Politics/EconomicsCanada: British Columbia: Petition vs Oil supertanker port for Chinese market?

As of this moment, obstructionists are trying to prevent an oil export port from being developed in British Columbia by waging a petition campaign thru the web facility Change.org.  The obstructionists in BC are a wing of the more general campaign to stop an oil pipeline proposed to carry oil crude (pre-refinement commodity) from southern Alberta thru the USA to Kansas City or some other hub to distribute it in the American heartland.  The reason for the obstructionists BC wingnut operation is a geostrategic manoeuvre of the war against oil and additional supply of the commodity from drilling in North America.  It's also a selfish effort to prevent job-creation (to build the port or the pipeline and maintain them), so that a "Green" utopia may prevail.  I wonder how many of the so-far 445 signers of the petition are laffing it up as they tour around in their automobiles, trucks, snowmobiles, lawnmowers, airplanes, and other oil-fuelled machines.  

Today, I signed a different petition circulated by Change.org -- to free Nigerian labour activists (petition sponsored by Damian Ugwu and Social Justice Advocacy Initiative, endorsed by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a total of 33 Nigerian groups (they are not listed, so I coudn't analyze them). 

Lamentably, one cannot tell from the info that Change.org provides whether there is a single Nigerian group among them that advocates a plurality of workers representation where unions get only proportional standing (no monopoly unionism) and are not tied into political cawzes that are not directly and only related to conditions of work, employment standards, workers health and safety in the workplace (checkoff of dues under anti-pluralist monopoly unionism where winner of the workers vote takes all representation power in its relation to the company, the government, and any damn political cawz that the elite or the unquestioning majority of members toward which they want to direct union-collected money -- paid by check of dues of all members).  This is how professional petition circulators deceive the public and benefit from ignorance regarding the cawzes which benefit.  Another nonprofit org that I support, Fairfood, recently tried to get me to sign a petition to oppose child labour in, if I recall correctly, coffee or tea plantation fields in developing countries.  But the problem of child labour where there are no schools, where HIV/AIDs has decimated the adult population, and other conditions is not solved by artificial pressure from the outside that the children working in the fields do not find to be in their own best interest.  Fairfood did not debate its move in the public arena of even its own supporters, as it assumed that the standards of Western industrial relations can be imposed everywhere else in the world, even under very different circumstances.  How about giving the kids who want to work a pay raise, allowing only a half-day's work per day, and increasing the number of adults and kids who get this more advanced daily income.  Maybe the governments involved coud forego personal income taxes on the kids, but then that woud de-incentivize adults from taking these field jobs.

Back to the building of oil-tanker ports in BC for the export of Alberta oil to China and the rest of Asia:  if the Americans don't want Alberta oil (ostensibly to protect the environment but we must ask what hidden agenda is functioning in the prohibition), then let the BC wingnutty envros come up with an alternative that doesn't cut down the job creation that otherwise woud accrue to the BC jobless (and jobless from other provinces as well), instead of keeping them perpetually on welfare handouts to the expense of all the taxpayers.  At the same time, the BC govt should insist that a cash deposit shoud be put in escrow to cover any expenses should a tanker spill its cargo onto the BC coastline.  Thus, emergency workers coud be kept in a state of readiness that woud lead to compensation for them (more jobs) should such a painful situation occur.  But, let's build the oil hub in the best location/s for a BC oil crude export centre.

Back to the oil workers in Nigeria:  what kind of unionism is the left and the "human rights" orgs promoting in Nigeria?  And:  did the charged unionists murder the police officer as the Nigerian govt charges?  We can't depend on the Left to tell the truth, any more than the ideologues of the Right.  We need independent verification, to which Change.org dec+dedly does not point us.

— EconoMix

— Change.org materials reposted by EconoMix, refWrite Frontpage economics / business columnistTweet #readEconoMix


Follow @Owlb

Tell Parliament: 

Keep oil supertanker traffic away from B.C.'s coastline

Targeting: Governments of Canada and British Colombia

Sponsored by: Dogwood Initiative

There are three proposals to bring more and bigger oil supertankers to British Columbia's coast, so that Alberta's oilsands crude can be shipped to China and Asia. If this is allowed to happen, most British Columbians would benefit little and B.C.'s resplendent coast would be threatened by oil spills. 

