Prime Minister Harper is currently orchestrating the approval and construction of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat. He is carefully putting in place the pieces necessary to ensure that the pipeline will be virtually impossible to stop. His process follows three essential steps.
First he used his omnibus budget bill to gut agencies and regulations which were designed to protect the environment. He has shut down, among other facilities, the contaminant lab at the Institute of Ocean Sciences on Vancouver Island to limit public access to reliable scientific information detailing the damage being done to the environment primarily by fish farms and the petrochemical industry.
Second, on the afternoon of Friday, December 7 at 5 p.m. (so that he could limit the public relations damage from the news cycle) he announced that he will allow the Chinese state owned oil company CNOOC to take over Canadian fossil fuel giant Nexen putting three to six billion barrels of tar sands oil under their control .
The third step in this carefully planned strategy is just ahead. It involves the approval, without parliamentary debate, of the Canada - China Foreign Investment Protection Act (FIPA). When this act is approved CNOOC will be able to sue Canadian governments - federal, provincial, and municipal - in secret tribunals rather than in Canadian courts if they do anything to threaten CNOOC corporate profits even if those governments seek to implement common sense environmental protection and job creation efforts.
When FIPA passes, if the B.C. provincial government, whether Liberal or NDP, attempts to block construction of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, BC taxpayers will face a claim for hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of dollars and are likely to lose. It will not matter even if the opposition is clearly in the best interests of our citizens and our environment.
It was once suggested that we would no longer recognize this country once Harper had four years in office with a majority government. Sadly that prediction is becoming all too true.
Bob Harris
Prince George
