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Federal Privacy Office Acted Like RBC’s PR Arm, Says Integrity Advocate
Federal Privacy Office Acted Like RBC’s PR Arm, Says Integrity Advocate
FOI reveals watchdog pushed media to change headline on story about investigation into bank.
Canada’s privacy watchdog moved to have news reports about its investigation of RBC and Facebook changed after the bank complained they were “problematic,” documents released under freedom of information legislation show.
The Tyee reported last February that Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien had told MPs that his office was investigating both Facebook and RBC over possible misuse of personal data.
“We received complaints from individuals on whether or not the Royal Bank was violating PIPEDA [Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act] in some way in receiving information in that way,” Therrien told the parliamentary Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.
“So that question is the subject of a separate investigation.”
The Tyee story was followed up by Bloomberg News reporter Doug Alexander, and the service distributed a report headlined “RBC Faces Canadian Privacy Investigation over Facebook Access.
RBC quickly complained to the privacy commissioner’s office about the story.
“The Bloomberg headline is problematic from RBC’s perspective,” said the OPC [Office of the Privacy Commissioner]’s Valerie Lawton, manager of strategic communications, in an email to 11 high-ranking employees, one of a flurry of emails.
Lawton said she had contacted Bloomberg. “Hopefully they will update based on my email,” she wrote.
In an email to Bloomberg, Lawton pressed for a change to the story. “The headline on the story (i.e. RBC faces investigation) is not correct, can you please revise?”
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What the Teck Mine Will Destroy
What the Teck Mine Will Destroy
Old growth, wetlands, wildlife. All the review panel added up and wrote off.
Any day now, the Trudeau government is expected to render its verdict on the $20-billion Teck Resources Frontier mine proposed to push Alberta’s industrialized oilsands landscape farther north.
There’s been a lot of published debate about whether the economics of the big dig make any sense. Less covered has been the environmental toll the project will exact should it proceed.
Last July, the Joint Review Panel assessing the impacts of the project released a 1,335-page report after holding public hearings.
Despite finding “significant adverse effects,” the panel declared that the mammoth project was in the public interest.
It added that the mine “would maximize the value of a product which is essential to everyday life” and provide income for Indigenous peoples of Alberta and Canada. Assuming, that is, oil prices reach $95 a barrel.The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada
Oil prices currently now sit at $50 a barrel, so that public interest to be traded against natural destruction is far from materializing.
In the meantime, here’s what the panel said the mine will destroy or imperil:
The project will destroy 292 square kilometres of the boreal forest, most of which is prime waterfowl habitat. For reference, that’s nearly three times the size of the city of Vancouver.
The report adds, “The project is likely to result in a significant adverse effect to biodiversity, primarily as a result of the loss of wetlands and old-growth forests.”
There will be a high to moderate loss of habitat for migratory birds whose populations are already dwindling.
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Coronavirus: An Economic Pandemic?
Coronavirus: An Economic Pandemic?
How COVID-19 could alter Canada’s oil and gas industry, tourism, education, and public health.
Also in Canada, and many other countries around the world, the epidemic is a threat to the livelihood of millions: the people who mine the raw materials China buys, the corporations that depend on Chinese-made goods as part of their global supply chain, and the service industries that rely on Chinese travellers and investors. Even Finnish fur farmers say they face “catastrophe” because Chinese buyers aren’t coming to their big spring auction.
More locally, COVID-19 is a threat not just to hockey, but to Canada’s oil and gas industry, tourism, education, and public health.
We forget what a market China is for oil and natural gas as well as coal. But Chinese demand has dropped sharply in the last few weeks, especially for LNG. Fewer people are travelling inside China, and almost none are flying to or from it. Some 50 airlines have ceased flying there, and 20 others are running reduced schedules because they lack passengers.
Meanwhile Chinese factories are struggling to resume production while their workers are locked down at home (or still stuck out of town since the Lunar New Year). China’s coal mines are still largely shut down and transportation is sharply limited in many parts of the country. Apple has warned of a drop in revenue because its Chinese factories can’t produce or ship iPhones, and it closed all 42 of its Chinese stores. Not as many containers are reaching Chinese ports, and fewer freighters are leaving for foreign destinations. So oil prices are down, and so is the price of LNG.
