Hiding the tarsands

Tories left oilsands data out of UN report 

"The federal government has acknowledged it deliberately excluded data indicating a 20 per cent increase in annual pollution from Canada’s oilsands industry in 2009 from a recent 567-page report on climate change that it was required to submit to the United Nations.

The data also indicated that emissions per barrel of oil produced by the sector is increasing, despite claims made by the industry in an advertising campaign.  

And in books like Ethical Oil by tarsands apologist Ezra Levant, who wrote : "Oil sands technology continues to improve - to produce one barrel of oils sands oil takes 38 per cent less emissions now than it did in 1990."

Reality check from DeSouza :

"This also indicates a growth in emissions that is close to about 300 per cent since 1990, which cancel out many reductions in pollution from other economic sectors."

Also from DeSouza today :
Feds considered hiring PR firm to polish image of oilsands

"... to promote Canada's oilsands industry, while fighting back against foreign climate change policies requiring it to reduce its pollution.

          ...including a "meeting with like-minded allies" from oil industry giants BP and Shell.

The action plan, prepared by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, also suggested hosting an "annual retreat" of its oilsands advocacy team in London to plan a strategy to help boost the image of the industry."

Which currently looks like this :

UK undermining Europe's tar sands ban 

"Britain is being accused of undermining a European-wide drive to ban forecourt sales of petrol and diesel derived from the carbon-heavy tar sands of Canada.

Tar sands were originally named in draft proposals from the European Commission which were drawn up to ensure that member states were able to meet the legally binding target of reducing greenhouse gas by 6% by 2020.

But by last year – following intense lobbying from the Canadian government – all references to tar sands were dropped."

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One of these things is not like the others

Harper, Obama talk plans for perimeter security

Manley, CEOs, propose details on perimeter security

CATSA airport security screening measures tightened
 
Government of Canada enhances aviation security
 
 CATSA lays off 15 to 20% of airport security screeners
* Winner! *

Cons direct every airport in Canada to reduce its security screeners by 15-20%

Vancouver International Airport - 120 screening officers laid off May 16th
Greater Toronto Airports Authority - 400 laid off
Montreal Pierre-Elliott Trudeau airport - 80 laid off
Ottawa International Airport - 11 laid off
Calgary and Edmonton - 15% reduction in screening staff

Hey, I'll bet it's because they've invested in those new full body scanners and they'll be using them instead.

Chair of the BC Association of Aerospace Workers :

"newly purchased multi-million dollar full body scanners will be left unmanned and unused ... because there is just not enough staff to operate them."

And you just know that even if we all consented to having Trusted Traveller barcodes tattooed on our foreheads, you still wouldn't be allowed onboard if you're packing Astroglide, although apparently handcuffs are still ok.
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Stacy Bonds "special constables" cleared

The Ontario Provincial Police has finished investigating the Ottawa Police Service for their assault of Stacy Bonds and announced no charges will be laid. You're shocked, I'm sure.

"I would like to thank the Ontario Provincial Police for conducting this investigation in an objective, thorough and professional way," said Ottawa Police Chief Vern White in a news release.

The Ottawa police officer Steven Desjourdy who cut off Bonds' shirt and bra was charged with sexual assault by the the Ontario Special Investigations Unit in March; the SIU however has no jurisdiction over the other "special constables" involved who are not officially police officers.

When the case came before Justice Richard Lajoie in October 2010, he described Bonds' arrest as "unlawful", "appalling", "a travesty" with "no reason apart from vengence and malice", and "an extremely serious breach of Ms. Bonds rights".
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G20 - Police oversight

Oversight - noun
1) the action of overseeing something
2) an omission, the failure to do something

Dorian Barton was taking a picture of police horses in the park at the G20 summit in downtown Toronto last summer when he was suddenly knocked to ground from behind with a riot shield, beaten with a baton breaking his shoulder, and stomped in the face. He was then dragged off by his broken right arm and detained without medical treatment for the first five of a total of 30 hours in detention, after which he was charged with "obstructing a police officer". The Crown dropped the charges against him at the same time it dropped all the bullshit charges against everyone else.

