Northern Gateway Disaster in the Making

 

 

This is the view from the Tsimshian peninsula on the north coast of B.C., across Dixon Entrance and the mountains of southeast Alaska.  Not far away is the area still suffering from the impact of the Exxon Valdez disaster.  This territory has never been ceded to Canada or the queen, and no treaty has been signed here, on Haida Gwaii to the southwest, or between the coast and the Alberta border.  Regardless, the Canadian federal government is determined to support Enbridge's plan to carve a dual pipeline from the oil/tar sands in northern Alberta to Kitimat on the west coast of B.C. so that raw crude oil can be shipped to China. Supertankers, the largest ever to be used would travel down a long fjord, Douglas Channel, from Kitimat.  Here is what the First Nations people along the route think about that plan:

 

 

“Enbridge poses a grave threat to the future of coastal First Nations’ way of life,” says Art Sterritt, Executive Director of the Coastal First Nations. “We will not allow Enbridge to do to us what BP has done to the people of Louisiana.”

 

 

 

Ever since Enbridge applied to the federal government for permission to build the Northern Gateway pipeline, opposition on the B.C. coast has been strong and consistent.

Enbridge's campaign is an insult to our intelligence, as they actually eliminated islands in their promotional video to create the illusion that the enornmous oil tankers would be travelling safely through an obstacle free area.  Fishers and indigenous people who know the area intimately are horrified; the Hecate Strait and west coast of Vancouver Island is known as the graveyard of the Pacific.  Hurricane force winds are common, reefs and small islands pepper the area, creating strong currents and extreme tides.  The B.C. Ferry, Queen of the North. still rests on the bottom since the tragic sinking in 2006, crashing into a small island due to human error and perhaps technological problems.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Proposed financial benefits depend on the price of oil, which do fluctuate, and most would go to Alberta, while B.C. would take by far the greatest environmental risk.  This at a time when the economy in B.C. is shifting from a primarily resource base to an eco-tourism base, and there is great concern about our wild fish stocks due to over fishing and damage to the marine ecosystem.  Questions are being asked about the wisdom of shipping raw crude rather than refining it here in Canada.  Considering that the pipeline would have to go through the Rocky Mountains among other ranges and across a thousand rivers and waterways, little trust exists, especially in the face of recent reports of Enbridge's damaging spills in other areas of North America and resulting damning reports.

 

 

 

B.C.'s wildlife is counting on us to prevent this disaster in the making. 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indigenous Rights Trumped by Big Oil

Despite the efforts of CBC and APTN, most Canadians still are not aware of the lies and broken promises that dominate relations between indigenous peoples and the federal and provincial governments.  Once again we have a royal couple making headlines with their visit to Canada, a favourite "colony", complete with dancing and costumed indigenous people entertaining at virtually every stop.  Of note is the lack of protocol as the Prince does not acknowledge that he is on the traditional territory of an indigenous nation everywhere they go.  This, despite the obvious effort to communicate a humble and sincere appreciation of Canadian people.

Most of the First Nations in Canada have signed treaties with the federal government, the representative of the Crown.  Although the chiefs a century or more ago likely did not understand the fine print, they signed in good faith that these agreements would benefit their people.  At the time of the signing, villages had been ravaged by small pox and alcohol, traditional and vital resources such as the buffalo, salmon, trees, and medicines were made unavailable by new federal and provincial laws.  Spiritual and cultural practises essential to the good order of their communities were outlawed.  Children were abducted and forced into confinement at Residential Schools.  None of these treaties were honoured by the federal government.  Reserves were made smaller when land was given to non-native veterans upon their return from WWII, entire communities forcibly removed from traditional territories for the convenience of corporations and utility companies.  In most of Canada, land claims are just about trying to get the government to abide by these treaties.  In Newfoundland, of course, there are no native people, as the Beothuks were all slaughtered when a bounty was offered ($5 per ear, as I understand).

