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Late last year, Royal Dutch Shell gave the greenlight to a massive LNG export terminal on Canada’s Pacific Coast, one of the largest investments in LNG in years. But like other fossil fuel projects in Canada, the plans have run into some trouble.

Shell’s LNG Canada project hinges on a crucial pipeline that will connect gas fields along the border of British Columbia and Alberta to the Pacific coast at Kitimat. The Coastal GasLink pipeline is to be constructed by TransCanada (or, rather TC Energy, as the company now wants to be known).

The Coastal GasLink pipeline was supposed to mark a departure from previous long distance pipelines in Canada – a project that would, from the start, adequately consult with First Nations. Prior pipeline projects – Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and Line 3; TransCanada’s Energy East; as well as Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion – ran into stiff resistance from various First Nations.

TransCanada hoped that Coastal GasLink would be different. But, it too is now meeting resistance. Members of the Wet’suwet’en nation threw up makeshift barricades to stop construction on their land in recent weeks. On January 7, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police broke through those barricades and arrested at least 14 people. RCMP said it was enforcing a court order, but the clash made national and international headlines.

The situation is complex because the Wet’suwet’en nation never signed a treaty with Canada, so their territory is neither ceded nor even formally acknowledged by Canada. “What I see is a long history of the Canadian government doing its best to avoid acknowledging the existence of other systems of government,” Gordon Christie, a scholar of indigenous law at the University of British Columbia, told The Guardian.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Coastal GasLink an Illegal Pipeline?

January 11, 2019

Is Coastal GasLink an Illegal Pipeline?

Challenge to energy project’s approval brings threats to Smithers activist.

Smithers resident Michael Sawyer claims the Coastal GasLink project lacks the required federal approvals and wants the National Energy Board to review it. Photo by Dan Mesec.

The $6.2-billion Coastal GasLink pipeline may face a bigger threat than the opposition of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and protests across Canada.

Smithers resident Michael Sawyer says the project lacks the required federal approvals. He has filed a formal application to require a full National Energy Board (NEB) review.

Last fall the board agreed to consider Sawyer’s challenge.

In April it will hear final arguments on the question of whether the pipeline falls under provincial jurisdiction, or if it is subject to NEB rules and assessments.

That would bring delays and “put real, tangible benefits to people in B.C., including First Nations, at risk,” said pipeline owner TransCanada Corp., rebranded this week as TC Energy.

The B.C. government’s Environmental Assessment Office approved the contentious 670-kilometre pipeline in 2014.

The project would move fracked methane from northeastern B.C. and northwestern Alberta to the $40-billion LNG Canada export terminal in Kitimat.

Sawyer, a 61-year-old environmental consultant, said the prospect of a NEB regulatory review should have been considered by the B.C. Supreme Court before it issued an injunction that led to RCMP action against two Indigenous checkpoints this week.

“I wonder if TransCanada disclosed information to the judge about this jurisdictional challenge before it asked him to grant the injunction against the blockade,” he said. “The fact is that the RCMP enforced the injunction in an over-the-top manner for a pipeline that may be deemed illegal and whose permits could be quashed.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bankrupt, Eh? Insolvency Filings Soar In Almost All Canadian Provinces

January 11, 2019

Bankrupt, Eh? Insolvency Filings Soar In Almost All Canadian Provinces

The pronounced aftershock from what would historically be considered as very mild interest rate hikes in Canada is continuing.

Bloomberg reported that the number of consumers seeking debt relief was up 5.1% to 11,320 in November, according to the Ottawa-based Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy. Combining October and November’s numbers, there were 22,961 consumer insolvency filings, the most since 2011.

These new numbers come on the heels of the bank of Canada raising its key lending rate five times since the middle of 2017. Like in the US, the impact of rising rates on the economy is being “monitored closely”, which is a nice way to say “obsessed over by central banks in order to continue to force all asset classes to rise in price”.

