no pipeline, no tankers, no problem 2

Thursday, April 26 at 5 PM - 9 PM PDT

Wilderness Committee National Office - 46 E. 6th Ave., Vancouver

In preparation for next week's rallies at MPs offices, we're painting a brand new banner! We need to show the federal government we will not stand by and let them use our taxpayer dollars to bail out Kinder Morgan's pipeline, trample Indigenous rights, fuel climate change and threaten our precious coast.

..this piece was posted once before and i do so again to highlight the struggle within indigenous nations re: band councils and km pipeline. the scc has already ruled some years ago that band councils only have authority over a small part of the land but not over the greater indigenous territory. to make this even worse the fed gov and km understand this very well.

Trudeau’s Trans Mountain fight isn’t with B.C., it’s with First Nations

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SECWEPEMC OPPOSITION

There are other reasons First Nations hold the balance of power in this fight, according to experts.

The Secwepemc Nation is the largest First Nation in the province with traditional territory stretching from the Rockies down into the B.C. interior. Half of the proposed pipeline, or about 518 kilometers of it, would pass through Secwepemc territory. The Secwepemc Nation has never signed a treaty with the Crown, so having the nation’s permission is extremely important for the pipeline to proceed.

Kinder Morgan claims it has that permission because it negotiated and signed benefit agreements with First Nation band councils along the route, including several Secwepemc band councils. But there’s a catch. Band councils were implemented by the federal government under the Indian Act, and they are not the only form of First Nations governance. By signing an agreement with the company, Secwepemc community members say the band councils ran afoul of traditional Indigenous law that predated the Indian Act.

According to Indigenous oral history, Secwepemc people have lived on their traditional territory since the last ice age, and newly found archaeological evidence suggests a First Nations presence in B.C. dating back 14,000 years. Before the 1876 Indian Act, First Nations had their own laws and governance systems that are recognized in Canada’s constitution under section 35. Secwepemc law states that title to the land is held collectively. In reaction to benefit agreements signed by band councils allowing the pipeline to proceed, Secwepemc community members released a declaration denouncing the agreements as “cynical attempts to divide and conquer our people.”

“We hereby explicitly and irrevocably refuse its passage through our territory,” the Secwepemc community members wrote about Trans Mountain.

To make matters worse for Kinder Morgan, band councils only have a say over reserve land, which makes up only about 0.2 percent of Secwepemc territory, according to Secwepemc political leader Arthur Manuel. So, even if Kinder Morgan’s benefit agreements with the Secwepemc band councils survived legal scrutiny, they would only allow the pipeline through a tiny portion of the group’s traditional territory.

..did you watch the video 17? it's interesting as they are building them on wheels.

Indigenous People and Swiss pensioners challenge Switzerland’s biggest banks on oil pipeline funding

Women from the Indigenous Women’s Divestment Delegation and the Swiss Klimaseniorinnen (Senior Women for Climate Protection) are at Credit Suisse and UBS headquarters today demanding that banks stop financing oil pipeline companies. The activists have set up a tipi in front of the headquarters to protest the pipelines, which cut through land, threaten Indigenous rights and human rights, put drinking water and wildlife at risk of oil spills, and contribute to climate change.

“Our goal is clear, there must be justice and accountability for banks and corporations. Indigenous Peoples are in danger, we need Europeans to act, to divest, to organise within their respective nations to make their banks accountable for Indigenous human rights abroad. We need Europe to stand and fight alongside us,” said Michelle Cook, a Diné/Navajo human rights lawyer.

The Indigenous Women’s Divestment Delegation, organised by the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), travelled to the heart of Switzerland’s financial district to demand that Swiss banks stop financing pipeline companies. They represent Indigenous Peoples from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, the Oglala Lakota and Mdewakantonwan Dakota, the Diné/Navajo, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Louisiana’s United Houma Nation. 

They were joined by Klimaseniorinnen (Senior Women for Climate Protection), a people-powered movement of Swiss citizens over 65 who are suing the Swiss Government for its inaction on climate change.

BC Needs To Use Full Toolbox to Stop Kinder Morgan

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The escalating war of words

Horgan and Environment Minister George Hayman both deserve top marks in the verbal squabble with Alberta and Ottawa. While Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and our New Age Prime Minister appear anxious, aggressive and increasingly desperate with their multiple threats, both of B.C.’s main spokespeople on all things Kinder Morgan have appeared unflustered, undeterred and reasonable. Horgan and Heyman may be overwhelmed on the volume of hyperbole, but on substance and tone they win hands down.

