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

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?

Wetsuweten Nation protest against proposed Enbridge Gateway pipeline, July, 2010

We’re on a collision course to violent conflict, with little to gain for BC.

This lovely, peaceful province of ours is flying headlong into a situation which customarily breeds violence. Those are harsh words, but this is how I see the pipelines/tanker situation developing.

Some will claim that I’m irresponsibly creating a self-serving prediction. I am, however, the chronicler of the news, not the maker of it. The catalyst pushing us to the brink is already brewing up its potent mix.

The battlefields are three in number: the Enbridge Gateway pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands to Kitimat, the oil tankers that would ply our coast to draw from that pipeline, and the Kinder Morgan line which already brings tar sands gunk — more politely called bitumen — to Vancouver harbour and is proposed to be upgraded to bring far more. All three of these routes pass First Nations unceded territory.

Before getting into that, there are some background facts that turn this question into one of potential conflict.

1. In spite of what Enbridge and Kinder Morgan, the pipeline companies involved say, oil spills are not risks but certainties.

2. These spills cause permanent damage. The Exxon Valdez catastrophe in 1989 is still not cleaned up.

3. Enbridge has an appalling record with spills. Its spill in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, next to a built up area, is 18 months later still not yet cleaned up and many doubt it ever will be.

4. Spills will certainly happen on land and on sea, and with their potential locations, Enbridge will not get to them soon enough to do anything. In fact, this is the horrible truth. Spills will happen far away from the company, and even if it could get to the scene, there is nothing it can do except put out press releases to mollify the citizens. Let’s suppose, for illustration purposes, a pipeline bursts halfway between the tar sands and Kitimat. How does Enbridge get to the spill and when they do, how do they do anything about it?

Google Enbridge Kalamazoo and you will see that the company has paid $550 million in clean-up costs but that hasn’t yet relieved the affected community of the toxic effects of the bitumen that was spewed in its midst.

The Enbridge Gateway pipeline to Kitimat is destined to cross 1,000 rivers and streams in its 1,070 kilometre journey, including three critically important salmon spawning rivers.

5. This pipeline may be great news for Alberta, but there’s nothing in it for B.C. except environmental grief. Enbridge is telling us that there are billions of dollars coming to B.C. because of their pipelines, but don’t tell us how this will happen.

I don’t want to put this in economic terms, however, because the sticking point is that this pipeline guarantees environmental catastrophe which, surely to God, is enough to dump it.

6. We’re told the Enbridge pipeline will mean thousands of jobs in B.C., but the cold truth is that most of those will be short-term construction jobs which history demonstrates inevitably go to experienced pipe constructors from out of province.

This raises the ultimate question. Do jobs trump the environment? Will we, like the man who uses shingles from the roof for his fireplace, destroy our environment to create jobs? If so, why not solve Vancouver’s unemployment by logging Stanley Park and fill it with condos as a follow-up?

Approval process lacks credibility

Now let’s deal with the process in getting a pipeline approved. There will be federal and provincial environmental hearings. It is not in their mandates to decide upon whether or not the pipeline should go through — that’s already decided — but how the company will proceed environmentally. I’ve been to these meetings and as I’ve said before, I’d rather have a root canal with no anaesthetic than go to another. You’re not there for five minutes before you recognize that the “fix is in.”

Now the real issue. How to get this pipeline and subsequent tanker traffic approved without having First Nations get in the way?

There is scarcely a square inch of the proposed route that doesn’t pass through First Nations land claims. Moreover, even if the company somehow gets approval for the pipeline, there’s no point getting the sludge to Kitimat if you can’t get on a boat. This brings in a new group of First Nations, and they vow that no tankers will move down that coast.

How do Enbridge and the governments deal with aboriginal resistance?

A legal expert at the University of Calgary law school says simply that the company doesn’t have to get consent from all the First Nations involved; the government need only “consult” with bands involved. Whether the expert, professor Nigel Bankes, is right or not, First Nations believe they do have a veto and are proceeding accordingly.

(We cannot overlook the possibility that First Nations are using the issue of their proclaimed veto simply as a bidding ploy to drive up the price they’ll agree to. After attending their large press conference and hearing what one chief after another had to say I do not believe that myself, but that possibility must be recognized.)

What we have then is a clash of legalities. The First Nations, following their laws and customs, are up against laws of Canada that they do not acknowledge. It’s not my purpose here to say who is right. I just lay before you the realities as I see them.

If — and I believe this is the case — First Nations resistance is real and they will not be bought off, 2012 will be a very long and deeply troubling year.

If Enbridge and the governments attempt to push the pipeline and tanker traffic through, it’s very hard indeed to see how serious consequences can be avoided.

Postscript: the Kinder Morgan pipeline from the tar sands to Vancouver and consequences of a tanker spill is another story to be told in the next article.

Frank Crumit: An anti-war singer of his day.

If citizens of our age need a scathing anthem, here’s one from 1927.

2012 bids fair to being a year of violence, which makes me think of Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and other chroniclers of the ’60s who eloquently and effectively wrote the anthems to which the peace movement marched.

This revolt against the government seemed to many of us to be a novel undertaking. We grew up when the government was the embodiment of the national interest. Songs should be like the Second World War songs, which glorified war and were mostly love songs. The First World War songs were the same, only more jingoistic.

But the anthems of the turbulent ’60s weren’t the first to parody the times. There was an earlier song which spoke of the ridiculousness of the issues that divide us into camps of war. I’ll get to that momentarily.

I have often thought and spoken about violence and war, and it seems to me when you can’t even get a village to pass a dog bylaw everyone can live with, how can we expect countries to agree on issues that divide them?

When I was a boy I had a gramophone record — kids, ask your grandparents about records — put out by RCA Victor by Frank Crumit and sung in 1927 called Abdul Abulbul Amir.

This was before my time! The reverse side (ask your grandparents again) was Frankie and Johnny. Hear the 1927 version and you will hear a great parody on human beings’ inherent dislike of peace.

