We had better be ready.

President-elect Donald Trump has noticed something in his travels across the U.S. Many parts of his country are running out of water. Groundwater supplies are being depleted faster than they can be replenished. The American west is in a multi-year water crisis. National Geographic says the country is “running out of water.”

For Trump, to “Make America Great Again” is to bring jobs, agriculture and energy production as well as manufacturing back to the U.S. He can’t do that without water, and he has already signaled where he could find some. Canada has a “massive faucet” that would take only one day to turn on, and all of that water “would come right down here and right into Los Angeles.”

The idea Canada has water to spare, however, is dead wrong. Canada has about 7% of the planet’s renewable freshwater and needs every drop to deal with both climate change and demand. British Columbia and Alberta in particular have faced severe drought and fires in past summers, leading the Wall Street Journal to say Canada’s lakes and rivers are “drying up.” In October 2024, Agriculture Canada classified 64 per cent of the country as abnormally to extremely dry, including 67 per cent of Canada’s agricultural landscape.

Yet the “myth of abundance” persists in Canada and elsewhere and there have been many plans to commercially export our water to the U.S. Canadians successfully opposed a number of commercial water export schemes, including the GRAND Canal that would have diverted water from James Bay, and the NAWAPA, that would have dammed rivers in northern British Columbia for diversion to the Southern U.S. Public outcry also stopped two proposed massive water export plans in the late 1990’s, one from Lake Superior, the other from a glacier lake in Newfoundland, both bound by tanker for Asia.
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#cdnpoli #environment #ClimateChange #water #trump

To fight Ottawa’s carbon cap, will Danielle Smith really take control of oil company emissions data?

To show how opposed her UCP government is to Ottawa’s oil and gas emissions cap, Premier Danielle Smith said Alberta would use its provincial Sovereignty Act to bar energy companies from submitting emissions data to the federal government, and from letting federal employees onto their production sites.

These actions are “bold” in the government’s own words. They’d also potentially run afoul of federal law requiring data sharing, and companies’ own obligations to shareholders and investors.

But it’s worth considering how many switches would have to flip a certain way to reach this fraught point of provincial-federal standoff over data and where federal inspectors could literally stand:

Parsing the symbols, signals and seriousness of Alberta’s new Sovereignty Act move | Read more |

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Immigration Minister Marc Miller was admonished in the House of Commons during question period Thursday when he told Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to “grow a pair” and get his security clearance.

Miller withdrew the comment but has yet to apologize for the language.

The minister was responding to a question from Poilievre for the government to detail its plan to address immigration concerns that led U.S. president-elect Donald Trump to threaten a 25-per cent tariff on all Canadian imports when he takes office in January.

“According to (Miller’s) department, there are half a million people here illegally, all of whom could be tempted to go south of the border, provoking a massive retaliatory response,” Poilievre said. “So once again, what’s the plan to fix what he broke?”

Miller responded by accusing Poilievre of “pandering to people, entertaining false hope, promising visas to everyone, promising they won’t get deported.”

He then turned to Poilievre’s refusal to get a security clearance to receive classified information on foreign interference allegations, including against Conservative Party members, which Poilievre has argued would prevent him from speaking publicly about matters he may be briefed on.

“He needs to grow a pair (and) get the briefing,” Miller said, which led to a lengthy period of disorder in the House.

Marc Miller tells Pierre Poilievre to ‘grow a pair’ in heated exchange | Read more |

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(Note from Steve: Danielle Smith doesn’t have children or grandchildren, and she obviously doesn’t care about ours)

Alberta is taking the federal government to court, saying Ottawa has failed to follow through on what Premier Danielle Smith calls necessary changes to a law governing resource development.

The federal Impact Assessment Act, enacted in 2019, determines whether certain major resource projects should be approved based on the environmental, economic or social impact each project might have.

Smith told reporters that the government failed to make the amendments she requested, and the amendments approved earlier this year didn’t go far enough to bring the legislation in line with the constitutional division of powers between levels of government.

“Their amendments contain some clever word games, but still ultimately gave the federal government control over projects that fall under Alberta’s exclusive jurisdiction,” she said.

Alberta taking federal government to court over revised impact assessment law | Read more |
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Besides being an admin at ReBoot Alberta, I’m also the admin of two FB Groups I started, #cdnpoli, and another one dedicated to keeping the Bay of Fundy clean.

Just recently I joined BlueSky as well. Plus, the website in the monitor in the above image is a new web consulting business I’m starting, to help people find a good hosting company, and offer advice on building their websites. You can find the website at SteveMacLellan.net.

I use this space for discussing politics, but I’ve worked as an electrician, and electronic technician, have taken IT courses and worked as a web developer for 20+ years, so I think I’m qualified enough to recommend good companies to host with and offer advice on building websites.

Thanks for hanging with me!

Planning to Retire at 65? Why Many Canadians Are Leaving the Workforce Earlier Than Expected | Read more |
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