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Jason Kenney’s Other Pipeline War Is with Michigan
Jason Kenney’s Other Pipeline War Is with Michigan
Locals say Enbridge’s aging Line 5 is a disaster waiting to happen and Alberta’s premier should butt out.
Locals urging the aging pipeline be closed down fear it could imperil drinking water for tens of millions of people. Some wonder why Kenney, who has claimed Alberta is bullied by foreign-backed environmental advocates, has no problem intervening in the decision-making of a jurisdiction beyond Canada’s borders.
“The premier ought to take care of things that are directly impacting the citizens of Canada and let the people of Michigan take care of things that directly impact the citizens of Michigan,” said David Holtz, a spokesperson for the environmental group Oil & Water Don’t Mix, based in northern Michigan’s Traverse City.
Last June, Kenney notified his 173,000 Facebook followers that Michigan’s leaders are trying to decommission Enbridge’s Line 5, a nearly 70-year-old pipeline traversing the state. Line 5 serves as a shortcut for moving Alberta crude oil to refineries in Sarnia, Ontario, accounting for about 70 per cent of the oil it carries.
The pipeline, which was built in 1953 and runs under the Straits of Mackinac between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, is losing its protective coating and was damaged by an anchor several years ago. In August, Enbridge revealed a 25-metre segment was unsupported due to erosion caused by strong currents, and said it was acting to re-anchor the section.
A worst-case-scenario spill would pollute 643 kilometres of Michigan coastline, a state-ordered risk analysis concluded.
Yet Kenney has said that Line 5 poses “no pressing or legitimate environmental concern.”
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Tech Giants Rely on Big Lies — and We Fall for Them
Tech Giants Rely on Big Lies — and We Fall for Them
From ‘the cloud’ to ‘free’ services, we’ve been conned by tech babble.
Remember when we spent our days “surfing” the “information superhighway?”
The 1990s dotcom bubble, when some tech companies spent as much as 90 per cent of their budgets on advertising, brought a flood of hype-driven technobabble designed to lure venture capitalists.
Twenty years later, some tech giants have revenues greater than the GDPs of small countries and have the power to influence election outcomes in major ones.
The need to cut through the hype churned out by the tech giants’ marketing departments has become even more acute.
Here are three techno-utopic terms we should ban in the 2020s.
1. There is no ‘cloud’
“The cloud,” we should have learned by now, simply means “someone else’s computer” (and not necessarily someone trustworthy).
The term is brilliant branding. Selling people on “cloud storage” is a lot easier than convincing them to hand over all their data to a corporation.
And the idea makes sense. With the advent of wide access to high-speed connectivity, it’s efficient — and cheaper — to shift storage and processing from individual devices to central sites.
But there is no safe, secure cloud. Security breaches have exposed millions of users’ accounts — on Dropbox, Amazon, Google and others. Companies have handed files over to authorities, sometimes without a fuss or a word. And Edward Snowden has revealed practically limitless government spying on data moving through the internet.
Where data ends up, how it gets there, and the laws and security processes that govern both are pretty darned important.
The clouds, where the gods live, have always been humanity’s favourite storage place for all that is out of reach of questioning and understanding.
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Green Myths Canada’s LNG Sales Force Tells the World
Green Myths Canada’s LNG Sales Force Tells the World
No, methane’s no fix for global coal-fired energy. Here’s why.
Representatives of the British Columbia, Alberta and federal governments are making the global rounds these days to sell the notion that liquefied natural gas exports can help the climate crisis.
Dave Nikolejsin, deputy minister of the B.C. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, for example, flew to Japan last September along with members of the Canadian Society for Unconventional Resources.
There they tried to impress upon the Japanese attendees “the role of Canadian LNG in meeting global climate policy objectives and reducing emissions of carbon dioxide.”
The pitch goes like this: According to LNG Canada, the big Shell project now under construction in northern B.C., could replace 20 to 40 coal-fired plants in countries like China and India with Canadian methane, and reduce their emissions by 60 to 90 million tonnes.
That’s impressive, says LNG Canada, because 90 million tons equals about 80 per cent of Canada’s car pollution. Or all of B.C.’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada
In fact, Darren Gee, president and CEO of Peyto Exploration, which fracks for gas in B.C., believes Canada has a “moral obligation to provide the rest of the world with the country’s clean, responsibly-developed energy to improve lives and preserve the environment.”