Here it is as sung by Crumit:

The sons of the Prophet are brave men and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear,
But the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah,
Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.

Now the heroes were plenty and well known to fame
In the troops that were led by the Czar,
And the bravest of these was a man by the name
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

One day this bold Russian, he shouldered his gun
And donned his most truculent sneer,
Downtown he did go where he trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.

Young man, quoth Abdul, has life grown so dull
That you wish to end your career?
Vile infidel, know, you have trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.

So take your last look at the sunshine and brook
And send your regrets to the Czar
For by this I imply, you are going to die,
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

Then this bold Mameluke drew his trusty skibouk,
Singing, “Allah! Il Allah! Al-lah!”
And with murderous intent he ferociously went
For Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

They fought all that night neath the pale yellow moon;
The din, it was heard from afar,
And huge multitudes came, so great was the fame,
Of Abdul and Ivan Skavar.

As Abdul’s long knife was extracting the life,
In fact he was shouting, “Huzzah!”
He felt himself struck by that wily Calmuck,
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

The Sultan drove by in his red-breasted fly,
Expecting the victor to cheer,
But he only drew nigh to hear the last sigh,
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.

Czar Petrovich, too, in his spectacles blue
Rode up in his new crested car.
He arrived just in time to exchange a last line
With Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.

There’s a tomb rises up where the Blue Danube rolls,
Engraved there in characters clear,
Is, “Stranger, when passing, oh pray for the soul
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.”

A Muscovite maiden her lone vigil keeps,
‘Neath the light of the cold northern star,
And the name that she murmurs in vain as she weeps,
Is Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

I saw this as just a funny ditty until earlier this year when, for some unknown reason, I remembered the song and picked it up for 99 cents from my iTunes library and actually listened to it.

It was a timeless parody of man’s inhumanity to man. Today, the Sultan and the Czar live, and Abduls and Ivans abound.

We’re all Abduls and Ivans

2011 has been the year the world has been shaken by the Occupy movement, and unable to understand how a movement could be so successful without a leader or expressed purpose. It has polarized communities that see these young people as hippies and druggies who create a nuisance — which they do to attract attention, and it has worked brilliantly.

History teaches us that when there is a huge gap between the minority that has everything and the majority that has virtually nothing, bad things happen. And we would be fools to think that what’s happening today will go away.

We in the comfy West who have “made it” manage to believe anything that sounds reassuring. We refuse to connect any dots, even though the Arab Spring has connections to the economic positions of the one per cent in that region — in addition to their very real other grievances.

What is also a joinable dot is the political disconnect between the 99 per cent and the governments owned by the one per cent.

Then there’s a dot for the mainstream media which, supinely or maliciously or both, leaves the one per cent alone. It’s the same dot that sees the world’s mainstream media without a social presence, on the side of large corporations, and the establishment who run everything for their own benefit. It is not just what they print or broadcast, but often what they don’t say.

The consequence of this capitulation of the media to Mammon, the purchase of government by corporations and the world being governed and informed by the boardroom is that folks generally “tune out.” The public knows it’s being lied to by corporations and government, but who’s telling the truth?

What’s this got to do with Abdul Abulbul Amir and Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar?

The arrival of the Sultan and the Czar to cheer on their gladiators is symbolic of us accepting, uncritically, the doctrines we adhere to without caring very much about what they mean. Even though we know that governments and their corporate rulers are full of crap, we fight for our leaders because we don’t know any better. If we never darken the door of a church, we as part of the Judeo-Christian community accept the traditional certainty that our cultures and traditions are better than anyone else’s. Not only do we believe in this, we will take up arms against the foe whomever he may be (a few bars of Onward Christian Soldiers, please!) when one of them trods on our toe.

The other guys, we’re reliably informed, might have been smart 500 years ago, but they’re still fighting the Crusades, suppressing their women and killing infidels that tread on any of their faithful toes.

I remember hearing the words of a well-educated Egyptian woman interviewed when Palestinians were hijacking planes. She was asked how she could justify these atrocities.

She spat back saying: “You who slaughtered millions of men in trenches for a few acres of land, routinely bombed innocent civilians and dropped a bomb each on two cities and killed 150,000 people, and you have the gall to accuse me of supporting terrorism?”

The thought flashed through the mind that the lady could be right — it all has to do with whose ox is being gored.

We are indeed like Abdul and Ivan. We accept, uncritically, what Big Brother tells us, and will draw from our holsters whenever we’re challenged.

Ah, Rafe, I’ll be told, 9-11 was no mere trodding on the toe!

No, it was not. But then neither was the Iraq-Iran war that had probably one million killed and wounded, with Iraq being funded by the U.S.

There is no purpose served by tossing atrocities back and forth. Moreover, there is more than one Czar and one Sultan involved, more than one Abdul and Ivan.

The point is this. When the only information and leadership comes from corporation boardrooms or from mosques, pulpits or from any similar location, we the people will find it very difficult to find a dog bylaw we can all live with or, at the highest levels, a way to behave rationally when our toe is trod on.

On all sides of the chasms that divide the cultures and nations, there is no shortage of Abduls and Ivans prepared to gamble the very life of this planet by spending their lives looking for trodden toes or insults to justify the drawing of the sword from its scabbard.

Now that the Obama administration has delayed its decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries in Texas, we had better gear up for quite a fight here in British Columbia. The pressure just rose to push through two dangerous oil sands pipeline projects running through our own province.

Before I take you through my thinking, let me address two questions I am frequently asked. Are you now a socialist? And, are you against all progress?

My answer to the first question is simple — socialism no longer exists in its original form other than in the minds of theorizing college professors. I believe in a mixed economy, a welfare state in the best sense of that term, and would be a Democrat in U.S. terms and a Social Democrat in Europe. I would be part of New Labour in the U.K.

I’ve done a lot of thinking on where I stand now and when I was in government, and I see a progression towards more social ideas but can, and do, make the case that my record in government shows a leftish tinge.

As to progress, let’s talk about this in a bit of depth, not one-liners.