The Alberta and federal governments are pushing for these oil tankers. They're using a review process that's rigged in their favour. But B.C. has a history of defending its coast and an epic struggle is underway.

You can't eliminate and can't predict oil spills. They happen because humans make mistakes and machines break.

A single oil spill could devastate lives, livelihoods, cultures and wildlife on our coast.

There's no need to accept the risk. Far more jobs would be put at risk than created in B.C., and since oil is non-renewable we think it's better to keep more Canadian oil in Canada for our children to use if they need to.

Together, we can create victory for our coast. Sign this petition to stop more supertanker traffic along B.C.’s coast!

SIGN

EconomicsCanada/USA: Oilsands Pipeline: Enviro issue used by USA State Dept to permanentize dirty Saudi oil

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Huffington Post (December 12, 2k11)
by Joshua Hersh
Reposted here by Politicarp
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refWrite comment:  Keystone XL Pipeline woud pump 'ethical oil' to help break USA dependency on 'conflict oil' from Saudi Arabia and other negative funders of totalitarian Islamicist projects in the USA.

It woud be better for Canada to sell the new oil from the tar sands to China.

Here's what Hersh says:

The State Department has hit the brakes on a congressional plan to revive the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project, signaling Monday that it would not be willing to authorize the project under an "arbitrary deadline." 

"Should Congress impose an arbitrary deadline for the permit decision, its actions would not only compromise the process, it would prohibit the Department from acting consistently with National Environmental Policy Act requirements," the State Department said in a statement. "In the absence of properly completing the process, the Department would be unable to make a determination to issue a permit for this project." 

The Keystone XL pipeline would have delivered tar sands crude oil from Alberta, Canada to refineries in the American Midwest. 

But after months of mounting controversy over the project's environmental impact, and scrutiny of the State Department's original regulatory review, the project was indefinitely delayed in early November. Many believed it to have been scrapped entirely. 

But in recent weeks, citing a dubious claim [all claims are dubious in the mundane world] that the project would create 20,000 jobs, congressional Republicans have attempted to force the administration's hand on the pipeline by including a provision in a tax relief bill that would compel the White House to approve the project within 60 days {a crafty but good move that does expose Obama's pretensions]. 

A White House official stressed to HuffPost that although Obama earlier said he would make the final decision on Keystone XL, authority for permitting the project remains with the State Department. Monday's statement reflected the administration's view that the project would not be forced through on a short deadline. 

Sam Stein contributed reporting.

My view: What all this propaganda from Hersh entails is that Republican efforts to exact one clear international trade deal that woud create American jobs thru Canadian-USA free-enterprise partnerships has been denied the green light in the name of extreme Green Leftist politics.  Prez Obama plays exclusively to job-killing environmentalism of the worst kind, becaws he prefers his state monopolies, crony-capitalist waivers to corporations supporting his regime, and bureaucratic obfuscation over his pretended goal of creating jobs.  Sad.

PoliticCanada: Opposition: Govt wants to examine books re its expenditures

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iPolitics (November 23,2k11)
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Bill to open First Nation’s books
‘paternalistic,’ say opposition

NDP aboriginal affairs Critic Linda Duncan.

Posted on Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 7:25 pm by Emily Senger

NDP aboriginal affairs Critic Linda Duncan.

A bill tabled today that will force First Nations chiefs and councilors to disclose their salaries, expenses and financial statements is already drawing fire from opposition members who are calling the legislation paternalistic and unnecessary.

Conservative MP Peter Penashue tabled “An Act to enhance the financial accountability and transparency of First Nations” in the House of Commons Wednesday, which requires First Nations to post their salaries and expenses for chiefs and councillors, consolidated financial statements and auditors’ reports on the internet within 120 days of the end of the financial year.

NDP aboriginal affairs Critic Linda Duncan

The act also requires a First Nation to provide copies 

of these documents to any of its members who request it.

Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan, speaking from the Whitecap Dakota First Nation outside of Saskatoon, said the bill would affect about 580 nations, making accounting information that is already required by the federal government public and accessible.

PoliticsCanada: New Democratic Party: Split regarding unions role in party

Globe and Mail, Toronto (Sept4,2k11)

NDP solidarity cracks over 

role of unions in picking leader

The first clean split among federal New Democrats since Jack Layton passed away last month rests on an issue that strikes at the historical heart of the party: the role of union members in choosing the next leader.