In British Columbia, the majority of the province has no signed treaties.  This means that the indigenous peoples, who can trace their roots through oral tradition and DNA evidence for 10,000 years and more, have been robbed of land, resources, and traditions.  Governor Douglas, perhaps pressured by his native wife, did manage to get a couple of treaties signed during his tenure, but that is all.  No other politician or bureaucrat bothered until recently.  Now it is costing millions of dollars and the process is badly flawed.  The Nisga people gave away 95% of their traditional territory in order to get a treaty signed before logging companies removed all the resources.  This, after 100 years of trying.  The first attempt involved several chiefs paddling down the coast to Victoria, donning suits, and marching up the steps of the legislative building.  To no avail.  They were turned away, so paddled back up the coast, presumably without the suits on.  100 years later, a descendant of one of those chiefs was a signatory to the new treaty.  A few more have been signed since then.

My own father told me of a traumatic experience he had as a small child on the prairie in southern Alberta.  As the son of a rancher, cooperation with the Blackfeet people was essential and resulted in a longstanding mutual respect between his family and their neighbours, especially the Crowfoot and Little Axe families.  When just a small child, playing with his Blackfoot friends, Indian agents rode up on horseback and drove his friends to Residential School like a herd of cattle.  A generation later tears still welled up when he spoke of this.  In the early part of the 20th century, there were still buffalo wallows on the prairie; tall grasses hadn't been eliminated; wild flowers still grew.  People chose to live in teepees and resisted the government's directive to stop their nomadic lifestyle, settle down and start farming.  On treaty day, once per year, my Dad said that Blackfoot people would line up for their sack of potatoes and their $5 in treaty money.  Today, many of these communities have been ravaged by the sudden relative wealth from oil exploration on reserves, which as we all know, is not always beneficial.

Few Canadians realize that South Africa modelled their apartheid system on Canada's reserve system, or that Indigenous people in Canada got the vote in the 60s, at different times in different provinces.

Today the internet is providing a forum for indigenous people in remote areas around the world to get information out.  Today, the people in the boreal forest of northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories are being impacted by the appalling mess created by the tar sands development and they need our support.  these links tell the story:

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/witness/2011/06/20116227153978324.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/05/201059193757125517.html

O.K., in most cases native people were not slaughtered outright in Canada, with few actual "Indian wars" fought.  The Chilcotin war is an exception, with these formidable people putting a stop to a proposed road through their territory, one that was to carry miners to the gold fields in central B.C.  Recently, those same people put a stop to a proposed mine that would have destroyed a lake they rely on for food.  An elder in a wheel chair threatened to block the road crew, shotgun in hand, and she made it clear she had no qualms about dying in defence of her territory.  Is this really what is necessary to stop this destruction?

Haida elders used similar techniques 20 years ago, without firearms, but by standing in the way of "progress", to protect the areas traditionally used for gathering food and medicines.  They were successful in protecting South Moresby. 

Rock on First Nations elders!

Insite on trial

On May 12th, Canada's supreme court heard eloquent arguments supporting Insite.  With so much support from the community, experts in addiction and criminology, and addicts, how can the federal government continue criminalizing people in need of medical care? 

http://www.suite101.com/content/prohibition-or-harm-reduction--the-supreme-court-will-decide-a371404

The dilemma for the feds, of course, it that to allow Insite to continue, and to stop putting sick people in jail would mean gutting their precious crime bill.  They will push this bill through parliament, and then sometime over the next year, the supreme court judges, who do not need to cater to voters, will rule on the side of harm reduction.  I predict this will be their decision, because that would be a rational decision based on research that has shown harm reduction is effective, and the war on drugs is a failure.  The B.C. court of appeal ruled on the side of Insite.

Harper does not have the background or expertise to make medical decisions, and his former Health Minster, Tony Clement considers helping addicts immoral.  I don't suppose he extends this bias to smokers, who partake, legally, in the drug that kills more people than all the illegal drugs combined.  Would he restrict treatment for lung disease to smokers....diabetes treatment for alcoholics?  The man's ignorance is astounding, but these are the folks Harper relies on for advice. 

40% of Canadian voters voted for these guys, and they got a majority.  They embarass on the world stage, with right-wing uninformed decisions that hurt people and their environment.

While the parliamentary page who dared to hold up the "STOP Harper" sign was fired, hopefully she won't be the last young person to have the courage to stand up for their convictions, but will inspire others to speak out against policies that hurt Canadians.  Some have criticized her as a pampered young Canadian who doesn't understand what oppression is.  She was speaking as someone who understands that she has the right to make her views known to those in power, and has the courage to do so, putting her job on the line for her beliefs. 
Simon Fraser University continues to promote progressive policies, and we can only hope that their access to government grants for research won't be cut off. 