I am NOT against “progress,” but say that what is and what is not “progress” has to be judged case by case. Just because it’s new and fashionable doesn’t make it progress.

To boil it down to cases, let’s look in some depth at the projected Enbridge pipelines proposal. It is two parallel lines, one carrying the tar sands gunk, known as bitumen, and the other to take the condensate, the stuff they use to transport the bitumen, back to the tar sands. Two potential disasters for the price of one.

Jobbed

I would argue this case from the No side even if we were making bundles of money and employing thousands of people — but let’s look at the profit side.

B.C. gets zilch out of this. Alberta, with the lowest royalty impositions in the world, makes money in the sense that they charge a royalty and are not required to pay the environmental costs. B.C.’s “share” comes in the abstract sense that the feds get money in which we share. From the pipelines we get the peppercorn rent of a right-of-way.

The pipelines will hire people in various aspects of construction, but before we get too excited about that, these jobs will be temporary and most of the workers who fill them will be from out of the province. Once completed, there will be maintenance jobs only.

Let’s talk frankly about jobs, and lest you think I’m callous on the subject, I’ve known joblessness big time, where friends were putting food in our freezer. Employment is a big issue.

But can we use potential employment as a reason for doing bad things with permanent consequences? Let’s put this in terms people in the Lower Mainland would understand.

We have far too many unemployed people here with an obvious way to alleviate it: log Stanley Park. It’s all second growth and there for the plucking. After that’s done, think of the construction jobs when the park is made over into high rises!

You may think this a silly argument, but why? If we’re going to seriously threaten our wilderness, the animals there and three major salmon rivers, why not Stanley Park — and let’s subdivide Little Mountain while we’re at it. Both would provide lots of jobs.

In both the forgoing examples, there would be lots of employment of British Columbians, and there wouldn’t be any bad things left over, such as leaky pipelines.

Employment is always an evocative argument, but can it be used to trump arguments about what will be left over when the employment is over?

Pipe dreams

What is that Enbridge wants to do?

First, the pipelines.

Here is the proposal — two parallel 1,170 kilometre oil pipelines between Kitimat, B.C. and Bruderheim, Alberta. The proposal includes the construction of a marine terminal at Kitimat, and associated tanker traffic. One pipeline would move 525,000 barrels of crude oil per day west to Kitimat, and the other would carry 193,000 barrels of condensate east to the tar sands.

If you doubt the fact that there will be ruptures in the pipeline, I invite you to look at the company’s (Enbridge) website and what they will do when there is one.

It’s interesting to look at Enbridge’s spill in July 2010 at Kalamazoo, Michigan. It took two days before Enbridge responded, and at this time 15 months later, they’re still cleaning up — they can never completely do the job. And the Kalamazoo River runs through developed, thus accessible land.

When the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines have their first spill and it’s in the wilderness, can you imagine the horror story that will be? How do you know when there’s been a rupture? How do you get there? How do you get equipment there? Once there, what can you do? Isn’t it fair to say that the damage will be permanent with catastrophic impacts on wildlife and salmon streams and rivers, and nothing can change that?

It must always be remembered that we’re not talking about a “risk” here, but a mathematical certainty. Let’s be clear. We’re looking at ongoing, certain spills in our sensitive wilderness, all of which are almost impossible to reach in a shorter term, and so will do permanent damage to this precious land.

Now let’s look at the tanker traffic which would result from these pipelines.

Former federal environment minister David Anderson had this to say: “If oil tanker traffic is allowed off the coast, it becomes a statistical question of when, not if, an accident is going to occur.”

220 supertankers would ply remote BC coast

I’m grateful to the Living Oceans Society for the following facts from their carefully documented paper entitled: Shipping on the British Columbia Coast. Current Status, Projected Trends, Potential Casualties, and Our Ability to Respond: A Briefing Report. Sointula, BC: Living Oceans Society. (The full report can be found on their website.)

“Known as bunker fuel, tankers carry between 2,000 and 8,000 bbls of fuel for this purpose. Because of their huge mass, tankers are very difficult to steer and stop. A loaded supertanker can take long as 15 minutes (and 3 km) to come to a full stop, and has a turning diameter of 2 km.

“If approved, an average of 220 supertankers will pass through the confined waterways of the Great Bear Rainforest on B.C.’s North and Central Coast each year, exporting oil to Asian and southern U.S. markets and importing condensate to Alberta.”

Where will these pipelines go?

The following, from the Skeena Wild Protection Society, has not been contested by Enbridge:

“The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Project proposal includes two parallel 1,170 kilometre pipelines from the tar sands in northern Alberta to a proposed oil port in Kitimat. One pipeline would carry between 400,000 to 1,000,000 barrels a day of crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to the B.C. coast. The second pipeline would carry 193,000 barrels a day of condensate, a mixture containing chemicals and petroleum used to dilute the thick, molasses like crude oil so that is can travel by pipeline. The proposed Enbridge pipeline would require over 1,000 stream and river crossings — this includes several hundred crossings in the Copper and Morice watersheds, two of the Skeena’s largest salmon producing tributaries.”

Coasting towards disaster

Let’s look at our coastline and what will happen after certain oil spills. This from the Living Oceans Society study, which says:

“The coastlines of the northern B.C. are among the richest in the world. It includes numerous salmon and Gray whale migratory routes, at least 650 spawning rivers, the Pacific Flyway, and the feeding habitat of Humpback whales and Orca. The wild salmon economy in B.C. — including commercial fishing, fish processing and sport fishing generate close to $1.7 billion combined each year in B.C. The commercial fishery in B.C. employs approximately 16,000 people. Additionally, the north coast crab fishery supports 41 commercial crab vessels that fish Dungeness crab in Hecate Strait, injecting another $20 million into local economies. An oil spill along the B.C. coast would devastate marine animals and destroy their habitats, with colossal consequences on local communities, fisheries and related tourism industries — even more catastrophic than the Exxon Valdes oil spill of 1989.

