White House Threatens Veto Of Indefinite Detention Bill

WASHINGTON -- Accusing the Senate of "political micromanagement" of national security, the White House Friday stood by its threat to veto a defense bill over controversial military detention provisions.

The National Defense Authorization Act passed Thursday by the Senate contains a section that spells out the military's power to detain Americans indefinitely without trial and mandates military detention for some terrorism suspects.

The White House warned last month that senior advisers would recommend a veto, saying the detainee provisions could restrict the ability of law enforcement to combat terrorism and "make the job of preventing terrorist attacks more difficult."

It also contended that rather than clarifying the rules, the bill was adding uncertainty to the difficult legal landscape around detentions. Civil libertarians and many senators opposed to the detainee section charged that the bill was trampling Americans' basic rights to due process.

The Senate sought to soothe the objections Thursday night by adding an amendment that says the provision will not affect current law on detainees.

It won almost unanimous passage in the Senate, but the compromise was not sufficient for the White House.

White House Will Not Support SOPA, PIPA

Saturday marked a major victory for opponents of proposed anti-piracy legislation Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), which would target foreign-based websites violating U.S. copyrights.

House of Representatives bill SOPA and its Senate counterpart PIPA are designed to punish websites that make available, for example, free movies and music without the permission of the U.S. rights holders. Opponents of the bills, however, worry that the proposed laws would grant the Department of Justice too much regulatory power. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has called the measures "draconian." Other Internet giants who oppose the bill include Facebook, eBay, Mozilla, Twitter, and Huffington Post parent company AOL.

The White House on Saturday officially responded to two online petitions, "Stop the E-PARASITE Act" and "Veto the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information," urging the President to reject SOPA and PIPA.

The statement was drawn up by Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff. They made clear that the White House will not support legislation that disrupts the open standards of the Internet.

"While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet," the statement read in part.

Occupy DC: We're Not Leaving McPherson Square

WASHINGTON -- District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray may have turned up the pressure on the federal government to remove the Occupy DC encampment from McPherson Square, but Occupy DC says their protest isn't going anywhere.

The protesters issued a media release on Friday with a to-the-point headline: "Occupy DC Is Not Leaving McPherson Square, Will Not Cave to Mayor Gray's Political Posturing."

In the release itself, the protesters claim a move to evict them from McPherson Square, where they have been camped since Oct. 1, would be unconstitutional and would cause more problems than it would solve:

Washington, D.C. -- Mayor Gray's call for the National Park Service to unconstitutionally evict Occupy DC is more dangerous than the problems it would purportedly solve. As Bill Line with the National Parks Service helpfully reiterated for Mayor Gray, Occupy DC is being treated as a 24-hour vigil, which the Park Service cannot shut down. "First Amendment rights and free speech rights are what are at issue here," Line said to WTOP.
The DC Department of Health memo that Mayor Gray has cited to justify eviction of the encampment recommends a different course of action: "working together to develop a monitoring and public education plan to reduce the risk of these concerns..." It is unclear why the Mayor's recommendation contradicts that of a team of sanitation experts.
Occupy DC will gladly work with the city, as we have worked with the Park Service from day one, to address sanitation and health concerns while maintaining the encampment in McPherson Square. Rats and sanitation are a citywide problem, and Occupy DC will be happy to resolve them in our camp.
Forceful evictions have significantly endangered lives in other occupations, and would be completely counterproductive to ensuring the safety of occupiers, especially since the cited sanitation concerns have not harmed anyone to date. Many who call McPherson Square home rely on the food and shelter the encampment provides. Eviction would not protect them from the freezing weather, but force them to endure it without the tent, food and blankets available at Occupy DC.
The Occupy the Vote DC members of Occupy DC hope that, despite this setback, their work with the mayor's office for DC statehood will help improve the relationship between the city and Occupy DC. We're all in this together.
Given Mayor Gray's background in activism, he should know that protesting injustice can be messy. But a mess is a poor reason to shut down a mass movement.

