Keystone XL Pipeline: TransCanada Says New Route Nearly Done; Environmental Worries Addressed

BISMARCK, N.D. - An executive with Canadian energy giant TransCanada Corp. says a new route will be proposed soon for the US$7 billion Keystone XL pipeline that has come under fire from critics.

Speaking Wednesday in Bismarck, TransCanada's Alex Pourbaix told North Dakota officials and oil industry representatives the company would present its amended plan to federal regulators "in a matter of a very few weeks."

The U.S. government in November delayed a decision on granting a permit for Keystone XL, largely because of worries about the pipeline's environmental impact, especially in Nebraska.

The disputed route runs through six states from Canada to Texas, carrying oilsands crude from Northern Alberta to refineries.

So-called feeder pipelines would connect the Keystone XL to the rich oil fields in North Dakota and Montana.

Keystone XL is part of a plan by the Canadian oil industry get more of Alberta's expanding oilsands output over the next few years to markets in the United States.

Another proposed pipeline — the Northern Gateway project across northern British Columbia — aims to deliver oil from Alberta to the West Coast for shipment via tanker to Asia.

That pipeline proposed by Enbridge Inc. (TSX:ENB) has also been criticized by environmentalists and is being reviewed by the National Energy Board in hearings that began this week in Kitimat, B.C.

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Source: Huff 

New United States military strategy a fork in the road for Canadian Forces

A new United States military strategy paints a bleak picture of a world threatened by China, Iran, and Al Qaeda and kept stable through the use of armed drones, stealth bombers, missile defence systems, cyber warfare, surveillance—and global policing increasingly shouldered by stalwart allies such as Canada.

The question now is: will Canada embrace that vision?

US President Barack Obama said he was "turning the page on a decade of war" as he revealed a new US defence document, Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities For 21^st Century Defense, on Jan. 5, making it clear that US-led interventionism was being downplayed in favour of a more conventional posture that will lean heavily on allies.

"Meeting the challenges of our time cannot be the work of our military alone—or the United States alone. It requires all elements of our national power, working together in concert with our allies and our partners," he said at the Pentagon.

Analysts say the document will reverberate throughout the Canadian Forces, presenting multiple ways forward on military strategy, procurement priorities, and how the military recruits and structures itself. It will all depend on how the Harper government decides to respond.

The man behind Russia's anti-Putin rallies

The Russian blogger leading vote-rigging protests against Vladimir Putin has accused the prime minister's supporters of seeking to smear him with a fake photo.

Alexei Navalny has proved that a picture in a newspaper distributed by Putin supporters was a forgery. The picture showed Navalny alongside the fugitive Russian tycoon, Boris Berezovsky, who lives in London.

A lawyer who took on corrupt state companines, Navalny has found himself leading recent protests against Putin's party, accused of rigging the recent elections.

But as Al Jazeera's Neave Barker reports, many are concerned about Navalny's extreme nationalist views. In a country where foreign labourers face frequent attacks, he has described migrant workers as “rotten teeth that need removing”.

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Source: aljazeera 

China unbowed by US pressure over Iranian oil

The US treasury secretary has highlighted Washington's strong co-operative relationship with China during a visit to Beijing, but appeared to have made little progress in persuading the Asian giant to back US sanctions on Iran's oil industry.

Timothy Geithner on Wednesday met Xi Jinping, the vice-president widely tipped to become China's next leader, prior to talks with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, who is due to visit oil-producing Gulf nations later this week.

"On economic growth, on financial stability around the world, on non-proliferation, we have what we view as a very strong co-operative relationship with your government and we are looking forward to building on that," Geithner said.

But China, which buys almost one-third of Iran's oil exports, reiterated its opposition to sanctions, which it has previously called improper and ineffective.

"Iran is also an extremely big oil supplier to China, and we hope that China's oil imports won't be affected, because this is needed for our development," Zhai Jun, China's vice foreign minister, told a news conference.

"We oppose applying pressure and sanctions, because these approaches won't solve the problems. They never have. We hope that these unilateral sanctions will not affect China's interests."

But Beijing on Wednesday called on Iran and the UN atomic watchdog to co-operate over a new uranium enrichment plant, amid mounting international tensions over Tehran's nuclear programme.

Lords inflict triple welfare bill defeat on government

The government's plans to reform welfare were badly hit on Wednesday when it suffered three defeats in the House of Lords on proposed benefit cuts.

Plans to means-test employment and support allowance (ESA) payments for disabled people after only a year were rejected by peers.

The means test would have applied to cancer patients and stroke survivors, and was denounced by Lord Patel, a crossbencher and former president of the Royal College of Obstetricians, as an immoral attack on the sick, the vulnerable and the poor. "If we are going to rob the poor to pay the rich, then we enter into a different form of morality," Patel said.

The government was defeated by 224 votes to 186, even though Lord Freud, the welfare minister, claimed that the cost of the amendment would be £1.6bn spread over five years.

The other defeats were over plans to time-limit ESA for those undergoing cancer treatment, and to restrict access to ESA for young people with disabilities or illness.

The defeats do not augur well for the government's chances in future votes in the Lords on the bill, which includes housing benefit caps. The bill is at report stage before returning to the Commons.

Canada Natives: Chiefs Warn New Relationship Needed With Crown Or Unrest May Follow

WINNIPEG - Native chiefs say Prime Minister Stephen Harper must come out of this month's First Nations summit willing to forge a new relationship with aboriginals or risk widespread unrest.