“The north and central coast present some of the most hostile environments for oil tanker traffic — it is one of the most active earthquake zones in Canada and the stormy unpredictable nature of the weather has given it a reputation for having some of the worst winter storms. Winds have been recorded at 200 km/hour, producing waves at 29 metres tall… based on the amount of oil intended to travel through the proposed pipeline route, it is predicted that there would be an oil spill of over 1,000 barrels about every five years, and a catastrophic spill of over 10,000 barrels every 12 years. Today, a 15 per cent oil spill recovery is considered a success.”

Let’s look at tanker traffic, including the boast by shipping companies that double-hulled tankers negate the possibility of a serious oil spill.

This courtesy of the Living Oceans Society: “Double-hulled tankers offer the best protection when a collision or grounding occurs at slow speeds, but double hulls do present challenges as they are still a relatively new technology and are more susceptible to problems of poor maintenance and operation. For instance, double hulls may result in increased corrosion between the hulls and a top heaviness that makes the vessel less stable in rough conditions.”

What will happen after a spill?

The most remembered oil spill on our coast was the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.

This calamity, near where Kitimat tankers will sail, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 was estimated to have resulted in the death of 2,800 sea otters, 250,000 birds, 1.9 million salmon, and 12.9 million herring. Just one spill, of which much evidence remains today, 22 years later!

No adequate oil spill response in place

In 1990, a federal public review on tanker safety in Canadian waters determined that based on the current levels of tanker traffic, Canada could expect 100 small, 10 moderate, and at least one major oil spill every year. A catastrophic spill — for which Canada was considered “wholly unprepared” — could be expected once every 15 years.

Twenty years after the Exxon Valdez disaster, Canada’s Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development determined that Canada’s plan for oil spill preparedness and response still does not adequately establish national preparedness capacity. The 2010 commissioner’s report noted the lack of any preparedness and response regime for ship-source chemical spills.

According to a drift analysis study, a vessel adrift off Haida Gwaii in severe weather would have to be 216 nautical miles offshore to ensure its rescue before drifting aground. The current Tanker Exclusion Zone falls far short of this requirement.

Here’s what Andrew Nikiforuk says about probabilities of spills in his blockbuster Tar Sands, Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent. According to Environment Canada, “these tankers would expose B.C. waters to average spills of 1,000 barrels every four years and ten thousand barrels every nine years.”

Is it possible that this terrible scenario can become a reality?

You bet. According to a recent article in the Sept. 11, 2011 edition of the Houston Chronicle: “U.S. and Canadian companies have dominated Alberta’s oil sands for decades. Now, though, Chinese firms are rushing to snap up Canadian oil sands resources and invest in ongoing projects — to the tune of $15 billion in the past 18 months in Alberta alone.”

We have, then, the federal government in favour, pending an environmental assessment that will certainly be ignored if not favourable, a compliant provincial government and the second biggest financial power in the world financing much of the venture. Moreover, if the U.S. eventually does pass the Canada Keystone project taking the tar sands gunk to Houston, they can be counted upon to support China. Given their fiscal relationship, the U.S. has no other choice.

Here we are supposed to be fighting global warming and weaning ourselves off fossil fuels as we help the worst polluter on the planet, the tar sands, expand their business by exporting their product through the most sensitive environment on the globe, thence down our coast — the most beautiful and dangerous coastline in the world!

The Vancouver connection

There is one hell of a big problem on the horizon related to yet another pipeline, the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which already is taking a huge quantity of tar sands gunk to Vancouver’s harbour. From there, it is shipped through our waters to China either directly or after it’s refined in Houston, Texas.

How so?

Let’s look at pipelines and ocean spills, and what the statistics tell us:

According to an article by Mitchell Anderson published in The Tyee on June 2, a quiet application to the National Energy Board (NEB) may soon vastly expand oil tanker traffic through the waters of Burrard Inlet, making Vancouver the major conduit of oils sands crude and bitumen to China.

Trans Mountain Pipeline, a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan that operates the 300,000 barrel per day (bpd) pipeline from Alberta to B.C. and Washington State, has applied to the NEB to enter into long-term buying contracts called “firm service.”

They are also requesting to divert more Alberta crude and bitumen capacity to the Westbridge tanker terminal in Burrard Inlet and away from existing land-based refineries in B.C. and Washington.

The threat of this increased traffic (the present traffic is dangerous enough) is immense.

Rex Weyler, a cofounder of Greenpeace, says the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion “would mean that its capacity would increase from 300,000 barrels a day to 700,000 barrels a day,” which would mean the “death of the inlet would be inevitable.” (Remember that an oil spill is inevitable!)

If, for sake of argument, let’s say that Enbridge decides not to use the Northern Gateway pipeline, and the Kinder Morgan pipeline was expanded accordingly. The daily flow into Vancouver’s harbour would be an extra 525,000 bbl per day!

Are we gambling with anything at stake here, or are we only playing for matchsticks?

The answer is clear that we will have oil leaks in pipelines and tankers. Enbridge doesn’t deny this, but writes confidently in an offhanded way about how they will handle these leaks. (See their webpage.)

What, then, are we looking at here?

In a nutshell, we have two new pipelines crossing 1,170 km of virgin wilderness. This raises the obvious questions: How long will it take for a response team to get to where the spill occurs? How will they manage a clean-up? Why would we believe the clean-up would happen in time to prevent any massive damage, given that the spill from an Enbridge pipeline into the Kalamazoo River, in a highly developed area, is still not cleaned up 16 months later, and never will be? What then will the damage be here in British Columbia? One must assume that sometime, the spill will get into one or more of the three major salmon rivers.

Silently slipping under the radar is the increase in size, capacity and delivery from the tar sands to Vancouver through the Kinder Morgan pipeline(s).

Again, the threat there is a certainty, and an ongoing one.

We can stop this

Let me ask this of well-meaning people who think that the risk is slight, whether it’s from a pipeline or tanker. Where is the value to B.C. in these immense transportation undertakings?

If we’re to take the unchallenged dicta from experts in this field, the spills are certain. How then can you justify putting our wilderness and coast to certain destruction, remembering that the companies admit that these spills will happen? And do it to help the tar sands continue the largest environment despoiler in the world to produce fossil fuels in great abundance!

