Cenovus and Husky, two of the five largest oilsands producers, just merged to save money by killing more than 2,000 jobs. Suncor axed another 2,000 employees. The so-called “economic engine of Canada” is shedding jobs, not making them.
As the world’s oil industry shrinks, prospects for global economic recovery seem remote if not problematic, because the world runs on oil.
China, the presumed market for Alberta’s heavy sour crude, has arrested two of our citizens, bullied our leaders and become a global exporter of technological tyranny.
And climate change, the topic everyone likes to endlessly talk about, continues to erode shorelines, burn forests, create refugees and undermine global security.
So does the world still need the Trans Mountain expansion project?
That’s the timely question David Hughes, one of the country’s foremost energy experts, deftly answers in his latest report for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Erin O’Toole has been the Conservative Party leader of Canada since August 24, 2020. Like his predecessor before him, he lacks any significant climate change plan. He feels the strength of the party lies in Ontario and Alberta, so he’s hesitant to suggest plans that would be unfavourable to his base. Economic recovery from the pandemic isn’t nuclear power or Liquefied natural Gas (LNG) as he would suggest.
Since former Prime Minister Stephen Harper stepped down, a blue funk hangs over the Conservatives’ heads. They lack direction and ambition. For that matter, the former party leader, Andrew Scheer’s only plan was to nip at Trudeau’s heels whenever he made a move. He never came up with a concrete rebuttal on any topic other than to say it wouldn’t work, and the reason why, was lacking credibility, if any reason was given.
Even his support for LNG seems to be getting him off on the wrong foot. It was proposed as an alternative to coal but his biggest supporter, Premier Jason Kenney of the Alberta United Conservatives, is ramping up dormant mines for Australian miners who hope to have a market in China and other Asian countries. To be fair, he can push LNG, but he’ll have to button his lip about coal. The Grassy Mountain Coal Project Public Hearings are set to begin on October 27, 2020. It will be interesting for both Kenney and O’Toole, to see which way it goes.
He’s been prompting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to create a parliamentary committee to probe the Liberal government’s pandemic response spending and possible ethical lapses including WE. Trudeau, obviously annoyed as there are more important matters to contend with, has suggested that this motion is a confidence matter. If the Conservatives persist, he will call an election.
Canadians can’t trust Justin Trudeau.
He has one set of rules for Liberals insiders and another for everyday Canadians.
The Commons’ ethics committee has also been asking for more information about the money he and his family received as speaker fees from the charity organisation.
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet supports the Conservative’s motion. He’s ready for an election as well. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh feels this is a waste of time, and rightly so. There are several issues much more pressing.
Let it be known, how foolish O’Toole is for pushing this motion. If he were elected prime minister, he might make Andrew Scheer, the former Conservative party leader, look much more competent in his performance.
Update 10/21/20 — Snap election averted as Liberal government survives confidence vote in Commons
Canadians will not be heading to the polls for a snap fall election now that the Liberal government has survived a confidence vote on a Conservative motion to create a special committee to probe the government’s ethics and pandemic spending.
MPs voted 180-146 to defeat the opposition motion, with the NDP, Greens and Independent MPs voting with the Liberals. [Read more]
Update 10/22/20 — New Conservative motion could trigger 2nd confidence vote for Liberals
One day after surviving a confidence vote on a Conservative motion, Justin Trudeau’s minority Liberal government faces another Conservative motion that could trigger yet more high-stakes drama over the possibility of a snap election in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The official Opposition is using its second opposition day this week to debate a motion calling for a sweeping probe by the House of Commons health committee into a host of issues relating to the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The motion is so broad and the demand for documents so massive that the Liberals are expected to argue that its passage would paralyze the government — the same argument used to declare the first Conservative motion a confidence matter.
Using an argument that’s likely to be repeated by government members Thursday, Liberal MP Darren Fisher told the committee that “the motion asks public health officials basically to stop what they’re doing to protect Canadians and sift through emails and documents instead.” [Read more]
In mid-September, the Sipekne’katik First Nation launched a moderate livelihood lobster fishery along the coast of southwestern Nova Scotia. Its fishers set out an estimated 250 traps at the time, the equivalent of one commercial boat.
Some, including the commercial fishing sector, worried this new fishery was a threat to maintaining healthy lobster stocks. Commercial fishers have articulated two conservation concerns about the Sipekne’katik fishery: its scale and whether fishing during the summer season — when lobsters molt and their shells are soft — is a problem for the survival of lobsters that are thrown back.
Yet two decades later, there has been no clarity on what “moderate livelihood” means, nor how implementation of the treaty right should unfold. Great people have been working on it, but it is not a trivial question.
Others have as well, including Listuguj and Potolek First Nations.
Fire destroyed a lobster pound being used by Mi’kmaw fishers in Middle West Pubnico, N.S., on Oct. 17, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS /Andrew Vaughan
The protests over the Mi’kmaw fishery have escalated to acts of vandalism and violence. The message from commercial fishers is that fishing in St. Marys Bay outside the commercial season is illegal and a conservation concern. In fact, it is neither.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) did not immediately help the situation. Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan and Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett waited five days to make an explicit statement that it was, in fact, a legal fishery. By that time, the commercial sector’s view became further entrenched.
