It’s time, gentlemen, to pee or get off the pot.

The issues of the proposed Enbridge pipelines and tanker traffic on our coast demand your immediate statement of policy.

In order that there be no misunderstandings, here are the facts, gentlemen – not assertions or opinions but plain simple to understand facts:

1. A spill from both pipelines and tankers is a dead certainty.
2. There is no way these spills can be cleaned up.
3. The record of Enbridge is appalling.
4. First Nations, be they on the coast or along the proposed pipeline right of way are opposed – 131 of them.
5. Neither the federal government nor Enbridge have considered the real possibility of terrorism or vandalism.

The pipelines, one to take the bitumen to Kitimat and the other to take gas condensate back, traverse arguably the last untouched rain forest on earth. It’s certainly as rugged and remote from civilization as anywhere else. Read full article at The Common Sense Canadian

What should really get our juices jumping is the statement that environmental hearings should proceed speedily and obstacles removed from these projects. it obviously being unthinkable that they could stop them.

That is ill-disguised code for, “Listen you assholes, we don’t give a damn about the public process – just get it over with so we can get on with the construction. It doesn’t matter that this monstrous Tar Sands gunk is to be transported through your pristine forests, mountain and streams – get on with it.” Read full article at The Common Sense Canadian

Any thinking citizen knows that the public, for many reasons, cannot grapple with all the issues and email a vote on each one. The theory of our government, runs the mantra, is that at election time we can throw those we disagree with out on their duffs. That, at any rate, is the theory.

In practice that doesn’t happen, which means that a government does what it wishes – subject only to elections every four years at which time new issues cloud the old.

There is a way that the public can be consulted: a referendum. This is a tool used in many different ways, under different systems – sometimes as a method to get rid of a politician, sometimes to eradicate legislation, sometimes only to go to governments as popular advice. Read full article at The Common Sense Canadian

Cartoon by Greg Perry

Keystone is no victory if dangerous bitumen instead pumps through Kitimat or Vancouver.

What will happen to the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands to Houston, Texas? Will it finally be a go after the November presidential election, or will it be tubed?

Before I go on, Damien Gillis, the master filmmaker and I, are co-founders of The Common Sense Canadian — an environmentally-based organization — and do it with virtually no money. We are both several-generation British Columbians but, if there is someone out there who wants to give us some badly needed money, with no strings, obvious or subtle, your nationality is irrelevant.

It was, I hate to admit, with mixed feelings that I heard last Wednesday that President Obama announced he would not approve Keystone XL. Now it appears that it only received, as Bill Tieleman says, a “flesh wound.” The global environmentalist in me rejoiced, but the British Columbian in me was disappointed. Read full article at The Tyee

First, Premier Clark is in one hell of a jam and it’s scarcely improved with a man who I bet left the inner staff of Attila the Hun to join with Madam Photo-op by name of Ken Boessenkool, who amongst other clients worked as lobbyist for Enbridge for two years! What the hell reason could she give for this kind of move?

This woman is out of control. She’s in a political hotbox like President Gerry Ford was when he took over the mess Nixon left him. In fact she’s in a box Houdini couldn’t have escaped.

She’s trying to distance herself from the disgraceful reign of Gordon Campbell and now finds herself in the midst of the worst environmental fight probably in history. The proposed Enbridge Pipeline and resultant tanker traffic is straight from the Gordon Campbell/Fraser Institute playbook and it isn’t working out quite like the Liberal advisors had expected. In fact, Clark is facing, and knows she’s facing a political storm that makes Bill Vander Zalm’s troubles look like a kid’s fight in a sand box. Read full article at The Common Sense Canadian

If what I’m about to say is wrong, you have nothing to worry about. You see, Premier, I have this radical notion that the mood of the voter has changed – you evidently don’t, making it obvious (sorry to talk as if you are a slow learner) that if you just paddle along, down the happy old stream, why the voters, so afraid of the bad old NDP, will put you right back in government in 2013.

In fact, if I’m wrong and you’re right may I respectfully suggest that some tactics are natural:

1. Keep right on charging us the HST. No matter that if you could start it in an instance you could stop immediately. I’m sure that the voter knows that you’re really trying hard on this matter.

2. Ignore the Fish Farm issue – most of the jurisdiction is now with the Feds so just wash your hands of the whole mess. Some might suggest that you should now speak up for BC and urge the Feds to get rid of this monstrous rape of our precious wild salmon resources, but I’ll betcha most people will overlook the fact that you don’t want to piss off the feds just when you’re trying to make a deal on that pesky HST. Read full article at The Common Sense Canadian

On New Years Eve, in addition to looking to a new year like the rest of you, I started my ninth and likely last decade.

