Topic
ENERGY & EQUITY: Morality doesn't guide the crude brotherhood, never did.
Photo by ezioman via Flickr Creative Commons.
Billing itself as 'grassroots', EthicalOil has close ties to a top oil sands law firm.
It's human nature to seek an honourable reason to avoid a pressing problem. But this distraction is deadly.
Oil and ethics have never mixed. And never will.
The world's black gold (seven of the globe's wealthiest corporations are oil firms) has financed both left-wing and right-wing revolutions (from Hugo Chavez to Margaret Thatcher) polluted major watersheds from the Niger to the Mississippi, and undermined the role of government from Saudi Arabia to Louisiana.
The Big Rich from Texas' oil fields even bankrolled Senator Joe McCarthy's witch-hunts in the United States. The Wisconsin extremist was known as "the third senator from Texas." And that was before the Koch brothers and their oil wealth funded the "drill, baby, drill" Tea Party movement.
Governments that run on petro dollars (whether Christian or Muslim, democratic or tribal) also become obsessed with the resource and its pathological power arrangements. In the end they represent oil and its sweat-free revenues instead of ordinary citizens.
This fact partly explains Canada's carefully orchestrated campaign to rebrand its controversial bitumen as some kind of ethical product. Even though most oil sands companies produce oil from troubled petro states, the Canadian government is now attacking the globe's oil infrastructure to deflect attention away from its own dirt.
Canada's bombing campaign in Libya is also part of this crazy strategy. The destabilization of Libya will keep the global price of oil high and therefore improve the outlook for bitumen production, a marginal crude highly sensitive to oil price shocks. Canada's intervention has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with money.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney along with his former communications director, Tory activist Alykhan Velshi, have also attacked Saudi Arabia for its record on women. The Saudis, who got corrupted by oil long ago by U.S. oil companies, make an easy target. But when one group of Canadian petroleum extremists attacks another bunch of petroleum extremists and all to protect oil revenue for a highly secretive prime minister and a religious fundamentalist to boot, every Canadian should fear for the future of this country.
Petro state propagandists
The ethical oil campaign began with Ezra Levant, a political activist and lawyer with close ties to government. He even works in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's war room during elections. For the record, Levant is a former tobacco lobbyist and a convicted libeler. He is also a political extremist who has demanded the jailing of Greenpeace leaders. (Greenpeace, a civic organization with 3 million members, has poked fun of Alberta's one party petro state. The Saudis, by the way, fear transparency and accountability and don't like Greenpeace either.)
Levant has a Venezuelan peer: U.S. lawyer Eva Golinger. She attacks critics of Hugo Chavez's dysfunctional regime as decadent agents of U.S. imperialism just as Levant slanders environmentalists as demonic forces. Although the two lawyers represent different ends of the political spectrum, they play the same hysterical role in a petro state -- deflecting criticism away their inept rulers.
Now Levant's basic argument on ethical oil reads like a grade two primer: Canada is a good petro state and therefore heavy crude is good. Saudi Arabia is a bad petro state and therefore its light oil is conflicted. Buy Canadian crude.
Levant's time as a tobacco lobbyist makes him a compromised candidate to advance the ethical oil line. But Alykhan Velshi, another lawyer, resigned from government to push the ethical oil argument. Leaving government to promote Big Oil is now a Tory tradition. A couple of years ago Bruce Carson, Harper's top advisor, left Ottawa to coordinate pro oil sands propaganda with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Alberta government. (Carson is now under investigation for unethical lobbying.)
Five falsehoods
Whether one supports rapid bitumen development or not (and the key issue is pace and scale) there are some big moral problems with ethical oil propaganda. Not only is the argument a Big Fat Lie, but these falsehoods sorely undermine the country's reputation abroad. It could also bring more trouble to the oil sands industry than its environmental critics. Saudi Arabia, for example, is well known for its lies and propaganda. But when Tory activists attack other oil exporters to defend a resource with true issues, well, Canada looks more and more like another pathetic petro state.