Conservation concerns unfounded
The commercial lobster season in Lobster Fishing Area 34, where the bay is located, runs from late November to late May. The livelihood fishery was launched outside that, leading the commercial harvesters to label it as illegal. Yet, as Shelley Denny, a Mi’kmaw doctoral student at Dalhousie University, points out, there are two sets of rules for Indigenous and non-Indigenous fish harvesters. The Indigenous fishery is not illegal, but is it a conservation concern?
The sun sets over the wharf in Saunierville, N.S. (Brandon Maloney), Author provided
Initially, five Sipekne’katik vessels were fishing 50 traps per vessel; there are now reportedly 10 vessels fishing a total of 500 traps. Compare that to the commercial sector, where each vessel — there are about 100 fishing in the bay — is allowed to fish 350 traps, for a total of about 35,000 traps.
There is no reason, no science, to suggest that the equivalent of one or two commercial vessels fishing in St. Marys Bay will be problematic. Lobster biologist Robert Steneck would bet you a beer there will be no negative impact on the lobster population.
Fisheries scientists and managers need only look to our neighbour to the south, Maine, which operates a year-round lobster fishery. In the summer, lobster molt and their shells are soft, resulting in a lower quality lobster. The Canadian market doesn’t prioritize these lobsters, even though Maine does.
These lobsters are more susceptible to what’s called “post-release mortality,” meaning that those lobsters that cannot be kept — lobsters that are too small or females bearing eggs, for example — are thrown back and may not survive. This mortality needs to be accounted for, but it doesn’t mean it’s not sustainable to fish during the summer.
Normal catches
One index fisheries scientists use to measure the status of a resource is called catch per unit effort (CPUE). In this case, lobster is the unit and the effort invested is one vessel.
While not perfect, the CPUE represents a relative abundance of lobster in a given area. When CPUE falls, it may be a sign that fewer lobsters are available in that particular area, but may or may not signal that the population as a whole may be in trouble.
Members of the Sipekne’katik First Nation load lobster traps on the wharf in Saulnierville, N.S., in September 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
Data for St. Marys Bay and Lobster Fishing Area 34 show that commercial catches have declined the past two years compared to the 2015-16 season. Commercial fishers have argued this is due to the summer “food, social and ceremonial” fishery that operates outside the commercial season.
The recent protests have targeted the “livelihood” fishery, but it seems that what the commercial sector is actually angry about is the food, social and ceremonial fishery. According to Brandon Maloney, fisheries director for Sipekne’katik, the band developed their plan for this fishery twenty years ago — this is not a new development.
So, what does the CPUE for St. Marys Bay look like over the past 16 years? I took the data released by Fisheries and Oceans Canada and calculated it. Although the CPUE in the past two years are on the lower end of the range, they are clearly within it. And they really only seem low when compared to the highs recorded in 2015-16.
CPUE for St. Marys Bay and Lobster Fishing Area 34, 2002-19. (Author provided. Data from DFO, September 2020.)
The assertion that the drop in bay catches is a conservation concern is wrong, as DFO itself has stated. So if there is no conservation concern, then the assertion that Indigenous summer food fisheries are decimating the stocks, as the commercial sector has argued, is incorrect.
It’s not surprising that commercial fishers are upset by a decrease in lobster landings in St. Marys Bay. But my assessment of the fishery is not why the public has a poor view of the group.
Their behaviour has been abhorrent. The sector needs to address its racism, cease its vigilantism, support dialogue and ensure that its positions are grounded in evidence. And, as Denny argues, it must make room for the livelihood fishery. The rest of Canada — and the world — is watching in shame. We must do better.
In the wake of public outrage about the systemic racism and disproportionate police violence experienced by Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC), a new report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council documents troubling findings of environmental racism and injustice in Canada.
The report, authored by UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Toxics who completed a visit to Canada in 2019, shines the spotlight on longstanding discriminatory and health devastating pollution experienced by Indigenous and Black communities across Canada including the mercury pollution crisis in Grassy Narrows, the pollution from petrochemical plants in Aamjiwnaang First Nation, the placement of toxic waste sites near African Nova Scotian communities, and oil sands pollution in Fort McMurray. It also exposes severe problems in government laws and policies that have resulted in unequal and unacceptable toxic exposures in vulnerable and marginalized populations.
Here are some of the important findings from the report:
September’s
job gains mean that the job market is now within 720,000 positions of
where it was in February, before the advent of COVID-19 in Canada.
March
and April saw a cumulative record of three million jobs lost, before
the numbers started to bounce back in June. Each month from then on has
been slightly lower than the previous, until last month, when hiring
seems to have picked up again.
Cenovus and Husky, two of the five largest oilsands producers, just merged to save money by killing more than 2,000 jobs. Suncor axed another 2,000 employees. The so-called “economic engine of Canada” is shedding jobs, not making them.