Before going on, let me thank all of you who helped celebrate my roast back on Nov. 24. It was a night I’ll never forget and I spent the lot of it shuffling through tears and laughter.

(In the laughter department, as well as in the teary part, the editor of this journal, David Beers, brought the house down!)

Sadly, the Vancouver Island group, including Mike Smyth and Moe Sihota, were kept away by high seas and no ferries. I was especially sad that Dr. Gordon Hartman, one of the celebrated “dissident scientists” from the DFO, who helped so much to win the Alcan struggle with his honesty and integrity, was stuck home in Nanaimo.

Gordon fashioned a beautiful walking stick for me, to be presented that night, made from a rare B.C. willow and an even rarer African hardwood. On the cane itself he has etched many of the environmental battles I’ve been in over the years — the Skagit, the Nechako (Alcan), Fish Lake, fish farms and private power. If you chance upon me in your travels — I mean this — ask me to show it to you. It means a great deal to me.

It’s traditional at this time of the year for loud mouths like me to look into the crystal beer glass and pronounce upon what is to come.

Since the beginning of time, the struggle has been between them that has and them that hasn’t. This goes back, I daresay, to Uncle Uglug’s time, as he fought over hunting grounds. I know that what I’ve just said seems trite but it is especially worth pondering as we look ahead to 2012 and beyond.

The less advantaged levels of society have always fought for whatever they could nip from the pie, always securely held by those who control the treasury and the law, controls that largely pass from generation to generation.

History, largely written by the “haves” (of which I and my family are a part), tells us that the progress from feudalism through the Renaissance/Reformation, the 100 Years War and the revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries has brought a steady supply of positive change to lower income groups and that things changed.

Looked at objectively, that’s a hard case to make. The Reformation didn’t break the power of the church, just made a few more of them. Powerful priests remained, moderators and archbishops replaced cardinals, and took a little power from the Pope and spread it around a bit. The 30 Years War made countries into nations but scarcely ended wars, which, as always, are soldiered by the “lower” classes; the Industrial Revolution brought even greater prosperity to the rich (rather it created a whole new rich class) while devastation for labourers who lost their jobs to machines; revolutions came and went leaving little to show other than grudging extensions of the franchise, gradually to women and to men who owned property; revolutions or fear of them forced western “Establishment” to recognize, grudgingly, some rights for others; slavery was abolished in the U.S., 80 years after their lofty Bill of Rights was passed — in actuality it wasn’t really abolished, it was just that “massa” had to pay (pitiful) wages and he couldn’t sell his labourers.

It’s hard to detect any comparative change — if the poor did improve their lives, the improvement of the richer class was proportionately greater.

What was created was a “middle class,” which to the poor was indistinguishable from the upper class.

Rights grudgingly granted

But didn’t 19th-century democracy bring the trade union? The vote? The right to property for all? The right to seek the justice of the law?

Marginally.

After uprisings like the Tolpuddle martyrs, the blood of the Peterloo massacre, The Haymarket massacre and the fear of worse, the Establishment grudgingly expanded rights, always keeping their hands on the till, on the justice system and the tools of governing. In fact the yielded rights did nothing to erase the caste system and the “rule of law” meant laws set down to preserve the status quo. The inner cities of the Industrial Revolution have been replaced by the ghettoes and homeless in that part of our cities the nice people choose to ignore.

We are witnessing the “Arab Spring” as millions, here in the 21st century, seek, in the same way as in olden times, equality and freedom, the right to prompt and just justice, the right to vote and have that vote count. The Establishment will, maybe, ease the burden of the poor by gently transferring chump change to the poor from the rich without them fussing too much. The reality mostly being “same old, same old.” My point is a simple one. The powerful, be they Uncle Uglug, Henry VIII, Napoleon, or the evil dictators of the 20th century or the governments of so-called democracies — the names may change but political and economical reality hasn’t. If you have the bucks you get what you want.

What do we have in Canada today?

Much better freedom and justice than, say, Pakistan, North Korea or Saudi Arabia. But do we have a democracy where everyone counts and justice is free, prompt and just?

Of course we don’t — and our so-called justice system is none of the above. Judges are selected by the “haves” behind closed doors, the time the system takes as it mosies along at its leisurely pace is contemptible and the cost puts the system beyond the reach of all but the rich. What is or is not a crime — and the punishment — often militate against the poor and often forgive the well off.

Do we have a stratified system?

