Vancouver council votes to require pipeline and oil companies to be fully liable for oil spill

A battle between Big Green and Big Oil kicked up a notch Wednesday as Mayor Gregor Robertson’s council passed a motion slamming a “radical proposal” to increase supertanker traffic through the Burrard Inlet.

The high stakes at play in Robertson’s green vision for Vancouver finally became fully clear in recent weeks, as he put forward a motion requiring pipeline operators and oil tankers operating in Vancouver to carry enough liability insurance to cover the cost of any spill.

The motion appears to be the first step in a Vancouver green blockade against Alberta oil seeking to flow through B.C. en route to lucrative Asian markets.

The motion came after Kinder Morgan put forward a plan to increase the daily capacity of its oil pipeline from Alberta to the Lower Mainland from 300,000 barrels to 850,000.

Kinder Morgan wants to twin its 65-year-old pipeline, which delivers crude oil from Alberta to the Westridge facility in Burnaby, en route to Asia and the U.S.

As a result, the number of tankers in Vancouver harbour could go up five-fold, increasing the risk to the harbours and beaches that are a critical part of the city’s appeal.

We Already Grow Enough Food For 10 Billion People -- and Still Can't End Hunger

A new a study from McGill University and the University of Minnesota published in the journal Nature compared organic and conventional yields from 66 studies and over 300 trials. Researchers found that on average, conventional systems out-yielded organic farms by 25 percent -- mostly for grains, and depending on conditions.

Embracing the current conventional wisdom, the authors argue for a combination of conventional and organic farming to meet "the twin challenge of feeding a growing population, with rising demand for meat and high-calorie diets, while simultaneously minimizing its global environmental impacts."

Unfortunately, neither the study nor the conventional wisdom addresses the real cause of hunger.

Hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity. For the past two decades, the rate of global food production has increased faster than the rate of global population growth. The world already produces more than 1 ½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That's enough to feed 10 billion people, the population peak we expect by 2050. But the people making less than $2 a day -- most of whom are resource-poor farmers cultivating unviably small plots of land -- can't afford to buy this food.

In reality, the bulk of industrially-produced grain crops goes to biofuels and confined animal feedlots rather than food for the 1 billion hungry. The call to double food production by 2050 only applies if we continue to prioritize the growing population of livestock and automobiles over hungry people.

But what about the contentious "yield gap" between conventional and organic farming?

Quebec’s Maple Spring

Montreal – As 180,000 students continue their 12-week strike against tuition increases, and police respond with concussion grenades, pepper spray, batons, kettling and mass arrests, Quebec’s major city is becoming ungovernable.

What was a fairly routine student strike has turned into what many are calling the Maple Spring.

Day after day, protesters wearing signature swatches of red cloth clog the streets of Montreal’s downtown chanting anti-capitalist slogans. A minority has responded to police aggression by trashing government offices and corporate windows, building barricades and ripping up concrete to heave onto police lines.

This week, CLASSE, the main coalition of student unions, rejected Premier Jean Charest’s attempt to defang the surging movement by spreading the tuition increase over seven years instead of five. Hours after the offer, thousands of protesters in a boisterous nighttime demo condemned it as an “insult.”

Outsiders, it seems, are having trouble grasping why students with the lowest post-secondary tuition in the country (generally around $2,600 yearly) would be so exercised about the Charest government’s increase of $1,625 over five years.

Occupy Is Right: It's the Economy, Stupid. And Don't Forget Democracy

Most people remember the famous sign in the Clinton campaign war room in 1992 as "It's the economy stupid!" But what is often forgotten is the second phrase in the admonition to Clinton campaigners to keep a sharp focus on the campaign's message: "And don't forget health care."

Today, the sign should read, "It's the economy stupid. And don't forget democracy." That advice was provided recently by the pollster who worked on Clinton's 1992 campaign, Stan Greenberg. In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Greenberg summarized the views of many Americans as, "There's just such a control of government by the wealthy that whatever happens, it's not working for all the people; it's working for a few of the people... They think that the game is rigged and that the wealthy and big industries get policies that reinforce their advantage. And they do not think their voices matter."

Unlike most advocates for economic justice or democracy who have separated the issues, the Occupiers got this right from the beginning. They clearly see economic inequality, corporate power, and the capture of our democracy by big money as a unified problem. The "we are the 99 percent" meme embraces both gracefully: We can't have an economy that works for the 99 percent until we put our democracy in the hands of the 99 percent.

CEO Pay Grew 127 Times Faster Than Worker Pay Over Last 30 Years: Study

It's good to be chief executive.

American CEOs saw their pay spike 15 percent last year, after a 28 percent pay rise the year before, according to a report by GMI Ratings cited by The Guardian. Meanwhile, workers saw their inflation-adjusted wages fall 2 percent in 2011, according to the Labor Department.

That's in line with a trend that dates back three decades. CEO pay spiked 725 percent between 1978 and 2011, while worker pay rose just 5.7 percent, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute released on Wednesday. That means CEO pay grew 127 times faster than worker pay.

Income inequality between CEOs and workers has consequently exploded, with CEOs last year earning 209.4 times more than workers, compared to just 26.5 times more in 1978 -- meaning CEOs are taking home a larger percentage of company gains.