David Lewis, a board member at the Canadian Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Professionals, told Bloomberg: “We’re seeing a bump, and in some provinces that bump is significant.”

Insolvency filings were up in every province except PEI, which was unchanged. Alberta saw insolvencies rise 16%. Filings in Ontario were estimated to have risen 1% in 2018 after declining for eight straight years. Insolvency firm Hoyes, Michalos & Associates Inc. estimates that Ontario will see a minimum of a 2% to 5% jump in insolvency filings in 2019. If rates continue to rise, they predict as much as an 8% jump.

66% of Ontario’s insolvency filings were consumer proposals, which is reportedly the highest year on record. You can view the country’s total insolvencies for November 2018 in the chart below.

We had previously offered a preview of this inevitable increase after October’s insolvency numbers also grew.

Chantal Gingras, chair of the Canadian Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Professionals stated in early December:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Judy Wilson’s Message for Canadians: ‘The Land Defenders Are Doing This for Everybody’

January 10, 2019

Judy Wilson’s Message for Canadians: ‘The Land Defenders Are Doing This for Everybody’

RCMP raids in Wet’suwet’en territory can’t bring justice, reconciliation or a better future, Neskonlith chief says.

Chief Judy Wilson: ‘We have to change to ensure that our young people have a future. That’s what the Indigenous land defenders are talking about when they say we need to protect the land and the water.’ Photo by Zoë Ducklow.

The Tyee reached out to Wilson to talk about RCMP action against pipeline protesters in the Wet’suwet’en nation in northwest B.C. because of her extensive involvement with government and industries and her long history of environmental advocacy. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What are your thoughts on how governments are responding to the RCMP action in the Wet’suwet’en territory?

I was just reading Premier [John] Horgan’s response to the Unist’ot’en, and I think he was trying to stay on the middle ground. He mentioned the bands who signed these agreements [to allow the pipeline], but to me, the issue is clearly about the hereditary Wet’suwet’en chiefs. They are the proper titleholders to their unceded territory, and they already made a decision. They said no pipelines in their territory.

As for Trudeau, I don’t think he’s really responded. It’s concerning that on one hand he talks about truth and reconciliation, he talks about implementing UNDRIP [the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People] and has supported Bill C-262, which is about implementation — and then he’s using forceful, militarized RCMP to remove people and arrest them at Unist’ot’en and Wet’suwet’en territory. He’s speaking contradictorily, and he’s actually in violation of some of the conventions that he signed at the United Nations.

You called for Canadians to ‘stand with land defenders.’ How can they do that?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil’s Wild Price Swings Set to Create Global Chaos

January 10, 2019

Oil’s Wild Price Swings Set to Create Global Chaos

Volatility is here to stay — and the political and economic implications will touch us all.

Oil once gushed from the ground for drillers, like these workers in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1901. Now costly fracking and oilsands mining produces lower-quality oil at far higher costs. Photo: US Library of Congress.

As the current global oil glut shakes up petro states around the world, oil prices are becoming more volatile than Donald Trump tweets.

Neither Canada, now the dumb owner of a marginal 65-year-old pipeline, nor Alberta, a key exporter of bitumen, a cheap refinery feedstock, has paid much attention to this revolution.

As a consequence Canada has no strategy to deal with the new normal of highly volatile oil prices.

Government incompetence explains the hew and cry in Alberta about its overproduction crisis and the various proposals to solve it, ranging from the purchase of rail cars (a bad idea) to the decision to order companies to cut production of heavy oil by about 325,000 barrels a day (a sensible idea).

Alberta’s panic attack is based on the idea that bitumen from the province’s oilsands producers is selling at a discount because of a lack of pipeline capacity.

The reality is that the dramatic 30-per-cent drop in oil prices since the beginning of October, from more than US$70 to US$50, is upsetting oil exporters, producers and markets around the world.

Different kinds of oil fetch different prices, based on their quality and transportation costs. And all are experiencing dramatic price drops. Alberta’s bitumen, a cheap refinery feedstock, is not the only crude languishing during a global market glut.

