the costs of termination could have been done by either transferring the Site C sunk costs and termination costs onto the provincial government’s debt or, if the government did not want to assume the $3–4 billion debt from BC Hydro, it could simply have agreed to annually transfer the interest costs of that debt to BC Hydro (as restitution for this politically imposed cost).

Four billion dollars in debt would result in additional interest costs of at most $150 million a year. That’s not insignificant. But neither is it enough to derail a government’s agenda: it is 0.3 per cent of the province’s $50 billion annual budget.

Would taking on $3–4 billion in termination debt, with no asset to show for it, squeeze out the rest of the government’s agenda and potentially erode B.C.’s credit rating with the consequence of driving up debt interest costs? This seems highly unlikely.

At today’s interest rates, $4 billion in debt would result in additional interest costs of at most $150 million a year. That’s not insignificant. But neither is it enough to derail a government’s agenda. $150 million is less than the current surplus. And for context: it is 0.3 per cent of the province’s $50 billion annual budget.

In contrast, consider that in the September 2017 Mini-Budget, the new government cut MSP premiums by 50 per cent and chose not to replace those revenues with progressive tax increases (as the CCPA has previously recommended). In doing so, the government chose to walk away from $1.2 billion in annual revenues — a much more costly decision it did not feel put the rest of its agenda at risk.

Similarly, as Green Party leader Andrew Weaver has noted, the government chose to cancel tolls on the Port Mann Bridge and take on that debt at a price of $3.5 billion (and annual costs of replacing the toll revenues of about $150 million), but expressed little concern about the impact this would have on the affordability of B.C.’s debt.

The September Mini-Budget estimated that taking on the Port Mann Bridge debt would increase B.C.’s debt-to-GDP ratio (the size of the provincial debt compared to the size of the economy) by about 1.2 percentage points. The cost of terminating Site C would have been similar in debt-to-GDP terms — an impact that is entirely manageable in economic terms and well within B.C.’s recent debt levels.

Would taking on this debt have resulted in a downgrade to B.C.’s credit rating?

Possibly, but not necessarily. B.C.’s fiscal situation would have remained enviable (with respect to both debt-to-GDP and debt service costs relative to other provinces). It is arguably also possible that credit rating agencies would have given kudos for termination, seeing it as an expression of fiscal caution that avoided further potential multi-billion dollar cost over-runs (as is common with such mega-projects), particularly given the fact the credit agencies and B.C.’s Auditor General have already expressed concerns about BC Hydro’s debt load.

Even with a downgrade (if it occurred), would B.C. face significantly higher interest costs?

Again, while there is frequently fear-mongering about this outcome, this result should not be assumed — bond markets don’t respond slavishly to credit rating agency assessments. And if there was a credit market response to a downgrade, it would have been minimal.

Canadian provincial credit ratings vary from B.C.’s Triple-A high to PEI’s Single-A low. But as economists Trevor Tombe and Blake Shaffer note, the practical significance of this difference is that long-term provincial bond interest varies from 3.1 per cent in B.C. to 3.5 per cent in the Atlantic provinces. They note further that, “On average, each notch on the S&P ratings scale is associated with 0.04 per cent higher yield on a 25-year bond.”

In other words, not much.

Letting others call the tune

Numerous NDP MLAs have offered public explanations of the decision to proceed, all stating some variant of: we referred the BCUC’s report for further analysis to financial experts, and with great regret, were told that, while the actual costs of termination versus completion were similar, the accounting treatment of the choices would be very different.

Effectively, the government has said that accounting practices — as interpreted by finance ministry officials — trumped good policy and UNDRIP.

The problem, I fear, is that the full scope of options gets lost at the Cabinet table. If one’s deputy minister, for example, sounds the debt and/or credit rating alarm, few politicians feel comfortable pushing back. Or if the government is spooked by a credit rating agency warning — Finance Minister Carole James did go visit the rating agencies early in the new government’s mandate — there is political fear of a downgrade.

It is a curse of modern social democratic governments that, on economic matters especially, they are inclined to let others tell them what is and isn’t allowed. This dynamic plagues otherwise progressive people who lack confidence in economics, and it is heightened when senior civil servants remain in place after a change of government — the same people giving the same advice as always.

It is a curse of modern social democratic governments that, on economic matters especially, they are inclined to let others tell them what is and isn’t allowed.

Another way was possible. The government could and should have taken on the costs of termination (realistically a figure closer to $3 billion). It could have taken on other energy conservation and renewable electricity projects over the coming years (wind, solar, geothermal, etc.) as needed and in partnership with local First Nations and the building trades.