The matter is the first in what promises to be a number of sharp policy debates among the various candidates and factions that Mr. Layton managed to hold together during his time as NDP leader.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/video/video-how-will-the-ndp-cope-with-losing-jack-layton/article2142162/

The article is by 

DANIEL LEBLANC

Ottawa— From Monday's Globe and Mail

Published Sunday, Sep. 04, 2011 7:38PM EDT

Last updated Sunday, Sep. 04, 2011 9:47PM EDT

This one's definitely a refWr+tRecommend!

At the same time, another important article in the mass media on Canadian politics will be found in a second Globe & Mail feature article, Without any fanfare, Canada has grown up.  The stimulating piece is by John Ibbitson, G&M's Ottawa correspondent.

Leader of the itsy-bitsy teenie weenie Greenie Party complains about the present Conservative-majority govt under Stephen Harper which the article renders more understandable, comprehensible. 

“We have never had a prime minister who was less interested in a national vision, and in particular in a strong, shared national-provincial vision,” laments Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party.

One day, a political party may come to power in Ottawa that once again seeks to impose pan-national programs in the interest of a Greater Canada.

But if the country has grown up, then parties of the left as well as the right may prefer co-operation to confrontation, accommodation to imposition. After all, one thing grown-ups learn is to give each other space.

— Politicarp

PoliticsCanada: Church Leader: Canada has distinctive mode of relating faith and politics, says EFC's Clemenger

Faith Today (July/August, 2k11)
Faith Today is the official monthly publication of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada; the author is a doctoral graduate of the Institute for Christian Studies.  Dr Clemenger wrote his doctoral dissertation for ICS on the philosophy of Friedrich von Hayek, a political thinker regarded as a founder or precursor of contemporary libertarianism.  —  Politicarp

The Canadian Way

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by Bruce J. Clemenger, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada


Canada handles the intersection of faith and politics differently than Britain, France or the United States.

The issue of religion rarely surfaced in the recent federal election [in Canada], a change from previous elections. When it did make news, it was usually prompted by media commentators raising the issue.

There were bright spots in the coverage. The National, the CBC TV evening news program, profiled the Elections Kit released by The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC). In this segment explaining how religious groups engage during elections, viewers learned that the EFC is not a single-issue organization, that we cover a breadth of issues and work across party lines.

Perhaps this is an indication of the media's willingness to explore what it means to be Canadian, to be religious and to be a voter or a citizen running for political office.

Party leaders and many other politicians regularly attend religious services and festivals of a variety of religions, but very few say much about their own religious beliefs.

Contrast this with American candidates for public office: for them not to speak about their own faith or not to have photo ops attending their preferred place of worship raises suspicion.

It is characteristically Canadian for our politicians not to wear their religion on their sleeves and instead to publicly reach out to a variety of religious expressions. It's a manifestation of a long-standing non-sectarian approach to religion that distinguishes Canada from Britain, France and the United States, the three countries with the greatest historical influence on our country.

Our Canadian ancestors did not presume faith should be privatized and kept out of the public square (France), nor did we have a state church (Britain), nor do we have a constitutional separation of church and state (United States).

A non-sectarian approach accepts that religions influence all aspects of life including the political - that religion does have political implications - and hence non-sectarianism seeks fairness in accommodating these expressions.

A secularist approach, by contrast, seeks to limit religious expression to the private sphere and asks people to check their specific religious beliefs at the door when entering the House of Commons or engaging in public dialogue about law or public policy. 

Canada's federation was forged in the political dynamics of the French Catholic and English Protestant reality that required anyone who would be prime minister, whatever their first language or denominational allegiance, to be seen as someone who could mediate between these “two solitudes” and be able to accommodate the aspirations of both.

Not only did Canada develop without a constitutional doctrine of the separation of church and state as in the United States, the Canadian constitution provided for the funding of minority religious schools: Catholic schools in predominately Protestant Ontario and Protestant schools in Catholic Quebec. Further, consider our social services sector, where Canada's largest provider besides our governments is The Salvation Army.

Canada's approach has been a robust non-sectarianism, where no single set of doctrines, religious or secularist, would be imposed.