Refineries in Japan and Korea, for example, scooped up cheap U.S. oil earlier this year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

First Nations Pipeline Protest: 14 Land Protectors Arrested as Canadian Police Raid Indigenous Camp

January 9, 2019

First Nations Pipeline Protest: 14 Land Protectors Arrested as Canadian Police Raid Indigenous Camp

In Canada, armed forces raided native Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia Monday, with at least 14 arrests being reported. Land defenders faced off with Royal Canadian Mounted Police as the police breached two checkpoints set up to keep pipeline workers out of protected territory. Indigenous leaders are reportedly being blocked from their territory. TransCanada Corporation has been seeking entry into indigenous territory, where they are planning to build the massive $4.7 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline. Land protectors from First Nations clans set up two encampments where they had been physically blocking entry to TransCanada workers.

We speak with Karla Tait, a member of the Unist’ot’en House Group of the Gilseyhu Clan. She’s the mental wellness manager for the Northern Region with the First Nations Health Authority, serving the 54 First Nations in Northern British Columbia. Dr. Tait is also the director of clinical programming for the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In Canada, armed forces raided native Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia Monday, with at least 14 arrests being reported. Land defenders faced off with Royal Canadian Mounted Police as the officers breached two checkpoints set up to keep pipeline workers out of protected territory. Indigenous leaders are reportedly being blocked from their territory.

WET’SUWET’EN LAND DEFENDER: The Wet’suwet’en have won rights and title to their lands. We did not hurt anyone. The hereditary chiefs say, “No, you cannot go through our lands.” And under your law, the authority is them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Yellow Vest Movement Spreads to Australia & Poland

January 9, 2019

We are witnessing the Yellow Vest Movement now also spreading to Australia. We are seeing the rise there and in Canada also against Fake News that the media is desperately fighting Trump on who now label him an idiot in headlines. We are also witnessing a backlash against taking in the Muslim claimed refugees from Syria in Australia as well. It is not a matter of race, but culture. People who traveled to Paris from the USA this summer have often returned with horror stories of being robbed on the street, cell phones, jewelry, purses being stolen by people on motorcycles. Muslim women begging on every corner of the Champs-Élysées. The culture clash is the problem. These people cannot speak the language and lack skills for employment for the most part. Immigrants historically seek economic opportunity – not handouts. Last November, Merkel was offering cash to the refugees to leave Germany it was getting that bad. Now she is willing to pay one year’s rent back home to leave Germany.

The Green groups that have taken over the UN are frantic fearing that they want to avoid the violent clashes that have rocked France from becoming a “je suis Trump” (I’m Trump) moment for against climate change. It was the higher global warming fuel taxes and other environmental efforts that sparked the “yellow-vests” protests that have forced President Emmanuel Macron into retreat. In Canada, the Yellow Vests are also growing over environmental sanctions that block pipelines and creating employment in the energy industry which is also lurking behind a growing separatist movement in Alberta.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Art of the Monstrous: Burtynsky and the Anthropocene

January 8, 2019

Art of the Monstrous: Burtynsky and the Anthropocene

The National Art Gallery in Ottawa currently hosts a sensational exhibition called “Anthropocene.” Edward Burtynsky and his associates Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier have created a multi-media mind-boggling representation of the transformation of the earth by humans. Their work has the shock-effect similar to the famous 1969 photograph of the earth taken from outer space, from far above. One recalls Carl Sagan’s equally famous description of the earth as that “pale blue dot.” Those words were uttered with hope glistening on its lips. Could we see how beautiful this whirling planet, ours, was from so far above? Isn’t it one world for everyone? Shouldn’t humanity encircle its collective arms around this pale blue dot and cradle it tenderly?