Furthermore, the so-called ethical oil argument is based on five bold falsehoods which bear some scrutiny:
Falsehood 1: Your local oil company. For starters, oil is a global commodity and every barrel is conflicted with blood, corruption or environmental degradation. As Daniel Yergin notes in The Prize, a lengthy history of oil, greed, power and money have always walked hand in hand with oil. (Ethics was never part of the crude brotherhood.) In addition every major oil sands producer pumps oil in petro states because of the money. Nexen produces in bloody Yemen. Suncor has billion-dollar investments in battle scarred Libya. Shell's oil interests literally turned Nigeria into a corrupt and polluted landscape. Total does business with Burmese dictators. The Chinese National Oil Company drills for gangsters in the Sudan. And on it goes.
Given Ottawa's new definition of ethics, there isn't a moral player in the tar sands. Should Canada do the moral thing and expel these firms so our oil can be produced by some non-existent race of pure oil companies? Perhaps when Levant, Velshi and Kenney call for the expulsion of these firms, we'll know they are really serious about ethics and not concerned about money for Tory coffers.
Falsehood 2: Oil island Canada. Half of Canada now depends on so-called conflict oil. It's more dependent on foreign oil than the United States. Every day Quebec and Atlantic Canada get their oil from places like Algeria, Venezuela, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The production of bitumen has not lessened eastern Canada's dependence on foreign oil by one barrel. If the world's most expensive hydrocarbon can't even displace so-called conflict oil in Canada, what difference can it make in global markets? But let's follow the extremist's advice, and boldly shut down half the country's energy supply in the name of petro ethics.
Falsehood 3: Ours is untainted by conflict. Bitumen is so damn thick that it won't move through a pipeline without being diluted with light oil. Much of this condensate comes either from the U.S. or the Middle East. EnCana has even imported conflict oil from Pakistan to dilute its bitumen. But condensate is in such short supply on the continent that most future supplies will come from the Middle East. The National Energy Board estimates that Canada will have to import 346,000 barrels a day from conflicted places by 2020 just to move the so-called ethical stuff. Perhaps Canadian philosophers will soon debate what happens when a nation mixes ethical oil with conflict oil? And what bloated Saudi-like bureaucracy should we create to discern these differences?
Falsehood 4: Perfectly Canadian. The idea that Canada walks the global stage without ethical problems is a grand right-wing Tory fiction and more petro hubris. (The Saudis say they are faultless too.) In plain truth we are a mining people with a lousy environmental record at home and a damn poor human rights record abroad. Our so-called ethical Canadian government even objected to a health-warning label for asbestos (how Saudi-like). Nor could they stomach a Responsible Mining Act. When the Canadian government takes up the stoning of foreign oil exporters, don't be surprised when global stones pass through our economic windows.
Every oil-exporting nation has to confront a raft of difficult ethical challenges that invariably come with oil wealth. They include fiscal accountability and saving one-time oil revenue for future generations. But Canada hasn't done that. Nor has Alberta. Battling the Dutch Disease and protecting the manufacturing and agricultural sectors from a high petro currency is another critical concern. Yet Canada just watches as oil exports hollow out the economy.
Falsehood 5: Oil profits make Canada stronger and better. Last but least, comes the corrosive influence of oil revenue on government policy and statecraft. Given our Saudi-like record on climate change (the Sheiks don't believe in global warming either) and the Harper government's ethical oil campaign, the money has already corrupted Canada's political institutions.
So oil and ethics don't mix. But Canadians will celebrate the day they do.
At that blissful moment the government of Canada will challenge the ethical record of oil sand investors such as totalitarian Communist China instead of its marginal oil competitors.
Just follow the money. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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elbillug
1 year ago
well said
Alas the politicians our country elected are 100% certain to defend to the bitter end all of this Alberta tar sands stuff. They don't give in on even the most minor of things, I can't see them ever swaying an inch on their position with regards to this.
realisticman
1 year ago
Alberta Author goes to Battle - against another Alberta Author!
But does it sell books?
Nikiforuk writes a book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of the Continent, which, incidentally, receives very poor reviews on Amazon. Then Levant writes a book, Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oil Sands, incidentally, quite well received on Amazon.
In this defence we get gems like, :"Immigration Minister Jason Kenney along with his former communications director, Tory activist Alykhan Velshi, have also attacked Saudi Arabia for its record on women. ..."