At the same time, a non-sectarian approach does not presume religious neutrality or that the public square can be neutral. Rather, it recognizes that a plurality of worldviews shapes and guides the actions of citizens.

The political world and the broader public realm are shaped by this doctrinal diversity. The goal is not to sanitize statecraft from this plurality, but to accommodate diversity and its expression in the fairest ways possible. In such a context political leaders are expected to be even-handed, fair and just in their dealings with everyone.

What we need is more constructive exploration of the intersection of faith and politics in Canada, and more reflection on how Canada is distinctive from other countries in how this has been expressed.

When political leaders are reluctant to talk about their faith, it doesn't necessarily indicate a hidden agenda or prove they consider their faith to be a private matter with no public consequence.

It might simply mean they understand what previous Canadian leaders learned about giving leadership in a plural and non-sectarian Canada.

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Bruce J. Clemenger is president of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. Read more of his columns at theEFC.ca/clemenger.

PoliticsCanada: Election Results: Conservs get majority, NDP official opposition, Libs now a rump, Bloc decimated, Greens in by 1 seat

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Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's
CBC News (May3,2k11)

refWrite editorial comment:  As of yesterday's federal elections, Canada now has a majority government, a majority if we count not the popular vote, but if we count instead the number of seats won in the Parliament's House of Commons, party by party.  There were four parties in the last Parliament, now augmented by a fifth party, the Green Party of Canada, which won 1 seat (the Saanich - Gulf Islands riding in the province of British Columbia).

A majority government, won by the Conservative Party of Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper yesterdat, will bring stability and will secure a full four year term -- unless the Prime Minister decides to call one sooner.  PM Harper will probably not pull the plug early, since he has been granted in his past winning election campaigns (2006, 2008) only minority governments which served at the whim of the other three parties -- all three having been leftist.  What's especially interesting is that yesterday Jack Layton's New Democratic Party, arguably the most leftist and socialist of the three, now four, opposition parties (which together received a majority of the popular vote) has become the 2nd-place party in regard to seats in the Commons, thus becoming what we call "the official opposition."  He accomplished this, as predicted here, by cutting the previous 2nd place party, the Liberals, down to a rump (falling from 76 in 2008 to 34 today.  Even more interesting was the movement of Lib voters away from that party in Québec where they landed on the doorstep of the NDP,  and Ontario where they fled a feared national victory of the NDP and so headed strait into the arms of the Conservs.

The CBC chart to the left shows how the NDP which was in 4th place before this election, in a sudden upsurge attracted the leftwing votes of the Liberals and decimated the ranks of the previously 3rd place Bloc Québecois, a separatist party which dropped from 49 seats in 2008 to yesterdays win of only 4 seats.

Ironically, the NDP's decimation of the Bloc brawt the newly-elected Québec NDPers into their new party and new caucus in the Commons, while at the same time the NDP lost some of its  veteran parliamentary members from Ontario.  To put the situations in the most mild terms, the influx of ex-BQers who speak French, mostly coupled with the outflow of English-speaking NDPers in its Ontario parliamentary ranks, has created a cuturally schizophrenic new New Democratic Party over which Jack Layton must preside; he will undoubtedly face a clash among his forces -- those who will push for Québec interests and its so-called "special status within Canada" (based on language difference), and those English-speaking NDP parliamentarians who will resist this push and work from the concept of equality as against special privilege (for Québec).   There are at least some strong sympathies among apparently ex-BQ voters in the freshman cohort of the new New Democrat caucus in the Commons, Québec freshmen described by some TV commentators as "autonomists" -- they want an autonomous Québec within Canada.  Old-style NPers, on the other hand, may balk at the anticipated demands from the soft-separatism of the new Québec NDPers.

