Mackenzie Valley pipe dream

The Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline has been in the works since forever... it's the fundamental case upon which large environmental assessments have been modeled after in Canada and the Berger Inquiry was an epic formation of its time (the 1970s). It was reported that new Environment Minister Peter Kent did his own reporting on the Inquiry and a television clip was recently played of this journalism (he's known about environmental issues himself for quite a while).

Thomas Berger's Inquiry created a moratorium on the Pipeline proposal for ten years to deal with Aboriginal land. Years of delays and assessments after that has meant that the Pipeline was still never built. Now Kent and his colleagues in Cabinet have approved that same Pipeline, CBC has reported. However, they put in a stipulation of no government subsidies meaning the economics of it all still might not work. We don't know if it will ever be built (and at this time, the gas would be used more for tar sands development than its original purposes).

More and more, economics has been driving development over environmental considerations - and in some cases, it can be a much stronger force in stopping a project that has negative environmental consequences. Either way, the Pipeline and its case - whether it will be built or not - still has the prints of Berger all over it. His report has certainly outlived Canada's annually changing role of environment minister.

Shady diplomats, Exxon and Harper

Just when we thought things couldn't get any worse on the Conservative's treatment of climate change, we hear more bad news.

Not only is the Party killing our own climate legislation, it's using old American corporate-money games to try to kill their legislation as well. Postmedia News and the Pembina Institute are reporting that our diplomats are working to eliminate American legislation by pressuring Exxon Mobil and BP to use their influence.


Of course the corporate oil barrens have been using lobbyist pressure to sway public opinion and Washington policies for years. But didn't this let up more recently when they had to admit that climate change at least exists? Apparently not. And now we have a government that is tight with industry - tight enough to try to protect it from having to do anything of substance on the most critical issue of our time.

We don't think of corporations as instructive to Canadian politicians as our American neighbours - the money's not as big and as obvious. But the ties are very close with the current government.

This is a scary trend. It's not just elected senators making our democratic decisions - corporations are playing their fair share. We know from Wikileaks that American do some pretty interesting things. And ours are looking pretty shady today as well.

How do we push back? This is what we're up against.