For up to date news on this and other legal issues affecting Canadians, check out PIVOT Legal Society's newsletter  http://www.pivotlegal.org/pivot-points/blog/join-us-for-health-harm-reduction-and-the-law

Morality: Who Decides?

Vancouver's successful project in harm-reduction, Insite, has saved lives.  35% fewer overdose deaths in the infamous downtown eastside of the city, following decades of tragedy as addicts succumbed to the unpredictable potency of heroin purchased illegally.  Doctors, judges, politicians with compassion, residents of the east Hastings area, criminologists, sociologists and those who object to the criminalization of addicts, all applaud the project.  The federal government has reluctantly suspended the Criminal Act so research could be conducted on the safe injection site project, while simultaneously calling it immoral. 

Just a minute here....  saving lives is immoral, but sending young people off to kill other young people is o.k. because the invading force always has the moral advantage, I guess.  Oops, not when it is the other country's army that is invading us.  This moralizing stuff gets tricky. 

Did Bradley Manning have it right when he decided getting the truth out about atrocities and lies at the highest level of government?  Oh, I guess not, because he is facing life in prison.  But, he is getting much support from others who made similar choices, and he reportedly is steadfast in his belief that it was the right thing to do.

Whistle-blowing is rarely rewarded in any material sense, and can, in fact, cause the blower a lot of anguish, so what drives someone to make the decision?  That is a personal and individual thing, but for some the internal dissonance is unbearable, and the resolution of the dilemma is to spill the beans, and damn the consequences.  Those consequences can be loss of job, of friends, family can turn against you, and in the U.S. this can mean life imprisonment or the death penalty.  If the blower is firm in their belief that they did the right thing, sometimes the satisfaction that comes with "doing the right thing" compensates for other consequences.

Moral development and cultural norms go hand in hand, along with family values (I mean the values your family instills, not the values Conservative governments spew).  Interesting the way conservatives tend to frame their values as the only "family values".  Our morals develop through experience at home, in the community, at school, through activities and entertainment we are exposed to.  Spirituality is wound into all of those, I believe, rather than sitting apart from other experience.  Genetics probably play a role not yet understood. 

Kohlberg presented his ideas on moral development, and Carol Gilligan contributed her feminist version, with variations following.  My interest is in the idea that moral decision-making develops through stages as do other types of development, not necessarily at the same pace as chronological development or physical maturation.  The feminist/masculinist conflict/comparsion isn't the key interest for me.  The idea that individual morality develops along with the capacity for more abstract thought clarified much for me.  Some remain stuck on following the rules regardless of the rationality of the rules and some will break the rules if they believe that is the right thing for the common good.  Some just follow their gut, inner voice, intuition or their version of god(dess) communicates the "right" path in some way.

So, I believe Tony Clement put his foot in his mouth when he loudly proclaimed that providing a safe injection site for heroin addicts is immoral.  He didn't realize that so many intelligent people saw his statement as ludicrous, perhaps he thought he would score political points with his strongly held views.  Perhaps it didn't occur to him that heroin addicts are someone's son, daughter, sister, friend, mother or father?  Perhaps he forgot or never realized that people who struggle with addiction, trauma, poverty, and prejudice are individuals that deserve love, support, and dignity.  Perhaps it is his moral development that is lacking.  Good luck with that, Tony.

Get Tough on Crime?

Once again our esteemed leader, Prime Minister Harper, is making uninformed decisions such as insisting that we need to get tougher on crime.  It doesn't seem to matter that in fact our crime rate overall has gone down in recent decades.  So, he wants to increase spending, dump useful programs like prison farms, and put more people inside, at the taxpayers' expense.  Never mind that we already spend more than ten times as much per inmate as we do per student in our schools here in Canada.  That's right.  Even though we know what good fiscal and social policy a strong education system is, even though prisoners themselves know that what they need is education, counselling, and job skills, our federal government still wants to put more people inside, and build more prisons to house them all.  Of course they are often fathers, and their families are often then dependent on taxpayers as well.