Original Article
Source: Huff 

B.C. Premier Balks At Federal Health Funding Plan

B.C. Premier Christy Clark says announced changes to federal government health-care transfers to the provinces won’t work for British Columbia, where a rapidly growing senior population is dramatically increasing medical costs to the province.

The federal finance minister announced last month that after the 2016-17 fiscal year, Ottawa will institute a change in the per-capita funding system that would be tied to Canada’s gross domestic product, but is guaranteed to be at least three per cent. The annual health-care funding increases to the provinces are currently six per cent.

Clark told CBC News Friday that provinces will need “an age-adjusted per capita formula implemented” in order for the federal plan to work sufficiently.

“You cannot allocate health-care dollars on a per capita basis until you adjust it for age,” Clark said in Vancouver during an interview with Rosemary Barton on the CBC Newsnet program Power & Politics. “You just can’t run a country or look after senior citizens [unless] that’s the way you do it.”

Clark said the fastest growing demographic in B.C. is people over 85, and the province would be especially hard hit unless the per-capita formula changes.

“It costs an average $22,000 a year for health care for someone who is over 85 versus $2,000 for someone who is 29 years old,” the premier said.

B.C. Finance Minister Kevin Falcon said B.C. would lose as much as $250 million a year under the new formula as it's currently conceived.

Clark said the issue has to be resolved or economic balances in the country could be disrupted.

“We’ll be looking at a massive change, migration of money across the country from provinces where many older people live to provinces where many younger people live.”

Clark did praise the federal decision to give provinces more responsibility for health-care policies, saying it is a step in the right direction.

“They are going to vacate the policy field … which provincial premiers have been asking for for something like 30 years, [to] do the policy in health care. So I think that’s a great thing.”

Clark was speaking in advance of a meeting of Canada’s premiers this weekend.

The Council of the Federation meeting begins in Victoria Sunday.

Original Article
Source: Huff 

The real pipeline debate

The start of hearings about the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to take Alberta oil to the west coast has been notable mostly for the venomous invective hurled about by the interested parties. Yet beneath the exaggerated charge and counter charge, the hawk-eyed can discern the very earliest stages of a national debate that will preoccupy us for the next decade or two.

Like it or not, Canada’s economic strength has always been closely tied to natural resources. We are abundantly blessed with them, we have great expertise in extracting and processing them, we have one of the world’s great markets for financing them, and we have spent liberally on pipelines and railways and ports to take them to market.

In return, natural resources have generally been kind to us. Growing global demand has driven up the price we get for them while the cost of many imports, such as manufactured goods, has remained stable or fallen. This improvement in what the economists call the terms of trade is a major cause of Canada leading the G7 in terms of income growth in recent years.

The phenomenal economic development of countries like China and India, with their insatiable appetite for our resources, has broadened markets for what we produce. That doesn’t eliminate the risk of falls in resource prices, but it makes extended declines less likely for the foreseeable future.

Canada, EU trade deal near

A close-to-completed trade agreement between Canada and the European Union will likely require towns and cities in Canada to open up bidding on their biggest-ticket spending to foreign companies.

The Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement will probably be concluded by the end of the year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday during his visit to the Halifax Shipyard. But a final deal is rumoured to be closer to completion and may be brought to Parliament within the next month or two.

Canadian beef, pork and seafood exporters could enjoy a boom in profits if EU tariffs are lifted. On the other end, according to those familiar with the talks, one Canadian market to which the European negotiators hope they’ll gain admission is municipal contracts, including those for transportation and construction projects, waste management systems, and smaller goods and services tenders.

The market includes spending by hospitals, airports, school boards and universities, according to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

Halifax Regional Municipality announced this week that it had awarded a contract for an online electronic voting system to a Spanish firm, raising eyebrows in the city. Coun. Dawn Sloane (Halifax Downtown) was unhappy with the decision and said she wanted to look into creating a "buy local" policy for future procurements.

Government pulls out of language training

The federal government is getting out of the business of providing language training to its employees, throwing 179 teachers and instructors across Canada out of work.

The move - which started with downsizing in the 1990s, and intensified after a 2006 Treasury Board decision - marks the first time in decades that the government won't be directly offering French and English training to public servants to meet the language requirements of their jobs.

