By Adam Scott for Oil Change International.

The historic announcement by President Obama and Prime Minister Trudeau that both countries would ban oil and gas development in Arctic and Atlantic waters was a major victory to protect our oceans and the people who depend on them, and a real victory for our climate.

But the difference between how the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office explained this announcement reveals a major rift between the leaders in their understanding of how to address the climate threat.

At the end of November, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau failed a key test of his understanding of what is required to stop climate change by approving the Kinder Morgan and Line 3 pipelines. During his speech he defended his actions:

“I have said many times that there isn’t a country in the world that would find billions of barrels of oil and leave it in the ground while there is a market for it.”

But just weeks later, the U.S. did exactly that. As part of President Obama’s announcement to permanently ban oil and gas development in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, the White House released a fact sheet explaining its justification.   

“…if lease sales were to occur and production take place, it would be at a time when the scientific realities of climate change dictate that the United States and the international community must be transitioning its energy systems away from fossil fuels.”

In essence, the White House is saying that further offshore oil and gas development in these areas fails a climate test — that these projects aren’t in line with the action needed to meet international goals to fight climate change. This is a crucial signal that President Obama and his team are finally beginning to understand that action to restrict the supply of fossil fuels is ultimately required to reach a safe climate future.

Notably, the joint statement from both leaders on their effort to block Arctic drilling mentioned climate but failed to point out this crucial justification for the decision. This points to the fact that Trudeau isn’t aligned with Obama on climate action.

Prime Minister Trudeau continues to cling to an ideological and dangerous assertion that his government has no responsibility to restrict fossil fuel supply in the middle of a global climate crisis. 

As Trudeau travels across Canada this week to defend his decision to allow massive new tar sands pipelines, he continues to make wildly contradictory statements.  He frequently says that ‘responsible resource development can happen in concert with solid environmental protections’ in the context of allowing new pipelines and tar sands growth to continue. He says this in spite of strong evidence that allowing the pipeline projects would directly compromise both domestic and international climate obligations.

He also continues to argue that his pipeline approvals are baked into his Pan-Canadian climate framework, in spite of the fact that Trudeau’s climate plan is projected to fall short of its 2030 emissions targets, with his government eyeing the purchase of fake international offset credits to make up the gap. This implies that the government knowingly undermined their own efforts when they approved new pipeline projects.

There’s a pipeline shaped hole in Trudeau’s climate plan.

It gets worse. Trudeau continues to put himself on the wrong side of history by aligning himself with President-elect Donald Trump in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project which President Obama rejected over its potential to exacerbate climate change and threaten communities along its route.

Trudeau’s view fully ignores the fact that new pipeline projects would lock Canada into rising production of dirty oil and associated climate pollution for decades to come. Because it will be so difficult and disruptive to cut production once those investments have been made, Trudeau’s endorsement of projects that lock-in carbon could put the Paris Agreement goals out of reach — aggravating suffering and harm caused by climate change for millions of people around the world.

It’s time for Trudeau to take a hard look at the legacy his ally President Obama is trying to leave behind. While Obama’s record has been far from perfect, he has in the 11th hour finally begun to demonstrate a clear understanding that success on climate change means keeping fossil fuels in the ground.

Trudeau now has to choose if he wants to join Obama’s legacy as a climate leader or follow Trump’s troubling path towards putting the interests of oil companies ahead of the global community.

Image: Trudeau and Obama at the UN General Assembly. Photo: Justin Trudeau via Facebook

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The Trudeau government’s rushed approval of the Petronas-led Pacific Northwest LNG project Tuesday — during sunset at a gated Coast Guard station near the Vancouver airport — struck some opposition MPs, and the Vancouver press corp, as oddly rushed.  

Now comes word, in a bombshell Reuters news report Friday morning, that Petronas may be looking to sell the Pacific Northwest LNG project, according to "three people familiar with the matter.” The B.C. government tried to throw water on the speculation Friday afternoon, saying it sought assurances from Petronas and that the proponent doesn't have plans to sell the LNG project.

However, the revelations have led some to speculate the Trudeau government knew about Petronas’ plans to sell and raced out west in a hurried attempt to save the project from collapse. Others have questioned if the provincial and federal governments knowingly approved a project destined for failure, and if so, why?

“It’s incredibly cynical if Trudeau’s government had advance knowledge this wasn’t going ahead,” Nathan Cullen, NDP MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley, told DeSmog Canada.

Hasty LNG Approval Signaled Trouble

The timing of the announcement was peculiar since Trudeau’s ministers were in a cabinet meeting earlier that morning in Ottawa. One of them, Fisheries Minister Romeo LeBlanc, was scheduled to meet in Ottawa with five B.C. hereditary chiefs opposed to the LNG project.  

But that meeting was abruptly cancelled, and ministers Catherine McKenna, Jim Carr and LeBlanc jetted across the country to the airport-area press briefing, where they announced their approval of the controversial LNG project.

Cullen said the timing of the Trudeau government’s announcement was highly suspicious.

“I’ve been trying to understand why they announced the way they did,” he said. “It was disorganized, it was panicked and they had already flown out hereditary chiefs to Ottawa. This was a huge announcement, a big deal for Trudeau. Why the panic?”

“I think because Petronas was about to say, ‘we’re thinking of selling.’ They wanted to milk one last good news story out of it before reality hit and people realized Christy Clark’s [LNG] fantasy was nothing more than an attempt to get reelected.”

Canada’s climate change minister Catherine McKenna stands beside B.C. Premier Christy Clark during the Trudeau government’s announcement approving the Petronas-led Pacific Northwest LNG plant on Tuesday evening near the Vancouver airport. Photo: Mychaylo Prystupa.