Horgan’s strong performance is welcome news to anti-pipeline warriors who have been nervous because of Horgan’s uneven resolve before he formed government. Remember back to the day, after then-NDP leader Adrian Dix’s unexpected 2013 Earth Day announcement of opposition to Kinder Morgan, when Horgan knee-capped his boss by infamously speculating that the oil port could perhaps be moved to Deltaport or Fraser Surrey Docks. Perhaps personally witnessing the devastation of the tugboat Nathan E. Stewart oil spill in Bella Bella was the epiphany that strengthened his resolve on Kinder Morgan.

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British Columbia’s mixed approach

The appointment of Thomas Berger to represent British Columbia as outside counsel on Kinder Morgan was applauded, but many of the subsequent choices have been ill considered. B.C.’s most egregious misstep was the decision to stand behind the evidence introduced by the previous Christy Clark government in the Squamish Nation’s challenge of the province’s Kinder Morgan approval. Ironically, while it is fighting off the big bad wolves from the other side of the Rockies, in the B.C. Supreme Court Horgan’s government defended the conclusion of the Clark government that Kinder Morgan would not have significant environmental impacts and that obligations to the Squamish had been fulfilled. Horgan’s government defended Clark’s approval despite knowing there were bureaucrats who were pulled off the Kinder Morgan file by the Clark government because they objected to the way First Nation and Squamish concerns were being ignored.

Berger could have easily gathered this evidence and filed it in the Squamish case. An affidavit from one of these government officials attesting to the inadequacies of Clark’s approval would have gone a long way to helping the Squamish quash Kinder Morgan’s environmental certificate, thus killing the proposal. Instead Horgan’s government decided to defend Clark’s approval, arguing it was obligated to because constitutional convention and the “honour of the Crown demands that B.C. defend its actions.” Filing a revised factual record that more accurately reflects what happened would uphold the Crown’s honour, not undermine it.

The B.C. government also seems to have lost sight of resetting the relationship with First Nations when reviewing the 1,187 provincial permits Kinder Morgan requires. It has committed to reviewing and reconciling laws and policies with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the Supreme Court’s Tsilhqot’in decision. This is no easy task; it will take time.

In the meantime, the government could implement the spirit and intent of its commitment in the power sharing agreement by instructing the staff reviewing Kinder Morgan’s permits to bend over backwards to engage affected First Nations on any issue, even if they tangentially involved. This doesn’t appear to have happened.

..glad you got to hear it unionist

..survey ends apr 30

B.C. Spills Regulation

About this Survey

Welcome to the 2018 Spill Regulations public engagement survey. British Columbia is enhancing the way the province prepares for, responds to, and recovers from environmental emergencies. This work started with the foundational phase of regulations and enhancements to the Environmental Management Act, which came into effect in October 2017. The Province is now considering a second phase of regulatory changes to enhance spill management across the province.  British Columbians are being invited to provide input on the government’s approach to spill response regulations.

Estimated completion time: 10 to 15 minutes

‘I was in shock,’ says government insider about instructions to ensure approval of Kinder Morgan pipeline

A new government insider has emerged to add their voice in support of allegations raised this week that Canada's review of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain expansion project was rigged.

Following the news report, another public servant spoke to National Observer confirming that they attended the Oct. 27, 2016 meeting. The instructions from then-associate deputy minister Erin O'Gorman about the major oil expansion project left them in shock.

"I'm not sure if that was word-for-word, but that was certainly the gist of the message. So I can't say if that was a direct quote, but that was the message I heard,” said the public servant, who spoke to National Observer on condition of anonymity. "I was in shock."

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The government has tabled new legislation, Bill C-69, to undo some of Harper's changes, but allowed the Trans Mountain review to proceed under Harper's rules after adding an additional consultation and review process, which federal insiders say was inadequate.

'All legally sound from Gitxaala'

The words "legally sound" also appear in records released by the Trudeau government through access to information legislation in response to a request for documents and notes produced at the Oct. 27, 2018 meeting in Vancouver.

They appear next to a sharp arrow with two lines on the left-hand column of personal notes taken by another public servant who was at the meeting.

“All legally sound from Gitxaala,” says the writing next to the arrow.

The message continues on the next line: “Convey with fidelity what they have chosen to do,” the writing appears to say.

These messages are on the second of two pages of handwritten notes taken during the special meeting involving five federal departments and the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority related to Kinder Morgan.

This portion of the notes was listed in a section of “risks” about the federal government’s consultations, at that time, with First Nations about Texas-based Kinder Morgan's plans to build its Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

Gitxaala is a reference to a court case that had been decided a few months earlier, in June 2016, when the Federal Court of Appeal concluded that the former Harper government had failed in its legal duty to consult First Nations prior to approving another west coast oil expansion project, Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline.