In doing so, it could have created just as many jobs as Site C will provide, but more helpfully spread across the province and closer to where people actually live, rather than concentrated in one locale (which will mean having to import much of the labour). Indeed, this is exactly what the NDP proposed in its 2015 Power B.C. plan.

Sadly, that plan was short-lived. A lost opportunity to move forward with far less of a price and much more to gain.

What now?

In the end (and official explanations notwithstanding), Site C was clearly a political decision — not an economic one. Only time will tell if that political decision was strategically correct or a costly mistake.

The government made a calculation (affirmed by recent polls) that the majority of the public would support continuation. They likely worried about the reaction of mainstream media pundits and the corporate sector had they chosen termination.

But the economic and political costs of proceeding with Site C will haunt the government throughout its mandate and beyond.

It seems at this point that the prospects of an about-face are highly unlikely. So why bother rehashing the decision?

First, it is important that unconvincing economic justifications — and the fear-mongering of credit rating downgrades — be challenged, otherwise the precedent is set for more disheartening decisions down the road.

Second, understanding this decision matters so that the new government can be encouraged to approach future ones differently. Much progress is clearly still needed to truly implement and operationalize UNDRIP in B.C. policy-making. And this is an opportunity to change the frame, to shift whose expertise wields authority and to reconsider what priorities win out.

In the last election British Columbian voted for change. Rather than deferring to the same accountants and ministry officials, this still new-ish government can continue to bring in new voices, invite more creative solutions and engage more fully with civil society.

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.

By Edward Struzik

This article was originally published on The Conversation Canada.

Northwest Territories Premier Bob McLeod was right when he issued a “red alert” in November and called for an urgent national debate on the future of the Northwest Territories. His peers, the premiers of Nunavut and the Yukon Territory, would be justified in calling for the same thing.

As housing, poverty and unemployment statistics show, Northerners are at a crossroads in their efforts to find a balance between a traditional way of life that puts country food on the table and one that provides basic goods, luxuries and economic opportunities that most southerners take for granted.

McLeod, however, was wrong in complaining about a “colonial” attack on the future of oil and gas development in the Arctic.

If the past tells us anything about the future, forging the Arctic’s future on fossil fuel development is not the way to move forward.

Leading energy experts have been saying this since 2006, when international energy consultants Wood Mackenzie and Fugro Robertson questioned “the long-considered view that the Arctic represents one of the last great oil and gas frontiers and a strategic energy supply cache” for the U.S. and Canada.

Sliding into the sea

In Canada, Arctic oil and gas has offered no significant returns since the late 1960s when the Canadian government engineered a plan to consolidate the interests of 75 companies with holdings in the Arctic. As a major shareholder in Panarctic Oil and Gas, and then Petro-Canada, the government used its resources, regulatory control and taxpayer money to encourage oil and gas exploration in the region.

Since then, government subsidization of Arctic oil and gas development has continued unabated at a very high cost.

In 2008, the federal government launched a program to bring petroleum geologists to the Arctic each year. To date, this program has spent nearly $200 million of taxpayers’ money to help the energy and mining industries find new sources of fossil fuels and minerals in the region with very limited success.

Another $16 million was spent to find ways to extract natural gas from methane hydrates in the Mackenzie Delta, a resource the energy industry has showed little interest in because of the technical and economic challenges associated with extracting it.

The recently completed $300 million Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway, built on rapidly melting permafrost, is another example of this misguided government strategy. According to a study done by the Northwest Territories government, it promises to save the town of Tuktoyaktuk $1.5 million in cost-of-living deliveries, and increase tourism — a good thing if it weren’t for the fact that the town of 900 is sliding into the sea.

Its main purpose, however, was to support energy development. It promises to deliver between $347 million and $516 million in increased cash flows from transportation savings over 45 years to resource companies operating in the Arctic.

The problem is that none of this Arctic oil and gas has ever made it to market, with one exception: A few shiploads of oil that Panarctic sent out from Melville Island in the 1980s.

Canada's North Needs Many Things, But Oil and Gas Drilling Isn't One of Them https://t.co/LMTMHR6Cb1 via @ConversationCA & @Kujjua #cdnpoli #arctic #climate

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 3, 2018

What does the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry Have to Do With This?

Many have blamed the failure of Canada’s Arctic oil and gas strategy on Justice Thomas Berger’s Mackenzie Valley Pipeline inquiry in the mid-1970s.