And so, while the blockaders of northern B.C.’s LNG Canada pipeline await police eviction while claiming to stand up for Indigenous sovereignty and climate protection, backers of the project lay claim to their own moral high ground.
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Trudeau and His North Van Climate Minister Are ‘Wrestling’ with a Massive Oilsands Decision
Trudeau and His North Van Climate Minister Are ‘Wrestling’ with a Massive Oilsands Decision
Teck’s Frontier mine would kill emissions targets, say analysts.
The Trudeau government is under intense scrutiny for a looming decision — one that will powerfully signal whether it favours oil patch growth over fighting the climate emergency.
Will the Liberals approve a new bitumen mine twice the size of Vancouver that alone is expected to add 20 per cent of additional oilsands emissions over the next three decades?
Or will Justin Trudeau’s government make good on its promise to set Canada on the path to having “net-zero” emissions by 2050 by rejecting the Frontier mine being proposed by Vancouver-based Teck Resources?
Federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, who represents the riding of North Vancouver, is reportedly “wrestling” with the decision, which is expected sometime next month. The Prime Minister’s Office didn’t respond to The Tyee’s interview request.
Wilkinson has said that achieving Canada’s aggressive net-zero target, which would result in the country effectively ceasing to contribute to global temperature rise within three decades, is not open to negotiation: “That is a target that is not informed by politics. It’s informed by science.”
If that’s the case, then the Liberals need to forcefully reject what is one of the biggest oilsands mining projects ever proposed, says Eriel Deranger, executive director of the Edmonton-based group Indigenous Climate Action. “We cannot afford more destabilization of critical ecosystems and the creation of massive amounts of carbon emissions,” she told The Tyee.
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The Quake Threat to Dams Posed by Fracking Was Long Warned
The Quake Threat to Dams Posed by Fracking Was Long Warned
A new trove of internal exchanges shaken loose by Ben Parfitt amplifies decades of safety urgings.
“Why is this so difficult?” a BC Hydro dam safety engineer plaintively asked his superiors seven years ago.
He’d been stymied again in proposing that because the risks of earthquakes caused by fracking were clear, preventing disaster required creating “no frack” zones around dams.
His sense of urgency runs through a long thread of discussions within BC Hydro and the Oil and Gas Commission surfaced by investigative researcher Ben Parfitt.
For years now the two crown agencies have been reluctant to publicly talk about the risks earthquakes triggered by the oil and gas industry pose to critical dam infrastructure throughout northeastern B.C.
But a freedom of information request by Parfitt at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has shed new light on what has been a long and often acrimonious internal debate.
Hundreds of emails, letters, memos and meeting notes released by the utility in response to Parfitt’s request and his just published investigationmake the following important revelations:
Officials at BC Hydro have been concerned about the shale gas industry since 2007 when coal bed methane extraction resulted in seismic activity at the Peace Canyon Dam near Hudson Hope.
The Peace Canyon Dam, which provides six per cent of the province’s electricity, is built on fragile shale rock and wasn’t built to withstand even modest earthquakes.
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Why UVic Faculty Massively Voted to Divest from Fossil Fuels
Why UVic Faculty Massively Voted to Divest from Fossil Fuels
It’s time to walk the talk on reconciliation and the climate crisis.
Therefore, we think it is hypocritical for UVic to present itself as a sustainability and reconciliation leader while investing in companies that are primarily responsible for both the climate emergency and Indigenous dispossession.
For example, UVic has $2.5 million invested in Imperial Oil (the Canadian subsidiary of ExxonMobil). Records show that Imperial Oil’s own scientists confirmed the realities of climate change as early as the 1970s, and yet the company has willfully pursued denial and policy obstructionism as an accumulation strategy. By investing millions of dollars into Imperial Oil, UVic is tacitly supporting its history of climate change denial; indeed, the university is hoping to profit from it. That is sustainability leadership in high-speed reverse.
Many fossil fuel companies also contribute to the destruction of Indigenous lands and waters with their pursuit of new fossil fuel infrastructure projects. For example, UVic’s endowment fund has $700,000 invested in Teck Resources. Teck is currently pursuing one of the largest open-pit oil sands mines ever proposed. The project is in close proximity to many Cree and Dene families. According to Indigenous Climate Action, “This project threatens our Indigenous rights, ways of life, and ability to ensure the preservation of our lands and territories.”