Here are some astounding facts about the direction Harper is taking us:
http://www.suite101.com/content/canada-spends-more-on-prisons-than-schools-a363996

...and the reality about how much crime there is in Canada?  We don't need all these expensive prisons!!  Put them to work in the real world, paying back in some meaningful way!

http://www.suite101.com/content/how-much-violent-crime-occurs-in-canada-a365657

Japan's tragedy, west coast next?

Sometimes it seems like we live in an idealistic bubble here on the west coast of North America.  We share the Ring of Fire with Japan and New Zealand, who have been devastated by earthquakes this year, and we are shaken regularly, although not in a big way for a long time.  Since last week there has been a resurgence of interest in this topic, as I have seen by the upsurge in clicks on my recent article: 
http://www.suite101.com/content/earthquakes-on-vancouver-island-bc-a358492 

I predict that this interest will die down again as Japan recovers, and we will go back to our usual complacency here in "lotus land".  For example, our schools here in B.C. are far from earthquake proof, according to this article:
 http://www.canadianconsultingengineer.com/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000207691

A 1.5 billion dollar program was announced in 2005 which was intended to bring B.C. schools up to new seismic standards by 2020.  To date, 121 out of 750 schools have been brought up to date.  Every day, parents send their precious children to schools that cannot adequately protect their children from the inevitable "big one".  The Vancouver School Board is worried about the pace of retro-fitting old schools in the city; 900 million has been spent so far.

How is it that in this free, democratic, peaceful, human-rights based country......that our children are not our number one priority?  That immensely wealthy corporations spend as much on bonuses as B.C. spends on making their schools safe?  Where are the corporate donors in this situation?

Check out what Dambisa Moyo has to say in "How the West Was Lost"....  she has the courage to confront western democracies for their hypocrisy.

Another situation that has remained under the radar of B.C.'s environmental groups for decades, and that is the nuclear danger sitting just across our southern border - Hanford Nuclear site in Washington state.  The U.S. Dept. of Energy is working hard, finally, to clean up the horrific mess left by 68 years of plutonium production and storing of dangerous nuclear waste.  Read about it in my article:
http://www.suite101.com/content/nuclear-waste-dump-in-the-pacific-northwest-a358901

We need to send Japan our aid in whatever form we can, and work hard to protect ourselves from a similar disaster.  We are not as prepared, either through government services or through our own efforts.  Lobby local and provincial governments to step up to the plate, volunteer on disaster prevention and support committees, and get ready in our own home and work environments so that we can take care of ourselves when necessary.  This will take the load off officials when the time comes.  And it will.  Just ask First Nations people about their oral history on the west coast.  Entire villages were wiped out in the 1700's.

Here's the info:
http://www.quakekare.com/?gclid=CNW2tp_S2KcCFRphgwodsSmIew

While B.C. parents and school boards scramble to protect their children by trying to get schools updated to current seismic standards, the federal government goes ahead with 18 crime bills without thoroughly investigating or disclosing the actual cost of implementing these questionable bills.  They say Canadians need protecting from dangerous criminals, but the crime rate has been dropping for decades, and they have closed progressive prison programs such as prison farms.  Their insular approach to legislation could mean contempt of parliament.  Follow Kady's blog for up to the minute news from Ottawa, and check out this report:
http://www.thehilltimes.ca/dailyupdate/view/102

 

News gets through

These days I find myself looking to Al Jazeera English for up to the minute news from around the world.  Realizing that American news has biased us toward this news agency, I searched out some history and current information, only to discover that journalists from Canada and Britain are heavily involved with Al Jazeera.  I wrote an article for Suite101 summarizing what I had discovered, and predictably, there was an angry post from a reader prophesizing the "Islamification" of Canada.  I do believe Canadians are able to read diverse perspectives without becoming Americanized, Catholicized, Paganicized or otherwiseified. 
Here is a link to my aricle:
 http://www.suite101.com/content/al-jazeera-in-canada--a-welcome-voice-a345965

Noam Chomsky is an American with another take on North American culture, one which sees global dominance as an American quest.   This book was written a few years ago, but Noam's perspective on current affairs can be found on his blog:   
http://www.zcommunications.org/blog/noamchomsky