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit, the civilian agency charged with investigating "police actions resulting in serious injury, sexual assault or death", is reopening for the third time an investigation into allegations the Toronto police officer pictured here was one of seven who took part in the vicious assault on Barton. The photographer who took this pic is willing to testify he saw the officer blindside Barton with his shield and strike him as he lay on the ground before other officers joined in. He has provided seven photos of the assault.

SIU dropped its two previous investigations into the case in January because eleven police witnesses, one of whom was the officer's G20 roommate and two of whom were his supervisors, declined to identify him. SIU director Ian Scott reopened it today after Toronto Police Chief Blair promised to provide the name of the employee who was able to identify the subject officer.

WTF?
I'm pretty sure if me and six of my friends were caught on film beating the crap out of you, the cops would not drop the case because my boss and my roommate declined to cough up my name to go along with my photo.

According to the Ontario Attorney General to whom the SIU reports, the SIU exonerates the officer in 97% of the cases it does pursue :

"The fact that the SIU overwhelmingly clears officers should be seen by the [public] as an endorsement of good policing."

However, in Oversight Unseen, a 2008 report on the SIU, Ontario Ombudsmen André Marin saw it differently :

"[T]he Ministry of the Attorney General has relied on the SIU to soothe police and community sensibilities and to ward off controversy. But in doing so, it has also overstepped the bounds of independent governance. The Director’s performance is subjectively evaluated and rewarded, compromising the SIU’s structural integrity and independence.

Its credibility as an independent investigative agency is further undermined by the predominant presence and continuing police links of former police officials within the SIU. It is so steeped in police culture that it has, at times, even tolerated the blatant display of police insignia and police affiliation."

[T]he SIU often ... adopts an impotent stance in the face of police challenge. Delays in police providing notice of incidents, in disclosing notes, and in submitting to interviews are endemic. Rather than vigorously inquiring into and documenting delays and other evidence of police resistance, the SIU deals with issues of police non-co-operation as isolated incidents.

Police interviews are rarely held within the regulatory time frames, and are all too often postponed – for weeks, sometimes even months. The SIU will not inconvenience officers or police forces by interviewing officers off duty. When it encounters overt resistance from police officials, the SIU pursues a low-key diplomatic approach that flies under the public radar. If disagreement cannot be resolved, the SIU more often than not simply accepts defeat."

"The SIU more often than not simply admits defeat." Good lord.

The current SIU director Ian Scott was appointed just before that report came out.
In February the Toronto Star ran a series based on 300 letters Scott sent to police forces over a 14-month period beginning in January 2009. They detail "his mounting frustration at not being able to hold officers accountable", including the burning of evidence before he got to see it, and being generally ignored by the Ontario police forces.
Presumably this is why he is giving interviews about this case to the press, despite the fact SIU Regulation 13 forbids it.

Rally in Toronto on Saturday for a public inquiry into G20 police riots

Meanwhile, out here in BC, the local media was pleased to bits last week to report that in response to Justice Braidwood  recommendations following from the police killing of Robert Dziekanski in 2007, we will be getting our own civilian police-oversight agency modelled on the SIU. And just like the SIU, the Independent Investigations Office will also report to BC's Attorney General, not the Ombudsman as Braidwood had wisely suggested.

Greg Klein at TheStraight :

[I]t was the AG’s Crown attorneys who exonerated the four Mounties involved in Dziekanski’s death. That was what led to Braidwood’s inquiry in the first place.

It gets worse. The government added that incidents or complaints involving IIO staff will be investigated by B.C.’s Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner. Almost all senior positions at the OPCC are staffed by former police officers.

An exception is police complaint commissioner Stan Lowe. But Lowe is a former Crown attorney and member of the criminal justice branch executive management that unanimously decided to exonerate the four RCMP officers involved in Robert Dziekanski’s Taser-related death. It was Lowe who made the infamous December 2008 announcement that the five Taser shocks inflicted on Dziekanski were “reasonable and necessary".