What on earth are we to make of a left-wing commentator seeming to be criticizing our government officials and supporters for speaking out to a foreign state for women's rights? Imagine if they didn't speak out, what then, no criticism?
We thank the writer for exposing his left-flank, so to speak. At least we needed not to marginalize him for his confusing and convoluted protestations, for he is rushing out there all on his own volition.
alda
1 year ago
Red herring argument
Realisticman:
It would take a piddly few thousands ($$$) in book sales and PR flacking on Amazon websites from hired guns of the oil industry to dump on Nikiforuk's book yet push Levant's fictional "masterpiece" into the best seller category in order to draw the North American public's attention towards a defense of Alberta's "ethical" oil industry.
Being a "best seller" in any artistic field is often MEANINGLESS these days. As any qualified literary or cultural critic can tell you, for example, tawdry Chic Lit fiction (think Bridge Jones' Diary) outsells quality literary writing every day of the week on the New York Times Best Sellers' list, and by a long mile. Also, cities can fill their sports arenas to the hilt while the local history museum and small theatre productions go begging for audiences. So what? Popularity and mass opinion has never been a gauge of quality and intellectual integrity.
It is a red-herring to compare Levant's rotten-fish hawking with Nikiforuk's quality investigative journalism.
Skywalker
1 year ago
Fiction is always a better seller.
Right one alda!
settingprecedent
1 year ago
On Realistic Men
Since when did the term "realistic" become a synonym for "deranged"? Seriously, the classic oil worker's remarks of "I live in the real world", "I'm a real Man", and "I'm not book smart, I'm street smart", etc, is fantasy. And not good fantasy, but really really bad fantasy! Like "Wizards of the Lost Kingdom" bad. I'm not saying you have to have a university education to present an intelligent critically thought out premise but apparently it helps!
igbymac
1 year ago
Ethical Oil
Is Stephen Harper claims it is ethical, you know it isn't. His record speaks for itself.
spartikus
1 year ago
Exploiting human rights to sell your product
Yesterday on Twitter, Ezra Levant made the following statement:
"Who presses harder for Saudi women: Amnesty International or @Ethical_Oil? Amnesty is too busy necking with Omar Khadr."
EthicalOil.org does *literally* nothing to affect change for the status and rights of women in Saudi Arabia.
They don't lobby the Saudi government.
They don't lobby the Canadian or U.S. government to lobby the Saudi government.
They don't give money or provide assistance to groups working in Saudi Arabia to affect change for the status and rights of women.
The consumer can't drive up to a gas station and choose "ethical oil" as they would different octanes. There are no plans to introduce this option.
Ethical Oil pointedly will not call for a ban on unethical Saudi oil imports.
There isn't even a call on their website for the Saudi government to make changes
The Ethical Oil campaign could be 110% successful and the Saudi government would suffer no consequences.
The women of Saudi Arabia are being used as props to peddle Canadian Tar Sand oil to a Canadian audience.
They are exploiting human rights for commercial gain. It is deeply offensive.
Amnesty International, on the other hand, walks the walk.
1timeatbandcamp
1 year ago
conflethical oil? Seriously
conflethical oil?
Seriously though I watched some of this debate on ctv's question period on Sunday there were so many false arguments on the side of "ethical" oil that do not stand up to any scrutiny at all
leftcoastia
1 year ago
Tarred Ethics
Having read another editorial about 'ethical oil' over lunch from the Postmedia-speak chain of papers, I was about to reach for my copy of ‘Tar Sands’ and attempt to formulate some sort of response. Turns out the author himself has already taken up the task. Nicely done!
The whole ‘ethical oil’ argument is just a tribute to the old strategy that the best defence is offence. I rather doubt Mr. Levant and his cronies cared much about the plight of women in places like Saudi Arabia and conservative forms of Islam before celebrities began speaking out against the TAR sands and the occasional niqab began appearing amongst the throngs of cowboy hats in downtown Calgary.
‘Ethical Oil’ is merely the ‘crude’ work of unabashedly rightist political spin doctors.
Illahie
1 year ago
Promoting the Oil Sands oil as ethical is the right thing to do
It is a fantastic resource, and we should make the most of it.
