Most Canadians weren’t surprised to hear Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approve the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline this week.

Yet Trudeau’s announcement was so thoroughly cut through with political spin and misinformation some have described it as “Orwellian.”

So where did the Prime Minister rank highest on the spin-master index?

Here are our top five myth and misinformation moments from Trudeau’s Kinder Morgan announcement.

Kinder Morgan Pipeline Approval Based on ‘Science’

Concerns about scientific integrity have plagued the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline since the project first came under review.

The pipeline review, conducted by the National Energy Board, refused to consider the upstream climate and environmental impacts of the project, meaning vital scientific information about the impacts of oilsands development on air, water, at risk species and human health were excluded from consideration. The province of B.C. quietly accepted the NEB’s assessment of the project, despite noted deficiencies in its analysis of cumulative impacts, emissions and oil spill impacts.

To the frustration of participants, the NEB also excluded oral cross-examination from the proceedings, meaning Kinder Morgan avoided answering many difficult questions about the project’s environmental impacts.

In fact, a group of 27 climate experts, including economists, scientists and political and social scientists, were refused intervenor status during the pipeline hearings because they wanted to discuss the project’s impact on Canada’s climate change targets.

In the weeks before Trudeau’s announcement a group of scientists reached out to the PMO to share their findings on the lack of scientific literature regarding the effects of bitumen spills.

“It’s hard to imagine that the federal government decision (to approve new pipelines) could be based on science, just when we’ve found that in many cases, there’s very little science to base those decisions upon,” Wendy Palen, associate professor of biological sciences at Simon Fraser University told the National Observer.

Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline and Tankers ‘Safe’ for B.C. Coast

Because of inadequate or faulty science, it is impossible to substantiate the claim the pipeline and its related increase in tanker traffic is “safe” for the coast.

During the pipeline review process Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans argued Kinder Morgan’s assessment of threats to whale species off the B.C. coast from increased tanker traffic contained “insufficient information and analysis.”

A separate analysis, commissioned by the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, found the anticipated increase in tanker traffic gives the local Southern Resident Killer Whale population only a 50 per cent chance of survival. Southern resident killer whales, which use echolocation to hunt their prey, have been overwhelmed by noise pollution in their habitat, a problem that has recently been connected to starvation within the population.

Kinder Morgan also failed to explain the potential impacts of a marine oil spill on fish populations.

Ecojustice, a west coast environmental law firm that acted as an intervenor in the pipeline hearings, pressed Kinder Morgan on this issue and 20 others related to marine science and safety during the pipeline review process.

Kinder Morgan refused to answer, simply claiming the questions raised were “not relevant.”

The recent grounding and sinking of the Nathan E. Stewart tugboat off the coast of central B.C. demonstrated the challenge of marine spill response in B.C.’s unpredictable waters and undercuts the myth of world-class oil spill response.

Following the diesel spill resulting from the Nathan E. Stewart grounding, Trudeau announced a $1.5 billion investment in coastal protection, which will help meet B.C.’s five conditions for the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and followed up with a tanker ban on B.C.’s north coast. Critics have argued the funding amounts to subsidies for oil and gas exporters, who should be required to pay for cleanup of spills in marine habitats.

Kinder Morgan Pipeline a Part of Canada’s Climate Plan

Trudeau announced the approval of the pipeline, saying it was “integral” to meeting Canada’s climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.

Canada has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Currently Canada is on track to miss this target by a wide margin. The Climate Action Network estimates that by 2030 Canada will be 91 megatonnes over the line.

Approving this pipeline (which was approved at the same time as the Enbridge Line 3 expansion which will increase the line’s capacity by 525,000 barrels of oil per day) will make it harder for Canada to meet those targets.

Trudeau admitted expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline comes in light of increased oilsands production. The oilsands are Canada’s fastest growing source of carbon pollution.

According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, the approval of the Trans Mountain and Line 3 pipelines is estimated to put an additional 23 to 28 megatonnes of carbon pollution into the atmosphere, the equivalent of adding 58 million cars to the road.

Pipeline Will Help Usher in Clean Energy Transition

Trudeau repeated a familiar talking point when approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline: that approving pipelines will help us move closer to a green energy future.