And so it goes ...
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Security perimeter chat at the G8 Bunfest

Oxfam Bigheads at the G8 in Paris
















CTV quotes "sources" on Obama/Harper security perimeter meeting at the G8 bunfest today :

"The Prime Minister's Office said the meeting would likely advance talks on a unified border security system for the continent that have been underway since February.
The hope is that such a pact would tighten security for people and goods entering the continent, but allow Canada-U.S. border points to boost the flow of goods and vehicles travelling across the 49th parallel.

Sources say the agreement would include joint border inspection agencies, relocation of U.S. food inspectors agents to Canadian plants and vice versa, greater sharing of intelligence, and harmonizing regulations on everything from food to manufactured goods."

Apparently we're done with last year's G8 splash :

The maternal and child health initiative, which Harper spearheaded during the G8 summit last year, is also on the agenda. But it is "falling off the radar."

CBC :

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada and the U.S will have a plan in place by the summer for a North American security perimeter agreement."

Manifest Destiny Flashback - Nov 13, 1979 : While officially declaring his candidacy for President, Ronald Reagan proposes a “North American Agreement” which will produce “a North American continent in which the goods and people of the three countries will cross boundaries more freely.”
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Sunday Update : CBC's online version of this story : Harper, Obama talk plans for security perimeter has attracted a record 1400+ comments. From the sound of most of them I'd say reports of the demise of Canadian nationalism - looking at you, David Biette - are geatly exaggerated.
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Hey, Globe&Mail, who's your daddy?

I didn't think I'd be mentioning Tim Pawlenty so soon again after Steve's rip of Pawlenty's tea party ad for his own election campaign, but for the third time in five days the G&M has run a story on TeaPaw's entry into the Republican race for the 2012 presidential nomination.

"A laid-back Midwestern Republican who governed a Democratic-leaning state, " went Friday's fluffer.
"A serious Republican," reads the headline in today's Globe Editorial, "to make Americans forget Donald Trump." A list of TeaPaw's virtues ensues, winding up with :

"Mr. Pawlenty is pursuing sound policy ideas for the greater long-term benefit of the United States.

Mr. Pawlenty is on the right track: His brand of truth-telling is a political strategy that could ultimately be more rewarding than the usual approach, stroking the base’s pleasure points."

Speaking of not stroking the base's pleasure points, TeaPaw presents his own one minute endorsement of himself :


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In their rush to publish their latest Republican mancrush, the G&M appears to have forgotten all about the Tea in TeaPaw. Here he is in January with American Family Association's Bryan Fischer :

I've been a strong supporter of the family, pro-life positions, traditional marriage positions.
I was co-author of the law in Minnesota that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. I've been a vocal supporter of an amendment in Minnesota that would put that into our constitution.

[W]e now have a small majority of people on our Minnesota Supreme Court we are conservative and strict constructionist. I think Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided by the Court. But I have been careful that I appoint people, particularly at the appellate level, that share this strict constructionist philosophy.

I have been a public supporter of maintaining Don't Ask, Don't Tell and I would support reinstating it as well.

Harper's former deputy chief of staff Patrick Muttart was working for both the Con war room and US PR firm Mercury Public Affairs/IGG Group's "Canada/US practice" during last month's election. Muttart's new boss is Terry Nelson, now Senior Advisor to TeaPaw.

So, G&M, who's your daddy?
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The North American-Made Energy Security Act

[updated below]

The Republicans on the US House Energy and Commerce Committee have drafted a "North American-Made Energy Security Act " (h/t Luiza Ch. Savage) - legislation which would ensure swift approval of the proposed $7-billion  2,000-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to the Texas gulf coast, doubling tarsands exports to the US to over a million barrels of oil a day .

"The draft legislation requires the president to issue a Presidential Permit decision no later than November 1, 2011."