We need to build the pipeline to Kitimat, so that oil can be exported to China to help pay for all the flat screen TV's that Canadians are so fond of buying.
wvdk
1 year ago
realistic, really?
'realistic' man's response to Nikiforuk's article asks who will speak out against the Saudis if not our government. Actually, many of us have been for quite some time. Welcome to awareness of the issue. His post offers a vague ad hominem attack, but does nothing to address the 5 falsehoods Nikiforuk presents. I suppose his silence is a tacit acknowledgement of their validity. Or perhaps he's just metaphorically putting fingers in his ears and shouting "la la la la la".
realisticman
1 year ago
alda
"It is a red-herring to compare Levant's rotten-fish hawking with Nikiforuk's quality investigative journalism."
Then why did this article devote four paragraphs to Levant? Who's tossing red herrings?
realisticman
1 year ago
wvdk
Then why does Nikiforuk throw in criticism of our government for speaking, out and derisively call the Saudis an "easy target"? If it is an important issue then the government, in its attack, should be applauded.
realisticman
1 year ago
wvdk
Falsehoods? Where does one start? Number 2, for example, is just plain silly. Refined gasoline cannot successfully be transported over a long pipeline. Oil has to be refined close to its market and end user. To reduce imported oil for the Eastern Canadian market and replace it with Alberta oil there is only way. Transport it to the Eastern Canadian refineries. Would you like that by rail tanker, truck or pipe?
istvan
1 year ago
realisticman
Tell us why refined products can't be moved by pipe.I do'nt believe you.
firefox007
1 year ago
Pipelines
Gasoline & ethanol have water in them, and other chemical compounds, that cause impossible erosion problems, making refined products such as these impossible to pipe long distances.
realisticman
1 year ago
istvan
With ethanol and other additives the lifespan of gasoline is reduced. Temperature also has an effect and water mixed in through condensation is obviously no good. It does go bad. It takes around three weeks to pipe from Houston to the far more heavily populated east coast. Edmonton to the refineries in Sarnia is about the same distance.
http://autos.aol.com/article/does-gas-go-bad/
http://www.triumphrat.net/twins-technical-talk/44443-gasoline-shelf-life-question.html
http://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=146530
"Oil moves through pipelines at speeds of 3 to 8 miles per hour. Pipeline transport
speed is dependent upon the diameter of the pipe, the pressure under which the oil
is being transported, and other factors such as the topography of the terrain and
the viscosity of the oil being transported. At 3-8 mph it takes 14 to 22 days to
move oil from Houston, Texas to New York City."
Old gas is not recommended.
zalm
1 year ago
spartikus
"The Ethical Oil campaign could be 110% successful and the Saudi government would suffer no consequences."
Well and succinctly said. Game, set and match, Mr. Levant.
G West
1 year ago
Umm
It would seem that the 'realisticman' has not taken the time to carefully read anyone 'but' Ezra Levant.
Otherwise he might have come across this recent Tyee article:
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/09/22/Refine-Oil-In-Canada/
Had he read and understood it, he might then not have made the rather foolish suggestion that this debate is in any way a discussion about the concept of piping refined end products like gasoline anywhere.
If you require further elaboration I'm sure someone will explain to you the difference between the product which is meant to be piped down the XL tubes and something called sythetic crude.
I can't be bothered.
G West
1 year ago
whoops!
That should be, of course, "synthetic" crude, which is a very different thing from what'll go down the XL highway....
igbymac
1 year ago
Ethical Oil ....
ever notice its PR label is as stupid as Intelligent Design?
It figures the same camp is involved with both. Talk about lost!
igbymac
1 year ago
Ethical Oil ....
ever notice its PR label is as stupid as Intelligent Design?
It figures the same camp is involved with both. Talk about lost!
realisticman
1 year ago
GWest
Perhaps if you read the article you would know that Andrew Nikiforuk discusses regional Canadian oil usage, specifically in his second "falsehood" section.
If you support a pipeline from northern Alberta to Eastern Canada, to reduce the need for imported oil there, perhaps that could be considered. Alternatively, the bitumen could be sent by pipeline to the west coast, then shipped through the Panama Canal to Eastern Canada. If this is what you are calling for.