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Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr told iPolitics earlier this week that “there were no directions” given to public servants about the Trans Mountain project.

His comments came after the government had spent several days avoiding any direct comments about the allegations raised by public servants.

The allegations have already had some political ramifications in Ottawa, where the NDP pressed the government for three consecutive days this week to explain what happened during the meeting.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has also sent a letter to Trudeau that urged the prime minister to release all federal records, related to the government’s review of Trans Mountain, including its secret cabinet documents.

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Meantime, the Federal Court of Appeal continues to deliberate over a legal challenge about whether the Canadian government fulfilled its constitutional duty to consult First Nations, including the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, about the project.

A decision is expected later this spring, but could likely be appealed to the Supreme Court, regardless of the outcome.

..in the past few years revelations regarding the neb shows it is not arms length nor even independent from the governing party nor the industry. revelations show it has been stacked with pro extraction folk. the neb is a tool used by the gov to get almost any project approved no matter how damaging it is.

..more

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She slides without warning to St. Paul’s Indian Residential School, run by Sisters of the Child Jesus, and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, in North Vancouver. The terrors she experienced happened less than ten miles from where I grew up, in Horseshoe Bay. We played in the same salt water. Like her, I swam to log booms, lay on the logs basking in the sun. Yet when I turned six, I held my brother’s hand and walked to Gleneagles Elementary, while Amy George went with her weeping mother to St Paul’s, where she was locked in a place she now likens to a prison. If anyone tried to escape, she says, they were brought back by the police.

It is hard to touch the past, and yet she does. It’s part of healing, she says.

Almost in a whisper she tells of a little boy who was thrown down the stairs by a nun. His head was badly injured. For two days he complained of headaches before being taken to hospital. He didn’t come back. When a friend of Amy’s worked up the courage to ask what had happened, a nun answered lightly: “Oh, he died.”

There was hard physical abuse, for speaking their language, and for seemingly trivial things, like a time she and a friend innocently played a game of exchanging their shoes. Her hands, where she was whipped, still ache when she weaves.

“One time I got sixteen lashes. What could I have done, a little girl, that warranted this?” She tells me that the children would say to each other not to cry, no matter what. Not to give the nuns the satisfaction.

There was sexual abuse, too. Amy blocked it out for years. “I made my whole childhood gray.” As she meets my gaze, I see the eyes of an old woman, and the eyes of the vulnerable little girl, both at once.

“When I first started talking, I used to get up on the stage and I’d just start to cry. I was so sad. I couldn’t help it. Rueben my son, he said, ‘If it hurts that bad, maybe you don’t have to speak.’” She shakes her head. “I still speak. I’m just learning not to cry so much.”

“Will you keep fighting Kinder Morgan?”

She straightens in her chair. “No matter what,” she says simply. “What more can Kinder Morgan or the government do to me? I guess they could shoot me.”

She is tired. I thank her and go. As I drive away my heart is full.

The NDP’s Oil Problem

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Contradictions of Canadian Social Democracy

Because the BC NDP is a minority one with confidence and supply agreement support of the Greens, Premier John Horgan has had some wiggle room to dial back some progressive promises.

Showing his party’s class biases, Green Party leader Andrew Weaver came out against card check certification and a quick phase in of a $15 minimum wage. Card check has been dropped, and a $15.20 minimum wage will be phased in over thirty-nine months which is a longer phase in than the other provinces introducing the $15 minimum wage.

Horgan could have tried to sell these revised policies as the reality of governing in a minority situation. Yet he went ahead and approved completing construction of Site C and providing subsidies for the LNG industry, two issues that the Greens were against and central to their campaign.  For his part, it does not look like Weaver is going to collapse the government over this issue any time soon, but the next budget in spring 2019 remains a possibility. There have been rumors that Horgan is pressing these issues in order to force an election while his government has strong approval ratings in order to obtain a majority.

These conflicts aren’t just risky for the NDP governments in the short term. They’ll have long term consequences for the NDP across Canada. They are failing to see, for instance, that the Trans Mountain protesters, who should be the NDP’s natural base, will also form the backbone of any anti-Site C or anti-LNG resistance.

Fundamentally, the NDP is still dedicated to fossil fuel development and have yet to articulate a real exit strategy and green economic alternative. The best they can offer up is more stringent regulation and carbon pricing, but these fossil fuels need to be left in the ground to avoid catastrophic climate change.

How Likely is a Canadian Oil-by-Rail Boom?