Can we stop it?

Only if we are prepared to go the distance. There will be threats to meet from the federal government and courts, and there will be bribes offered. The threats will be brute force, you can bank on that.

I believe that the mass of B.C.’s population wants nothing to do with these projects and will happily use civil disobedience to enforce their views.

Before finishing, let’s remember that any who are guilty of civil disobedience must be prepared to accept the consequences. Having said that, we must rally in huge numbers. We must be prepared to lie down in the path of machinery and when the expected injunction is achieved, we must be prepared to go to jail. In fact, if enough of us do this, there won’t be enough jail cells to hold us.

Given the fatal environmental damage these international corporations will inflict, we surely must spare no opportunity to fight these pipelines and tankers with everything we can, short of violence.

Before I get started, please understand that I mean no disrespect whatsoever to those who died on 9-11, nor their families and friends — that I mean from the bottom of my heart.

I am sick of 9-11. I’m sick of hearing “God Bless America” instead of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” for the seventh inning stretch. I’m tired of seeing and even thinking about George Bush. (As we settled in to enjoy the World Series, my wife Wendy was so pissed off at seeing Bush in the owner’s box, she changed her allegiance from the Rangers to the Cards!)

I’m tired of excessive airport security. I love those questions about who packed your suitcase. Are they expecting a terrorist to say, “No, my Al Qaeda buddy did and it’s full of explosives?”

Right after 9-11, a local professor said that Americans had created hardships in the world that had motivated the attack. Like most in the media, I dumped all over her. Now, however, it’s pretty obvious that she was right — her timing, however, was awful.

As Chief Dan George advised, it’s wise to walk a mile in another man’s moccasins, and I suggest we look at this through Islamic eyes and see if we can learn something of what caused this tragedy.

Vietnam is not a bad place to start because, like the Middle East, it had suffered the indignity of European occupation. In Vietnam, the Americans had no issue at stake to use as a reason for being there exception their 235 year old doctrine of “manifest destiny” that said every place in the world must have American democracy. Considering the gang they supported in Saigon, this was pretty hard to stomach. The plain fact was that to the Vietnamese, the U.S. was just a newer version of France.

The distinction between Vietnam and the Middle East is that in the latter, there is long religious and cultural battle going back to the Crusades. You might remember the fuss when Bush the First talked about a “crusade” running up to Iraq war number two.*

How to create generations of resentment

The modern lousy relationship between Europeans and Muslims became a matter of holy writ after the Balfour Declaration in 1917 started the movement of Jews into Palestine, leading to the creation of Israel in 1948, an event which Arabs bitterly resent to this day.

Let’s pause here for a moment and examine this declaration, for there is a line which seemed forgotten before the ink dried on the manuscript, namely that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

Is it any wonder why the taking of Palestine and making much of it into a Jewish homeland made the inhabitants cross?

After the First World War, the Ottoman Empire, which controlled the majority of Arab land, crumbled.* Britain and France, more the former than the latter, offered to make everything better by creating a number of nations, none of which, excepting Egypt, had any sense of nationalism. They had common language and common religion, yes, but they were not otherwise nations. The British simply drew lines in the sand, created kingdoms, and like Little Jack Horner, looked content while no one in the new “nations” involved did.

Lubricating conflict

Then there’s oil. For the chapter and verse history, one should read Linda McQuaig’s It’s The Crude, Dude. Allow me to roughly summarize.

Just before the First World War, First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, decided to replace the coal burning Royal Navy with oil which soon became, and still is, the “economic” issue that has plagued the region ever since. The oil in the Middle East, which was abundant, became the issue used by the U.K., and U.S. to interfere in Middle East countries. One example stands out — Persia (now Iran), which had an abundance of what the unwelcome visitors courted, then critical to their economies.

In 1951, Iranians democratically elected Mohammed Mosaddegh, who became prime minister of Iran. This quote from Wikipedia tells his story: “From an aristocratic background, Mosaddegh was an author, administrator, lawyer, prominent parliamentarian, and politician. During his time as prime minister, a wide range of progressive social reforms were carried out. Unemployment compensation was introduced, factory owners were ordered to pay benefits to sick and injured workers, and peasants were freed from forced labor in their landlords’ estates. Twenty per cent of the money landlords received in rent was placed in a fund to pay for development projects such as public baths, rural housing, and pest control.”

Mosaddegh, by 1953, had been demonized by the U.K. because he had the temerity to nationalize oil. For his trouble, he was overthrown by the U.K. and the CIA (led by Teddy Roosevelt’s son Kermit) who installed the Shah as an absolute monarchy. Space requires that I leave unsaid a hell of a lot more examples of intervention in the Middle East by the U.K., the U.S., and to a lesser degree France.

What if one looks at this as if it were Arabs interfering with the European countries? There would be war.

Here’s where Muslims kidnapping, bombing ships and buildings, and carrying out the 9-11 attacks come in.

Arabs and Iranians see themselves as wronged and seek to fight — except they can’t. The U.S. is too powerful to meet head on. Arab and Iranian forces are no match for the U.S.

Frustration inspires innovative ways to retaliate. It’s the old story. If all you have is a hammer, all you seek are nails.

A decade can shift perspective

I was as horrified as most people at 9-11. In fact, I asked our priest to have the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” as one of the following week’s hymns. He agreed and there was scarcely a dry eye in the congregation.

But time begets fresher perspectives. And although I’m still horrified with that terrible morning, I’ve become more reflective and analytical in the days since.

No bombing of innocent people can be excused, be it Guernica, London, Dresden, Hiroshima or New York and Washington. But until humankind learns how to, in Lyndon Johnson’s words “reason together,” we will have the horrors of war and deaths of the innocent.

When you look at 9-11 or any bombed city, one can see that while there is never a good reason, there is an explanation.

Even the U.S. — no, particularly U.S. citizens — must expiate its own sins when evaluating those of others.

