Canada

Yesterday, Canadian pipeline behemoth Enbridge won government approval for its plans for 9B, one of the most contentious pipes in pipe business. While it doesn’t get much press, 9B is important because it’s part of a hot, new trend in trans-national pipe dreams: Skirting environmental review, and public scrutiny, by pumping dirty crude through existing pipelines rather than building new ones.

The Canadian government is increasingly worried that the growing clout of aboriginal peoples’ rights could obstruct its aggressive resource development plans, documents reveal.

Since 2008, the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs has run a risk management program to evaluate and respond to “significant risks” to its agenda, including assertions of treaty rights, the rising expectations of aboriginal peoples, and new legal precedents at odds with the government’s policies.

The anti-environment offensive by Canada’s fossil fuel industry and its flacks in government is radically shifting the political landscape of the country. Each day, it seems, brings some new announcement and outrage being committed against Earth and the humans. More pipelines to be built, and more leaks and cover-ups of existing oil and tar sands facilities that poison the land and water.

When a tight oil boom invaded rural Alberta five years ago, Diana Daunheimer was, as she puts it, just another "ignorant landowner." The mother of two and vegetable farmer knew little about the practice of horizontal drilling or multi-stage hydraulic fracturing. The practice involves the injection of highly pressurized fluids into mile deep wells that later mole out horizontally for another mile or two, in order to break open shale rock as tight as granite.

When you hear folks expressing opinions on national television you may not be aware of who helps pay their mortgages -- or golf club memberships.

On CBC's The National, last week, the "At Issue" panel was discussing the recent leaders' meeting in Mexico where, yet again, Prime Minister Harper failed to convince President Obama to give his blessing to the Keystone XL pipeline.

This photo of Peter Mansbridge holding forth from behind a CAPP (Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers) lectern popped up online last weekend. Grabbed from CAPP’s Facebook page, it’s dated December 11, 2012, and contains this caption:

    “Peter Mansbridge at CAPP’s Investment Symposium last night. He articulated that energy has moved to the forefront of news: economic, environment, safety.”

Canada makes no mention of climate change in its 427-page budget for 2014, in another sign of the country’s dwindling interest in environmental protection. The budget, which was released to little fanfare during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, has invited accusations that Canada’s Conservative government has prioritised winning votes at the next election over the transition to a low-carbon economy.

How much is Canada worth? About $33 trillion according to one recent reckoning, based only on our oil and timber resources. Those two commodities alone make Canada the fourth richest country on Earth, and number two on a per capita basis -- just behind Saudi Arabia. Divided between 35 million Canadians, every one of us is close to being a millionaire. Like the TV commercial says, you're richer than you think.

OTTAWA — A secret report from a committee of federal deputy ministers stresses the need for the federal government to further combat climate change and manage the risks that threaten Canadian communities, government infrastructure, food security and human health. The briefing materials shed some intriguing light on what’s unfolding within the government on how Canada should both mitigate and respond to climate change, and which emerging energy and environmental industries Ottawa may financially support in the future.

"Severe Drought Has U.S. West Fearing Worst" - front page headline, New York Times, Sunday, Feb. 1 Ayoung couple on the Canada Line asks for directions to the airport. They are flying home to San Francisco after a week skiing in Whistler, despite the fact there was not much snow. "But there was more snow in Whistler," the man says, "because there's none in Tahoe."