An interesting thing about that House Energy and Commerce Committee :

LA Times, Feb 6, 2011: Koch brothers now at heart of GOP power

"David and Charles Koch no longer sit outside Washington's political establishment, isolated by their uncompromising conservatism. Instead, they are now at the center of Republican power, a change most evident in the new makeup of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Wichita-based Koch Industries and its employees formed the largest single oil and gas donor to members of the panel, ahead of giants like Exxon Mobil ...

Nine of the 12 new Republicans on the panel signed a pledge distributed by a Koch-founded advocacy group — Americans for Prosperity — to oppose the Obama administration's proposal to regulate greenhouse gases. A top early goal: restricting the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the Kochs' core energy businesses."

Americans for Prosperity organized the Tea Party rallies and funneled millions of dollars into various groups promoting climate change skepticism, including Canada's Fraser Institute.

The Tyee, March 22, 2011:

Koch Industries processes one in four barrels of U.S.-bound Alberta tar sand, while pumping millions of dollars into highly conservative, anti-green causes.

What do Tea Party rallies, Republican victories, climate-change deniers, Wisconsin's anti-union push, and attacks on a cap-and-trade market for carbon emissions have in common?

They're all fueled in part by profits derived from Alberta, Canada's oil sands.

Charles and David Koch. Together, America's fifth-richest citizens - each worth $21.5 billion -- own Koch Industries, a refining, pipeline, chemical and paper conglomerate.

Reuters : Koch Brothers Positioned To Be Big Winners If Keystone XL Pipeline Is Approved

A Koch Industries operation in Calgary, Alberta, called Flint Hills Resources Canada LP, supplies about 250,000 barrels of tar sands oil a day to a heavy oil refinery in Minnesota, also owned by the Koch brothers.

Flint Hills Resources Canada also operates a crude oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta, the starting point of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

The company's website says it is "among Canada's largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters."

Koch's 2009 application for intervenor status at National Energy Board's Keystone XL hearings here

Fun fact : "Koch Industries has had 300 oil spills (mostly from pipelines) in six states over a seven-year period."

Speaking at the White House presser in February, Stephen Harper plumped for the pipeline :

"Canada is the largest, the most secure, the most stable and the friendliest supplier of that most vital of all America's purchases: energy."

and tomorrow a TransCanada exec will address the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee in support of the pipeline.

TransCanada's chief Washington lobbyist, Paul Elliott, as it happens, also served as national deputy director and chief of staff for delegate selection for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Because the pipeline crosses the border, it will be Clinton who will decide whether to approve it.
 

So what's all this tarsands oil headed for the US in aid of anyway?
 
From the proposed "North American-Made Energy Security Act " : 

"Continued development of North American energy resources, including Canadian oil, increases domestic refiners' access to stable and reliable of crude and improves certainty of fuel supply for the Department of Defense, the largest consumer of petroleum in the United States."

I think they meant to say the Department of Defense is the largest single consumer of petroleum in the US.
But what is the largest single use the DoD makes of petroleum?
Jet fuel.

 
The environmental disaster that is the tarsands, the health hazards to First Nations downstream from them, the undermining of Canadian sovereignty, the danger to the Ogallala Aquifer pictured at the top, the tea party nonsense, the attacks on Obama and on a cap and trade market for carbon emissions, the gutting of the EPA, the buying of committees, the funding of rightwing thinktanks and climate change deniers ...
 
- all this so Koch Industries can make a buck off apes playing with firesticks.
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Monday Update : Brave New Films vid on the Kochs and the Keystone XL pipeline up at DeSmogBlog today : US farmers calling on Secretary Clinton as their last faint hope to stop it.
Thanks to Holly Stick in comments.

Also from The Hill : Koch and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton respond :

"A Koch executive, in a statement Friday afternoon, reiterated that the company has “no financial interest” in the pipeline project ... “Given these facts, we are confused about why Koch is being singled out and inserted into these discussions,” said Philip Ellender, the company’s president for government and public affairs."

Unbelievable.