The basic assumption here is that Canada’s oil and gas sector, hurting from low market prices, needs the boost a new pipeline provides.

Yet prominent energy analysts and economists have disputed the argument that a bitumen export pipeline will be a boon for the Canadian economy, much less fund a clean energy transition.

Jeff Rubin, senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and former chief economist of CIBC world markets, told the CBC Canadians have been oversold on the benefits of selling oilsands crude to Asian markets.

“The reality is that Asian markets pay less, not more, for the bitumen that Canada wants to sell than U.S. refineries,” Rubin said.

Asian markets may not be in a position to handle refining oilsands crude, a particularly heavy hydrocarbon that often must undergo a costly coking process to be upgraded to a more useable light hydrocarbon product. Several refineries capable of handling oilsands crude already exist in the U.S., however.

Kinder Morgan argued the pipeline would be a major job creator, yet the company’s figures were called exaggerated in a report by Simon Fraser University and The Goodman Group that found the economic risks from a pipeline rupture were downplayed.

Rubin said some jobs from the pipeline construction are a small benefit, but may not outweigh the burden of building costly fossil fuel infrastructure at a time of global carbon constraints.

“If in fact it’s built, I don’t deny that the construction of a new pipeline will be a short-term job creator,” he said. “But if that ends up being a stranded asset, that’s not going to be an engine of economic growth. That’s an albatross around the economy.”

Pipeline Approval Doesn’t Violate Indigenous Rights

Last month a ministerial panel, convened by the federal government, released its report on the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

Their conclusion? The pipeline should not be built without serious reassessment of its impact on Canada’s relation with indigenous peoples.

The panel posed this question to Justin Trudeau and his ministers: “how might Cabinet square approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline with its commitment to reconciliation with First Nations and to the UNDRIP principles of ‘free, prior, and informed consent?’”

The panel posed this question because roughly two-thirds of the First Nations directly affected by the pipeline project have not signed letters of support for the project.

Several First Nations have already launched legal actions against the pipeline project and the National Energy Board-led review process they say did not respect constitutionally protected aboriginal rights.

Far from being in line with reconciliation, Trudeau’s approval of the pipeline goes against his promise to repair nation-to-nation relations with Canada’s indigenous peoples.

With files from James Wilt.

Image: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discuss the approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Photo: Prime Minister Photo Gallery

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Today is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first day in office and when it comes to science, his new cabinet appointees look like a step in the right direction.

On top of naming Catherine McKenna the first ever Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Trudeau also appointed a Minister of Science, Kirsty Duncan, as well as a Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Navdeep Bains.

Duncan has a doctoral degree in geography, previously taught meterology, climatology and climate change at the University of Windsor and was a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

These appointments combined with Trudeau’s point blank response to questions about his 50 per cent female cabinet mandate (“Because it’s 2015”), his inclusion of indigenous leaders and his collaborative approach to the upcoming Paris climate talks have inspired a lot of hope in the new Prime Minister.

But with an abundance of commitments about science, electoral reform and transparency some Canadian scientists are left wondering if Trudeau will be able to live up to the promises.

Minister Duncan, we've done some of the intelligence gathering for you and here's what Canadian scientists say they hope to see from the new government.

Return to Evidence-Based Decision-Making

“I’m tremendously excited about this change in government,” Wendy Palen, associate professor of ecology at Simon Fraser University, told DeSmog Canada.

Palen, who also sits on the board of the science-advocacy group Evidence for Democracy, said the Liberal government has made big promises to undo the damage done by the Conservatives.

“Many Canadians think Harper’s policy regarding science has really looted what it means to be Canadian — both at home and how we’re seen by the international community,” Palen said.

“I think the Liberals have their job cut out for them but I think they’ll make progress restoring evidence-based decision-making in a way that hasn’t been there for a while.”

Create a New Culture of Science Among Public Servants

Katie Gibbs, executive director of Evidence for Democracy, agrees there is a lot of work to be done but that many of the Liberal’s platform promises “will go a long way to restoring and rebuilding science in Canada.”

“A lot of the promises they made are certainly feasible — reinstating the long-form census, un-muzzling government scientists, creating a Parliamentary Science Officer — these are all doable. They just require the political will to make them happen,” Gibbs said.

