Wexit

[Anonymous]

By Brian Lilley



Trudeau should treat Alberta like Quebec





As the Trudeau government looks at putting together an "aid package" for Alberta rather than approve the Teck Frontier mine project in the oilsands, and as Liberal MPs openly call for the project to be rejected, it's always interesting to look at the difference between Alberta and Quebec — at least at how the federal government treats them.



We've heard plenty about the need to shut down Teck Frontier. The daily news of protesters trying to block any pipeline that carries Alberta oil out of the province is relentless.



In Quebec though, big projects just go ahead with government approval. [size=150]Have you heard about the Malartic gold mine in northwestern Quebec? It's a massive 55,000-tonnes/ day open-pit mine, one of the largest in the world. It has been operating for several years now with no attempt to shut it down, no attempt to say ripping open the earth is bad for the environment.[/size]



The town even moved some 200 homes and public buildings to the other side of town to let the mine start operations. There were no blockades, endless court challenges and celebrities flying into town to try to stop the project.



I understand that a gold mine is not an oil project and many of the people trying to stop oil projects say they are concerned about climate change, but ripping apart the Earth's surface with an openpit mine this big is hardly environmentally friendly.



But it's in Quebec so it gets treated differently — by governments, by activists, by the media. Kind of like spewing raw sewage or putting up a carbon spewing cement plant without an environmental assessment. Now what about Énergie Saguenay?



This is a project that will see a pipeline built from Eastern Ontario to Saguenay, Que., where a liquified natural gas export port is being built. If you don't know the geography, having an export port in that location means tankers carrying the liquified natural gas will have to navigate the Saguenay River down to the St. Lawrence before heading out to sea. Strange, we have a tanker ban on the West Coast — for oil tankers anyway — to protect the environment but we can have LNG tankers going up and down the St. Lawrence and Saguenay rivers without a peep. We can also build a pipeline for the project through major urban centres and through land claimed by various indigenous groups and, remarkably, not a word of protest.



Also, as the Trudeau government confirmed to me when I first reported on this project two years ago, Énergie Saguenay was not required to account for upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions in order to get approval.



A spokesperson for then-environment minister Catherine McKenna said the project only needed to account for emissions upstream, not every emission from people using the product in other countries to heat their homes.



This is a project that was sent to the government for approval a year after the proposed Energy East pipeline but only one was required to meet the more rigorous test. The tougher test is one of the reasons Energy East was pulled.



As the Trudeau cabinet weighs its options on Teck Frontier, as it looks at the skyrocketing costs of building Trans Mountain due to government delays, it needs to think carefully. Rejecting this project, or even approving it with a pile of new conditions unpalatable to Alberta or the company, will only send one message: You don't matter.



National unity is in the balance. There is no scenario where a federal government would shut down such a major investment in Quebec, one where thousands of jobs would be created.



Trudeau needs to treat Alberta with the same respect and approve this project.

[Anonymous]

Equality demanded---Alberta Tory MPs urge feds to 'repair our national bonds'



EDMONTON — Four federal Conservative MPs from Alberta issued a manifesto for the province on Thursday, warning against the rising threat of western alienation and separatism and calling for clear efforts from Ottawa that they say would constitute a "concerted effort to repair our national bonds."



Unless the perceived inequalities within Confederation outlined in the document are remedied, they caution, the strain between Alberta and the rest of the country will push the province to seek separation as its only recourse. "One way or another, Albertans will have equality," the letter concludes. It was signed by four Alberta MPs: Arnold Viersen, Blake Richards, Glen Motz and Michelle Rempel Garner. Viersen, Richards and Motz did not respond to an interview request by press time.



The 13-page "Buffalo Declaration" — named in homage to Sir Frederick Haultain's original vision of Alberta and Saskatchewan as a united province called Buffalo — was released Thursday online and in the conservative Alberta based publication The Western Standard. The document had some echoes of the so-called "firewall letter," the Alberta agenda published in the National Post in January 2001, in that it identified structural imbalances in the country that Albertans believe perennially shortchange the province's interests. But while that earlier document outlined a policy plan for Alberta to strengthen its powers within Confederation, similar to those Quebec enjoys, and was addressed to then premier Ralph Klein, the Buffalo Declaration aims its demands directly at the federal government and the rest of Canada. "It is not our job to explain Alberta's value, it is now up to Canada to show they understand Alberta and our value to Confederation," the authors say.



The Buffalo Declaration lists four distinct challenges that the signatories believe the province faces. Among them, the belief that Alberta has always been an unequal member of Canada; that Alberta has a distinct culture that has gone unacknowledged; and that Alberta has been treated as a colony within Confederation to be exploited for the benefit of the east rather than a partner.



The declaration calls for the House of Commons to publicly acknowledge the devastation of the National Energy Program on Alberta. "When you acknowledge something happened, that's a starting point to fixing it," Rempel Garner said. It calls for reform of the equalization system and demands fairer political representation for the West, such as could be achieved with a different Senate arrangement. It also calls for arts and culture funding to be spread more equally to the west, and for Ottawa to "Ensure Western art is prominently displayed in national museums," as well as "greater access for Western-based journalists to the Parliamentary Press Gallery to ensure widespread coverage of issues facing Alberta within the national news narrative."



In an interview, Rempel Garner said the intention of many of these points was to broaden the discussion about Alberta; it's not just a province that has an oil and gas industry, even though alienation is most often expressed via economic concerns.