In the age of airplanes, most of us who inhabit this pale blue dot have been stunned by how awesome our view of the Rockies is from 30,000 feet above the earth. And we are probably aware that photography from above is not entirely new. It has been used for cartographic purposes. Now, many know Burtynsky’s earlier works such as Manufactured landscapes (2003), Oil (2009) and Water (2013). If you have never looked at any of Burtynsky’s big picture photographs, you may be in for something akin to an electric shock. His photos of large-scale sites from high above (planes, drones, helicopters) stop us in our tracks. They grab our attention and demand that we think anew about the world humankind has manufactured.

Some would add—and ruined. Viewing Burtynsky’s photos triggers deep spiritual and philosophical thought. Nature photographs and paintings are never mere representations; they carry symbolic meanings. And, essentially, they press us to ask the big questions: Who are we as a human species? What is our purpose on this pale blue dot? What have we done to this beautiful place, whirling in an unfathomably immense universe? Where, when all is said and done, are we headed?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canada’s Forgotten Man: Energy Workers

January 7, 2019

Canada’s Forgotten Man: Energy Workers

All over the world, the forgotten man is rising up, reminding the ruling elite of his existence. Fed up with leaders catering to the whims of 0.05% of society, or instituting policies that impact their pocketbooks, the working folks of America, Italy, Brazil, and France are making sure their voices are heard in the political arena. This uncomfortable fact is sending shivers up and down their masters’ spines, including those in the Great White North.

Ivory Tower

For so long, Canadians were passive and apathetic about how they were treated by their rulers. They just drowned their sorrows of excessive taxation and abuse of the public purse in a Tim Hortons double-double and a plate of poutine. That’s just the way it is, they cried. There’s nothing to do, they grieved.

It is this level of arrogance that puts Trudeau and his minions out of touch with typical Canadians.

But then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau happened.

The trust fund baby is a man who continually talks down to those who are not like him. By encouraging young people to use “peoplekind,” openly wishing that Ottawa would embrace a Chinese-style government, and suggesting citizens with real concerns about Syrian migrants are racist, Trudeau has begun to light the populist spark from British Columbia to Newfoundland.

To truly comprehend the left’s disdain for blue-collar Canadians who do not accept the premises of leftist dogma, you will need to travel to Calgary, Alberta. At a recent demonstration of energy workers, Liberal Mayor Naheed Nenshi treated the crowd like kindergarteners:

“Well, for those of you who are saying, ‘No I don’t believe in climate change,’ good luck changing hearts and minds because we have to be able to say that there is no difference between standing up for the economy and standing up for the environment.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canada’s Natural Gas Crisis Is Being Ignored

January 6, 2019

Canada’s Natural Gas Crisis Is Being Ignored

“Alberta and its natural gas producers face a daunting crisis,” Alberta’s Natural Gas Advisory Panel said in a report in December, highlighting the challenges that natural gas producers in Alberta face in market access and pricing for their commodity.

Industry officials and analysts say that the situation with the steep natural gas discounts in Canada to the U.S. Henry Hub benchmark is similar to the huge discounts of Canada’s heavy oil benchmark—the Western Canadian Select—to the U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI).

The record-low oil prices in Canada have attracted a lot of media attention in the past few months, but the steep discounts and volatile prices of Alberta’s natural gas have received less attention, although the pricing and problems are similar.

“It’s absolutely a similar situation,” Advantage Oil and Gas president and chief executive Andy Mah told the Financial Post.

Like oil, natural gas prices have also been suffering from the steep discounts, but the attention has been on oil “because of the slower decline in natural gas prices,” Mah told Geoffrey Morgan of the Financial Post.

According to Samir Kayande, director at RS Energy, the natural gas prices discounts have been plaguing the industry for longer and the problem has been “far worse than it is for oil.”

“Gas is such a forgotten commodity now,” Kayande told the Financial Post.

Alberta’s government has recently taken drastic measures to prop up the price of heavy oil in Canada, but it has yet to address the distressed natural gas pricing.