But some policies will be easier to change than the mindset of scientists working within federal departments, she added.

“Changing the communication policy is fairly easy and could be done quickly, but changing the culture among government scientists could take much longer,” Gibbs said.

Prioritize Science and Evidence, Quickly

Gibbs added that a major challenge for the Liberal government will be prioritization. With so many important election promises on the table, competing interest groups, lobbyists and civil society organizations from across the country are jockeying for first dibs. 

“[It] can't all be done immediately, so what is this government going to prioritize?” Gibbs said. “Which is also why it's really important to recognize that the work isn't over, it's really just beginning.”

Set Measurable Environmental Targets the Public Can Evaluate

Isabelle Côté, professor of marine ecology at Simon Fraser University, describes herself as “very cautiously optimistic” about the Liberal government’s campaign promises.

“I don’t think it can be as bad as we’ve had it for the past 10 years,” Cote said, adding, “but that’s the problem: expectations are so high because we’ve been battered so hard and essentially decimated for so many years.”

Côté said Trudeau’s reluctance to set specific greenhouse gas emissions targets is troubling.

“I find that worrisome because obviously if we don’t have targets, we can’t evaluate how well we’re doing. Without targets we can say we’re doing better but we don’t know. And that worries me a bit.”

Côté added Trudeau’s inconsistent position on pipelines as well as the fact that “one of his campaign managers seemed to be buddy-buddy with the oil industry” is also cause for concern.

Trudeau’s commitment to meet the Convention on Biological Diversity’s goals for ocean protection is unlikely to happen, according to Côté.

“[Trudeau] wants to meet our CBD commitment of 10 per cent of our oceans protected by 2020 but right now we’re at less than one per cent,” Cote said.

“The reality is that given the legislation we have now and the amount of consultation that has to happen for permanently protected marine areas — we don’t have the time.”

Cote noted that one protected area off the B.C. coast took a decade of consultation to put in place.

Getting Canada back on track to do more than just marine protection is going to take a tremendous amount of work, Côté said.

“We feel like the page has been turned but we need many, many pages to be turned just to get back to where we were 10 years ago.”

A good place to start would be with the implementation of a Parliamentary Science Officer, she added. “I think that’s something he could do tomorrow. He could say, ‘the search begins.’ ”

But Côté remains realistic: “The reality is it’s going to take a heck of a long time to reassemble the expertise that’s been lost by all the cuts. It’s not like these people are just waiting in the wings to jump back into the positions they had. Those people are gone.”

Bring Science Funding Back

One of those lost federal scientists is Peter Ross, former federal scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Ross, a marine contaminants expert now working with the Vancouver Aquarium, said Canada “has serious work to do” when it comes to restoring science.

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t say I was optimistic,” Ross said.

“Even though these last few years have been hard, I’ve always remained optimistic.”

Ross said after major budget cuts and a restrictive communications environment, he would like to see the mandate of science expanded in Canada.

“If we look at the history of science in Canada we spend half of what the OECD spends on science — we always have,” he said. “If we’re going to excel in terms of the knowledge economy, in terms of the global village, we have to invest in science.”

Trudeau has promised to return $40 million in funding to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, a federal body that saw a research exodus after major funding cuts under the Harper government in 2012.

Stick to Liberal Party’s Scientific Integrity Motion

Jeremy Kerr, professor of biology at the University of Ottawa, said he is “definitely optimistic” science will fare better under this new leadership.

“It’s like coming out of a cave,” Kerr said. “The last 10 years have been an almost unrelenting series of efforts to suppress scientific information, shut down programs, supplement normal communications with clearly organized propaganda efforts.”

“It has been an incredibly dark time.”

Kerr, who worked with the Liberal party and new Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan in May to craft a parliamentary motion to restore scientific integrity, said he has “every expectation” the Liberal government will follow through with many of the good ideas — including unmuzzling scientists and creating a Parliamentary Science Officer — in that document.

Kerr said some members of the scientific community are unnecessarily pessimistic about implementing changes.

“A lot of the scientific integrity changes that we have called for and many others have called for are not going to require an act of Parliament to achieve,” Kerr said. “What they are going to require, with careful thinking, is a few days writing a policy and communicating it to the public service.”