When asked to confirm the news of Petronas’ intentions, Caitlin Workman, McKenna’s media officer, provided this statement via e-mail: “As far as I have seen there are only speculation and unnamed sources out there on that matter. The project was approved by the government based on a lengthy and thorough process that took about three years from beginning to end.” A media inquiry to Petronas, via its Pacific Northwest LNG office, was not responded to Friday afternoon.

Shannon McPhail, executive director of the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, told DeSmog Canada the news reveals a dizzying level of political posturing on behalf of both the province and the federal government.

“Clearly they knew this was going to happen. What other reason was there for their hasty press conference in Vancouver?” McPhail told DeSmog Canada. “They didn’t plan that. They had meetings scheduled with hereditary chiefs in Ottawa. That was a last-minute, hasty decision.”

While McPhail said she was frustrated by the federal government’s decision to approve the project earlier this week, the news of Petronas’ potential exit from the B.C. LNG market puts it all into perspective.

As for B.C. Premier Christy Clark, McPhail sees it cutting two ways.

“Did the feds play her?” McPhail mused. “At the press conference Christy Clark couldn’t get that smile off her face — she looked like the cat that had caught the canary.”

“Then I started thinking — she didn’t know. They used her has a pawn to get what they wanted: a carbon tax across Canada.”

Did Christy Clark ‘Get Played’ or is She a Player?

Earlier this week Clark reversed a long-standing election promise that her government would not increase the provincial carbon tax. This was the result of an explicit political condition placed on federal approval of the Pacific Northwest LNG project.  

Clark sure as heck wanted this Pacific Northwest LNG approved. She set ambitious LNG targets for herself, promising to have three LNG facilities up and running by 2020 and committing much of her cabinet to LNG project approvals.

So far, none of the other already approved LNG projects — Squamish's small-scale Woodfibre LNG plant, and the two giant Kitimat LNG projects by Shell and Chevron — have moved ahead with final investment decisions.

But that doesn’t mean Clark wasn’t willing to leverage the federal approval of the Pacific Northwest LNG project for some political advantage.  

It’s entirely possible Clark’s cheshire grin at Tuesday’s rushed press conference was due to the fact that she could say “we did everything we could,” McPhail said.

“Maybe the cat that ate the canary face was just for show to demonstrate to media, ‘hey look I was right all along, we’re the jobs people and look how hard we worked.’ ”

But the approval of the Pacific Northwest project may just be setting the stage for the main B.C. event: the federal approval of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

That’s what it comes down to for Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs.

“We suspect that in part the tradeoff between the federal government and the Clark government here in B.C. is that the premier agreed to sign on to the federal carbon tax proposal,” Phillip told DeSmog Canada.

“Furthermore we believe in exchange the federal government has agreed to complete the hat trick of betrayal of the promises and commitments made to the First Nations people during the course of the last federal election will be the approval of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proposal.”

The Vancouver Sun’s Editorial Board has yet another take on the connection between the LNG approval and the pending pipeline decision, stating that Trudeau’s LNG approval will win “applause from resource sector” while giving the Prime Minister the credibility to impose the moratorium on oil tankers on the northern coast, thereby killing Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline and “winning the admiration of the environmental movement.”

“Having earned his green spurs, he can [then] approve the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain” pipeline….having deftly played both sides of the street.”

The federal government is expected to make a final decision on the Trans Mountain pipeline by December.

For Project Opponents, Approval Still Represents Betrayal

Phillip is among many of the project’s opponents that consider the federal government’s approval of the project — even if a political charade — a deep betrayal.

“Let me begin by saying that to see the deception inherent in the approval of the Pacific Northwest LNG project proposal flies in the face of any notion of genuine reconciliation between the government of Canada or the province of B.C. and First Nations.”

Lax Kw'alaams woman Christine Smith-Martin crashed the Trudeau government’s Tuesday night Petronas LNG decision announcement in protest while holding a jar of salmon.  Photo: Mychaylo Prystupa.

“Clearly there has been a great deal of backroom dealing going on.”

Cullen, who spent Friday in Haida Gwaii for the royal visit, said many people in Northern B.C. are furious.

“Trudeau wasn’t invited here, the Premier wasn’t invited here for a reason. People are feeling very betrayed right now,” he said, adding Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, were canoed by members of the Haida nation wearing “no LNG” t-shirts.

“Haida elders expressed their real sadness and anger,” he said.

David Moscrop, a political scientist and PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia, said that kind of betrayal comes with high political costs.

“You don’t get to shake the betrayal because the approval didn’t work out — the betrayal sticks to you,” he told DeSmog Canada.

Moscrop, who studies democratic governance, said if the Pacific Northwest deal goes south it will be a lose-lose for the federal government.

“On the right and left they’re going to be accused of having sold out,” he said. “This doesn’t benefit anyone participating in this process.”

‘Cui Bono?’

Moscrop said ultimately, it may have been both the provincial and federal governments who got played.

“I like to ask the old question: ‘cui bono?’” he said, referring to the ancient question, meaning simply, who benefits?

“People think industry and government are friendly, but only to the extent that they can get something out of one another.”

“If industry thinks it can gain significant advantage by sticking it to the government, they will.”

Throughout the project review process Petronas, a company with a poor human rights record, leveraged poor market conditions as a way to gain an ever-sweetening deal for the project from the provincial government. Petronas successfully negotiated for enormous income tax breaks and weakening of carbon tax rules that could cost B.C. taxpayers millions of dollars.

“I don’t blame them — either get out or leverage this moment to get every nickel and dime out while the getting is good,” Moscrop said, adding if Petronas was eyeing a sale of its Pacific Northwest LNG project it will be easier now with a conditional approval under their belt.

McPhail said the idea Petronas is threatening to pull out of the project for leverage might be what worries her most of all.

“My biggest fear is this is a negotiation tactic from Petronas,” she said.

