TransCanada : an "American company"

Hey, did you think TransCanada, the company intending to extend the Keystone XL pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to the Free Tariff  Zone refineries in Texas, was a Canadian company? 
Me too. Must be something about the name. And the fact that articles about TransCanada always refer to it as "Alberta-based".

However TransCanada's own K-XL Know the Facts webpage begs to differ. Debunking the "Myth" that  TransCanada is a foreign company operating in the US :

"Like many American companies with operations in Canada, we are incorporated and registered in both Canada and the United States. We currently have 1,631 talented employees in 33 U.S. states. Our U.S. operations are headquartered in Houston and will be responsible for the U.S. construction of Keystone XL."

Huh. 

Now as we already know via Inside Climate News, Koch exports 25% of all tarsands crude to the US.

In 2009, Flint Hills Resources Canada LP, an Alberta-based subsidiary of Koch Industries, applied for—and won—"intervenor status" in the National Energy Board hearings that led to Canada's 2010 approval of its 327-mile portion of the pipeline. 

The company's Flint Hills subsidiary already has an oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta, the starting point of the Keystone XL. It sends about 250,000 barrels of diluted bitumen a day to a heavy oil refinery it owns near St. Paul, Minn., making that refinery "among the top processors of Canadian crude in the United States," the company website says.

Yesterday that same National Energy Board, Canada's presumed energy regulator, rejected the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union's request to hold a new hearing into K-XL. 
CEP, which opposes K-XL on the reasonable grounds it would rather see tarsands refineries built in Canada, maintained "the project had violated its permit by not starting construction by a March 2011 deadline". However, according to the NEB, TransCanada's 'earth moving' activities in Canada apparently counts as a start. 

Meanwhile, south of the border, three environmental groups filed a lawsuit against TransCanada earlier this month for mowing a 110 ft wide swath clear across the state of Nebraska prior to receiving the official US go ahead for K-XL to begin. TransCanada responded that mowing grasslands and moving endangered beetles out of the way of the proposed pipeline doesn't count as a start.

So far, no matter which side of the border you're on, things really do go better for Koch. 
And for TransCanada, an "American company".

Update : From Harvard Business School : a short history of TransCanada Pipelines

TransCanada's "Know the Facts" webpage - June 2012 http://web.archive.org/web/20121109020149/http://www.transcanada.com/docs/Key_Projects/know_the_facts_kxl.pdf

 
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Stupid Senate Pet Tricks

Harper-appointed Senator Nicole Eaton is calling for a private members bill to replace the beaver with the more "stately" polar bear as the national symbol of Canada.


In her remarks to the Senate, the former National Post gardening columnist from the Eaton department store family referred to the beaver as "a has-been", "a dentally defective rat", and "a big rat that doesn't reflect our new values".


Apparently overlooked in the flurry of CBC, G&M, CTV, National Post, and Vancouver Sun coverage of her remarks is the source of her enmity for beavers and the presumed reason why she feels Canada should agree to her request for "a national emblem makeover" :

"We have a cottage on Georgian Bay (in Ontario), and beavers eat away our dock every year. There are thousands of trees around, but no, they choose our dock," Eaton said.

Okey dokey then. Brought to you live from the Canadian chamber of sober second thought.
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"Never again," said Harper

.... last Friday, “Never again will Gadhafi be in a position to support terrorism or to turn guns on his own citizens."

No, because as you can see from the pictuure above, that was our job.
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Steve gets his long gun wedge on

Never mind that rifles and shotguns are the weapon of choice for spousal homicides (71% in the last decade, of which the majority of victims are women), or that 14 of the last 18 officer shooting deaths were committed with a long gun, or that the long gun registry last year cost less than 40 Gazebos ($1Gazebo =$100K) and less than one one-hundredth of what just one of the Cons nine new war on invisible crime bills will cost next year ($4M vs $458M) .... the important thing for Steve is that the long gun registry is a nice wedge issue with which to divide the official opposition and a fuck you to the rest of us not happy about his party's NRA-Canada long gun registry connection.

Bonus :Cowboys For Social Responsibility reports (via the gun lobby National Firearms Association) :

 "the bill removes the requirement to call and confirm transfers". 
That means that a gun shop doesn't have to check if a buyer's licence is valid before he or she sells a weapon powerful enough to penetrate soft body armour.
As a consequence, criminals with fake firearms licenses and domestic abusers with a firearms licence card they shouldn't have can walk out of a gun shop with a shiny new gun, no questions asked.