Of course we do and any who strays outside the acceptable bounds of dissent is “sent to Coventry.” The Mainstream Media is owned by the Establishment and those who work in it either self-censor or are censored. The “journalist” doesn’t need to be told what to say or write. As the wise man said, “You cannot bribe or twist / Thank God the British* Journalist. / Considering what the man will do / unbribed, there’s no occasion to.” (*Put in any nationality to suit.)

Ask anyone who’s been jailed for defending ordinary citizens against the bulldozers of the large corporations how fair the system is.

Ask those who want to protest conferences or other gatherings of heads of state and government who, in a just world, would be behind bars.

Ask those who protest the building of a highway through pristine natural preserves.

Illusion of democracy

What we have in Canada is the appearance of democracy, but as the scales fall from our eyes, we see the sham. In the U.S. we see millions being spent to elect a governor who makes $250,000 a year, hundreds of millions to elect a president who makes half a million. Are we to assume that no payback is expected for this, ah, generosity?

In Canada it’s no better. We spend hundreds of thousands electing MLAs and MPs who have exactly zero influence on what government does. We say “let’s vote for Bloggs, he’ll make a great MLA” — even though he goes to Victoria as a slave to the premier. Indeed the premier likely pays more attention to his barber than poor Bloggs or any one in his caucus (Maybe he should!).

Think upon it. If you are a Canadian voter, in your hand is the ballot paper, the key to power and the exercise of that power, right? Permit me to put a few questions,

How much say have you in permitting salmon farms? In their proliferation? What say do you now have as the licences increase?

How much say did you have in saving BCRail? In fact, Premier Campbell promised not to sell BCRail but did it any way. Did you have any say, Hell, knowledge, of the criminal aspects to how it was sold?

How much impact have you had on an energy policy that devastates our rivers so that private power companies can sell the power to BC Hydro, which though it doesn’t need it must buy it for double what they can re-sell it for? When did you vote to change a public-power system into a private one? What power do you have to save BC Hydro from the bankruptcy it’s technically now in?

How much say will you have stopping pipelines carrying tar sands gunk to Kitimat to be sent by tanker down our coast, at the same time the most beautiful and treacherous coastline in the world?

Here it is in a nutshell. We, the people of B.C., have not had and never will have the slightest impact on these decisions, which will destroy our way of living. They’ll all be made by CEOs, approved by a paid-for premier or prime minister, who having no one to stop him will have it approved by a captive cabinet then by the lickspittles on the government backbench.

We have never needed democracy more than now and the lack of it will cost us dear. For unless there’s a sea change in how we’re governed, we will have violence. The public knows that our environment is in serious jeopardy because our governments are so in thrall to the corporate boardroom that they dare not fight them. The public sees that the democratic option is gone.

End of their tether

Now we see Premier Photo-Op surveying the scene, pronouncing that she will have no opinion on the Enbridge pipeline and the consequent tanker traffic until the Environmental Assessments — the “rubber stamp” process — is complete!

Any damned fool, with the exception of Premier Clark, knows that pipeline ruptures and tanker spills are not risks but certainties waiting to happen. By approving the pipelines and tanker traffic we will have certain disaster… not perhaps, not maybe, not only if we have bad luck, but certain catastrophe.

What can the enraged and neutered populace do?

Do we allow these desecrations to our home take place without a fight?

When an all powerful autocracy emerges, history teaches us that the resultant combination of frustration added to anger turns good men and women to civil disobedience,

You tell me, Madam Clark, Mr. Harper — what are we to do?

Depend on Parliament/legislature? Depend upon the courts to back us up on our quest to save and return our heritage? Uphold the rule of law when it has been reduced to that which suits the powerful only?

I put it to the captains of industry and their purchased politicians — read your history! See what happens when the public has reached the end of its tether. Then ask yourself, what’s different today?

And how long do you think the public will take this shit without fighting back?

Enbridge's 2010 spill of over 4 million barrels in Michigan - still not cleaned up

Enbridge is proposing two pipelines to Kitimat BC to take Tar Sands gunk (more politely “bitumen”) to tankers who at 300 per year will take it to China as is, or to the United States for refining, thence China.

Today I want to deal with the pipelines only. The horrible consequences of tankers on our coast are for another column.

First off, there is no question that there will be leaks and that any leak will be serious and in a remote area. The lines will cross over 800 rivers and streams, all fish bearing – three of which are important salmon spawning rivers.

Two questions arise. When there’s a spill somewhere in the heart of wilderness, how long does it take to find it and, once found, what can you do about it?