The investment in Teck Resources contradicts UVic’s Strategic Plan and Indigenous Plan, which “commits to building and strengthening respectful relationships with Indigenous communities locally, provincially, nationally and around the world.” How can UVic claim that reconciliation and respectful Indigenous relationships are top priorities while materially investing in the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples as well as destruction of their homelands and waterways?
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When Climate Striking Stops ‘Sparking Joy.’ What Comes Next?
When Climate Striking Stops ‘Sparking Joy.’ What Comes Next?
Youth activists pause to plan a fresh wave of action.
On a cold Friday in Winnipeg two weeks ago, ten people gathered in a circle outside city hall singing “Happy Birthday.” They were celebrating the one-year anniversary of the city’s first student climate strike.
“We’re all a little burned out,” said Cam Beer, 17, one of the attendees. “We’ve been going at it for a while and some of these things are not sparking joy as they could.”
The Winnipeg group strikes every Friday and meets every Monday to organize. I got to know many of its members when I helped plan the global climate strike on Sept. 27. In writing this piece I spoke with many more youth strikers in other cities. What I heard repeatedly is they are weary, frustrated with the lack of government response. They are pausing this Christmas to regroup and strategize.
But they show no signs of stopping. In fact, it feels like they’re only getting warmed up.
Cricket Guest, 20, an Anishinaabekwe Wiisaakodewikwe land defender and one of the lead coordinators of the Toronto climate strikes, can relate. She said these days she’s mostly angry.
“The feeling of anger stems from a feeling of deep hurt. Myself and other student climate strikers feel deeply hurt people in power are not taking this issue as seriously as we are. If we are able to take the time out of our day, why is it not a priority for the adults who say they care about our future?”
Greta Thunberg expressed similar frustrations recently, when she told the United Nations, “Of course there is no victory, because the only thing we want to see is real action.”
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Oilsands Firms ‘Morally Responsible’ for Deaths and Destruction from Climate Disasters
Oilsands Firms ‘Morally Responsible’ for Deaths and Destruction from Climate Disasters
Greenpeace’s Yeb Saño explains what a Philippines human rights investigation means for the fossil fuel industry in Canada.
Four years ago, the Philippines Commission on Human Rights began posing an incendiary question.
Should 47 of the planet’s most polluting companies have to answer legally for the deaths and suffering caused by climate change?
This includes the more than 6,300 Filipinos who died in 2013 during Typhoon Haiyan, which was made more destructive by rising global temperatures.
Four of the companies named in the investigation are Canadian oilsands producers — Canadian Natural Resources, Encana, Husky and Suncor — and Canadian environmental law experts like York University’s David Estrin presented evidence at hearings held by the commission.
The commission, established in the Philippines constitution, announced its findings last week at the COP25 climate talks in Madrid.The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada
While the commission cannot make legal rulings, it found that the fossil fuel companies under investigation are “morally responsible” for death and destruction linked to their business model. Some legal experts think this could be a starting point for civil and criminal cases against those companies.
The Tyee spoke with Greenpeace Southeast Asia executive director Naderev Yeb Saño, who was in Madrid for the climate talks, about the implications of the commission’s decision for Canadian oilsands producers and the political leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who support them. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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Crazy Days in Alberta: The Poison Wells File
Crazy Days in Alberta: The Poison Wells File
The province let oil and gas firms create a $100-billion disaster. They expect you to foot the bill.
Every day something crazy happens in Alberta to illustrate how thoroughly oil politics have eroded the province’s grip on reality.
Judy Aldous, who hosts a province-wide CBC Radio noon show, recently devoted an hour to one particularly crazy item — orphaned and unreclaimed wells in Alberta.
Guest Gary Mar, CEO of the Petroleum Services Association of Canada, argued that federal taxpayers fund tax credits for the oilpatch worth $700 million over three years to help pay for the cleanup.
“All Canadians benefited from this industry and all Canadians should be part of the solution,” he said.
An average listener unaware of the history of the province’s derelict well, pipeline and gas plant liability problem might have concluded Mar was being reasonable.The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada
But Mar, a former provincial Conservative cabinet minister, was really asking for taxpayer’s money to make up for 43 years of misrule by Tory governments. They created the current crisis by failing to require oil and gas companies to provide security deposits to cover their cleanup responsibilities, and by allowing them to put off remediation of inactive wells indefinitely.