And about those transfers :


CBC : Transfers of firearms registration to a new owner, July - September 2011

• using the internet, 142,516

• over the phone, 76,002

• total 218,518

Glen McGregor at the Ottawa Citizen, writes about the bill's clause mandating destruction of all records of registered long-guns.
Glen doesn't much care for the destruction of government data and has published, sans names and addresses of course, 7 million records from the 2007 gun registry database. Go, Glen!
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Harper's very own "Mission Accomplished"

As already noted by Pogge, Campbell Clark at the Globe and Mail is just awesome proud of Steve winning his first ever war of his very own  : 
 With Libyan liberation, a political victory for Harper

"Stephen Harper’s first war victory was clinched in a few sudden hours when Moammar Gadhafi was captured and killed and his last bastion of Sirte fell.  

Although Mr. Harper has led a nation with forces in combat since he took office in 2006, this was not a war he inherited but one he chose ..."

 Clark then quotes from Steve's victory speech :  

“Our government shall be speaking with our allies to prepare for the end of our military mission in the next few days,” he said.

Although as is clear from the clip above (full speech here), what Steve actually said was :

"Our government shall be speaking with our allies to pretend to prepare for the end of our military mission in the next few days."

Just an unfortunate slip of the tongue surely. 
Like when Government House Leader Peter van Loan told CBC's The House last month that the Conservative government wants to extend Canada's military role in Libya beyond the scheduled end date, a statement 'government sources' quickly denied the next day.

War in Africa is an investment.
As returning US Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz put it last month " in a State Department conference call with about 150 American companies hoping to do business with Libya" :

“We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources, but even in Qaddafi’s time they were starting from A to Z in terms of building infrastructure and other things” after the country had begun opening up to the West six years ago, he said. “If we can get American companies here on a fairly big scale, which we will try to do everything we can to do that, then this will redound to improve the situation in the United States with respect to our own jobs.”

R2P - the responsibility to protect investments.


Of course we don't talk about our humanitarian intervention like that up here when we're sponsoring regime change we can believe in! - in countries with the bad luck to be situated on top of what is clearly NATO's stuff to fight over.

"Never again," said Steve yesterday, will Gadhafi "be in a position to support terrorism or to turn guns on his own citizens."
Sure. Here's a list of 10 things likely to be missing from any future G&M account of Steve's war.

Rather heartening however is the G&M readers' response to Clark's article, with the majority of the 960 comments under it using terms like "delusional" and "jingoistic" and "colonialism".
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Canadian Wheat Board : The Cons being cons

On Tuesday AgMin Gerry Ritz stood in the middle of a suburban Ottawa farm behind a desk hung with the sign "Marketing Freedom" and announced the end of the Canadian Wheat Board single desk monopoly.
             " ... freedom to choose ... marketing freedom ... market forces ... jobs, jobs, jobs ... "

There were questions.

Chris Rands, CBC : "Back in 2007 the prime minister was in Churchill and he said the fate of the Wheat Board is in farmers' hands, so why aren't you opening up to the farmers to have a vote to say whether the wheat board should be removed as a single desk?"

AgMin Gerry Ritz : "Well we actually had that vote, Chris, on May 2nd. We campaigned in all rural areas across western Canada on an open voluntary wheat board. Farmers sent us back here with that mandate; we're following through." 

Rands (referring to farmers' plebiscite in which 62% voted in favour of keeping the CWB) : "But you didn't like the results. You called the vote flawed, if I recall?" 

Ritz : "No, I'm talking about the general election, May the 2nd. That's our mandate. Thank you."

NDP Pat Martin to Gerry Ritz in the House : "13 times the US went to the WTO to complain about the Wheat Board and 13 times the WTO ruled that there's nothing unfair about Canadian farmers acting collectively in their own best interests. The question is : why is American agribiz so willing to kill it and why are they [the Cons] so willing to do it for them?"

Outside the House, Pat Martin related that three years after Australia privatized their single marketing desk, it went bankrupt and was bought out by Cargill. As a non-profit marketing board with no assets and without its monopoly, the CWB is not in a position to compete with big agribiz.

Prior to the May 2 election, farmers were told by Gerry Ritz there would not be any attempt to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board without a vote.

They were conned. He meant the general election.

Friday Update : Hill Times :

Majority-governing Tories shut down Wheat Board debate, third time to cut off debate since House resumed.