The answer is you don’t know and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Here is the interesting point – in their promotional materials, Enbridge expressly admits that there will be spills because they talk not of eliminating leaks but of “managing” them.

That last line is critical because it’s Enbridge’s confession that they cannot prevent spills – in fact the confession is certified by this release called Enbridge Line 6B Response, wherein Enbridge talks about “risks”, opening with this:

Because of their location and the products they carry, pipelines may come in contact with water, bacteria and various chemicals, all of which can corrode steel. Both the interior and exterior of the line are potentially subject to corrosion. We combat [not eliminate – my comment -RM] corrosion by:

• using high-quality materials and anti-corrosion coatings

• scheduling regular monitoring and inline inspections to check for corrosion

• scheduling excavation and repair programs identified by inline inspections

• using cathodic protection (a low level electrical current) to inhibit corrosion of underground pipelines

• using modelling tools to predict corrosion growth rates along pipelines

• using inline devices known as “pigs” to clean and inspect pipelines from the inside

• using specialized corrosion inhibitors within the pipeline to address internal corrosion”

Thus the candid admission that there will be spills.

Under Managing Stress Corrosion and Cracking, Enbridge says:

Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) is a crack initiation and growth process that can occur in steel pipelines. Research has shown that SCC is caused by a number of factors, including pipe material, stress and the environment surrounding the pipe. SCC typically occurs on the exterior of the pipe. This type of cracking has the potential to penetrate the steel and cause a pipeline break.

You will note that there is no action to eliminate stress corrosion
.

Under Setting Leak Reduction Targets And Performance Goals: “
We believe that pipeline safety and reliability begin with prevention. This means recognizing conditions that have been known to cause failures in the past – then working to minimize the risk.”

Again, Enbridge does not talk about eliminating the “risk” but managing it!
 This release confirms what The Common Sense Canadian has been saying all along: spills from pipelines are not “risks” at all but dead certainties.

There is more to it than this. Throughout the debate there has been no mention of outside causes such as terrorism or vandalism. Think on that a moment – 1070 km of dangerous Tar Sands gunk over a wilderness area and no one is considering these threats!

If there is a leak from any reason, how does Enbridge respond? How do they find the problem and once having found it, how do they get to it? Moreover, how do they get heavy equipment to the site, and once there, what the hell do they do about it?

A good example of how Enbridge handles spills is found in the spill in July 2010 in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, a highly populated area. It took several days to get to the spill and in nearly 18 months Enbridge has not come close to cleaning it up!

In fact it’s not possible to clean up oil spills – the Exxon Valdes spill in 1989 is still not cleaned up.

No matter what is said, and by Enbridge’s confession, Pipeline ruptures cannot be stopped but are dead certainties, the only question being the damage done. In our case, by the nature of the location the resultant spills will create appalling, ongoing and long-term consequences.

We simply cannot let this happen.

From the commencement of time ownership and control of societies have been shared, preposterously unfairly, between “them that has and them that doesn’t”.

It continues today as never before. What the super rich don’t own, they control. 100s of thousands of jobs, thanks to the computer, have been exported to lands where labour is dirt-cheap and where benefits are minimal if they exist at all.

We are witnessing the corporatization of our government by the powerful. It’s an easy task, for the ordinary MP or MLA, by reason of our rotten system, does what his or her leader orders. The decisions of society are no longer made by parliaments – if they ever were – but in the corporate boardroom.

A question or two:

What say did you have re: fish farms? What say have you about the huge damage these farms present? What say have you now on new licenses?

What say have you had in the destruction our rivers by large and very rich foreign companies? Have you agreed that it’s a good thing that these private sector companies get a sweetheart deal, where they sell power to BC Hydro for more than twice what it’s worth, forcing Hydro to buy this power at a huge loss when they don’t need it?

BC Hydro is technically bankrupt – is that what you thought you would have when the Campbell government set forth its private energy policy, turning over power production to rich companies like General Electric?

What say did you have in the privatization of BC Rail where the Campbell government gave our railroad away in a crooked deal that the government hushed up?

What about the Enbridge Pipeline scheduled to ship hundreds of thousands of barrels of Tar Sands gunk (aka bitumen) from the Alberta to Kitimat? Have you had a say in this matter? The only reason to send this gunk to Kitimat is so that it can be shipped down our coast through the most dangerous waters in the world – have you had a say in this?

Of course you haven’t and it’s instructive, I think, to note that Premier Clark will only express her opinion after the rubber stamping National Energy Board has deliberated.

Premier Photo-Op doesn’t seem to understand that the approval of the pipeline means oil tankers at almost one a day sailing down our pristine coast line.