“This is smart business accounting, smart corporate accounting. That’s what these guys are doing. If they’re threatening now, people are going to say 'give them whatever they want, please don’t go.' ”

Image: Premier Christy Clark and the ministers gather in Richmond for the approval of the Pacific Northwest LNG terminal. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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It’s been a month of mostly good news for Enbridge and Kinder Morgan, the two companies pushing to build major pipeline projects from Alberta’s oilsands to British Columbia’s coast.

Quick recap: on April 11, the National Post reported that the federal government is drawing up a pipeline implementation strategy for Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion Project and TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline.

Two weeks later, Bloomberg noted the federal government is reevaluating its tanker ban on the province’s northern coast, which currently bars exports from the Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. On the same day (April 25), Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement project was quietly approved by the National Energy Board, boosting future exports by 370,000 barrels/day.

Capping off the busy spell is the May 6 announcement that Enbridge has requested a three year extension from the National Energy Board for the Northern Gateway pipeline. The company is required to begin construction by 2016 according to its current permits but says it needs more time to lock down legal permissions and further consult with Indigenous peoples.

The reinvigoration of these pipeline projects come on the heels of a major lobbying effort by both Enbridge and Kinder Morgan.

Enbridge and Kinder Morgan Met with Federal Officials a Combined 37 Times Since October

Since the federal Liberals were elected in October 2015, Enbridge has met with federal officials 20 times, including two meetings with Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr, another two meetings with Fisheries and Oceans Minister Hunter Tootoo and one meeting with Transport Minister Marc Garneau.

The company, represented in lobbying activities by CEO Al Monaco, met with Janet Annesley, chief of staff of the Department of Natural Resources and former vice president for communications at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, another three times.

In that same span, Kinder Morgan Canada president Ian Anderson lobbied federal officials 17 times. Four of those meetings included Bob Hamilton, deputy minister of the Department of Natural Resources. The company met with Timothy Gardiner, director general of the department of Natural Resources, another three times.

It also lobbied Gerald Butts, principal secretary and right-hand man for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as well as Environment and Climate Change Canada’s chief of staff Marlo Raynolds.

Pipeline Companies ‘Absolutely Desperate to Start Construction’

Such numbers don’t match Suncor’s 46 registered lobbying efforts since October. But they’re certainly notable.

“The concern is that corporations from Texas like Kinder Morgan are able to purchase undue influence due to their ability to afford an army of lobbyists,” says Kai Nagata, Dogwood Initiative’s energy and democracy director. “The content of their lobbying, to my mind, has got to be pretty clear. They’re absolutely desperate to start construction.”

“The longer that they are forced to delay their project, especially in the current price environment, the longer that a review takes, the more their project costs increase and the more money they lose, and the more restless their shippers become,” he adds.

The federal government has attempted to appear neutral on the subject of pipelines, reiterating that the review process conducted by the National Energy Board is intended to be independent.

But the Alberta government has taken a much more aggressive stance, pushing hard for both Kinder Morgan and Energy East despite significant opposition from Indigenous and climate activists.

Resurrected Northern Gateway to Make Kinder Morgan More Appealing

Which makes the rumours around Northern Gateway rather confounding.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley previously expressed skepticism about the future of the project. Shortly before the province’s election in 2015, she stated that “I think that there’s just too much environmental sensitivity there and I think there’s a genuine concern by the indigenous communities.”

Little has changed on those fronts. The recent B.C. Supreme Court ruling on the province’s failure to consult with Gitga'at and other Coastal First Nations about the pipeline will further delay the project.

Nagata suggests that Enbridge hasn’t counted on Northern Gateway in its business plan for many years (it’s set to spend billions in the coming years on renewable energy projects).

In other words, the supposed resuscitation of the project may serve as a clever piece of horse trading to make other projects appear as the lesser of two evils compared to the highly contentious Northern Gateway.

“[They’ll] throw it under the bus as a sacrifice to move Kinder Morgan or Energy East forward,” Nagata says. “But in order for that strategy to work, they have to make Northern Gateway appear viable.”

Potential Bilateral Trade Deal with China May Increase Pressure on Governments

Such moves require careful coordination. That’s where effective lobbying efforts may well come in.

Nagata suggests that pressures may also be coming from China, which Canada is preparing (and might have already started) to negotiate a free-trade agreement with: “China has made no secret of its desire for a West Coast pipeline and greater ownership of Canadian oil companies,” he says.

Such realities put Canadian politicians in a very tricky spot, given they’re already subject to annual budget cycles and fickle public opinion.

But Nagata emphasizes that B.C. residents aren’t about to sacrifice the province’s coast to make up for poor planning by the governments of Alberta and Canada. If the National Energy Board and federal government ends up approving the Kinder Morgan project, it will come with legal and political ramifications, he says.

“It’s a risky strategy, because I can tell you it’s certainly motivating British Columbians to take a stand for their interests,” he says. “This is a short-term move that will have long-term consequences for these politicians and their political brands, especially in B.C.”

Image: PMO

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No one has a better handle on the effect climate deniers have on the socio-political stage than science historian and author Naomi Oreskes.   Her book Merchants of Doubt charts the path of many of the world’s most notorious deniers, skeptics, shills, PR men and experts-for-hire. Plus, as a trained historian and professor of earth and environmental sciences at Harvard, Oreskes has the ability to take a 10,000-foot view when it comes to climate politics and the turning tide of public opinion.   Oreskes recently visited Vancouver to discuss climate change and climate denial in Canada at a talk organized by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.     For Oreskes, understanding how climate denial is active in places like Canada involves acknowledging the expansiveness of climate change as an issue, one that cuts across boundaries between government, society and market power.   We asked Oreskes what she makes of Canada’s current political situation — a situation in which our  prime minister announces impressive climate targets on the world stage but then quietly approves B.C.’s first LNG export terminal on a Friday afternoon.   “Of course there is a long road ahead,” Oreskes said. “[Climate change] is a very big issue that reaches into economics, politics and culture.”