Chiefs from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario gathered in Winnipeg on Wednesday to talk strategy before the summit in Ottawa on Jan. 24. Many have concerns about the lack of housing, clean running water and education in their communities, but virtually all say they don't expect to solve those issues in a day.

They want the prime minister to commit to holding at least one first ministers meeting on aboriginal issues and to appoint a commissioner to ensure that treaties signed more than 100 years ago are being followed.

Grand Chief Derek Nepinak, head of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, said Third-World conditions in native communities are a symptom of the unequal relationship between aboriginals and the Crown. Harper must take immediate action following the summit or frustrated young people will start taking matters into their own hands, he warned.

"Our young people are fed up with the way things are," Nepinak said. "We've made several attempts to deal with this through diplomatic means and political means, but we're reaching a point where the winds have shifted.

"People are frustrated. If diplomacy fails, we can't speak for what happens beyond that."

Harper announced the long-awaited summit last month when a housing crisis in the Cree community of Attawapiskat became high profile. First Nations chiefs had been asking for such a meeting since the summer of 2010. Harper called it a "historic" opportunity to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing aboriginal people.

Elizabeth Warren Raises $5.7 Million In Fourth Quarter 2011 In Bid To Unseat Scott Brown In Massachusetts

WASHINGTON -- It's looking like former consumer advocate and Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has the golden touch when it comes to fundraising.

The Democrat's campaign to oust Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) hauled in $5.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, or nearly double the $3.2 million raised by Brown in the same period.

Warren declared her candidacy in mid-September and raised $3.15 million immediately thereafter. The ex-Harvard professor's combined take gives her nearly $9 million in less than four months.

While Warren's torrid fundraising pace puts her on the path to becoming the top buck-raker of the 2012 race after the White House contestants, Brown's skills at passing the hat are not shabby. After the last quarter, he had an impressive $12.8 million in the bank for what is shaping up to be the most costly Senate battle in the country.

Warren's campaign has not revealed how much of that $9 million she has spent, so it's unclear how far she has to go to catch up to Brown in overall funding.

States Attempt to Instill 'Work Ethic' by Rolling Back Child Labor Protections

It’s been a long time since the engines of American industry were driven by tiny fingers. So when Newt Gingrich recently proclaimed, “Young people ought to learn how to work,” and suggested that children could develop a strong work ethic by working as janitors in their own schools, many Americans probably missed the throwback to the early twentieth century, when hundreds of thousands of children toiled in factories. But after decades of campaigns against youth exploitation, the right is rekindling vestiges of the sweatshop era with legislation aimed at rolling back child labor laws.

While they didn’t go so far as to recruit tweens back to the factory floor, throughout 2011 state legislators pushed bills to erode regulation of youth employment. Maine Republicans sought to ease protections for young workers with amicably named legislation to “Enhance Access to the Workplace for Minors.” The original bill, introduced by State Representative David Burns, would remove some limits on working hours for teenagers and expand the number of days a youth under 20 could work for $5.25 an hour—to about half a year. That would be a bargain for employers, who pay adult Mainers a minimum wage of $7.50. Last summer, a more limited teen labor bill passed, which only eased restrictions on working hours.

Dismissing his bill’s critics in a Press-Herald commentary, Burns argued the purpose was simply to provide job-seeking youth valuable opportunities, since many “have no experience, and perhaps no work ethic, and don’t merit the minimum wage until they learn a job.” As for government safeguards against abuse, he added, “We have usurped the responsibility of families to make intelligent decisions and transferred that responsibility to school officials and the state.”

Occupy Movement: Camps In Newfoundland, New Brunswick Brave Winter

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - A large makeshift tent covered with layers of tarp is all that shields diehard Occupy protesters from the fierce winds that lash their seaside camp in St. John's.

Along with a part-time camp in Moncton, N.B., the shelter nestled into the corner of a harbourfront park in St. John's persists in Canada as part of the Occupy Wall Street uprising that swept North America last fall.

Protesters in major centres such as Vancouver and Toronto were evicted in November, while city staff in Fredericton dismantled a local camp last week.

"It hasn't been that bad," said a shivering Ken Canning, 19, who joined the St. John's protest against corporate power and social injustice on Oct. 17, two days after it started.

He has stayed through ferocious gales clocked at more than 100 kilometres an hour, a storm that dumped 30 centimetres of snow and frigid downpours. He has no plans to leave, and the City of St. John's says it won't force the issue unless there's danger or disruption.

"It's essentially camping in winter in the middle of a city," Canning said. "I've done it out in the woods."

Rob Moore: Tory MP And Staff Spent $35,000 Over Six Weeks Cutting Red Tape

OTTAWA - New documents show a junior cabinet minister and his entourage racked up $35,000 in expenses over six weeks as part of the government's Red Tape Reduction Commission.

Receipts and expense forms show Conservative MP Rob Moore and his staff accounted for well over half the travel and hospitality costs incurred by MPs on the commission.

The group was set up to look at the burden on businesses of complying with government regulations.

Travel and hospitality costs for the six Conservative MPs on the commission — including Moore and three of his aides — totalled $60,000.

The documents also show Treasury Board bureaucrats questioned why a limousine was needed to take Tory MP Cathy McLeod on a short trip to the airport.

An aide explained McLeod took an 11-minute ride to the Winnipeg airport in a luxury vehicle because her flight was late and she needed to get to Toronto for an event with the prime minister.

Original Article
Source: Huff