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But there are two major issues with such analysis: 1) there’s not enough rail capacity to substitute for pipelines; and 2) transporting oil by rail wouldn't be nearly as unsafe as it currently is if government updates its rules and enforcement.

Ignoring such realities may allow for convenient pro-pipeline mythmaking, but not for reasonable fact-based debate.

“Governments and industry uses it to fearmonger a little bit to justify pipeline capacity expansions,” said Patrick DeRochie, climate and energy program manager at Environmental Defence. “But if they were actually concerned about mitigating the risks of oil by rail, there are some pretty clear and simple steps they can take.”

Here’s a breakdown of what’s actually going on.

IEA predicts rail exports could nearly triple by 2019

In February 2018, the most recent month that we have data for, Canada shipped a daily average of 134,100 barrels of oil to the United States on trains. While not an insignificant amount, it was nowhere close to the historical high of December 2014 — when oil-by-rail exports hit 175,600 barrels per day (bpd) due to pipeline constraints.

Such figures don’t include oil that’s shipped by rail across Canada. A recent Globe & Mail article reported that more than 150,000 barrels of oil are moved daily on British Columbia’s railways. Much of that ends up being exported to the United States.

To put such numbers in perspective, Alberta produced an average of 3.4 million barrels of oil per day in February. So rail shipments represented only five per cent of the province’s output.

The concern is that those numbers will rapidly rise in the near future, well beyond the December 2014 threshold.

“It’s real and people have been predicting it,” said Bruce Campbell, former executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and author of an upcoming book about the Lac-Mégantic tragedy. “As production keeps increasing, there’s uncertainty about the pipelines, so there is that looming possibility.”

In March, the International Energy Agency forecasted that Canada’s oil-by-rail exports could increase to 250,000 bpd in 2018 and 390,000 bpd in 2019. Kevin Birn of IHS Markit told Reuters that exports could go higher than 400,000 bpd if pipelines face more delays.

To put all those numbers in perspective, the rosiest forecast would mean an increase of 266,000 barrels per day via rail. Meanwhile, Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proposes to add more than double that with 590,000 barrels per day of capacity.

CP and CN already facing major backlog of grain shipments

According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, there’s already a total of 754,000 bpd in rail loading capacity in Western Canada, including 210,000 bpd at Kinder Morgan’s very own co-owned terminal in Edmonton.

So why on earth aren’t oil producers using that spare rail capacity? Well, for the very same reason that some are doubtful oil-by-rail is going to see any kind of major increase: there simply aren’t enough trains to go around.

DeRochie is skeptical about projections by the International Energy Agency.

“There might be a small incremental increase in the oil being shipped by rail, but we’re looking at the tens of thousands of barrels, which is nowhere near the capacity that pipelines would introduce to the system,” DeRochie said.

Canada’s two freight rail companies, Canadian Pacific (CP) and Canadian National (CN), are facing ongoing criticism from grain producers on the Prairies for critical delays that have left massive quantities of wheat and canola unable to get to markets. Grain shipments are ultimately the “bread and butter” of freight rail in Canada — and the companies are failing to adequately service even them.

..more

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"We are here today to ritualize resistance. As a Muslim, I stand in solidarity with Indigenous people in meaningful and intentional ways and take leadership from them," said Amal Rama of the Interfaith Institute for Justice, Peace and Social Movements, an anti-racist, anti-colonial collective.

Bat-Ami Hensen, a member of the Jewish faith community in Victoria, explained that she attended to uphold the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as honour her faith: “In our Torah it says, ‘Justice, Justice shall you pursue’ and we’re told that the reason justice is repeated twice is because it’s not just for ourselves, but for others.”

Last Friday, 16 clergy and members of faith communities blocked both gates at Kinder Morgan’s Westridge Marine Terminal, shutting down operations for seven hours. Three were arrested.

..this happened at camp cloud km in bby on sunday. the camp was set up to keep an eye on km.

National Observer releases its Trans Mountain files

Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain expansion project is suddenly facing an unexpected legal challenge following a series of investigative reports by National Observer.

The reporting revealed concerns raised by public servants who warned that the government was rushing to approve the pipeline, despite criticism from First Nations that the process was "paternalistic," "unrealistic," and "inadequate." All of this came to light due to documents released through access to information legislation as well as from comments made by government insiders.

A lawyer for the Tsleil-Waututh Nation on the west coast, Scott Smith, has cited this reporting in a legal letter sent on April 26 to the Federal Court of Appeal that opens the door do some new legal maneuvering.

The reporting uncovered explosive details about what happened before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government approved the Trans Mountain expansion on Nov. 29, 2016.