“But that does not mean we should discount the very substantial gains that are now being made, especially here in Canada, with the great breakthrough in Alberta.” 

Although new governments on both the provincial and federal level have reinvigorated the prospect of nationwide climate action, Canada has yet to make substantial headway in limiting carbon pollution, Oreskes admits.   A February report from Environment and Climate Change Canada shows the country is not on track to meet its climate targets. Development of oil and gas in both Alberta and B.C. is expected to prevent Canada from getting back on course.   Oreskes says straight-up climate denial is less visible in Canada than it once was, but that doesn’t mean the interests of the fossil fuel industry have disappeared.   A new form of climate denialism is at work, Oreskes argues, one meant to persuade the public that fossil fuels are necessary and renewables unreliable. Alternatives to fossil fuels, Oreskes recently wrote in The Guardian, “are disparaged by a new generation of myths.”   Those myths include the idea that countries like Canada are dependent on new fossil fuel infrastructure for prosperity.   Canada has been beset by a new collective of industry advocacy groups, like British Columbians for Prosperity, Resource Works, Canada Action and Oil Respect, that advance this kind of thinking.   Asked what Canadians should be on the lookout for, knowing that climate denial groups and pro-industry organizations continue to advance a fossil fuel agenda, Oreske said awareness is the first step.   “A lot of groups now are saying, well, yes, maybe there is a bit of climate change, but we can't afford not to fill in the blank: develop tar sands, frack for gas, build new pipelines, etc.”   “This is not a new argument,” Oreskes added. “We've heard it since the early 1990s. I wrote about it back in the 2000s. But we can expect it to be made more strongly post Paris.”   The myths don’t stop there, Oreskes said.   “We are also seeing a line of argument that goes like this: yes renewables are nice, but they are too intermittent and unreliable to be our primary source of power.”   “There are several important recent studies that show this is not true, especially in North America where we have so much solar, wind and hydro.”   One such study, recently published by The Solutions Project research team at Stanford University, outlines how Canada could achieve 100 per cent renewable energy by the year 2050 with a mixture of solar, wind, existing hydro, wave and geothermal energy.   The idea that renewables aren’t reliable has gained a lot of traction, Oreskes said. She added a particularly “egregious and sexist version” of that argument was on full display in Shell’s highly criticized video campaign that compared renewable energy to a fickle woman.   According to a new report by the UK-based Influence Map, Shell spent USD$22 million in 2015 lobbying against climate legislation.   Despite industry-sponsored attacks on clean energy, renewables have taken off in recent years. Nearly $500 billion was invested in clean energy in 2015.   But that figure is overshadowed by global fossil fuel subsidies. The International Monetary Fund estimates government subsidized the fossil fuel sector to the tune of USD$5.3 trillion in 2015 by failing to charge for the climate, environmental and human health impacts of oil, gas and coal combustion.   Oreskes cautions that “because energy is not a free market” we cannot simply rely on market mechanisms to solve the climate conundrum.   “Fossil fuels are still gigantically subsidized,” she said. “So we need to eliminate those subsidies.”   Oreskes added these combined social and political influences driving fossil fuel interests make it dangerous to think the era of climate denial has come to an end.   “It ain't over till its over.”     Image: Naomi Oreskes/TED

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At the Canada-U.S. bilateral talks last week President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an ambitious plan to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40 to 45 per cent below 2012 levels by 2025. 40-45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025 from the oil and gas sector – See more at: http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2016/03/10/us-canada-joint-statement-climate-energy-and-arctic-leadership#sthash.wStj0LFd.dpuf 40-45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025 from the oil and gas sector – See more at: http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2016/03/10/us-canada-joint-statement-climate-energy-and-arctic-leadership#sthash.wStj0LFd.dpuf

The announcement came as welcome news to many environmental groups concerned about the high global warming potential of methane. The gas is 25 to 34 times as potent as carbon dioxide over a century.   Methane is a component of natural gas and the recent fracking boom in both Canada and the U.S. has dramatically increased methane emissions from gas production and transportation as well as fugitive emissions leaked from processing stations and pipelines.   Scott Vaughan, executive director of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and former Canadian environment commissioner, said the cross-border plan to limit emissions is “really impressive.”   “The announcement, if implemented, will lead to reducing [absolute] emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector by about 20 per cent,” Vaughan told DeSmog Canada.

A recent analysis by the research firm ICF, commissioned by the Pembina Institute and the Environmental Defense Fund, found a nationwide 45 per cent reduction in methane is the equivalent to taking every passenger car off the road in both British Columbia and Alberta. 