Cartoon by Greg Perry

The movement is inevitable, unstoppable and unpredictable.

The Occupy Wall Street movement should come as no surprise. It certainly doesn’t to me, as I’ve been saying — in print — that the gap between the rich and the poor with the slow extermination of the middle class was a traditional recipe for serious unrest. While history doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, common factors usually reach similar consequences.

Here’s what I wrote in April 2010 for the Russia-based Strategic Culture Foundation magazine under “Thoughts on Communism and Capitalism”:

“Although communism may be dead in fact if not name, the conditions that spawned and nurtured it are very much with us today. Large corporations have replaced the noblemen, the dwindling middle class is no buffer between the haves and the have-nots, and the rich get richer. Not much different than 1917… Change, unpredictable change, is coming to your home and sooner than you think!”

I frankly believe that the Occupy Wall Street movement, which did its Occupy Art Gallery last Saturday in Vancouver, is part of the civil unrest in the Arab world as well, in the sense that in all cases governments lost their moral right to govern coupled with the factors I mentioned above.

Statistics abound demonstrating the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Paul Bentley in the Globe and Mail in June 2010 says (and this statement seems to be common): “Ten per cent of the total personal income in America was taken home by the top 0.1 per cent of earners in 2008 — the latest year for which figures are available.

“The top one per cent took home more than a fifth of all personal income in the U.S.”

I have written about billionaires recently, asking how in hell can anyone accumulate 70 thousand million dollars — that is 70 billion dollars — as has Carlos Slim, from Mexico would you believe!

According to Forbes Magazine, there are now 1,200 billionaires in the world.

It’s not the number of billionaires that matter. They are the pimples, not the measles. The problem is more basic than that, namely that the failure of banking institutions, which led to the recession, which led to unemployment, which led to the erosion of the middle class, happened because governments did not have regulations in place, and those they had weren’t enforced.

Outrage at the Teflon wealthy

If the collapse of banking institutions weren’t enough, the public money that went into saving the banks/brokerage houses was paid out, in large and in public gestures, to executives by way of bonuses!

In short, governments, especially in the U.K. and the U.S., failed to regulate and failed to enforce their own laws. And then, having used public money to revive economies, governments passively watched the bail-out recipients take that money as rewards for mismanagement.

A poor man who steals for food goes to jail; a man who steals hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, goes home to one of his residences full of million dollar art as if nothing had happened — then finds that shortly after his company went broke that he was richer than ever!

Poor people, unemployed people, are not stupid. The reason that Occupy Wall Street is able to sustain protests all over the world should be obvious — the failure of capitalism is so egregious that the poor masses all over the western world saw these shenanigans and need little prodding to take them to the streets.

Next moves

The question is, what now?

One possibility is that, like a grassfire, the movement quickly burns itself out with no obvious consequence. In my view, you can forget this scenario. Even if the “movement” does burn out, there will be lasting results if only the lesson that there are a hell of a lot of angry people out there looking for a way to unleash that anger.

I believe that the movement will look for a leader. In fact, the vacuum in leadership is so obvious that it will come; or perhaps more than one leadership hopeful will appear. It’s instructive, I think, to look at the Russian Revolution in 1917.

It’s interesting to note that this revolution was not, despite Soviet fairy tales, started by heroic communists. In fact, it sprang from angered people from all walks of life. The president of the first provisional government was Alexander Kerensky from March 1917 to November 1917. His biggest problem was that he was from the middle class. It was not until November that the Bolsheviks, in a coup, took over.

The advantage the ruling elites have today is that the OWS movement is in so many different countries. That, I believe, can and will be overcome by modern technology.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the U.S., especially in the pre-November 2012 Democratic and Republican electoral tap-dancing leading to their respective conventions.

The governing elites will, of course, remain in denial and will make no moves toward dealing with the underlying causes for these (so far) peaceful protests. They will bring out their “obey the laws” argument and, like the Russian elite in 1917, will assume that it will all blow over.

It won’t. The genie is out of the bottle and the bottle has been smashed to bits.

God only knows what will happen now.

Today, a doubleheader.

First to my MP, John Weston (West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea-to-Sky Country).

Dear Mr. Weston,

I want to direct your intention to how sexual predators will be dealt with under your criminal law proposals, and point out that this is an area that requires leadership, not just braying to public prejudices.

Back when I was a young law student, rape was a hanging offense and guess what the unintended consequence of that was — rapists murdered their victims because it got rid of the principal witness and you could only hang once.

Sexual offenses against youngsters are so appalling that society expresses its massive rage and disgust — understandably so — and in doing so, creates two horrible unintended consequences that could and should be erased by the stroke of a pen.

First, like with rapists of yore, there is an incentive to kill the victim who is usually the only witness.

Second, no matter how long the sentence is, the predator will be let out, far from cured, to offend again.

Here is the answer, and it’s the right one, but it takes leadership and courage.

What is the very first thing we all say when we hear of a sexual predator molesting and perhaps killing his victims?

“He’s sick!”

And he is! Big time! And our diagnosis is bang on!

Why, then, do we put him jail when there is a much better way? Namely, when it is shown, at trial, that the accused is mentally ill and his actions inherent to that sickness, the judge acquits him on the grounds of diminished capacity and orders that he “be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.”

What does this mean?

He is confined in hospital, treated if, and only if, he is deemed to be cured, released under the strictest of parole conditions. Uncured, he stays, perhaps forever.

Is this mollycoddling?

Hardly, since the offender may never be released. Moreover, no release is permitted unless and until a board of psychiatrists judges the offender is no more likely to offend than any other citizen. He stays in custody, and that decision is supported by a committee of the provincial cabinet followed by an order-in-council from cabinet as a whole.

Please think this through. The issue is whether we’re going to let a sexual molester back on the streets without any therapy, or let him out only after he has been treated and found safe to release by a board of psychiatrists and agreed to by the government.