The Canada School of the Public Service, which runs language training, notified employees about the cut in a national conference call Friday, along with plans to help departments manage the transition to using private language schools. Most of the jobs are in the National Capital Region, but the majority were term positions. About 66 of the positions were permanent jobs and those workers may find jobs in other departments.

Larry Rousseau, vicepresident for the National Capital Region at the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said the government decision to turn all teaching to the private sector will invariably erode the quality of instruction and undermine the strides made in bilingualism within the public service.

"This was purely an ideological cut," he said. "It shouldn't have happened and the only reason I can find is that the government has made a decision that this will play well in the heartland and show we are getting out of the business of making people bilingual."

Inside Canada's battered EI system

Jobless Canadians wait over 8 weeks for EI cheques, minister adds resources to deal with backlog

Like many Canadians, Marie Ferguson struggled to get her employment insurance after she was laid off last August.

But unlike many Canadians, Ferguson knew what to do about it.

That's because for nearly four years she worked in the Kingston EI processing centre of Service Canada.

It's the branch of the federal Human Resources department that's supposed to help Canadians get their entitlements.

When Ferguson applied for employment insurance herself, she ran in to some of the same frustrations it had been her job to try to fix.

"I knew exactly what had happened and I was able to tell them how I wanted it resolved. I had to put in a dire need request," she says from her home in Westport, Ont.

"And then they tried to deny me that, saying 'how could I justify it was a dire need?' when I was talking about needing my income because my children were getting ready to go back to school. Providing for my children is a dire need."

After the global economic meltdown in 2008, Service Canada got an infusion of more than 3,000 term workers across Canada.

The Queen is not Canadian

Dump Janice Kdy the Queen? You have to give the Young Liberals of Canada points for idealism, if not political savvy.

In their attempt to add the future of Canada's monarchy to the agenda of their party's current national convention, the Young Libs have opened up one of our most enduring cans of worms. Again.

Like a clarion call - to mix in another layer of metaphor - the issue has roused all the usual suspects (including this one) and thrust us onto our favourite soapboxes.

Including the soapbox dedicated to the institution's Canadianness. The Liberal youngsters, who should have known better, resolved to "sever formal ties with the British Crown." Red flag to a bull.

It's not the British Crown, Canada's relentless monarchists pointed out with outraged vigour. It's the Canadian Crown.

So it is. It's there in our symbols, legal language, apparatus of nationhood. We live in a constitutional monarchy. We understand.

Elizabeth II is the Queen of Canada. We get it.

So why does everyone in the world, including probably most Canadians, see her as the British Queen? What are we missing?

Could it be because Elizabeth, Queen of Canada, is not actually Canadian?

Social Welfare State, American-Style, Means Relief For The Rich

WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has taken to accusing President Barack Obama of trying to turn the United States into a European-style social welfare state.

The hyperbole about Obama's actions aside, the United States already is a social welfare state -- almost right up there with the Europeans -- if you measure the total amount of drain on the Treasury caused by spending and subsides on such things as health care and retirement.

The one big difference is that in the American social welfare state, a lot of the benefits go to the rich.

"We spend a tremendous amount on private social welfare through tax subsidies," said Christopher Faricy, a political science professor at Washington State University whose forthcoming book is about our divided welfare state.

"It just goes to a drastically different population than what we usually associate with welfare programs," Faricy said.

Direct government social welfare spending pays for such signature programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment.

But there's also a whole other world of social-welfare measures in the tax code -- called tax expenditures -- that benefit individuals and companies.

The two biggest tax breaks with a social welfare purpose are the exemptions for employer-sponsored health benefits (which cost the U.S. Treasury about $184 billion a year in foregone revenue) and for contributions to 401(k) and other retirement plans and pensions ($113 billion).

Last day to get out of Syria, Ottawa warns Canadians

The Canadian government is winding down the clock on an extraordinary campaign to convince citizens to leave Syria, dropping any assurance the embassy in Damascus will stay open after Saturday.

In an unprecedented month-long campaign that was stepped up in recent days, Ottawa has taken to Twitter, websites and news releases to tell Canadians in Syria to get passports and get out.