The reductions would equal the removal of 27 million metric tonnes of Canada’s carbon dioxide emissions.   The recent ICF analysis found industry could cut 45 per cent of methane emissions easily and cost-effectively by simply adopting available best practices.   The joint Canada-U.S. climate strategy indicated regulatory bodies in both countries will move as “expeditiously as possible” to develop national regulations for methane emissions. Environment and Climate Change Canada committed to releasing the initial phase of proposed regulations by early 2017.   Both countries will require industry to report on existing methane sources.   Canada currently has no national framework for reporting methane emissions from all industrial sources. Consistent underreporting of methane emissions has plagued the oil and gas industry, leading international experts to conclude regions with high volumes of fracking, such as northeastern B.C., likely have much worse climate impacts than reported.   A 2014 DeSmog Canada investigation revealed B.C.’s methane emissions are likely seven times greater than reported, meaning the CO2 equivalent of the industry is around 25 per cent higher than estimated.   The B.C. Ministry of Environment estimates 0.3 to 0.4 per cent of fugitive emissions are lost to the atmosphere during natural gas fracking, processing and transport. Recent studies in the U.S. found that figure is likely closer to the four to nine per cent range.   The high fugitive methane emissions associated with fracking has led experts to conclude natural gas is equivalent to or worse than coal as a source of energy when it comes to climate impacts.   According to Vaughan, the high climate impact of methane is what makes the Canada-U.S. collaboration on emissions so significant.   “The question of how we account for fugitive emissions is really important, and urgent,” Vaughan said. “What we really need to see now is a strong political commitment to move together jointly."   Vaughan added both Canada and the U.S. are signatories of the Paris Agreement to limit temperature increases to as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible.   “Debates about ideology are over and this is a question now of arithmetic: how much can we as global community stand to emit and still hit that target?”   Andrew Gage, staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, said although the plan to reduce methane emissions is significant, the overall agreement keeps the door open for continued oil and gas development.   Gage said the agreement takes what Canada and the U.S. call a “science-based approach to oil and gas” development.   “It’s interesting because science supports more or less full decarbonization by mid-century, if not sooner,” Gage told DeSmog Canada.   The agreement relies on “the idea that — if we can just regulate methane emission well enough — we can continue on with developing fossil fuels,” he said.   “I think it’s fairly clear that the trajectory of that is wrong,” Gage added.   “If we’re talking about science, it’s talking about decarbonization by 2050 at the latest and here we are ramping up and banking our economy on an industry that is completely out of alignment with that.”   Without clear plans for implementing the joint climate strategy and how meaningful methane emissions reductions will be achieved, high-level agreements such as this are mere “lipservice,” Gage said.   “The methane stuff seems to be relatively positive but… you don’t just announce a target, you lay out how you will achieve it.”

Image: Justin Trudeau 

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The strained relationship between Canada and the U.S. over the last decade was in no small part due to disagreement over the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline.    Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper was a staunch supporter of what he called the “no-brainer” project. President Obama, on the other hand, felt like all sorts of brain should be involved when deciding on the future of such major fossil fuel infrastructure. And he rightfully rejected the border crossing pipeline project, which had clearly failed his climate test.   Now, with Canada’s new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the helm of America’s Hat, the two most intimately tied economies in the developed world have a lot of catching up to do. Even with Keystone XL dead and buried (sort of), environment and energy issues are still top of mind for the two leaders.   In a recent Q and A with the Huffington Post, Trudeau acknowledged the timing is right for bold leadership on climate change and the environment: “There is a nice alignment between a Canadian Prime Minister who wants to get all sorts of things done right off the bat and an American President who is thinking about the legacy he is going to leave in his last year in office,” Mr. Trudeau said.   “The issues that are important to him and to me are climate change.”   Obama and Trudeau already had an informal ‘bromance’ meeting soon after the new Prime Minister took office in November 2015. But now, with the unprecedented Paris Agreement behind them, the two leaders have an incredible opportunity to break new ground on climate action and environmental protection at this formal summit.   Here are the top five energy and environment issues these self-proclaimed climate leaders should have on their agenda:

1. North American Climate Change Strategy 

Rumors have already spread about the signing of a continental climate change plan between Canada and the U.S. that will focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions on both sides of the border.   Recently Canada’s international trade minister Chrystia Freeland told the Globe and Mail that a North American climate agreement is a priority for Trudeau at the bilateral talks this week.   Freeland, who chairs the cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations, said officials are working on a climate and environment package for Obama and Trudeau to announce during the summit. The agreement is expected to focus on emissions from the transportation sector, strengthening fuel emissions standards and spurring the production and use of electric vehicles and ride-sharing apps.   Trudeau recently hosted a First Ministers’ Meeting in Canada that brought together provincial, federal and indigenous leaders to discuss the issue of climate change. The meeting resulted in the Vancouver Declaration, a document that outlines a new climate change negotiating process for the country that will give Trudeau a better sense of what Canada can offer to a continental strategy.   Todd Stern, White House envoy, told reporters in Washington that a part of the climate strategy on the table will involve 40 to 45 per cent reductions in methane emissions from the oil and gas sector from 2012 levels by 2025.   2. Drilling in a Climate-Threatened Arctic 

Environmental organizations on both sides of the border recognize the bilateral talks as a prime opportunity to impose a moratorium on oil drilling in the pristine and ecologically sensitive Arctic — something insiders say is unlikely to happen.   Obama and Trudeau are expected to address the issue of the Arctic specifically as a part of their larger climate and environment strategy.   In recent years, Arctic sea ice has been at an all time low while rising sea levels have accelerated coastal erosion and melting permafrost has threatened the structural integrity of northern infrastructure. Some Arctic communities have already been forced to relocate, placing indigenous cultures and traditional ways of life under threat.   The agreement announced at the Obama-Trudeau Summit is expected to include measures to protect sensitive marine areas in the Arctic and bring more renewable energy to remote communities to eliminate the high use of diesel which produces a soot by-product known as ‘black carbon’ that further exacerbates ice melt.   A ban on Arctic drilling is not expected to form part of the agreement.   “Drilling is all risk and no reward,” Franz Matzner from the Natural Resources Defense Council told The Globe and Mail. “And now it is a perfect opportunity to take it off the table.”   The U.S. is currently the chair of the Arctic Council, a position held by Canada for the last two years. Environmentalists would like to see the U.S. set an example in the Arctic by refusing to grant new oil and gas leases.   There is currently no active drilling in the Arctic although exploratory activity is taking place in the Beaufort Sea.

