Canada

January 18, 2017 - Toronto – New research released today reveals disturbing new evidence on how locking-into new long-lived tar sands production undermines global efforts to address the global climate crisis far beyond Canada’s borders.

It's a sign of how utterly frightened they are of democracy when politicians and pundits start lecturing us about the "real" definition of civil disobedience. This usually happens during the sanitizing rituals of the January Martin Luther King Day holiday, when King's revolutionary calls to justice are erased in favour of saccharine, self-congratulatory events wholly unconnected to the civil rights movement's multiple, powerful legacies.

TORONTO, Jan. 9, 2017 /CNW/ - Two First Nations in northwest Ontario – Aroland and Ginoogaming – have just launched a precedent-setting lawsuit and injunction motion against TransCanada Pipelines, Canada and the National Energy Board, for doing and allowing damaging physical work on parts of the Mainline pipeline that runs through those First Nations' traditional territories.

Even if twinning the Kinder-Morgan pipeline doesn’t go ahead, the Salish Sea will not be saved — unless something bold, principled and practical is done, and soon.

The endangered southern resident Orca whales, the depleting fisheries of Puget Sound, the sewage dumps into Juan de Fuca Strait, the toxic leachates from old mineshafts and coal-storage pits along the Island’s east coast, and the plans that would see industrial sites such as an LNG plant located in Howe Sound: these all point to incremental destruction. As it stands now a long, slow death awaits the Salish Sea.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, B.C. Premier Christy Clark and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley have cooked up a sweet deal. Trudeau and Notley get their pipeline to tidewater, while Clark gets federal approval for the Site C dam and the Petronas liquefied fracked-gas plant.

The three-way political backscratching has a high price, and the people of British Columbia will be paying it.

As oil prices rose and fell, the federal government somehow wrestled a national agreement on climate change — with two notable exceptions. The fates of pipelines that had consumed public interest for years were drawn, while others were punted into the future. Canada’s beleaguered oil and gas industry faced an uncertain year with a new Liberal government in Ottawa, and 2017 looks like it will have its own share of big shifts. For the year that was, here are the top five energy stories.

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau,

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a lifelong, pretty old British Columbian who loves his province with the same passion I’m sure people in Trois Rivières love theirs. Your inferential calling BC’s patriotism into question because we will vigorously oppose your approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline demonstrates clearly that you’re quite unable to understand this, your connections to BC notwithstanding.

Watch this series of five short videos.