Even more unusual, they’ve set a Jan. 14 deadline. The subtext: After that, Canada will be on a day-to-day watch to decide whether the embassy will be closed.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister John Baird and junior foreign minister Diane Ablonczy, who is responsible for consular cases, issued a joint statement warning that the so-called “voluntary evacuation” effort, which offered expedited passports and visas to Canadian citizens and their relatives, ends Saturday.

“As the security situation deteriorates, embassy services may be reduced or suspended without warning,” they said.

Santorum charity for the poor spent most of its money on management, political friends

As Republicans gathered for their national convention in Philadelphia a decade ago, Rick Santorum, who was then an up-and-coming senator from Pennsylvania, launched a charity he said would improve the lives of low-income residents in his home state.

“Wouldn’t it be a great thing to leave something positive behind other than a bunch of parties and a bunch of garbage?” Santorum told a local reporter.

But homeless families and troubled children were not the biggest beneficiaries of “Operation Good Neighbor.” Instead, the foundation spent most of its money to run itself, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for fundraising, administration and office rental paid to Santorum’s political allies.

The charity also had significant overlap with the senator’s campaigns and his work on Capitol Hill. Among the leading donors to the foundation were Pennsylvania development and finance firms that had donated to his election efforts and had interests that Santorum had supported in the Senate.

Santorum, whose last-minute surge in the Iowa caucuses has brought new attention to his presidential bid, portrays himself as a common man concerned about the gap between the nation’s rich and poor. But in the case of his charity, his efforts ended up mostly helping his cadre of political friends.

Occupy Atlanta Takes On Bank To Save Historic Church From Foreclosure

A 108-year-old church threatened with foreclosure got a last-minute reprieve thanks to the efforts of Occupy Atlanta, whose members staged a protest at the church and convinced the bank to delay foreclosure until another payment plan could be reached, CBS Atlanta reports.

The church, Higher Ground Empowerment Center, has been struggling to retain members and raise funds for renovations after being significantly damaged by a tornado that ravaged downtown Atlanta in 2008.

Church leaders took out a huge loan with BB&T in Atlanta to cover repairs, but keeping up with the payments became increasingly difficult as membership numbers continued to fall. They eventually decided to try refinancing the loan, but were disappointed to learn they would be evicted if they couldn't raise enough money to avoid foreclosure.

That's when pastor Dexter Johnson called up Occupy Atlanta, asking for help in convincing the bank to reconsider its decision. Protestors staged an occupy-style protest on Wednesday, moving onto church property with signs and tents. Later that day, the bank decided to delay foreclosure hearings and work out a payment plan.

Occupy Atlanta's protest follows a recent wave of anti-foreclosure campaigns that use occupy movements to delay home foreclosures. Dec. 6 marked the official launch of Occupy Our Homes, an anti-foreclosure campaign activists say could become one of the most important efforts of the Occupy movement.

"The defense of homes from foreclosure and forcible eviction could cement OWS’s relevance in a new post-encampment period," Peter Rothberg wrote in The Nation. "Hopes are riding high that the day can galvanize a new frontier for the occupy movement: the liberation of vacant bank-owned homes for those in need."

Occupy Our Homes has caught on in cities around the country as protestors stage sit-ins at foreclosed properties.

AOL Real Estate reported on Minneapolis man Bobby Hull, a Vietnam vet forced out of work by war injuries who faced foreclosure last year after falling behind on mortgage payments.

Hull reached out to Occupy Minneapolis, and activists continue to protest the bank ahead of the scheduled February eviction.

"It's been a big relief," Hull told AOL Real Estate regarding the help he's received from Occupy activists. "I'm not trying to have false hope. But I'm hopeful."

Original Article
Source: Huff 

Government pours millions into Olympic team sports

Cash infusions totalling $5.6 million per year are being funnelled into Canada's men's and women's field hockey teams, as Canada attempts to own the Olympic podium in the summer version of the country's national winter sport.

But with only one chance remaining to qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympics, the extra support may be too little, too late for London.