That’s how crazy the situation has become in Alberta. Taxpayers are being asked to pay for the failures of government and oil and gas companies by a former politician whose party was responsible for the problem.
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Governments Need to Face Reality — the Fossil Fuel Industry Is Collapsing
Governments Need to Face Reality — the Fossil Fuel Industry Is Collapsing
From Saudi Arabia to Alberta, the numbers are clear. But we still shovel taxpayers’ money at oil and gas companies.
While Canadian politicians keep up their parochial posturing, a global storm is brewing.
Around the world there is early evidence of a seismic shift. Capital is moving away from fossil fuels, and regions that have let their economies become dependent on oil revenues are showing signs of authoritarian abuses of power. (Sound familiar Alberta?)
Saudi Arabia, for example, planned to sell up to five per cent of state-owned oil company Aramco in what was supposed to be the largest IPO in history, raising $100 billion to improve services and diversify the economy.
Instead, the sale has been scaled back. Only 1.5 per cent of the company will be sold, and the share offering may only raise $25 billion — enough to cover the Saudi government deficit for about six months.
The precarious balance in Saudi society is maintained through lavish government spending that has relied on oil prices of $85 a barrel to drive revenues. But Brent oil prices have not been at that level in the last five years. Saudi Arabia is running deficits of around $60 billion a year to maintain services — and head off unrest.
Former CIA director David Petraeus noted ominously, “It’s a fact that Saudi Arabia is gradually running out of money.”
Even though Aramco is the most profitable company on the planet, with proven reserves of 270 billion barrels of the world’s cheapest oil, private equity investors so far have taken a pass on the IPO. Oil is a cyclical business, but their reluctance is not due to downturn slump in the sector. The reasons investors snubbed the sale seem more existential.
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Memo from a Climate Crisis Realist: The Choice before Us
Memo from a Climate Crisis Realist: The Choice before Us
If we don’t take these 11 key steps, we’re kidding ourselves. Second of two.
That first query was this: The modern world is deeply addicted to fossil fuels and green energy is no substitute. Am I wrong? Read my fact-based argument here.
Today I ask:
Question 2: Human nature and our methods of governance are proving incapable of saving the world. We need to ‘get real’ about climate science. Am I wrong?
Remember the self-congratulatory hubbub following “successful” negotiation of the Paris climate accord in 2015? Was all that ebullient optimism justified? The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada
Consider that in the past 50 years, there have been 33 climate conferences and a half dozen such major international agreements — Kyoto, Copenhagen and Paris the most recent — but none has produced even a dimple in the curve of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
And things are not about to change dramatically. The 2019 Energy Information Administration International Energy Outlook reference case projects global energy consumption to increase 45 per cent by 2050. On the plus side, renewables are projected to grow by more than 150 per cent, but, consistent with the trend I rudely pointed out yesterday, the overall increase in demand for energy is expected to be greater than the total contribution from all renewable sources combined.
Fact: Without a massive rapid course correction, CO2 emissions will continue to climb. This threatens humanity with ecological and social catastrophe as much of Earth becomes uninhabitable.
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Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
To see our fate clearly, we must face these hard facts about energy, growth and governance. Part one of two.
Why is this important? Well, if Greta Thunberg and followers are to inspire more than emotional release about climate change, the world needs to face some hard facts that suggest we are headed toward catastrophe. At the same time, skepticism is the hallmark of good science; realists too must be open to the challenge posed by new facts.
So, today, and in a piece to follow, I present an unpopular but fact-based argument in the form of two “Am I wrong?” queries. If you accept my facts, you will see the massive challenge we face in transforming human assumptions and ways of living on Earth.
I welcome being told what crucial facts I might be missing. Even a realist — perhaps especially a realist in present circumstances — occasionally wants to be proved incorrect.
Question 1: The modern world is deeply addicted to fossil fuels and green energy is no substitute. Am I wrong?
We can probably agree that techno-industrial societies are utterly dependent on abundant cheap energy just to maintain themselves — and even more energy to grow. The simple fact is that 84 per cent of the world’s primary energy today is derived from fossil fuels.
It should be no surprise, then, that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the greatest metabolic waste by weight produced by industrial economies. Climate change is a waste management problem!
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