The anticpated tension within the NDP will not occur utterly without precedent in Canadian political history.  A prime example may well be the case of the r+twing Social Credit Party (Socred) that began in the province of Alberta, where it had developed out of ideas for economic reform originating with the English engineer C. H. Douglas (1879-1952).  In depression-conditioned Alberta, Social Credit in 1935 fielded 46 candidates and won 17 seats in the federal House of Commons. It also formed the Alberta provincial govt  (1935-1943) of William Aberhart the radio evangelist, with a largely Protestant Christian base but was already abandoning its originator's "funny money" policy. The national federal Social Credit Party of Canada was founded in 1944.  After electing a small caucus to the Federal Parliament, in due time some Québec populists found sufficient agreement with points of policy advocated by the anglophone Social Crediters, to unleash themselves among the largely Catholic and French-speaking population in Québec where they to elected francophone Social Crediters to form a wing of Social Credit in Canada's House of Commons.  Réal Caouette became the leading figure in Québec's version of créditisme, once he had been first elected to the federal Parliament in 1946.  In 1959, Robert Thompson become national leader of the Socreds and was well spoken-of  by all parliamentary party leaders.

In the 1962 election, Social Credit won 26 seats in Quebec. Caouette himself returned to Parliament as the MP for Villeneuve, a riding he held for the rest of his life (though it was renamed Témiscamingue in 1966). The party won only four seats in the rest of Canada, forcing Thompson to appoint Caouette as the party's deputy leader. Holding the balance of power in the House of Commons, Social Credit helped bring down the Progressive Conservative minority government of John Diefenbaker. However in the 1963 election, Social Credit was reduced to 24 seats nationwide.

Caouette fought for bilingualism in the House of Commons, winning a symbolic victory when he got the Parliament's restaurant to produce bilingual menus.^[1] In this, he anticipated the official bilingualism policy that would later be put into effect by Pierre Trudeau.

Caouette believed that since the party was most successful in Quebec, he should be leader of the party instead of Thompson. As well, Caoeutte and his followers remained true believers in the social credit monetary theories of C.H. Douglas while Thompson and the Social Credit Party of Alberta had largely abandoned the theory. Thompson refused to step aside, leading Caouette to leave the party, along with the rest of Quebec wing in 1963, to establish the Ralliement des créditistes as its own political party, independent of Social Credit.

Main article: Social Credit Party of Canada split, 1963

In the 1965 election, Caouette's Ralliement won nine seats, while Social Credit led by Thompson won five seats. In the 1968 election, Caouette's party won 14 seats while Social Credit won none.  (Wikipedia)

Any argument from historical analogy can only hold in certain respects regarding a current event and its suggested historical antecedant / analogue.  My main point, of course, is simply that Jack Layton has a difficult job on his hands.  My secondary point is that the cultural milieux of Québec gives Mr Layton little ground for relishing the youth, inexperience, and in some cases lack of fluency in French of his new caucus members from Québec -- where his numbers skyrocketed from 1 to 58 (58 out of a total of 102 in the full caucus).   Mr Layton's caucus size, minus its 58 Québec numbers, is 44, which may be the statistical marker of a sociological faultline that even the amazing Jack Layton can't talk away.

-- Politicarp

Harper: Majority win 

turns page on uncertainties

Layton seizes Opposition; Duceppe, Ignatieff defeated as parties devastated

by Mark Gollom and Andrew Davidson, CBC News 

Posted: May 2, 2011 9:19 PM ET

Last Updated: May 3, 2011 12:29 PM ET 
Read 3271comments

Canadians can now "turn the page on the uncertainties and repeat elections of the past seven years," Stephen Harper said Monday night as voters delivered the Conservative leader his first majority government and brought a dramatic and unpredicted realignment to the country's political landscape.

The re-elected prime minister told the country that government affairs will begin "as early as tomorrow" with a plan for creating jobs and growth without increasing taxes, immediate help for families and seniors and eliminating the deficit while maintaining health-care transfers to provinces and territories.

"And friends I have to say it — a strong, stable, national Conservative majority government," Harper told a cheering crowd in Calgary, a reference to his oft-repeated refrain during the campaign.

Meanwhile, NDP Leader Jack Layton will now become Official Opposition leader and replace Michael Ignatieff, who himself was defeated in his own Toronto riding. Ignatieff took responsibility for the Liberals' historic electoral loss. Ignatieff's Liberals — often touted as Canada's "natural governing party" — placed a distant third behind Layton's party.

With 99 per cent of polls reporting, the Conservatives won 167 seats, followed by the NDP with 102, Liberals with 34 and the Bloc Québécois with four and the Green Party with one. A party needs to capture 155 seats to win a majority in the House of Commons.

Despite his majority victory, Harper pledged to work with other parties and praised their efforts over five weeks.