On the same day the prime minister talked about the importance of “climate competitiveness” in keeping Canada’s economy strong and secure, his Liberal government gave the go-ahead to a major new piece of fossil fuel infrastructure.
LNG Canada is slated to pay less than a third of the millions of dollars it will cost to connect to BC Hydro’s clean electricity grid instead of burning gas to fuel its operations.
The first phase of the massive export facility in Kitimat started up in June, launching BC’s bid to access global markets for the fossil fuel, particularly Asia.
“Due to social unrest, the Musée d’Orsay is closed,” a sign might have read on Wednesday (Sept. 10), when tourists were not able to admire the works of Courbet. The great revolutionary painter would have surely looked on with sympathy at this shutdown laden with irony, and at the movement that paralyzed Paris on Wednesday with the rallying cry of “Let’s block everything.”
There were some thoughtless vandals, to be sure. But the protesters were mostly young people, very many women, many immigrants, and red banners were everywhere.
Over 90 per cent of Canadians agree that trade is important to the economy. Yet less than half can accurately identify how much our gross domestic product actually depends on it, according to an Ipsos poll. That knowledge gap doesn’t mean Canadians are uninformed; it shows how technical and complex trade really is. And complexity is fertile ground for distortion.