That trend comes despite workers nearly doubling their productivity during the same time period, when compensation barely rose. Worker productivity spiked 93 percent between 1978 and 2011 on a per-hour basis, and 85 percent on a per-person basis, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Meanwhile, workers saw their inflation-adjusted wages fall in recent years as corporations postponed giving raises while adding to their record corporate profits.

Original Article
Source: Huff
Author: Bonnie Kavoussi 

DND amended report on F-35 status two weeks after AG Ferguson released his report

PARLIAMENT HILL—The department of National Defence last month retroactively amended a key phrase in a report it submitted for tabling in Parliament last year on the government’s planned F-35 fighter jet acquisition after Auditor General Michael Ferguson issued a scathing report on the controversial project's costs.

National Defence described the change as being due to a “typographical error.” The department, through the office of Vice-Chief of Defence Staff Vice-Admiral Bruce Donaldson, changed wording that originally placed the project further along the Cabinet decision-making process when Treasury Board President Tony Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.) tabled the report in Parliament last June.

A former Parliamentarian who is familiar with Treasury Board’s reporting system to Parliament was shocked and, although he did not want to be identified, said Mr. Clement should have announced the change and publicly amended the reference while informing Parliament it had been misled when the report was first tabled nearly a year ago.

The document, a Report on Plans and Priorities which all departments submit to Parliament through the Treasury Board Secretariat as yearly updates on major plans and acquisitions, originally described the $25-billion F-35 project as being in the “definitions” phase when Mr. Clement tabled it in the Commons last June 9.

Closing penitentiaries is not in taxpayers’ best interests

This spring we’ve heard many announcements of layoffs in the public sector, and for the most part we expected this. However, I know of several officers in Correctional Services of Canada who believed their jobs were more secure with a Conservative majority. They were shocked when Vic Toews made the announcement that two federal prisons were closing, including Kingston Penitentiary – a maximum-security prison holding some our most frightening and violent criminals.

The claim is that these closures will save the government $120-million per year on facility and labour costs, with no threat to public safety. Inmates will be reallocated to existing prisons. We are led to believe there is excess capacity in the system, wasting taxpayer dollars, and this is simply an efficient policy change.

I’m always in favour of using our tax dollars more efficiently, but we’re looking to reallocate nearly a thousand inmates here – where exactly are they going to go?

Budget bill gives Conservatives broad power over EI rules

The Conservative cabinet is giving itself sweeping powers to rewrite the rules on whether Canadians on EI can turn down certain jobs without losing their benefits.

The measure is contained inside the budget implementation bill and would give cabinet the power to change employment insurance rules later through regulation without the approval of Parliament.

Yet, even though the provision is currently before MPs, Human Resources Minister Diane Finley is refusing to explain its purpose other than to say further details will be announced over the coming months.

Under the existing Employment Insurance Act, the government already has the power to terminate EI benefits if a claimant refuses to take “suitable employment.” That’s a term that isn’t explicitly defined in the law, but numerous court rulings have said personal considerations must be taken into account, such as geography and experience. Essentially, an out-of-work scientist can’t be denied EI for refusing to dig ditches or pick fruit.

The budget bill contains a small section that allows cabinet through regulation to define “suitable employment.” Ottawa isn’t saying what it has in mind, but Immigration Minister Jason Kenney recently expressed his frustration that Prince Edward Island was bringing in temporary foreign workers to fill fish plant jobs even though many Canadians in the area are unemployed.

Welcome back Conrad Black. Surely we don’t deserve you

Oh dear. Convicted fraudster Conrad Black is coming back to Canada. Hang onto your wallets.

New Democrat Leader Tom Mulcair accuses the government of favoritism for allowing this particular convicted felon — who is no longer a Canadian citizen — into the country. And Mulcair is right. That’s how the system works.

The law gives Ottawa great leeway in deciding which non-citizens get in. The government may bar a felon, or indeed anyone it can reasonably claim threatens public safety. But it doesn’t have to do so.

So the Conservatives let in the felons they like — such as Black.

And they bar those they don’t like.

The NDP raised the case of Gary Freeman, an American who served 30 days in jail in the U.S. four years ago for wounding a Chicago police officer under disputed circumstances in the ’60s.

Freeman spent most of his life in Canada and has a wife and four children here. But Ottawa won’t let him cross the border to see them.

Is this fair? I’m not sure it is. But it is, apparently, legal.

There are other cases. The Conservatives twice barred Chicagoan Bill Ayers from entering Canada. He had no trouble crossing the border before Stephen Harper became prime minister. He does now.

Charities face up to $20,000 in new garbage fees

An employee for an after-school children’s program, or garbage collection?

More than 1,000 Toronto charities and non-profits are now scrambling to make decisions necessary to balance the books after learning of a city council decision to charge for garbage pick-up.

Beginning July 1, charities and non-profit groups will pay for waste collection — a motion passed by city council late last year that many organizations say they’ve only recently been informed of.

“The roll-out of this has been just awful. Organizations are now just waking up to the fact that they are facing really significant costs,” said John Campey, executive director of Social Planning Toronto.

Hardest hit, Campey said, are organizations that accept food or clothing, since they receive loads of poor-quality donations that wind up in the garbage. For those groups, costs will be between $10,000 and $20,000 once they are phased in by 2015, he said.

Adding to the sting was the fact that some charities were slapped with the news around the same time council announced the city ended 2011 with a $292 million surplus.

The surplus for the city’s solid waste management system alone was $37.2 million.