G West
1 year ago
I support, as does Peter Lougheed
I support, as does Peter Lougheed, something like the Suncor (once a truly Canadian company owned by all Canadians as Petro Canada) upgrader option which turns tar sands raw material into synthetic crude AND further refined products, utilizing Canadian jobs, right here in Canada.
As long as we're tied into NAFTA we have little choice about selling a good bit of our production to the US - but that doesn't mean we can't stop shipping so many jobs south along with the condensate-diluted bitumen.
In fact, one of the largest pipeline spills in the continental US happened in July 2010 in Michigan when an Enbridge DilBit tar sands pipeline spilled over 840,000 gallons of diluted bitumen (DilBit) into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River watershed.
DilBit’s characteristics can lead to the early weakening of pipelines, furthermore, there are many indications that DilBit is more corrosive to pipeline systems than conventional crude.
DilBit blends are more acidic, thicker, and contain higher levels of sulfur than regular crudes.
DilBit also contains fifteen to twenty times higher concentrations of acid than other crudes and five to ten times as much sulfur as conventional crudes.
DilBit is up to seventy times more viscous than conventional crudes. DilBit also has high concentrations of chloride salts which can lead to chloride stress corrosion in high
temperature pipelines. Refiners have found tar sands derived crude to contain significantly higher quantities of abrasive
quartz sand particles than conventional crude. Dilbit also must be heated to significantly higher temperatures than conventional or synthetic crude, another contributor to a more rapid deterioration of pipeline steel.
What I was calling for was pretty clearly spelled out in my post...
realisticman
1 year ago
GWest
Where do you and your friends in the NDP think a refinery should be built in BC? Or is this just jobs for Alberta?
G West
1 year ago
me and my friends?
What ARE you talking about R/man?
My ally in this debate is someone called Peter Lougheed –did he take out a membership in the NDP recently?
I see an awful lot of Alberta people doing carpet-bagger jobs in BC that should be done by British Columbians now - maybe a bit more refinery capacity in AB would get those characters to go back home (where they’d also be closer to their homes and families) - if only the provincial government here didn't care so much about helping Albertans and care so little about poverty, education and homelessness here.
Why would I expect you to actually consider the matter of piping high temperature toxic sludge through pipelines for thousands of kilometers as anything more than an opportunity to make an utterly redundant post like the one just above me here?
Couldn't you, just once, have actually addressed an issue rather than vent a prejudice?
realisticman
1 year ago
Refining the Oil
Yes, refining here would be better.
As the Economist says,
Canada’s oil industry
The other Keystone debate
Oct 1st 2011,
"Peter Lougheed, a revered former premier of the province of Alberta, recently voiced these concerns anew. When the first part of the Keystone pipeline was built, the union commissioned a study showing that Canada would have had 18,000 more jobs if its oil were refined first in Canada."
But, they go on, "Albertan workers are not suffering from the lack of value-added exports: the provincial unemployment rate of 5.6% is well below the national average of 7.3%, and most forecasts call for an even tighter job market as tar-sands production increases..."
The question is, who and where in the west will support refining in Canada come from? Alberta hardly can support any more projects because they are so short of workers. Will BC step up?
This is interesting:
http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Unions+slam+dangerous+workers+Canada/5487705/story.html
G West
1 year ago
Apparently not
Thanks for nothing.
realisticman
1 year ago
GWest
As you say, "My ally in this debate is someone called Peter Lougheed".
I thought you more as a Progressive Conservative too.
Thanks for the update.
morningboy
1 year ago
Slant
Andrew, you should know better. You restrict your "analysis" to the now well-recounted "horrors" of the oil business. You completely ignore that the petroleum era has brought more wealth and health to humans, through economic growth and increasing leisure, than at any other era in human history. And that continues. What do you think powers the rise of the middle class in India and China, the greated poverty-destroying demographic development in history. These people live longer, healthier and wealthier lives, essentially because of oill
G West
1 year ago
As I said earlier
Thanks for nothing.
You started this with the following:
"Where do you and your friends in the NDP think a refinery should be built in BC? Or is this just jobs for Alberta?"
After I'd posted a serious comment about the risks, costs and dangers of pipelines filled with DilBit AND the economic costs of ignoring the job related benefits of not shipping this sludge thousands of kilometers to the southern US.
