Canada

A scientist, or any knowledgeable person, will tell you climate change is a serious threat for Canada and the world. But the RCMP has a different take. A secret report by the national police force, obtained by Greenpeace, both minimizes the threat of global warming and conjures a spectre of threats posed by people who rightly call for sanity in dealing with problems caused by burning fossil fuels.

Four years ago, if you had asked Stephanie Merrill of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick(CCNB) and Jennifer West of the Ecology Action Centre (EAC) in Nova Scotia the odds of success in their respective efforts to enact fracking bans in their provinces, they would have likely replied: pretty low. After all, they were going up against a powerful industry, lax government oversight, and a largely uninformed public.

Yet last fall, the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick joined Quebec in halting the practice of hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.

The Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) is the latest to speak out against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's proposed Anti-Terrorism Act.

Harper's Bill C-51 is meant to increase the power of RCMP and other bodies to combat terrorism and includes giving more power to security personnel, letting authorities detain possible terrorists for longer periods, and allowing authorities to remove terrorist propaganda from any Canadian-based website. However, critics have said that the bill will restrict Canadians' freedom.

The Mounties always get their man.

But a newly disclosed intelligence assessment from the RCMP looking at the "anti-Canada petroleum movement" suggests the same might not always be true about their facts.

First reported in La Presse, and again Monday in the Globe and Mail, the RCMP report dated January 2014 warns of "a growing, highly organized and well-financed anti-Canada petroleum movement that consists of peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society's reliance on fossil fuels."

The RCMP has labelled the “anti-petroleum” movement as a growing and violent threat to Canada’s security, raising fears among environmentalists that they face increased surveillance, and possibly worse, under the Harper government’s new terrorism legislation.

In highly charged language that reflects the government’s hostility toward environmental activists, an RCMP intelligence assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are bent on blocking oil sands expansion and pipeline construction, and that the extremists in the movement are willing to resort to violence.

Alberta's provincial energy regulator says a significant earthquake in northern Alberta was likely caused by hydraulic fracturing.

If fracturing is confirmed as the cause, scientists say, it will have been the largest earthquake ever to result from an industrial operation.

Residents in the town of Fox Creek noticed the earthquake a week ago on Jan. 22. It was of 4.4 magnitude, severe enough to cause minor damage.

. . . .But as the society points out in its report, A Cold Wind Blows, poverty remains one of the biggest barriers to children learning.

The Aboriginal Care Society’s report is not as blunt as Turpel-Lafond’s assessment of government failures.

But its assessment of why it is happening in British Columbia is brutally frank.

Reactions to the federal government's attempts to stop NAFTA's environmental oversight commission from investigating environmental damage caused by tailings ponds in Alberta's oil sands came fast and fierce from critics.

“There’s compelling evidence that [industry contamination] is happening," said Dale Marshall of Environmental Defence, "and that the federal government is denying it, and not allowing that information to be known to Canadians and the people who live in that area." 

The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) is unsatisfied with the recent decision to dismiss their judicial review of the Federal approval of Shell Canada’s Jackpine Mine Expansion project, according to a press release. The ACFN argued the project approval process failed to uphold proper and adequate consultation and as result has harmed the nation and its rights.

Quebec's energy regulator is giving the thumbs-up to TransCanada Corp.'s Energy East pipeline, calling the plan "desirable."

The $12-billion pipeline between Alberta and New Brunswick aims to connect western crude with eastern refineries and new markets across the Atlantic.

It would make use of under-used natural gas pipe already in the ground for about two thirds of the way, with new pipe being constructed in Quebec and New Brunswick.