"The majority-governing Conservatives used their majority Thursday to cut short debate on the controversial bill to eliminate the 76-year-old Canadian Wheat Board, the third time it has muscled legislation through the House since Parliament resumed in September."

The other two times being the massive crime omnibus bill and the end of government subsidies for political parties.

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The George and Bill Show comes to Surrey

[updated below]

And hey, you could win a CBSA cash reward!

George W. Bush in Surrey 

Thursday Oct. 20

Tickets - $599 per head. No media allowed.


Thursday, October 20, 11:00 am

Gather at the parking lot outside the Bay, Guildford Mall, SW corner of 152 St. & 104 Ave.
If you are coming from Occupy Vancouver at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Amnesty International is organizing a contingent leaving from there at 9:15am at taking the Skytrain to Surrey.

Transit :Take the Expo Line to Gateway Station in Surrey, then the 332 bus to Guildford, exit 104 Ave and 150 St. , walk to 152 St.


But remember what CBSA says : Don't try to make the arrest yourself. That's the RCMP's job. 
#Arrestbush

Update : 
Via Stephen Hui at the Georgia Straight : the Surrey Regional Economic Summit's proud corporate sponsors at left. Click pic to read.

Brigette DePape spoke to the 200 or so demonstrators outside.


Glob showed vid of Occupy Vancouver folks arriving.


Inside : BC premier Christy Clark attended, Kevin Falcon's former flackman was one of the organizers, and honorary chair of the summit Surrey mayor Diane Watts was interviewed about torture.








Matt Eisenbrandt in Embassy Mag : The case for Canadian prosecution of George W. Bush

"The government has recently taken a very public position that Canada should not be a safe haven for alleged torturers and war criminals. To open its doors yet again to Mr. Bush sets a disturbing double standard."

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Tiananmen Square and Occupy Wall Street

From Garnotte at Le Devoir
h/t Lagatta at Bread and Roses
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New mandaTory minimum sense on marijuana

Dan Gardner blasts the Cons' proposed 'war on drugs' mandatory minimum sentences for growing pot :

• Six months mandatory jail time for growing six pot plants.
• Nine months mandatory jail time for passing a joint from one plant grown in the privacy of your own home if you are a renter.

I assume this represents the Cons' attempt to 'harmonize' Canadian policy within the security perimeter deal, or as US AG Eric Holder put it in his "Beyond the Border" speech : the need for "certain sentencing laws" to be "updated".
This, even as more than a dozen US states are currently repealing mandatory minimum sentences.and reducing sentences.


Besides, notes Gardner, they don't even deliver what they promise :

"The standard argument in favour of mandatory minimum sentences is that they deliver certainty. ... 

But mandatory minimums don't actually do away with discretion.

They merely transfer it from judges, by restricting their ability to choose the sentence, to prosecutors, who choose the charge. The system is still ambiguous, uncertain, and unpredictable. It's just ambiguous, uncertain, and unpredictable in a different way."

From the discretion of judges to the better nature of prosecutors. 
What could possibly go wrong?
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h/t Pogge
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Update :  Terry Milewski, CBC : Texas Conservatives reject Harper's crime plan
'Been there; done that; didn't work,' say Texas crime-fighters
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All day, all week, occupy your streets!

h/t Boris

But that's just the US, right? No reason for us to protest up here in Canada, origin of the Occupy movement.

NOW Mag : The Arsenal of Corporatocracy : Why We Should Occupy Bay Street

• A person making $45,000 a year and a person making $1 billion essentially pay the same tax rate.
• A person making $130,000 a year and a person making $1 billion a year pay the exact same tax rate.
• A person making $45,000 a year pays a higher tax rate than a multi-billion dollar corporation

Muldoon began this by lowering the corporate tax rate from 36% to 28%. By next year it will be down to 15%, for those that pay any at all.

Meanwhile, over at The Onion ...
Nation Waiting For Protesters to Clearly Articulate Demands Before Ignoring Them

 "If they don’t have a clear power structure organized around specific demands first, then I'll never be able to completely tune them out due to a political conflict of interest or an inability to comprehend complex, detailed economic concepts. These people really need to get their act together." 

Once Occupy Wall Street has a concrete set of objectives in place, the majority of Americans said they would go back to waiting for the sluggish economy to recover while blindly accepting things the way they are."

For everyone else  : How to Stream Live From a Mobile Phone

Occupy Vancouver vid and photos from: West End Bob @ The Beav and Jymn @ Let Freedom Rain

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