Kerr said people think restoring science in Canada will be “some monumental Everest challenge.”

“But I just don’t think it is,” Kerr said, adding that though these things can be done easily they must be treated as urgent.

“Some of that stuff has got to be done quickly. If it doesn’t get done quickly the opportunity for using electoral momentum will pass and they will be slowed down by the inevitable inertia of being in power.”

Kerr said the Liberal government should work to restore broken relationships with the public sector through the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. Morale among scientists is at “subterranean” levels at this point, he said.

Kerr also said the government needs to repair the holes in environmental protection, such as the loss of protection for practically all freshwater bodies in Canada, and enforce the Species at Risk Act.

“The federal science issue in Canada right now is basically a field of debris,” he said. “I think that’s over now, but we don’t know — the proof is going to be in the pudding.”

Image: Twitter

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This is a guest post by Richard Kool, Associate Professor in the School of Environment and Sustainability at Royal Roads University in Victoria.

Back in the 1930s, the Soviet ruler Josef Stalin had a problem with genetics; as a result, geneticists were branded traitors ("Trotskyite agents of international fascism"), stripped of their positions at government laboratories and universities, sent to prison, or even executed. Soviet biological sciences were hindered for more than a generation. The story of the Soviet geneticists has a distant resonance to the story of what is happening to government-sponsored environmental science in Canada today.

Genetics, the science of inheritance, was developed in the late 19th and early 20th century by scientists such as Gregor Mendel and T.H. Morgan, who did careful experiments demonstrating, among other things, the presence of dominant and recessive genes, as well as examining how genes combine to produce a variety of traits in animals and plants. Unfortunately, in Stalin’s Soviet Union, there were a lot of things wrong with Mendelian genetics, including: Mendel was a Catholic priest (and thus stood against the atheistic Soviet regime), while Morgan was branded a capitalist (he was an American). Mendelian genetics didn’t fit the Soviet ideology.

In the 1930s, Soviet genetics fell under the sway of Trifim Lysenko, an agronomist who proposed a different grounding for genetics. Lysenko’s beliefs were that seed quality could be improved by challenging seeds with extremes of high humidity and low temperatures, and that these changes so produced would be inherited by the next generation of plants; indeed, he believed that new species of plants could be created through this process (much as the Soviet rulers believed that a new humanity could result from “challenge and struggle”). Instead of engaging in the necessarily long-term selection processes to produce the plant products that would be most valuable, Lysenko pushed Soviet plant science towards a method of crop improvement that led to crop failures and famine: genetic reality trumped Lysenkoist ideology.

The pursuit of scientific knowledge flourishes when scholars are free to pursue the best understandings they can come up with, knowing that others may come along afterwards and create more and better explanatory theories. Science can do what it does best when political systems encourage the freedom of exploration, and those systems are usually found in contexts of democratic governance.

Science, and scientists, do not always do well when states are run by rulers, especially rulers with strong authoritarian and ideological orientations that might be threatened by research findings. Rulers feel that they know what is right and what needs to be done in their domain, and see no need to compromise, to consult, to listen or to consider other opinions, all of which are essential elements of the toolkit of those who govern democratically. Rulers often see themselves as exceptional and exempt from the rules that they can impose on the ruled.

Mendelian genetics in Russia and those that practiced it were threats to the ruler’s ideology and they were removed from positions where they could do ‘harm’ to the State.

And now we have in Canada a situation where environmental scientists working for the government of Canada have been found to be doing research that is no longer in line with the ideology of our present rulers. Climate change scientists, eco-toxicologists, habitat specialists and more are not being lined up and shot as the geneticists were in Stalin’s time, but they are seeing their positions eliminated, their funding and other resources constrained, and their ability to communicate restricted.

The ghost of Trofim Lysenko stalks Canadian government science. Science that produces results that fit with the Harperian science doctrine of “utility to corporations and industry above all else” seem to get the resources. Those government scientists engaging in the exploration of the major global issues of our time but whose pursuits fall outside of Harperian ideology today are, either literally or metaphorically, being shown the door.

Image Credit: Zack Embree

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“If people don’t speak out there will never be any change,” says the University of Victoria’s award-winning climate scientist Andrew Weaver. 

And the need for change in Canada, says Weaver, has never been more pressing.

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