You come back with a throw-away line about Peter Lougheed's 'politics' when it's clear he's at odds with virtually everyone in the current moribund party he once led?
Why would anyone bother trying to have a discussion with you, ever?
RickW
1 year ago
R/M old man....
If the Harper/Kenny combo were serious about women's rights in Saudi Arabia, they would take some real action in the form of embargos, sanctions, recalling ambassadors, and whatnot.
But the Con Party is a paper tiger everywhere except in Canada.
realisticman
1 year ago
RickW
Brilliant Rick. In fact, I'd have to say "fantastic!". Wish I were young like you and had bright ideas. Well, let's see what we can do. What does Saudi Arabia buy from Canada? We'll make a list:
1) Complete embargo on logs, potatoes and Maple Syrup. Ouch!
2) whatnot.
What's that Rick, send in the army?
Let the US embargo Cuba, we're going to embargo Saudi Arabia.
I guess you support the Conservative's plan to expand the military?
igbymac
1 year ago
morningboy says ...
"You completely ignore that the petroleum era has brought more wealth and health to humans, through economic growth and increasing leisure, than at any other era in human history."
I really think that depends on how one defines 'wealth' and 'life'.
Is wealth meaningless toys and numbers printed off in a bankbook? Is life Maoist China where life expectancy doubled? For that, Thank You Oil!?
I guess my point is analogous to the use of heroin by a junkie -- nothing much gives a kick like mainlining some H, but there is a price to pay and you can't do it forever.
As for all our leisure time, you might want to read Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness.
G West
1 year ago
good point igbymac
morningboy] fails to make the necessary allowances for the fact that the petroleum age was in its dotage before China even started its halting climb up the development ladder...a climb, moreover which has had more to do with the rise of the international conglomerate corporation, the ascension of a few wealthy economic elites in the west and the destruction of decent, productive and well paying jobs in North America, than it has to do with the very mixed effects which have issued from the petroleum economy.
Furthermore, the size of the so-called 'middle class' in China is, thus far, an improvement in the conditions for approximately 80 – 100 millions of Chinese in a score of cities (whose levels of pollution and urban misery are palpable) combined with the increasing destruction of the rural economy, the ecology, productive agriculture and the life style of the Chinese people in the rest of the country.
Furthermore, anyone who understands why we have such huge environmental and climate change problems now, will not be surprised when a few more tens of millions of Chinese folks manage to start consuming like middle class Americans used to. If they do it with the same purblind passion and ignorance which have characterized the ‘petroleum economy’ in North America (to cite just one obvious example) I’d suggest that the rise of China’s middle class will be a pretty bad thing for the future of the planet as a whole.
So, I think you need to be careful what you wish for.
Wealth, the quest for mindless economic growth and so-called leisure, in the dying years of the age of petroleum, are a very mixed blessing. Without the one-child policy and a dictatorial central government - not to mention a race to the bottom for international labour standards, all the oil in the world - no matter where it comes from – wouldn’t have done Communist China even a lick of good.
zalm
1 year ago
Repossessed-Man
[i]"What does Saudi Arabia buy from Canada?"/i]
You can't be serious? Armaments and spares (about a $billion worth a year), military training for their air force, off-road vehicles, electric trains, medical equipment, drug licencing, and especially doctors and nurses. The Saudi medical system would completely collapse if all foreign medical staff went home, and it would ease the shortages we find so acute here in the West. For some reason Saudis love Canadian nurses best of all, and American ones right behind them. If ethical oil were serious, it would have had Foreign Affairs in all western countries deny travel/work applications for Saudi Arabia, not to mention tax their earnings at Canadian rates.
Once more time - with feeling: If the Harper/Kenny combo were serious about women's rights in Saudi Arabia, they would take some real action
realisticman
1 year ago
zalm
Clearly, when it comes to ethics you agree with Ezra Levant.
The more Canadian oil is produced, the less Saudi oil is needed and your embargo becomes de facto by default. Ethical Canadian oil prevails.
You should contact Ezra. He might be interested in having you comment on his tv program.
G West
1 year ago
Ezra Levant has a 'TV' program?
Now there's a scary thought.
RickW
1 year ago
R/M old man....