Berger’s report recommended a 10-year moratorium on pipeline construction in the Mackenzie Valley so that First Nations could resolve their land claims with the federal government. It also led to the creation of a complex permitting process, which has slowed approvals for a more recent pipeline construction project.

The inquiry cast Berger as a symbol of environmental and social justice with his recognition of Indigenous rights.

But the real reason why Arctic oil and gas has never made it south is because of the high cost of piping it over land or shipping it by sea to market.

The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Project that Justice Berger considered in the 1970s was touted as “the biggest project in free enterprise history..”

Had it been built, it would have been an economic disaster. Bob Blair, the Calgary-based entrepreneur who wanted to build one of two proposed pipelines, suggested as much years later when he wondered why anyone would try again to ship Arctic oil and gas south.

The second Mackenzie Valley pipeline would have fared even worse. First proposed in 2004, the pipeline would have required gas prices to be in the range of $6 to $8 to break even.

That looked good in the years that followed when gas prices temporarily soared to nearly $15 in June 2008. Since then, however, the price has sat largely in the range of $2 to $6. The cost of the $20 billion pipeline would now need gas prices to triple from current rates to recoup its cost. That’s why Imperial Oil, its main proponent, received permission to delay the project until 2022 at the earliest.

In the meantime, Canadian governments have seemed oblivious to the fact that human-caused climate change — largely due to the burning of fossil fuels — is ending the Arctic as we know it. Since the 1970s, air temperatures in the Arctic have risen by as much as 5℃ and sea ice area has declined by about 12 per cent per decade.

The ripple effect

A warmer and shorter ice season means some polar bears have less time to hunt seals, and mosquitoes and flies have more time to take their toll on caribou, whose populations are at a historic low.

As sea levels continue to rise, powerful storm surges are causing massive saltwater intrusions, imperilling the freshwater lakes, wetlands and deltas that support tens of millions of nesting birds.

Soon low-lying coastal Inuit communities such as Tuktoyaktuk, sitting on rapidly thawing permafrost, will have to be relocated, like residents of the Alaskan community of Shishmaref have voted to do.

We are already seeing the rippling effects of some of these changes throughout the Arctic ecosystem.

Capelin, not Arctic cod, is now the dominant prey fish in Hudson Bay. Killer whales, once largely absent from the Arctic, are beginning to prey on narwhal and beluga, important food sources for the Inuit. Polar bears at the southern end of their range are getting thinner and producing fewer cubs. Trees and shrubs are overtaking tundra landscapes. Sub-Arctic forests are burning bigger, hotter and more often.

What the future holds for Inuit and First Nations peoples of the north, whose cultures grew out of a close association with this frigid world, is a puzzle.

Those cultures are already in a state of rapid economic reorganization and social readjustment. Most of these people continue to live in overcrowded houses. They have stopped or reduced their consumption of caribou, walrus and other Arctic animals, not because they prefer store-bought beef and pork but because the caribou populations are collapsing, and the receding sea ice makes it difficult for them to hunt marine mammals.

Steered by Northerners

What will the future Arctic look like? That is a wide-open question that can only be answered by debates steered by northerners.

Here’s a list of topics worth discussing. Oil and gas development isn’t one of them.

The Canadian Arctic needs an affordable and efficient air and road network that can bring in tourists and investors.

It needs museums to display artifacts — such as those in the recently discovered Franklin ships — that have been routinely shipped south.

It needs food security that goes beyond subsidizing the transportation of southern foods to the North.

It needs renewable energy to replace diesel, which is prohibitively expensive and polluting.

It needs a better form of post-secondary education that combines traditional knowledge with western scientific knowledge — and a way to convince its best students to stay home, instead of relocating to the south.

It needs a forward-looking ecological conservation plan that will ensure a future for polar bears, caribou, walrus, narwhal, beluga and other Arctic species.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to temporarily ban future oil and gas exploration in the Arctic in December 2016 was a good start to setting a new course for the North.

So was Mary Simon’s report “A New Shared Arctic Leadership Model.” It makes 40 recommendations, many of which have been made several times in the past four decades.

Now it’s time to find new ways of moving forward with a road map to the future that will lead to economic advancement and improvements in the quality of life that Northerners long for and deserve.

The oil and gas industry has has tried and failed for more than 40 years to make a contribution. It doesn’t deserve to be part of this future.

Edward Struzik is a fellow at Queen's Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy in the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University.

Image: Edward Struzik

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