Internal documents from Sport Canada - obtained by Postmedia News through access to information provisions - reveal the government's determination to break the decades-long losing streak.

"Canada has not won an Olympic medal in a 'traditional' summer team sport since 1936, when Men's Basketball won a silver medal," the documents read. "In fact, summer team sports currently face extremely competitive fields and are challenged even to qualify for the Olympic Games."

An official with Own the Podium - launched by the Conservative government in 2006 - explained that events such as basketball, water polo, field hockey and a couple of others, are considered traditional team sports. Events such as the 4x100 relay - an example being the Canadian team led by Donovan Bailey that won gold at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta - are not.

In 2009, Sport Canada launched a Summer Olympic Team Sport System Initiative, "with the goal of developing multiple summer Olympic teams to medal potential status for the 2020 Olympic Games and beyond."

Penashue denies interference in jobs decision

The federal cabinet minister for Newfoundland and Labrador says Service Canada workers in his riding will keep their jobs, and is batting aside allegations of political interference related to the decision.

The centre in Happy Valley-Goose Bay was slated to close along with seven others in the province. The closure of the central Labrador office won't happen, Penashue confirmed Thursday.

But Penashue said the decision was made by the federal Human Resources department, and he just passed on the information.

"The response was that their positions will remain in Goose Bay, and that it didn't make sense to consolidate Goose Bay operations into Halifax or St. John's, and particularly when Labrador is on the mainland and it's a different region," Penashue said.

Penashue told reporters that he went to HRDC after getting calls from concerned constituents.

In the fall, Liberal MP Scott Simms had accused Penashue of political interference. Penashue declined to address the matter at that time, walking away from reporters in Ottawa.

There have been protests in other parts of the province trying to save the jobs of 70 to 80 other Service Canada workers who are set to get layoff notices.

Tax breaks leave gaping hole in federal budget

Ottawa’s chief cost-cutter, Tony Clement, is finalizing his list of budgetary cutbacks. The losses will be big — 10 per cent of federal spending — and they’ll hurt. Some public services will be axed. Some departments will be decimated.

But there is one area of government activity that will escape his scrutiny. Every year Ottawa gives up billions of taxes in deductions, exemptions, deferrals, credits, rebates and concessions. Because no money actually goes out the door, these tax breaks don’t count as spending. But they cost the federal treasury billions.

Opposition MPs would like to know how much revenue the government is forgoing. Taxpayers would like to know who’s actually paying the freight in this country.

They’re unlikely to find out. The government refuses to provide a tally. All it offers is an annual compendium of all its “tax expenditures” with a warning not to add them up.

It would be misleading to produce a bottom line, the finance department insists, because “many tax expenditures interact with each other such that the impact of several tax provisions at once cannot generally be calculated by adding the estimates and projections for each provision.”

The Greater Toronto Area’s warm winter puts wildlife, nature at risk

Finally, snow. Enough to shovel.

But nature’s first attempt to dump a lasting white calling card on Toronto Friday might be too little, too late for local critters, bugs and plants that have evolved to tolerate frigid, snowy Canadian winters — not tennis-playing temperatures in December and January, which put their survival at risk.

“We don’t need statistics to tell us something odd is happening,” says Ryan Ness, manager of water resources at the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.

His evidence, besides not needing boots until now? Ponds and streams usually covered weeks ago with solid ice — which protects resting fish with a stable environment buffered from very cold air and calorie-burning turbulence — are open water.

Odd, too, are the extreme freeze-and-thaw cycles of the past few two months. For this weekend, for example, forecasters were predicting thermometers would plunge into bitter below-zero range, then rocket back up to 5, with rain, on Tuesday.

Environmental experts say temperature swings stress out animals, invertebrates and plants used to one long winter freeze with a gradual warm, rainy melt into spring.

Ontario Premier’s office ignored red flags over ORNGE raised one year ago

The Ontario Premier’s office and the health ministry were briefed a year ago on many of the controversial money-making and spending plans at ORNGE now being investigated by two government agencies.