3. Off Fossil Fuels, On to Clean Energy

At the December 2015 Paris climate talks both Canada and the U.S. agreed to limit global temperature increase to two degrees Celsius and to create carbon neutral economies by 2050. Both countries have also promised to eliminate the use of fossil fuels by 2100.   The fossil fuel industry is subsidized to the tune of $20 billion in the U.S. each year and roughly $5.6 billion in Canada. Both countries have pledged, along with all other G20 nations, to end fossil fuel subsidies although no significant progress has been made. In fact, Canada appears to be moving in the wrong direction: last year investment in renewables skyrocketed around the world but dropped by 46 per cent in Canada.   Alternately, the U.S. is the second largest clean energy economy after China. In 2015 the U.S. invested $56 billion in renewables, an increase of seven per cent from 2015, according to Clean Energy Canada.   Canada and the U.S. have the capacity to integrate clean energy grids across the border. But this will only represent meaningful climate progress if investments in clean energy are used to accelerate a major transition off fossil fuel-based energy systems.   Obama already has a Clean Power Plan (currently stalled in litigation) that will allow states to purchase clean Canadian power. According to the North American Electric Reliability Council this could lead to Canada tripling its clean energy exports to the U.S. by 2030.

4. Mining Regulations 

Tensions regarding Canadian mining regulations are at an all time high between British Columbia and Alaska after the collapse of the Mount Polley mine tailings pond in August 2014. An estimated 24 million cubic metres of mining waste were released into Quesnel Lake, a pristine source of drinking water and spawning grounds for a large portion of B.C.’s sockeye salmon.   The accident exposed poor mining practices and an inadequate regulatory regime in the province.   Since then, Alaskans near the border have voiced concern over the 10 new mines in construction or proposed for northwestern B.C. A tailings pond breach at one of the new mines, one of which is operated by Imperial Metals, the owner of the Mount Polley mine, could devastate a local economy dependent on tourism and fishing.   There are only five mines operating in Alaska, none of which use wet tailings ponds for waste storage. Only two of those mines are near salmon runs in southeast Alaska.   Growing concerns that Alaskans aren’t given adequate input into the decision-making process could be allayed by an appeal to the International Join Commission, a body established to resolve Canada/U.S. water disputes. 

5. Trans Pacific Partnership 

The TPP is one of the most controversial and secretive international trade deals ever brokered. In October 2015 Canada and the U.S. along with 10 other nations finalized the details of the TPP although the agreement has yet to be ratified.   If adopted the TPP will introduce new measures to protect fossil fuel giants and their profits from effective climate policies. Just like under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the TPP deal includes provisions that allow corporations to sue countries that limit the extraction of oil, gas and coal or the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.   While Canada and the U.S. at the highest level are promising to implement meaningful climate policies — policies that are critical to achieving targets enshrined in the Paris Agreement — international trade deals give companies the right to sue if those policies hurt their bottom line.   The White House touted the environmental benefits of the trade deal, saying it is a “once-in-a-generation chance to protect our oceans, wildlife and the environment.” But Karthik Ganapathy of 350.org told ThinkProgress the deal is “an absolute disaster for our climate.”   Although Trudeau has indicated he is pro trade and that the TPP represents an important opportunity for Canada, the deal was negotiated under the previous federal government with little to no public accountability or disclosure. This conflicts with Trudeau’s commitment to transparency in government.   Perhaps Trudeau, who promised to consider Canadians’ concerns as well as indigenous rights in light of the agreement, could reopen crucial elements of the deal for discussion with the U.S.   But I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.

Image: PMO press gallery

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The summer of 2010 was a bad year for Saskatchewan. Record floods, winds, and hailstorms led to 175 communities declaring states of emergency, and costing the province over $100 million. “The Summer of Storms” also made it the worst year ever for insurers, with $100 million in crop insurance payouts.

Premier Brad Wall, a man once described by Maclean’s as “standing athwart history yelling ‘I’m not sure about this!’” responded to the string of natural disasters with a telling quote: “The one thing the province cannot control is the weather,” he said.

Unfortunately for Saskatchewan, the type of extreme weather that cost it so dearly in 2010 is symptomatic of what models predict for the province under a changing climate.

Sure enough, extreme weather was yet again making headlines and shutting down entire cities in 2014.

On carbon emissions, the province is Canada writ small: both are small emitters in their larger contexts, yet large emitters per capita. Saskatchewan is the biggest carbon source per capita in the country, with three quarters of the province’s energy coming from coal and natural gas, although it plans to reduce that to 50 per cent by 2030.

Wall’s philosophy on climate change appears to be to downplay the significance of actual emissions while encouraging innovation in Canada that can be exported to larger emitters — tackling carbon on a larger scale than what can be done in the Canada’s relatively small arena.

Frustrated during last year’s Paris climate conference by his characterization in the media as being out of step with the rest of the premiers, he defended his province, saying he was actually offering a solution: carbon capture and storage (CCS). His flagship endeavour in this regard is the CCS facility at SaskPower’s Boundary Dam coal power station, which he regards as a model for the world’s developing nations as they bring more and more coal-fired plants online.

“We can talk all we want about cap and trade or carbon taxes in Canada, but we’re three per cent of global emissions,” he told Alberta Oil Magazine before the Paris conference. “So why don’t we, as Canadians, decide to lead the world and develop technologies that can be applied in places like China and India and Indonesia and Europe where coal is being turned on right now?”

The Saskatchewan government hypes the Boundary Dam project for capturing 90 per cent of the emissions from one of the station’s units. However, what is captured doesn’t all stay that way; some is lost in the capturing phase and some is sold for use in oil extraction, meaning that only about half of what is captured is actually stored on a permanent basis when the CCS process is working — which it only is about 40 per cent of the time.

Reducing part of a coal power station’s emissions by almost a fifth, however, is still no mean feat if it can be done in a way that would encourage emerging economies to follow the example, i.e. by being cost-effective.

But that doesn’t seem to be the case: the economics of the CCS technology at Boundary Dam have not borne out, and given that the project is projected to lose about a billion dollars over its lifespan, energy reporter David Roberts called the $1.47 billion price tag a “very high carbon tax” on provincial and federal taxpayers as well as anyone paying for power in Saskatchewan.