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In his April 26 legal letter, Smith spelled out initial arguments designed to persuade the court to accept new evidence in a case that is challenging the federal government's approval of the Trans Mountain expansion.

But this request is unusual given that the case was heard about six months ago and the court was already deliberating on its decision.

A lawyer representing Trans Mountain responded the next day with a letter that warned this maneuver could cause "significant" delay. The company has already threatened to pull out by May 31, due to uncertainty about the impact of opposition to the project in B.C.

But the court battle could be part of what brings more facts and evidence to light, beyond what we already know.

Here is a sample of some of the relevant evidence released through access to information legislation and other public information gathered by National Observer over the past two years.

Taking a call from Kinder Morgan's Ian Anderson

On Jan 14 and Jan. 18, 2016, Kinder Morgan Canada reported lobbying Natural Resources Canada's then deputy minister Bob Hamilton, a non-partisan public servant.

When asked for documents related to this lobbying activity, the federal department released a Jan. 14, 2016 memo through access to information legislation that reveals the company's Canadian president, Ian Anderson, had requested a phone call, and was likely interested in speaking about the rules for the federal review of the Trans Mountain expansion project.

Following the memo and the second reported lobbying activity from Jan. 18, high-ranking officials within the department distributed an email that proposed to speed up the federal review of the project in order to prevent Kinder Morgan from abandoning its project.

Media malpractice and the bitumen bubble

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But bubbles are not endowed with immortality. They are, as a matter of physics, designed to fail. And the job of journalists is not to be popular, or go along to get along, but to pursue facts that matter – then let them fall ‘without fear or favour’.

Which brings us to Canada’s bitumen bubble, and missing-in-action media coverage, which amounts to malpractice.

In the days following Kinder Morgan’s ultimatum that it would jettison its planned Trans Mountain oil pipeline and forsake Canada unless it gains a clear and certain path to final approvals by May 31, a collective wail of lamentations ensued from oil companies, the pipeline manufacturers, the Alberta premier and Opposition leader, the Prime Minister and his senior cabinet members, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, and major banks. This is natural and fitting, and so is media coverage of their collective fury and resolve to avert that ultimatum. It is a big story. It needs to be covered.

However, it is not the media’s job to assume that opinions without evidence are equal in worth to opinions which are fact-based. Or to assume that the scale and decibel level coming from oilsands advocates is proof of their cause. A noise meter is not evidence. Or to assume that the voices of opposition should be discounted as, at best, merely emotional and at worst, severely irrational.

In a recent three-part series of investigative reports published by The Energy Mix, I laid out an evidence-based argument that there is no credible business case to support an expansion of oil sand exports or the proposed Trans Mountain and Keystone XL pipelines. That Alberta’s bitumen bubble is about to burst, due to multiple global forces far beyond its control.

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If there is no credible business case for expanding bitumen exports (no Asian customers willing to buy huge volumes of Alberta oil at prices significantly higher than U.S. refiners will pay), then there is no business case for the Trans Mountain and Keystone XL pipelines. So no new investment capital for oilsands production or pipeline projects will be put at risk and existing oilsands producers will continue to operate at current scale. That will mean no extra royalty revenues for Alberta’s debt-plagued government to promise before an election next year and no victories for the federal Liberals to tout in 2019.

Tyee Poll: Would You Risk Arrest to Protest Kinder Morgan’s Pipeline Expansion?

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Affleck, who granted the injunction to keep pipeline protesters away from Kinder Morgan’s site in Burnaby, recommended April 9 that the “public nature of the breaches warranted criminal sanction.”

Crown counsel Trevor Shaw said the sentencing position for violating this Kinder Morgan injunction is a $500 fine, though there are considerations, such as whether they acted peacefully and whether they have other convictions for administration of justice offences.

We’re wondering what you would do.

* Please note that all poll answers will be publicly viewable, but anonymous.

..robyn allen, from one of smith's links, has done a lot of great work digging long and deep to expose the km business plan as fake.

..further to this is the fragility of the tarsands project itself. from the post below there hasn't been a financial approval of a new project since 2014 - 15. the talk about needing more pipeline capacity represents the coming online of a project from 2012 - 13 which took about 10 yrs to put together. it is doubtful, due to changes in the market, that a project like that would be approved today. 

Kinder Morgan: Nation-builder or white elephant?

Ricochet editor Ethan Cox is joined by National Observer editor Mike De Souza and Senior Research Analyst Lorne Stockman of Oil Change International for an in-depth conversation about all this and more on this special bonus episode of Unpacking the News.