Any day now, the Harper Cabinet will make its decision on Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline project, approved with conditions by the Joint Review Panel in December 2013. Cabinet’s decision is expected by mid-June.
That decision is deeply linked to the fact that Jim Prentice is now officially in the race for leader of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party and is considered the front-runner to become premier of Alberta, replacing Alison Redford who resigned in March. The Progressive Conservative leadership vote is scheduled for September. If Prentice wins, he would be Alberta premier for about two years, until the 2016 provincial election.
Prentice is the Senior Executive Vice-President and Vice Chairman of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). On March 5, Enbridge announced that it had hired Jim Prentice to lead negotiations with Aboriginal groups opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline. Prentice is also a director of BCE Inc. (Bell Canada), CP Rail and Coril Holdings, as well as being a member of the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council and the international advisory committee of LaFarge Group.
At this writing, it is not clear which of these positions Prentice will continue to hold during the leadership race. CBC reported that Prentice will remain a director of CP Rail “but will resign the board position if he wins.”
Completing the résumé
Despite all the praise that Prentice has garnered, the mainstream media has overlooked several important details of his résumé.
As federal Minister of the Environment, Prentice oversaw the “U.S.-Canada Clean Energy Dialogue” launched in 2009, through which electricity ratepayers across Canada are generously paying billions of dollars to subsidize electricity exports to the U.S.
At CIBC, Prentice has continued to advocate for continental energy interconnections.
For example, in an April 2013 speech in Halifax, Prentice told the Maritimes Energy Association, “Canada must continue to fight for a continental energy marketplace that is free of national and sub-national impediments.” As reported by Canadian Press, Prentice complained about U.S. regulations: “In some cases, ‘the net effect is they don’t recognize Canadian hydro as renewable (energy),’ while in other cases, low-carbon requirements are designed specifically to keep out Canadian oilsands products, he said.”
Big Oil and the Canadian government have been lobbying fiercely against California’s low-carbon fuel standard. As B.C. writer/energy analyst Arthur Caldicott and others have shown, much of the tar sands dilbit to be transported by Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline (and Kinder Morgan’s proposed TransMountain pipeline expansion) is intended to be shipped to California refineries.
Getting rid of “national and sub-national impediments” to corporate profits is also what multinational corporations and the globalist elite have long been advocating.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Prentice has been a member of the Rockefeller-founded and funded Trilateral Commission (TC) since at least 2012. According to their March 2014 membership list (www.trilateral.org), Jim Prentice is now North American Deputy Chairman of the TC, having taken over that role from Allan E. Gotlieb, Senior Advisor to law firm Bennett Jones.
Quality time
At Trilateral Commission meetings in New York, Prentice gets to spend quality time with fellow TC member Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of the UK-based WPP Group. As the biggest PR firm on the planet (with 2011 billings of $72.3 billion), the WPP Group owns a dozen big PR outfits, including Hill + Knowlton Strategies — the top PR firm advising client Enbridge — and Burson-Marsteller, whose Canadian “affiliate” National Public Relations is also advising Enbridge.
WPP/H+K/National Public Relations’ other known Canadian energy clients include Encana, Imperial Oil, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, TransAlta Corp., the Ontario Power Authority and the Government of Alberta.
The Trilateral Commission website lists 23 Canadians as current members, including avid continentalist Wendy Dobson — for some 20 years a director of pipeline giant TransCanada Corp until very recently.
Henry Kissinger, who has been orchestrating political events for over 50 years, is “Lifetime Trustee” of the TC. The ageing David Rockefeller, Founder and Honorary Chairman of the TC, is still serving on its Executive Committee. Rockefeller & Co., with assets of at least $34 billion, in 2012 teamed up with Rothschild’s RIT Capital Partners to increase business in North America. Rockefeller is controlling shareholder in Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco and Marathon Oil, all involved in the tar sands.
Rockefeller is also the only person on the “Member Advisory Group” of the Bilderberg Steering Committee (which must make for brief Advisory Group meetings). Bilderberg is an even more secretive and exclusive globalist annual conclave (only about 130 members), founded and funded by the oil/banking billionaire and others in 1954. As we shall see, Bilderberg is also deeply involved in Canada’s energy issues.
Joyce Nelson is an award-winning freelance writer/researcher and the author of five books.
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