Natural gas “is just as important (as oil), it’s just not getting the same kind of attention as oil” but that could soon change, a government official told the Financial Post.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Yellow Vests Becoming World Wide Movement

January 4, 2019

Yellow Vests Becoming World Wide Movement

The Yellow Vest Movement that began in France, is spreading. It appeared also in Belgium and it spread to Canada as well. The French arrested the leaders of the Yellow Vest Movement calling them an anti-government charging them for organizing an unauthorized protest, as authorities adopt a tougher approach to try to curb the demonstrations. During the weekend of December 15th, mimicking the Yellow Vest movement in France, protests have formed all over Canada. These are peaceful protests, unlike in France, but they have continued every weekend in various cities such as Toronto, Halifax, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Calgary etc, especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Alberta has long been known as the oil province of Canada and is highly commodity driven. With NDP (New Democratic Party) preventing the expansion of the TransMountain Pipeline
from Alberta’s Edmonton to BC’s Burnaby after the project has already been approved by the federal government back in 2013, many people are unemployed. With oil in Western Canada
(Western Canadian Select) hitting $11.43 a barrel in November, companies simply cannot afford to stay in business. Combining this with the announcement that the price of vegetables
increased 4%-6% as of January 1st, it’s no wonder that many Canadians are frustrated.

This is also apparent as Calgary voted a resounding NO on a bid for hosting the 2026 Winter Olympics on November 13th. An estimate of $5.11 billion was announced with additional extra
costs which were never disclosed, people voted no to the increase the taxation in order to pay for it. The wrong event at the wrong time and people simply can’t afford to foot the bill.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BC earthquakes and fracking

January 4, 2019

BC earthquakes and fracking

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information

There is no fracking going on right now in northeastern British Columbia, the epicenter of the province’s oil and gas production. Hydraulic fracturing operations have been shut down there for a month due to earthquakes that happened on Nov. 29 about 20 kilometers southeast of Fort St. John.

The BC Oil and Gas Commission (BCOGC), which both regulates and promotes the industry (more on that below), is investigating the 4.5 magnitude quake, followed by two smaller aftershocks. One of the largest oil and gas producers in Canada, Canadian Natural Resources, was fracking in the area.

The commission has linked previous earthquake incidents to increased seismicity, though it states on its website that none of the events in BC have resulted in environmental or property damage. Yet.

For those who have been following our investigations into the BC government’s plans to develop a liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry in BC – something we vehemently disagree with considering its costs will vastly outweigh its benefits – there is an irony in the operations suspension.

A couple of months ago the BC Premier and the Prime Minister gathered with industry representatives to announce the final investment decision by Shell and its Asian partners to go ahead with LNG Canada. The first-in-BC $40 billion LNG compression plant, to be built in Kitimat, will receive natural gas via a new pipeline – filled with the same fracked gas that is causing earthquakes and shutting down the industry while the BCOGC investigates. It would be downright shocking if they found anything that would slow fracking in northeastern BC, which supplies natural gas to BC and Alberta, as well as valuable liquefied gas products like diluted bitumen (dilbit) to the oilsands, not to mention hundreds of millions in royalty payments to the BC and Alberta governments.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canadian Household Debt-to-Income Ratio Near Record High

December 30, 2018

Canadian Household Debt-to-Income Ratio Near Record High

“Households with elevated levels of debt are more vulnerable to increases in interest rates”, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation redundantly observes in its latest bulletin and warns that “with interest rates on the rise, highly indebted households could see their increased required payments exceed their budgets.”

Naturally, this increased debt payment burden usually come at the cost of reduced consumption, decreased savings or opting to make lower repayments on principal amounts. Some households might even default on their loans if their incomes are not sufficient to cover higher expenses and credit charges.

And, as the CMHC ominously warns, if an increasing number of borrowers begin to default on their loans, financial institutions may decrease lending activities in response.

These negative effects could then impact other areas of the economy. Research has shown that recessions in highly indebted countries tend to exhibit a greater loss in output, higher unemployment, and last longer compared to countries with lower debt levels.