But nobody followed up on the red flags raised by ORNGE’s briefing. The briefing clearly shows that what the people of Ontario had long been told was a non-profit public service had evolved into a web of for-profit companies with side deals, executive perks and at least one mysterious payment from an overseas supplier.

“(The briefing) was well received,” recalls ORNGE chief operating officer Tom Lepine, who was present at Queen’s Park last January.

Documents obtained by the Star show that top executives at the air ambulance service wrote a letter and attended a meeting at Queen’s Park explaining to deputy ministers and premier’s officials how they would be “leveraging” and “exploiting” the expertise of the public service, saying it would make money both for the people of Ontario and ORNGE officials.

The document explains the anticipated split from a variety of new ORNGE Global businesses that would trade on the non-profit ORNGE Ontario’s air ambulance expertise: 3 per cent of gross revenues for Ontario taxpayers, a whopping 97 per cent for companies owned by ORNGE executives and investors.

City cool to CUPE wage freeze offer

One of the unions trying to reach a negotiated deal with the City of Toronto, says it is willing to accept a three-year wage freeze, in exchange for a new three-year contract.

CUPE Local 416, which represents about 6,000 outside workers, says it is making the move in order to try to avoid a confrontation between the city and the union in the coming weeks.

But deputy mayor Doug Holyday, who also chairs the city's labour relations committee, said "there's far more at stake here than wages and benefits."

The two sides have not held face-to-face talks since last year, and earlier this week the conciliator appointed to help bring the two sides together asked for what is called a 'no board' report, which essentially gives the two sides 17 days to reach an agreement.

At the end of that time a strike or a lockout can occur.

A decision by the Ontario Labour Relations Board on whether to issue a no boards report is expected on Tuesday — meaning a strike or lockout could happen as early as Feb. 3.

Conservative ridings benefit from Service Canada closures

As the battle gets even tougher for out-of-work Canadians trying to get Employment Insurance, there are new accusations that planned closures of Service Canada processing centres will benefit Conservative ridings, while harming opposition ridings, especially in Atlantic Canada.

Over the next three years, Human Resources and Development Canada plans to cut the number of offices that process EI claims from 120 nationwide down to about 20.

Of the 20 processing centres left, more than half will be in Conservative ridings and only one will be in a Liberal riding.

The government argues that an ongoing process of automation will eliminate the need for so many workers in so many locations. That's despite a current months-long backlog of more than 80,000 claims that have waited longer than the four-week limit, part of which has been blamed on flawed automation.

About a third of people with EI claims now pending have been waiting more than a month for cheques, and many more than two months.

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said there is always a surge in applications in December and January, and this year the spike was higher than usual. Her office said the department has added 400 employees in recent weeks and shifted 120 people from part-time to full-time to deal with the backlog.

"We do monitor it closely and that's why we have added extra resources," Finley said in an interview. "We're continuing to do that this month to make sure those cheques get out faster."

The union representing the Human Resources workers said they will barely scratch the surface given the current backlog and how long the system has been short-staffed.

Opposition MPs and the union said the plan to close 100 offices will benefit mainly Conservative ridings in a classic case of pork-barrelling.

What the Gateway commission could learn from an oil sands pioneer

I spent a morning this week reading about the Northern Gateway pipeline, which, if it is approved by the National Energy Board, will carry oil-sands bitumen from Alberta to Kitimat on the coast of British Columbia and thence via supertanker to the ever-open crankcase of China.

Afterward, I stopped by the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, as I do from time to time, though I admit a rare-book library may seem like an old-fashioned place to hang out, obsessed as the world is these days with technology and response rates and “going forward,” as managers like to say.

The funny thing was this: When I told Anne Dondertman, the acting director of the Fisher library, that I had been reading about the new proposed pipeline, she immediately started talking about a set of maps that were made 130 years ago by Joseph Burr Tyrrell, a Canadian geologist/paleontologist/explorer/

historian/apple farmer/mining executive who was one of the first scientists to describe what we now call the Alberta tar sands.

“They're very evocative things,” Ms. Dondertman said. “They're not really what you'd think of as maps.”