Perhaps, then, it’s because the province already has a de facto carbon tax that Wall has promised to refuse to sign any carbon tax put forth at this week’s premiers’ meeting.

He has consistently criticized the idea of carbon taxes, worrying that the money would be directed into federal coffers (like the equalization payments his province already pays), and that the low price of oil is already hitting the oil industry hard.

His stance that oil companies are too fragile to support a carbon tax, however, is undermined by industry statements like Suncor CEO Steve Williams’ assertion last year that he believes “a broad-based carbon price is the right answer.”

Wall nearly missed the 2015 premiers’ meeting because his province was on fire, but decided to attend at the last minute to make sure the other premiers knew that “oil and gas is not something we should be ashamed of.”

It appears his message will remain the same this year, fighting the rest of the premiers and the federal government on behalf of an industry that seems to itself be coming around to the other side of the argument.

If the premier can’t control the weather, in other words, he could certainly benefit from knowing which way the wind blows.

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.

This article originally appeared on the Dogwood Initiative blog.

With final arguments in the Kinder Morgan pipeline review underway in Burnaby, a top Chinese official is using the moment to offer Canadians a deal. During his visit to Ottawa last Friday, Han Jun, China’s Vice-Minister of Financial and Economic Affairs, said the world’s second-largest economy would be willing to sign a Free Trade Agreement with Canada — but only if we build a pipeline to the West Coast.

Signing an FTA, Han suggested, would give Canadian agriculture and energy producers greater access to China’s domestic market. In return, Beijing also wants restrictions lifted on takeovers of Canadian companies by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

China has been working to gain access to Canadian oil reserves for more than a decade. As Enbridge’s first partner on Northern Gateway in 2005, state-owned PetroChina pledged to purchase up to half of the pipeline’s capacity, but became frustrated by delays and eventually pulled out of the project.

In the years following, China’s SOEs invested billions into the Canadian oil patch, culminating in the 2013 purchase of Nexen by the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) for $15 billion. (In a tragic coincidence, hours after Han spoke in Ottawa, an explosion at Nexen’s Long Lake facility killed one worker and left another critically injured.)

After the Nexen takeover, which prompted concerns about China’s human rights record, labour practices and one-way approach to investment, Prime Minister Stephen Harper brought in restrictions on future purchases of Canadian firms by Chinese SOEs. Angered by the gesture, the Chinese administration shelved negotiations on a Canada-China trade deal.

Now Beijing is back, once again dangling the prospect of free trade. Right on cue, two friendly think tanks — the Canada-China Business Council and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives — released a report arguing that a trade deal with China would boost Canadian exports by $7.7-billion over the next fifteen years and create 25,000 additional jobs.

“During the term of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau there are rare, historical opportunities between China and Canada,” Han told the Globe and Mail. Here in Canada, influential members of the Liberal family are working hard to prove him right.

Having served as Jean Chretien’s former Deputy Prime Minister (as well as Minister of Finance, Foreign Affairs, and Industry), John Manley is perhaps the most visible former Liberal lobbying for closer economic ties to China. Manley is President and CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, which co-authored the Canada-China FTA report.

The CCCE’s Chairman is Paul Desmarais Jr., whose day job is Chairman and Co-CEO of Power Corporation of Canada. Having employed at different times Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, and Pierre Trudeau, the late Paul Desmarais Sr. was also the founding Chairman of the Canada-China Business Council, which is the other co-author of the above-cited FTA report.

The CCBC is stacked with Liberal heavyweights. Its current Chairman, Peter Kruyt, works for Desmarais at Power Corporation, while its Vice Chairman is former Liberal Justice Minister Martin Cauchon. The CCBC’s President is Peter Harder, a highly-respected former federal civil servant. When Justin Trudeau needed an experienced set of hands to oversee his transition into government, he called Harder.

None of this is to suggest that further trade with China is in itself a bad idea. But the terms on which we negotiate such a deal must be fair to Canadians, as well as uphold the country’s duties to First Nations. By cheerleading publicly for an FTA, old-guard Liberals like Manley and Desmarais increase the pressure on Trudeau to cut a quick deal on China’s terms.

Don’t forget, any new trade deal would take effect in addition to the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement ratified by the previous government. The FIPA, from which Canada cannot fully withdraw for the next 30 years, locked in more wide-ranging investment rights for Chinese companies than Canadian firms get in China. That’s why signing the FIPA before negotiating a Free Trade Agreement was a mistake by the federal government, according to one of the treaty’s most vocal critics.

“The sequencing works in China's favour,” says Osgoode Hall law professor Gus Van Harten. “China is the capital exporter in the relationship, so it has the greater interest in a FIPA that provides special rights and protections to each country's investors in the other country. I would say that, with the FIPA, the Harper government gave away one of Canada's bargaining chips to get a favourable trade deal. Now we should be going into trade negotiations with a view to repairing some of the flaws in the FIPA, which will not be straightforward or easy.”

Among the problems with the FIPA — at least for Canadians concerned about environmental laws or labour standards — is the right of Chinese corporations to sue Canada over decisions by courts or legislatures that are seen to interfere with their investments. These investor-state disputes are settled in secretive international tribunals overseen by for-profit arbitrators, and can force host countries to pay damages in the billions of dollars. (For more on the Canada-China FIPA, see Sold Down the Yangtze by Gus Van Harten).Add up the lopsided terms of the FIPA and the sudden pressure on Trudeau to conclude a Free Trade Agreement and the picture becomes clear. China intends to use this next round of trade talks to get what it has wanted for more than ten years: ownership of Canadian energy assets and secure access via pipelines and supertanker terminals on the West Coast.

