Phil Burpee, Columnist
Phil Burpee Burpee is a carpenter and farmer living north of Pincher Creek. He keeps an eye on the world from under the big Alberta sky. |
Somewhere
up on a high rock ridge, far, far up in amongst the ramparts of the
Rocky Mountains, beneath the watchful gaze of the golden eagle and
the grizzly bear, as lightning crackles and thunder booms, a mighty
dust-up is shaking the very foundations of the great mountain chain
that separates the proud and vast Queendoms of British Columbia and
Alberta. Two Great Mothers, two towering titans of their respective
multitudes, are squared off in a steaming, stomping, stupefying
fracas, each possessed of a fiery heart beating hotly within a
swelling bosom of righteousness and stalwart intransigence. Christy
and Alison, the sharp-tongued and ruthless champions of our
neighbouring provinces, are nose to nose, staring each other down,
fingers fidgeting on their legislative pistols, eyes steely and
unblinking, each ready in an instant to drop the other one without
mercy should she weaken or even flinch. The birds have fallen silent.
The very clouds themselves seem to hang nervously along the
mountain-tops. And high overhead, the jet planes give the showdown a
wide birth, fearing the sudden turbulence that could erupt at any
second should the Premiers suddenly throw down, and lock into a
dreadful, tearing combat. For Alison has come with her oozing
pipeline – and Christy is in no toying mood.
So indeed, the once
breezy and foregone-conclusion-sort-of-plan to drape a bitumen slurry
pipeline from the Tarsands to the B.C. coast at Kitimat has run into
a wholly unexpected snag in the estimable person of the Premier of
British Columbia, the Honourable Christy Clark. Well, I have to say
this situation is not without a certain irony, especially given that
her opponent is none other than the crisp and cerebral Alison
Redford, Premier of the Patch over here this side of the map. Because
anybody who remembers Ms. Clark (aka the Wicked Witch of West, the
Bad Girl) from back in the day will recall her waging war on teachers
and the school system in general, along with various other
miscreants, all the while grinning that Cheshire Cat grin, even as
she slipped the dagger in amongst the ribs of her various opponents –
hardly a bastion of propriety and public sensitivity. And as to Ms.
Redford, the irony runs very deep indeed, given that this former
human rights lawyer now finds herself plumping for the Chinese
national interest – an interest firmly ensconced within a framework
of totalitarian capitalism, wherein any questioning as to either the
integrity or advisability of state policy can net the questioner a
quick and threatening censure at the very least, and more likely
direct harassment from the authorities, along with a probable stretch
in the none-too-amenable slammer.
Christy Clark seems to
have found her stride here, though. She had been tanking in the
polls, and had kept notably quiet on the whole Northern Gateway
affair, claiming the wisdom of due process and a wait-and-see sort of
stance. But such has been the pompous and crowing arrogance of both
the governments of Stephen Harper and Stelmach/Redford, and so
diabolically stupid is the plan to run hot, corrosive, solvent-laden
bitumen slurry across a thousand streams and rivers to waiting
Chinese super-tankers along a violent and rock-infested coastline,
that the citizenry of B.C. has risen up in outrage and anger, and
made it impossible for Premier Clark to hang on the sidelines. And
perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the whole thing is that what
Ms. Clark has been forced by her unruly electorate to undertake is
the nearest thing we have seen to date to an actual long-term
cost-benefit analysis of the whole pipeline proposal – an analysis,
I might add, which has never come from the proponents, perhaps for
obvious reasons, but which would otherwise be fundamental to any
serious business proposal – at least one that wasn’t based purely
on cud-chewing laziness, geo-politics, and pure, unbridled greed.
And then there’s
Enbridge Corp. – oh dear. These are the guys who want to build this
pipeline. These are also the guys who need to go down to the nearest
drug store and stock up immediately on a case or two of Depends,
because they are having quite a bit of difficulty of late with
incontinence – unseemly leakage from various orifices. This
rat’s-nest of a corporation is so busy planning their next foray
into the Big Sandbox, that they can’t even remember to supply
enough duct tape to their fieldmen for patching up the ancient,
dribbling, spewing network of crude oil arteries that criss-cross the
continent. And, in a quirky reversal on historical patterns of regard
between our two countries, ask an American now what he thinks of
Canada, and he will likely cite the concerns of a downtrodden victim
of national economic imperialism from those damn Canucks and their
rapacious energy corporations. No longer the weeny beaver and maple
syrup and toothless hockey players spring to the Yankee mind, but
rather filthy, unregulated corporate monstrosities reaching out their
suppurating tentacles across virgin lands, levering citizens out of
the way with threats and eminent domain, and leaving behind a toxic
residue of spillage, incompetence, resentment, and transparent
excuses. Quite the spectacle.
Cost benefit necessarily
and primarily comprises risk analysis – six year-olds don’t head
out to the curb to set up their lemonade stand without some sense
that the enterprise will reap benefits, both monetary and in the
manner of the satisfaction associated with delivering a valuable,
healthful, sustainable and well–appreciated product. And, of
course, they see to it that they have solid and creditable backers in
the persons of Mom and Dad to offer not only collateral, but most
importantly a safety net should the I.P.O. (Initial Public Offering)
run into unforeseen difficulties in the marketplace (viz. rain). But
in this sordid business of the Northern Gateway Pipeline, risk
analysis is, with blinding idiocy, vacuously deferred, not only in
the pointed threat of a spill, but most egregiously in the blithe
refusal to factor in the extent to which the release of further
mega-tons of carbon into the atmosphere constitutes a direct
transferral of risk to future generations – an appallingly
numb-skulled manoeuvre. For both the moral and the environmental
responsibility associated with perpetrating a process which will have
undeniable and unforeseen deleterious effects on the lives of as yet
unborn children goes beyond mere carelessness, and becomes rather a
wilful acquiescence to the visiting of a blight upon our collective
progeny.