Huh? Processing TAR SANDS at home would decrease the volume that has to be hacked out of the bogs.
BTW, you must be a bit antedeluvian in your mindset, as you could only think of raw resources, and not those listed by Zalm.
And of course, all Saudi investments in Canada could be "put in trust"......until such times as women can be treated as human beings. Of course, that means we'd have to do the same here in this country.....
realisticman
1 year ago
Rick the Younger
Quite. "Canada doesn’t prevent women from driving, require them to dress like mummified corpses in public"
You Levant and zalm feel just as the writer above does.
http://tinyurl.com/3nno2df
RickW
1 year ago
R/M old man....
But last stats indicate that wimmin get about 75 cents on the dollar for equivalency.
So you are saying that "a little discrimination" is OK? Please to let us know where the line is between a little and too much, if you would be so kind......
igbymac
1 year ago
TV Show -- lol
G West: "Ezra Levant has a 'TV' program? Now there's a scary thought."
It's scary like FOX News scary or blow-hard Bill O'Reilly scary, or Scary Movie scary.
Challenging those who take these programs seriously to rethink their views is not unlike trying to reason with a fideist. On the theoretical side, who am 'I' to tell 'you' where your true interests lie? We have to figure this sort of stuff out for ourselves, and it doesn't happen without some serious investigation into matters.
In my opinion, Ezra Levant opportunistically operates as part of the capitalist apparatus; he is just another piece of the technical intelligentsia's propaganda campaign to create divisions within the ruled.
realisticman
1 year ago
Rick the Younger
What about GLBTs? What do your stats tell us? Does a transgendered-now-male, get more and transgendered-now-females lose earnings and get less? Nobody should take this lying down.
RickW
1 year ago
R/M old man....
Why don't you do what I did and look it up in StatsCan.....
G West
1 year ago
Interesting hints of some 'moving' against other countries...
Some people are even saying that it's time for some 'action' against China and the way it has been manipulating the value of the Renminbi vs the dollar.
If such things happen, then some kind of discipline relative to relations with all kinds of countries might be possible - including Saudi Arabia.
realisticman
1 year ago
Rick the Younger
A reversal of fortunes;
http://tinyurl.com/3jp4hnc
and, It's good to see everyone agree with Ezra Levant.
G West
1 year ago
Speaking of 'ethics' and truth telling
Perhaps the 'ethical' oil folks could take some time to explain and justify the 'cozy' relationship discused in today's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/science/earth/04pipeline.html?hp
realisticman
1 year ago
A Friendly Neighbor
"While the pipeline would help insure the United States a stable fuel supply from a friendly neighbor..."
It will be surprising if the pipeline is not approved. Especially because:
"In 2003, there were over 2.3 million miles of pipelines in the U.S. carrying natural gas, and hazardous liquids (chiefly petroleum and refined petroleum products, as well as chemicals and hydrogen)."
http://tinyurl.com/5tfhtfp
That was eight years ago.
G West
1 year ago
Friendly neighbour????
Really - the same 'friendly neighbour' with whom Canada has to regularly plead for fairness and equity with respect to softwood lumber exports and pricing?
The same 'friendly neighbour' who, whenever the concept of 'buy American' starts to ring in the halls of congress, has to be cajoled to remember exactly what country has traditionally been the United States's largest trading partner?
The same 'friendly neighbour' who sat on her hands in both world wars of the last century while making tremendous profits selling war materials to both sides in the conflicts while your countrymen and mine were bleeding and dying on the fields of Flanders, on the North Atlantic and in Holland, France and Belgium – not to mention in the skies over southern England?
As for the fact that there are lots of pipelines moving lots of hazardous products now - I think Americans are well aware of the increased risks with DilBit - especially Americans who live in Michigan.
Our ‘friendly neighbours’ may find those dangers a little harder to ignore than you do. Simply because a situation is already fraught with danger hardly seems a logical reason to support unnecessary and dangerous proposals which up the ante - especially when the profits will do far less for Canada under this proposal than adopting a far less risky method which will create lasting jobs and prosperity here at home.
XL is a lose/lose proposition – hopefully some sanity will prevail among the decision makers as they understand the ‘ethics’ of the folks behind it.