Let’s curtail any accusations of Sinophobia, right here and now. My family was the victim of the same ‘yellow peril’ discourse that has simmered below the surface of B.C. politics for more than a century. This is not about racism toward Chinese people. This is about protecting our sovereignty — Canadian sovereignty, B.C. sovereignty and Indigenous sovereignty — from a powerful international trading partner.

Prime Minister Trudeau’s job is to balance the pressure coming from the likes of Han Jun, John Manley and Paul Desmarais Jr. with the legal and political realities here in British Columbia. Just last Monday the B.C. government came out in opposition to Kinder Morgan because the company has no credible plan to clean up toxic, sinking bitumen. Municipalities and First Nations around the Salish Sea applauded the province’s move.

Then on Wednesday the B.C. Supreme Court delivered the game-changing Gitga’at ruling, concluding that B.C. erred in signing away its duties of consultation around Enbridge’s Northern Gateway proposal. That ruling has clear implications for theKinder Morgan review, which relies on the same “Equivalency Agreement” between B.C. and Ottawa. Pipelines, as it turns out, are not the exclusive domain of the federal government.

As Beijing ramps up its campaign for a West Coast pipeline approval, our job will be to support those Members of Parliament looking to do right by their constituents — and prevent another cave-in like what happened with the FIPA. Simply put, if the cost of a trade agreement involves dangerous bitumen-laden supertankers on our coast, then the people of B.C. aren’t going to accept the terms. We have just under two months to make that clear before Trudeau heads on his first trade mission to China.

Image: Prime Minister Photo Gallery

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Stephen Harper is not interested in root causes or academic debates. When Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau suggested in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings that acts of terrorism are best seen in the context of their social causes, Harper swiftly rejected the idea.

At a press conference in Ottawa, Harper responded to Trudeau by declaring that now is not the time to “commit sociology.” As a counter-proposal, Harper said that terrorists are simply “people who have agendas of violence that are deep and abiding threats to all the values that our society stands for.”

It was a familiar piece of rhetoric straight out of the George W. Bush playbook. Terrorists are enemies of freedom who only understand the language of violence. Politicians need to be strong leaders who can cut through the complexity of the modern world with decisive action. Politics is merely the act of choosing sides.

But Harper’s strange linguistic turn of describing sociology as something that one “commits” (what else collocates with that verb?) wasn’t just the return of stale War on Terror posturing. It points beyond anti-terrorism legislation and partisan spats to the deeper roots of Conservative strategy.

His aversion to critical thought aside, Prime Minister Harper is correct in saying that acts of terrorism are an affront to Canadian values. Violence against civilians should have no place in Canadian politics, either domestically or internationally. But it isn’t just terrorists who are excluded from Canada’s imagined community. 

In working to build support for the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines, the Conservatives have repeatedly described opponents of pipeline development as radicals. The implication is that these activists are so unhinged in their opposition to fossil fuels that they have placed themselves beyond the pale of Canadian public discourse. In Conservative parlance, a radical is someone blindly given over to some niche ideology, with no understanding of common sense or the good of the nation.

There’s a considerable amount of overlap between radicals and terrorists in popular usage of the two terms. The mention of radicals conjures images of black bloc tactics, property destruction and pipeline bombings. Terrorists are said to have undergone a process of radicalization, in which they transformed from normal citizens into murderous villains. 

In the United States, where a wave of prosecutions against environmental activists has been labeled a “green scare,” the line between political radicals and terrorists is even more blurred. Members of groups such as the Earth Liberation Front have been prosecuted as domestic terrorists for acts of sabotage and property destruction, although they were deliberately calculated to avoid harming human beings.

In a further abuse of language, American activists who film deplorable conditions in slaughterhouses have been labeled “animal rights terrorists.” New legislation called “ag-gag” laws threatens to criminalize the simple act of filming animal abuse in factory farms.

The end result is that the terms radical environmentalist and eco-terrorist become interchangeable. By equating radicalism with extremism and violence, the political center grows narrower, and those whose views are not represented in government find themselves outside the borders of the body politic.

But when we trace the meaning of radical to its Latin origins, we find something completely different. Radical comes from the Latin radicalis, meaning “of or having roots.” In English, the term originally describes going to the origins or root causes of something, and in its political sense refers to “change from the roots.”

Seen in this light, Stephen Harper’s response to Trudeau’s comments begins to make a little more sense. Though he’s far from being a radical himself, Trudeau’s interest in finding the root causes of terrorism places him in the radical tradition. That tradition sees society as something that we have constructed, and therefore as something that we can collectively transform and improve.

The Conservative tradition, on the other hand, sees the social order as a victory over chaos, and something that must be preserved. It is not interested in looking at scientific evidence, participating in genuine debate, or hearing the voices of the oppressed.

The basic strategy of Harper’s Conservatives is to maintain the injustices and errors of Canadian society by making the social order seem timeless, universal and normal. To that end, they cut funding for science, shut down democratic debate and build a constituency through regular appeals to common sense.

Examples of this abound in Conservative policy. Since common sense tells us that criminals are bad people, we need to build more prisons and issue tougher sentences—despite mountains of evidence on the greater effectiveness of rehabilitation programs. Since oil is a valuable commodity, we need to extract it—even if the resulting wealth goes to a tiny minority, while the rest of us face the ballooning costs of adapting to climate change.

When confronted with threats to the social order, whether from terrorism or imminent climate change, Conservatives react by doing more of the same: more police powers, more oil extraction, more common sense.

Contrary to what Prime Minister Harper thinks, now is the perfect time to commit sociology—to go to the roots. To solve the problems of growing inequality and the ecological limits of growth, we need more than advertising campaigns extolling flimsy economic actions plans. To confront the reality of climate change, we need to draw on scientific evidence as well as democratic debate to transform the way we produce, consume and distribute wealth. Above all, we need to see society not only as something to be defended, but as something that we can radically improve.

Image Credit: PMO photogallery.

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