Canada’s Petro Paralysis, Diagnosed
Three books show how bitumen blocks democratic solutions to our climate crisis.
- Costly Fix: Power, Politics and Nature in the Tar Sands
- Ian Urquhart
- University of Toronto Press (2018)
- Oil’s Deep State: How the Petroleum Industry Undermines Democracy and Stops Action on Global Warming
- Kevin Taft
- Lorimer (2017)
- The Big Stall: How Big Oil and Think Tanks are Blocking Action on Climate Change in Canada
- Donald Gutstein
- Lorimer (2018)
Among the most vocal critics of this environmental assessment process, ironically, was Justin Trudeau himself, when he was on the 2015 campaign trail. He had promised to fix the federal environmental process to restore the trust of Canadians in resource decision-making. After the election, his new government struck a blue-ribbon panel to advise them on how to do just that.
Instead, 2018 saw the Trudeau government ignore most of the panel’s sensible recommendations, introducing instead Bill C-69, a legislative mash-up that, from a sustainability, transparency and accountability perspective, is likely to be worse than the Harper environmental assessment law that Trudeau railed against in 2015. Passed by the House, Bill C-69 is now hung up in the Senate, the target of a noisy misinformation campaign being led by a right-wing, astroturf group calling itself (I’m not kidding) “Suits and Boots.”
Meanwhile, under unrelenting pressure from Alberta Premier Rachel Notley to get shovels in the ground, the Trudeau government remitted the job of fixing the defective TMX review back to the National Energy Board, under the old Harper rules. To this end, it ordered a new board panel to do a high-speed reconsideration of the deficiencies the court had identified the first-time around. The deadline for intervenors to file their final written arguments to this new panel was last Tuesday.
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