Tyrrell was the first to survey the territory north of the 60th parallel that stretches from Hudson Bay to what is now Fort McMurray, Alta. Because no maps existed, he often had to consult the local Dene and Inuit he met as to where he was, and how he could get to where he was supposed to be.

Joe Oliver’s fever dream of forbidden pipeline love

The source of Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver’s ideas – of a conspiracy between “environmental and other radical groups” that are working with “foreign special-interest groups” and “jet-setting celebrities” to prevent Canada from completing “any major project” – appears to be our Prime Minister.

Speaking in Vancouver last November, Stephen Harper said, “I think we’ll see significant American interests trying to line up against the Northern Gateway project, precisely because it's not in the interests of the United States. It's in the interests of Canada. … They'll funnel money through environmental groups and others in order to try to slow it down.”

Mr. Oliver's addition of the threat of “jet-setting celebrities” is a charmingly anachronistic touch, as if the rest of us still travel by boat or biplane. Unless of course he means actual jet-setting celebrities, from the age of the jet set. They are mostly dead now. Does the minister fear that Canada's industries are under attack by Zombie Sammy Davis Jr.? Even if that is what Mr. Oliver means, Mr. Harper's is still the more paranoid suggestion.

Mr. Harper insists that international environmental groups are working together, targeting individual projects, specifically to undermine our national sovereignty. Which is bizarre enough because, honestly, when has the left ever reached a consensus on anything? Is nobody infiltrating these groups?
They do some fine work, but I wouldn't want to be the one forced to organize the United Groups of the Left Potluck. It would take 122 votes just to agree on who was going to bring the tabbouleh.

But, more strangely, Mr. Harper also wants us to trust him that these environmentalists are working hand in hand with American politicians and businesses.

An Open Letter to Joe Oliver

Dear Joe,

Your letter caught my attention.  I respect you and like you a lot as a colleague in the House.  Unfortunately, I think your role as Minister of Natural Resources has been hijacked by the PMO spin machine.  The PMO is, in turn, hijacked by the foreign oil lobby. You are, as Minister of Natural Resources, in a decision-making, judge-like role.  You should not have signed such a hyperbolic rant.

I have reproduced a short section of your letter. The idea that First Nations, conservation groups, and individuals opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline are opposed to all forestry, mining, hydro-electric and gas is not supported by the facts.  I am one of those opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline.  I do not oppose all development; neither does the Green Party; neither do environmental NGOS; neither do First Nations.

I oppose the Northern Gateway pipeline for a number of reasons, beginning with the fact that the project requires over-turning the current moratorium on oil tanker traffic on the British Columbia coastline. The federal-provincial oil tanker moratorium has been in place for decades.  As former Industry Canada deputy minister Harry Swain pointed out in today’s Globe and Mail, moving oil tankers through 300 km of perilous navigation in highly energetic tidal conditions is a bad choice. In December 2010, the government’s own Commissioner for the Environment, within the Office of the Auditor General, reported that Canada lacked the tools to respond to an oil spill.  These are legitimate concerns.

Rowlinson: No social value without social responsibility

At midnight on Sunday, Jan. 1, 425 unionized workers at London’s Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) were locked out of the plant by their employers on the expiration of their contract. EMD builds locomotives for mass transit systems; it is owned by Progress Rail, a subsidiary of the American heavy equipment company Caterpillar. There are currently no contract talks underway between the parties. The lockout followed upon the workers’ rejection of Caterpillar’s offer of a new contract only on the basis of a 50 per cent cut in wages and the elimination of the pension plan.

This offer is impossible to understand as part of a good-faith attempt to negotiate a new contract; it makes sense only as part of a strategy either to close down the London plant altogether and move production elsewhere or to break the employees’ union.

In either case, the big picture is Caterpillar is taking advantage of the current economic crisis to pit workers against one another and drive down wages.

No one should credit the company’s claims it is interested in negotiations; these come from the same PR firm that on Sunday, Jan.1, as the old contract was in its last hours, falsely announced the workers had struck the plant.

In fact, they hoped to continue working under the terms of the old contract while negotiating a new one. What happened was the employer locked them out when they showed up for work Sunday night.