Here are some of the latest troubling observations on Canadian household debt levels from the CMHC:

Household debt to disposable income near record levels

The debt-to-income (DTI) ratio is a measure of the relative vulnerability of indebted households. While households may be able to service their debt during periods of low interest rates, some may face challenges when rates rise. Highly indebted households have usually few debt consolidation options to respond to increasing debt service costs.

Total household debt relative to disposable income has been trending higher as indebtedness has been rising faster than incomes, with mortgage debt being a major contributor, counting for two-thirds of all outstanding household debt in Canada. While the increasing trend in the Canadian DTI ratio has now paused, it remains near a record high, hovering around 170% in Canada and varies significantly among Canada’s metropolitan areas (see chart 1).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Imperialist Aggression against Venezuela: Canada Tries to Use International Law to Justify Interventionism

December 30, 2018

Imperialist Aggression against Venezuela: Canada Tries to Use International Law to Justify Interventionism

Like the shopkeeper in the Monty Python dead parrot sketch who insists a deceased bird is actually alive, imperialist aggression against Venezuela is turned into promotion of the “international rules-based order”.

At the opening of the UN assembly in September Justin Trudeau said the International Criminal Court is a “useful and important way of promoting an international rules-based order.” Simultaneously, Canada announced it (with five South American nations) would ask the ICC to investigate the Venezuelan government, which is the first time a government has been formally brought before the tribunal by another member.

Liberal officials and the sycophantic media portrayed Canada’s move to bring Caracas before the ICC as a challenge to the US. Evan Dyer reported, “Government sources told CBC that Canada’s decision to refer Venezuela is also meant as a show of support for the ICC, an institution this country believes in that is under attack” from the Trump administration. In other words, Ottawa will challenge Washington by showing Trump how the “international rules-based” ICC can undermine a government the US and Canada are seeking to overthrow through unilateral sanctions, support for the opposition and threatening an invasion, which all contravene the UN Charter.

Unfortunately, some people are willing to buy a dead bird for a pet, the proof of which is that the “international rules-based” ICC Trudeau is promoting has previously been employed to enable violations of international law. In 2011 ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo helped set the stage for NATO’s war on Libya, which contravened UN resolutions 1970 and 1973. (Ottawa defied the UN Security Council resolutions authorizing a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians by dispatching ground forces, delivering weaponry to the opposition and bombing in service of regime change.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

No “Poloz Put?” Ignore BoC Warning At Your Peril

December 19, 2018

No “Poloz Put?” Ignore BoC Warning At Your Peril

Governor Stephen Poloz’s warning last week that the Bank of Canada wouldn’t backstop fluctuating stock markets drew little attention.

“Is there a Poloz Put?” the central bank head asked rhetorically. “No.”

At first glance, the fact that only one BNN Bloomberg producer and a few smaller media picked up the story is hardly surprising.

Canada is a mere bit player in global central banking and financial markets, and the opinions of any Canadian official generally carry little weight outside of local circles.

However, in December 2017 Poloz provided investors a similar warning about Bitcoin, then trading near its all-time high, but which subsequently fell by more than 80%.

Investors would thus be foolish to ignore him now.

Consider:

One of the Fed’s main policy tools

First, a little background. The idea that governments are key drivers of stock prices may appear ludicrous to those who believe that Western economies are free markets.

However, as Moody Analytics notes, higher asset prices and resulting wealth effects are one of the Federal Reserve’s main policy tools for achieving its inflation and economic growth targets.

For U.S. stock traders operating today, most of whom have never seen a crisis that government hasn’t bailed them out of, the Fed’s most important manipulation is the existence of a tacit “put,” which ensures that asset prices won’t fall too far.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen all intervened to boost asset prices at key points when the heavily-indebted U.S. economy appeared set to implode.

The Bank of Canada’s policies are less overt. While the central bank claims that it “does not target asset prices,” asset price manipulation is clearly direct “collateral damage” resulting from its other policy objectives.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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