While I was in cabinet, I was part of the three ministers’ review process, and we dealt with the question of release of people detained “at the Queen’s pleasure.” I especially remember one where the man had set fire to his house knowing that his wife and children were inside. They all died. He was passed by the board as safe to release, and that’s what we did. We were under enormous pressure, for we knew that a mistake on our part could have very serious consequences. Of the dozen or more we released over five years, none re-offended.

Please, Mr. Weston, do some serious thinking on what I’ve said.

Sincerely, Rafe Mair

Second, a response to a Tyee reader:

I feel compelled to answer a comment posted on The Tyee to my last article by “igbymac” because it deals with a very important part of British Columbia history. Here’s what igbymac said:

“I wonder why, as spokesperson for constitutional matters in B.C., I never heard you address how the 1982 Constitution was imposed upon Canadians, and upon British Columbians in particular, without broad democratic consultation and a vote/referendum?”

I was a spokesman for B.C. constitutional affairs from late 1976 until January 1981, at which time I left government. The major issue was the “patriation” of the Canadian Constitution (The BNA Act of 1867 etc.), which was spearheaded by prime minister Pierre Trudeau. From 1979-81, I was a member of Trudeau’s Committee of Cabinet Ministers on Constitutional Matters, which consisted of two ministers from each province and two from the federal government. It was our mandate to examine all the issues and report back to Mr. Trudeau for the First Ministers in 1980.

It must be remembered that Trudeau was going to force a constitution on us, and we were advised that he could not be stopped. More on that in a moment.

It must also be realized that the vast percentage of the old BNA Act was to be untouched.

I write this column with the uneasy feeling that no one gives a damn, yet I think people who read a columnist have a right to know what makes the writer tick. Or belch for that matter — something I often do when digesting news from Victoria and Ottawa. And so here’s a handy user’s guide to Rafe Mair’s worldview:

1. Journalism. As the late Denny Boyd said, I’m not a journalist but (particularly in my radio days) have strived to be a cross-examiner. I see my mandate (self-imposed to be sure) as a prod who constantly holds the establishment’s feet to the fire.

I know from experience how spinmeisters work — they lie through their teeth. The media also lies like dogs but their method is to remain silent on things that adversely reflect on their good friends, the establishment. One need only look at the appalling media reportage on environmental issues.

True to form, the media love Christy Clark, Premier Photo Op. When she was threatening an early election, no one challenged Clark making families and children the main election issue. Never mind that this file has been mangled by the Campbell/Clark government for 11 years. Were Clark to have campaigned on families and children, she would have raised the wonderful word Chutzpah to new heights. The reason the spin doctors have encouraged making this the centrepiece of an election is because all the other potential issues are even worse for the government. But corporate media pretty much gave her a pass.

2. Who to believe. I don’t believe a word government or the business community says. Not a word of it. They only tell the truth by accident, much like a stopped clock is right twice a day. Whether they are in the business of mining or drilling for oil or extracting some other form of wealth from our precious ecology, profit-driven corporations simply mouth whichever falsehoods people might be induced to believe. I don’t believe politicians, especially when they tell me that what they’re doing is in my best interests.

3. Why I was a Socred. I’m often accused of vacating the principles I espoused as a Socred minister back in the 1970s. This is partly true since I didn’t leave my brain behind when I left government for radio. Essentially, however, I still believe in free enterprise, but a market that is properly policed and includes just taxes.

I am still an environmental activist. As a Socred environment minister I saved the Skagit from being dammed by the city of Seattle, ended the wolf kill and put a moratorium on production of uranium.

I must also say that I made errors, many of them, but my philosophy, if not evident in all my actions, was essentially as it is now. As to any change in philosophy I plead Emerson, who said “foolish consistency is the hob-goblin of little minds”.

4. Where my first allegiances lie. I was born, raised and educated in Vancouver. I represented Kamloops in the Legislature. I am a British Columbian first and foremost. When I was the B.C. spokesperson on constitutional matters I was told that once I spent some time in central Canada I would learn that they really cared for British Columbia. I found nothing of the sort and my suspicions of their utter indifference to B.C. were brutally confirmed. I would not take to the streets on this issue but if B.C. went its own way I would shed not a tear.

This commitment to British Columbia causes me to cry out against the BC Liberal government’s horrible energy plan that desecrates our rivers while making private producers rich and forcing BC Hydro into a calamitous economic state. In the same vein of wanting to protect the precious natural heritage of this province, I take every opportunity to declare that oil pipelines and oil tankers pose not risks but certain disasters, and if we allow either in B.C. we deserve the catastrophes that are bound to happen.

5. My favourite medium. I love books and am a modern day Luddite when it comes to ebooks. I regularly canvass the big stores and order what I want from the independent 32 Books in Edgemount Village. I hate cell phones and mine is in the glove compartment of my car only to be used in an emergency. I have no idea what my cell phone number is because I am not interested in hearing phone calls which aren’t to my home/office.

6. My diagnosis of what ails our democracy. I am for democracy — of which we have precious little given the way we go about it. In our system, 40 per cent of the 50 per cent who voted are given 100 per cent of the power for four or five years. MLAs and MPs are toothless and must do as they are told. Large identifiable groups in our system are not only powerless but without any parliamentary or legislature voice. Every day I lean towards proportional representation or a version of it.

7. My critique of our current justice system. I believe that sex criminals should not be jailed but treated, not to be released until psychiatrists certify that he is no more likely to offend than the average citizen. As we do it now, these menaces are jailed and let out of prison not because they have been cured but because time has passed. That’s very wrong yet somehow we believe that detaining until cured is “mollycoddling.”

I believe in a massive reformation of the court system so that ordinary people can have the same access that the rich do.

I also profoundly believe in the presumption of innocence, the basis of our justice system for 1,000 years. At this point I especially believe in the presumption of innocence for drivers suspected of impaired driving. Instead, we now make the cop not only the arresting officer but decider of charges to be laid, prosecutor, judge and the guy who decides what the penalty will be. If we will make an exception to the presumption in one case, what next? The reason it hasn’t been tested in court is, interestingly, because the driver has no right to go to court!

8. My position on how much free expression should be allowed. I profoundly believe in free speech, even (perhaps I should say especially) the rude versions.