At the Energy and Commerce Committee hearing today, TransCanada President Alex Pourbaix responded to criticism that TransCanada had tried to "bully and intimidate" landowners to grant land easements along the Keystone XL route, even though their project has not even been approved yet.

"We treat our landowners with respect and we treat them fairly," Pourbaix said. "We have always viewed (eminent domain) as a last resort."

Wow. The expropriation of privately owned land without the property owner's consent is the prerogative of governments for the public good, not corporations.

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Update : June 15 - Passed in committee ; July 20 - Listed in the House as "active bill"
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The North American Security Intelligence Partnership

CBC, via WikiLeaks :

228182
SECRET 2/10/2009
SECRET OTTAWA 000768
Subject : Visas Viper : The "Toronto 18" as candidates for Visas Viper Program

SUMMARY At Embassy Ottawa's monthly Visas Viper meeting on September 09, 2009, a list of 27 indidivudals (sic) who were involved in the so-called "Toronto 18" conspiracy, a plot to engage in terrorist activities in the Toronto metropolitan area, was submitted for consideration. All of these individuals are watchlisted in the Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS). Post is submitting their names to be included in the Visas Vipers program.

The Visas Viper program is the entry level into US terrorist watchlists.

Pogge, yesterday : Apparently we need to hold the Arar inquiry all over again

"The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada's principal intelligence agency, routinely transmits to U.S. authorities the names and personal details of Canadian citizens who are suspected of, but not charged with, what the agency refers to as "terrorist-related activity."

In at least some cases, the people in the cables appear to have been named as potential terrorists solely based on their associations with other suspects, rather than any actions or hard evidence."

Evidently even working as an undercover police informer busting terrorists will get you on that list.
In addition to the Toronto 18, the embassy cables name nine others.
Among those nine names is Mubin Shaikh.

Mubin Shaikh, a Canadian Muslim, was recruited by CSIS in 2004 to infiltrate possible terrorist groups.
Shaikh infiltrated the Toronto 18, secretly taping them and setting up the RCMP sting resulting in their arrest.
He testified against them at their trial as the Crown's star witness. Without him there would have been no trial, no convictions.
And now he's in the US terrorist database.
I'm sure other Canadian Muslims will be really keen to help CSIS out now.

So did CSIS put their own mole on that list? Or do they just have no autonomy at all over their own data.

“Clearly it’s a mistake,” Mr. Shaikh said in an interview. He argued that most people who are on watch lists belong on the lists, and that he has “compete confidence” in Canada’s ability to safeguard intelligence sources.

Good for you. I don't.

Yesterday CSIS gave a damage-control response to breaking news of their continued handing over of Canadian names and personal details to US watchlists :

 " ... any decision to hand over names is the result of a detailed process, in which an individual's threat level is assessed by a committee of Canadian security officials, including a senior executive at CSIS.

Lawyers from the Department of Justice also participate, and often a representative of the RCMP.

As part of the process, someone plays the part of devil's advocate, challenging the information gathered on the individual being considered.

Even then, said the official, the decision to hand over a name to the Americans is subject to written ministerial directives and internal CSIS policies.

None of which explains how Mubin Shaikh got on there.

But as Evan Dyer pointed out during RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli's grilling about Arar four and a half years ago, all that rigorous bureaucratic bullshit doesn't mean fuck all if US security forces are already physically present in the room when "persons of interest" are being discussed at INSET meetings.
INSET, the Canadian Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams, are the Canadian counter-terrorist forces comprised of CSIS, the RCMP, Border Services, and other security groups. They handled both the Arar and Toronto 18 cases.

As Pogge put it : "Our "principal intelligence agency" doesn't work for us; it works for American intelligence agencies."

"We don't want another Arar," said the security official. But at the same time, he said, CSIS is acutely aware that if it did not pass on information about someone it suspected, and that person then carried out some sort of spectacular attack in the U.S., the consequences could be cataclysmic for Canada.
U.S. authorities, already suspicious that Canada is "soft on terror," would likely tighten the common border, damaging hundreds of billions of dollars worth of vital commerce.