So Christy says –
“Show me the money!” And Alison says – “Go pound sand!
You’re not getting a nickel! It’s OURS!” And that might be
the end of it if it were some pokey little lumber deal or highway
project. But it is far from that. And here we see the particularly
interesting spectre of constitutional politics enter the fray. For it
is not within the powers of the province of British Columbia, within
the frameworks of the British North America Act (B.N.A.), our
patriated constitution, and/or various inter-provincial,
national/international trade statutes, to veto such a thing as the
Gateway pipeline. Ultimately, Ottawa has the bully pulpit here and,
in the final analysis, could legally and technically over-ride the
wishes of the government of B.C. Ms. Clark knows this, but of course
continues to speak as though it were not the case, because she knows
all too well that the resultant shit-storm that would ensue from the
Federal Government directly contravening the popular will of an
entire province as manifested through their provincial legislature
would consume Mr. Harper’s government, and reveal it once and for
all for what it really is – a sycophantic clutch of apologists for
the corporate sector, imaginationless law and order knuckle-heads,
and short-sighted opportunists, addicted to efficacy and the
suppression of science and diversified thought.
It’s fun though. We
haven’t had a good constitutional crisis for years. And although
neither a provincial government nor a united front of concerned
environmental and citizens’ groups can directly prevent the
building of this pipeline, this is not the case with our Aboriginal
sisters and brothers. Because, you see, in our haste to wrap up the
final subjugation of this continent during the colonial period, we
neglected to affect treaties for almost the entire land mass of B.C.
– just took the map and drew it in – called it a done deal. But
it’s not a done deal at all. Delgamuuk vs. Regina has shown
this to be so. The majority of First Nations in B.C., especially up
north, have never relinquished title to their lands. Virtually all
the land across which the Northern Gateway is anticipated to be laid
is still under land claim negotiations between the various Native
jurisdictions and the provincial and national Crowns. And these
peoples have been repeatedly dumped on by both Enbridge and the
governments of Alberta and Canada – lumped in with radicals and
foreigners and agitators and traitors of one stripe or another. So,
they’re in a growly mood up there. And as little respect as they
might have for the B.C. government after years and years of cheating
and abuse, they are now hearing loud and clear that Premier Clark
will not budge on this matter without their full, immediate and
complete agreement and complicity with any or all of the ins and outs
of the current proposal.
Well, did we really
think this was going to fly? Will it have escaped the notice of
history that 21st century Alberta so utterly ran out of
ideas that all it could manage to do was to annex itself to a
bankrupt ideology of growth, consumption, whoredom to the highest
bidder, and the vilification of those for whom community means
something other than pandering to people’s worst excesses? And even
if the rapid, accelerating exploitation of the finite resource in the
Athabasca had any merit, which it patently does not, even the notion
of processing the bitumen into useable hydrocarbon products here in
Alberta, or even Canada, doesn’t even get lip-service. The
profit-margins are too narrow for the private sector, and the
province doesn’t have the chutzpah to tie such processing
stipulations to rights of access to the resource. The government of
Alberta won’t, of course, do the processing itself for
philosophical reasons – any state enterprise being tantamount to
the slippery slope to communism – let Market-forces prevail. But
it’s OK to sell the stuff to commies, who are quite handy with
state enterprise, so the best we can dream up is to sell it to the
Chinese at fire-sale prices (they’re already buying up the
extraction facilities anyway) – if only we can get this damn pipe
stretched out over to the Big Water and onward to the Middle Kingdom!
So, I’m with the Bad
Girl on this one. And Alison Redford can squawk and fuss as she will,
but all she’s ever going to look like is a ridiculous, insincere,
blustering pin-striped gladiator for an imperial gallery of spoiled
buffoons and dim-witted babies – waah waah waah – “We want
stuff! We want stuff noooow! It’s miiiine!” Now at least
some politician in a position of power is questioning, at quite a
deep level, the credentials of a big chunk of current so-called
Economic Wisdom. What is the actual price of growth? What are the
real risks of further toying with carbon-heavy technologies and
commerce? To what extent must the voices of the people be heard, and
at what juncture must they carry the day? When will we learn that the
private sector will not look out for future generations, nor will
they accept responsibility for significant environmental catastrophe,
preferring to lawyer their way out of payment and leaving it to the
public purse? – Exxon still hasn’t paid a penny for their
escapade in Prince William Sound with the Exxon Valdez these twenty
years past – and they never will. In short, when will reason
replace impulse, and when will we stop to truly consider the
actual cost of short-term prosperity. As political and business
commentator Marjorie Kelly notes: - “Our politics and economy
are so intertwined that imbalances in wealth and ownership have
eroded our political democracy. To fix this we need to democratize
the economic aspect of our sovereignty.” Indeed. We are so
often told by our ‘leaders’ that such resources as the Athabasca
tarsands belong to the people of Alberta through the agency and trust
of the Crown. Nothing in the conduct of either the government or the
business sector involved with the exploitation of these resources,
however, gives any indication that these are anything other than
weasel words. ‘For the greater good of all Albertans’ –
balderdash!
I trust Christy Clark
about as far as I could throw her, but I like it that she’s
operating outside the usual box. She’s flipping the bird to the
presumptions of some very fat power blocs in this country right now,
and for that I say ‘Bully for you Bad Girl.’ Because when the Big
Guys send their dogs over to squeeze a coupla warm fresh ones into
your sandbox, somebody’s gotta stand up and holler it out –
“Hey! Just what the hell do ya think yer doin’ over here?! Go on
- git!”
Phil Burpee
July 28, 2012
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