Is the premier that dumb?

Or is it that her government is prepared to approve tanker traffic?

The companies and politicians talk about minimal risk – the plain, incontrovertible fact is this:

THESE ARE NOT RISKS BUT CERTAINTIES WAITING TO HAPPEN.

The issue facing BC can be simply stated: will we give up our land and resources to the private sector and, while we do it, will we accept the destruction of our environment?

The Corporations say that these efforts, fish farms, private power, pipelines and tankers will being lots of money and lots of jobs into BC.

I ask two questions – what money and what jobs? Building fish farms, private dams and pipelines bring construction jobs, mostly to off shore crews, and leave behind a few caretakers to watch the computers. The profits go out of the province into the pockets of Warren Buffet and his ilk.

This is the fact Premier Clark must ponder and soon: will the public of BC simply accept these destructions of our beautiful province? Will they just simply shake their heads and go quietly?

In my view they won’t. Through the ages the long-suffering public takes so much and no more. Read your history, Madame Premier – there comes a tipping point where the public will take no more and in my judgment we have reached that point.

I beg of you, Premier, shake the scales from your eyes, look and think! This isn’t a right wing versus left wing matter but a question of right and wrong.

The last thing in the world I want to see is violence but I tell you fair that the decision rests upon you – if you don’t deal with the fish farmers, the energy thieves, the pipelines and tankers there will be violence, and that will be the legacy of the Campbell/Clark government.

John has never been strong on complicated issues and I wonder if he realizes that by supporting Enbridge he is also supporting tanker traffic? This may come as a surprise, nay shock, to Mr. Cummins, but it’s like the old song, “you can’t have one without the other”.

Perhaps Mr. Cummins has forgotten that Enbridge would cross 1000 rivers and streams, including 3 major salmon spawning rivers. Or does he have trouble with geography and thus is unable to trace these rivers into the Pacific Ocean thus doesn’t think there are any salmon around?

I wonder what’s next? Will we soon have a statement from Mr. Cummins that he favours fish farms as long as they do it right? Will we see him embracing his old Tory comrade, John Duncan, who is the only politician I know who likes fish farms and a man Cummins heartily disliked in his previous life?

Mr. Cummins has long had trouble with First Nations, especially in the area of fish – does the fact that First Nations oppose Enbridge and tankers account for the Tory leader’s decision?

I can’t see this announcement affecting the NDP one way or another – their goal remains namely getting 40% of the popular vote.

Maybe this shows that the same old whacko right-wing bunch still controls the unhappy band of no-hopers called the BC Conservative Party and that Cummins fooled people like me who thought he had a bit of decent Red Toryism in him.

In other matters, I followed much of the Cohen Commission and it seems to me that one thing has been clearly established: the fish farm industry has been obstructive in the extreme, withholding evidence and lying through their teeth.

They are now backed into a corner where their sole escape is to say “these diseases predated our arrival so that any disease in our fish was not our fault” – the old sea lice defence. Even if this is so, the defence fails as it does with sea lice.

Here is the meat of the matter – hundreds of thousands of penned fish provide a huge number of hosts to become infected and thus create a huge aura of disease that migrating salmon must go through. Be it viruses or sea lice, the fish cages become so infectious that wild fish passing them can’t help being stricken. In other words, migrating salmon can deal with lice and disease when it’s in the normal quantity – in nature’s balance – but they haven’t a chance passing fish cages.

The Cohen Commission has exposed a corrupt industry that puts money far ahead of moral obligation. It does more than that, for when you analyze them alongside other industries in the environment, they demonstrate beyond doubt, whether you’re talking power, mining, extracting, transporting product – none of them gives a damn about the environment. Corporate Responsibility is an oxymoron.

What truly makes one want to throw up are the ads these lying bastards display and the shit that pours from their flacks. The news media that take their high priced ads and give endless free space for the flacks are beneath contempt.

Hard as it is to believe, the politicians are even worse. There’s Premier Photo-op in her year-end review saying that she will wait for all the evidence to come in before dealing with pipelines and tankers.

What evidence to come in? Another Kalamazoo spill from Enbridge? Another Exxon Valdez? Some help with basic arithmetic showing how leaks and spills are not risks but downright certainties?

You can measure the Campbell/Clark governments concern about our cherished environment and all within it by comparing it to the concerns of large corporations – except it’s worse, for the corporations have no morality, while the governments hold our possessions in trust; they have a solemn moral obligation to the voters.

To say they all have the morals of an alley cat does a grave injustice to cats.