9. My measure of a good society. I believe that the state must ensure that every Canadian is fed and housed and I also support some examples of “affirmative action.” These things are opposed by the wealthy class but let me give you my reasons.

I believe that a caring society is judged, and rightly so, by the compassion it shows to the poor. Even those who think “too bad for the poor” must surely feel for children who, through no fault of their own, face daunting challenges to making for themselves a decent life. Many wealthy people I know say ‘if I could do it, so can they,’ which ignores two things: Not everyone is blessed with the wherewithal to ‘make it’ and not everyone is as lucky as the rich usually are.

I support affirmative action to help those who have been handicapped by their upbringing. I had huge affirmative action based on whom I was born to, their “social class,” and their ability to see I had the very best education and their ability to provide me with a safety net if I were fall on sorry times.

I get myself in a lather about cheating but when I do, I’m not looking at single moms on welfare but rather the rich. With the help of lawyers and accountants, the rich pay far less tax in proportion to their wealth than the less well-off. Let me give you an anecdote to demonstrate. In the U.S., a whistle blower who turns in a tax dodger gets 10 per cent of the tax collected with this proviso — that pay-off is limited to $10,000,000! In other words there are taxation thieves stealing over $100,000,000. You can forgive a hell of a lot of welfare cheaters for that kind of money!

As you may deduce, then, I have that quaint notion that the rich, individual or corporate, should pay their share of taxes.

10. When enough is enough. Finally, I believe that it’s time for me to shut up!

The world abounds in wake-up calls but, as Sinclair Lewis wrote, “It can’t happen here.”

Or can it?

All over the world, citizens are taking to the streets and although the issues vary, there is an underlying theme — the government isn’t paying attention and the corporations, as usual, are lying.

Citizens against a large pipeline gather in rage in front of the White House.

Throughout the streets of the Middle East there are rebellions taking place.

In the U.K., there were riots, ostensibly, because of diminished social services.

While in Vancouver, people rioted, again ostensibly, as a result of a lost hockey game.

Many governments seem bewildered at what’s happening and in at least three of them, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, are coming to the easy but wrong conclusion that putting down the riot/demonstration will take care of everything.

A spectrum of resisters

It is not my purpose here to condone violence and looting but to paint, for those in charge of British Columbia, what it all really means.

There have been many riots throughout history, of course, and some springing from bad motivations, such as the anti-Asian riot in Vancouver in 1907.

But usually those rioting have been one class of people, workers, rioting against a perceived threat to their livelihoods or to make their lives better. Examples in the U.K. included mineworkers rioting for better conditions, and, Chartists and Luddites rioting against new machines in Peterloo in 1819.

The widespread protests against the war in Vietnam, however, crossed all social and racial lines and happened when mass media had become worldwide. Most were non-violent demonstrations but some of the resistance was violent.

As a recent environmental activist, I have noticed something that the government obviously hasn’t. The protesters span all societal boundaries. Rather than being (mostly) young people, many gray heads, and indeed hairless heads are seen at rallies in which I’ve been involved. At the protests over the Eagleridge desecration in aid of the Sea-to-Sky upgrades I saw what I dubbed the three-piece-suit/pearl-necklace crowd, which went in busloads to Tsawwassen to protest the transmission lines and ALR demonstrations. Anti-fish-farm demonstrations clearly included a wide variety of angry people. The B.C. government either hasn’t the wit to understand what it all means, or perhaps (my view) they just don’t give a damn.

I neither predict violence nor, God knows, want it. I’m simply saying that more and more British Columbians are pissed off and at more and more things.

Demanding a say

There is a common thread, whether it be fish farms, private power outrages, threats to wildlife preserves, seized farmland for highways, pipelines, oil tankers, First Nations demonstrations — you name it. The common thread is lack of meaningful consultation. This was certainly obvious in the HST referendum as it was in the 1992 Charlottetown Accord referendum. In ever increasing numbers, British Columbians simply refused to acknowledge that the government knows best.

Mere consultation is not enough. It must be transparently meaningful.

A very good example is the Environmental Assessment Process for private power projects. I’ve been to several and as I’ve remarked before, I’d rather have a root canal without anaesthetic than go to another one.

These meetings are put on by the company, at a location inconvenient to most people and is chaired by a government employee. The meeting isn’t even called until it’s a done deal. Indeed, the only thing a member of the public can do is ask about the technical environmental process or make suggestions along that line. Time and again people want to deal with the merits of the undertaking — time and time again they are ruled out of order. The company rep is an exception and is allowed to extol the “virtues” of the project ad nauseum.

I must admit that these hearings had an unintended consequence for the company and its co-opted politicians. So many people heard about the hearings and informed themselves of the issues that even the toady media in this province began to discover that — Surprise! Surprise! — trouble makers like Joe Foy, Damien Gillis and Rafe Mair just might be right in saying that these private power projects (IPPs) were not only wrecking the rivers but bankrupting BC Hydro.

This happened because the protests raised extended the time of final approval such that even this media could no longer avoid facing the issues. When they finally did, they acted as if they were breaking news!

BC’s ecology at stake

Two hot button issues have had a very dangerous addition — oil pipelines and oil tankers. I say “dangerous” because here we have a mathematical certainty that pipelines will spring leaks and tankers will founder.

Why are they mathematical certainties?

That’s simple. If you take a so-called risk without any boundaries as to how long or how often you will take it, it’s no longer a risk but a certainly waiting to happen. There will, as a certainty, be ghastly leaks in our fragile and wondrous wild country; there will be, as a certainly, a tanker disaster.

It does no good to cloak movement of oil in our province with weasel words like “mitigation.” It is plain that a series of ghastly calamities will forever despoil our wilderness on land and at sea.

The question remains, I suppose, whether I am encouraging violence by raising subjects which beget violence.

I leave that with readers and will only say that I hate violence with every fibre of my body. The blame for violence will not be on the head of those who warned of it but those who thought that their fellow citizens had endless patience with politicians who would desecrate their beloved province.