So we're just haggling about the price of our sovereignty and Charter rights now then.

Or, as most of the WikiLeaks-released Ottawa Embassy cables usually sign off with:

"Visit Canada's North American partnership community at
http://www.intelink.gov/communities/state/nap /"

Yeah. Thanks. How's our security perimeter coming along?
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Update : WikiLeaks has now released the S E C R E T OTTAWA 000768 cables. Same redactions as CBC.
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The new face of Canadian diplomacy

'OK, Pogge, I'll see you a "Now representing Canada on the world stage" and raise you a "New face of Canadian diplomacy".

The man who named his cat "Thatcher" is rumoured to be named today as our new Minister of Sucking Up to the US.

Update : Confirmed.
Peter van Loan will replace him as the new Government Angry McPointy.  ™

Also ...

Christian Paradis, formerly Minister of Natural Resources and Asbestos, is now Minister of Industry and Asbestos

Tony Clement, formerly Minister of Gazebos, becomes President of the Treasury Board, where he will be in charge of cutting billions from federal spending.

Maxime Bernier, sometime Minister of Cleavage and Leaving State Secrets Lying Around, is the new Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism and Climate Change Skepticism.

Bev Oda, Minister of "Not", stays on as Minister of "Not".

Etc. etc. ...

And then after his morning presser on the new cabinet appointments, Steve announced three failed Con candidates, including two who quit the Senate to run in the last election, to his Senate of Unelectable Cons.
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Afghanistan : "All options are back on the table"

WikiLeaks via CBC :

From : US Ambassador Jacobson, Ottawa Embassy, 3/17/2009
To : SECSTATE WASHDC
SUBJECT: CANADA: RE-CONSIDERING ALL OPTIONS FOR ITS FUTURE MILITARY ROLE IN KANDAHAR?

"Summary: The minority government of Prime Minister Harper may not have actually ruled out extending Canada's 2,800-member military contingent, including combat forces, in Kandahar beyond 2011.

At a March Cabinet 10 meeting, ministers of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority government apparently agreed that "all options are back on the table" with respect to Canada's military role in Afghanistan after 2011, according to Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) XXXXXXXX Senior Advisor XXXXXXXXXXXX (strictly protect). It will take time for the government's public rhetoric to catch up to this "new reality," however, requiring some "patience" on the part of allies, XXXXX commented privately to polmiloff on March 16. He urged that, for now, allies should not publicly press Canada to extend its troop deployment in Kandahar beyond 2011.

Comment: After being explicit publicly and privately that the CF combat mission in Afghanistan would definitely end in 2011 according to the terms of the March 2008 motion, PM Harper and his Cabinet would be venturing into politically sensitive territory to try to re-sell a further extension to an increasingly dubious Canadian public."

Senior Advisor XXXXX suggests "that Canada might withdraw the CF battle group in 2011" for a one year "operational pause":

"If Canada begins to withdraw its troops starting in July 2011, as currently mandated by a March 2008 House of Commons bipartisan motion, the U.S. and other ISAF partners will need at least six months to send replacements into RC-S (January-June 2011) in advance of a subsequent six month long withdrawal or draw-down of CF (July-December 2011), he explained. Canadian and U.S. military and civilian planners will need to have a plan in place by January 1, 2011, he reasoned, in order to ensure that the necessary personnel and infrastructure are in Kandahar throughout that year."

The cable ends, as so many of these US embassy cables do, with an invitation to :

"Visit Canada's North American partnership community at http://www.intelink.gov/communities/state/nap /"

but you can't visit it because it's restricted.


WikiLeaks has also provided cables confirming Jean Chretien and General Walt Natynczyk's covert complicity in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Then Foreign Affairs official James Wright, now Canada's high commissioner in London :

"emphasized" that contrary to public statements by the prime minister, Canadian naval and air forces could be "discreetly" put to use during the pending U.S.-led assault on Iraq and its aftermath

which we already knew about several years ago.
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