Grandstanding of the Parties which Form the Establishment
Vancouver climate change march, September 9, 2018 calls out the Trudeau
government for its grandstanding on the environment while purchasing a
pipeline.
As people all over the
world take a stand to humanize
the
natural and social environment on Earth Day, April 22, the
grandstanding of the political parties which form a cartel party
system is nowhere more evident than on matters which concern the
economy and the environment. Liberal grandstanding over the last
four years with their feigned concern for the environment is
astounding. They are trying to convince people that they are
protectors of the environment with their carbon tax yet buy a
bitumen pipeline, which many people decry as a danger to the
environment. They assault Indigenous water and land protectors on
their sovereign land in northern BC to allow the global oil
companies to frack for natural gas in eastern BC, pipe it to the
coast, turn it into liquidified natural gas using enormous energy and
ship it to
Asia. Meanwhile, in the words of National Post columnist
Andrew Coyne, "opposition to carbon pricing is now the badge of
Conservative identity."
In this way, the ruling elite and their media have been
trying
to frame an issue in the 2019 federal election as being for and
against a carbon tax. The aim is to keep the people spinning and
counterspinning so that they cannot work out what they themselves
need. The Trudeau Liberal government says its carbon tax is meant
to combat climate change, while the Conservatives claim nothing
should be done and the NDP are divided between those who take one
stand or the other based on nonsense about finding the right
balance between jobs and responsibility for the environment.
If governments were serious
about climate change they would
not be hell-bent on building pipelines to rip and ship raw
bitumen to the U.S. through Vancouver or another pipeline to rip
natural gas from northeast BC using the discredited fracking
method and ship it to the coast. The RCMP, a federal police
agency, would not be enforcing an injunction which violates
Wet'suwet'en hereditary rights. Enforcing the "right" of private
contractors to trespass on Wet'suwet'en land to build a pipeline
to rip and ship natural gas to Kitimat on the West Coast has
nothing to do with either the environment or a sound economy.
Claims that such projects are based on sound environmental
assessments are proven hollow time after time after time.
 On April 1, federal
legislation called the Greenhouse
Gas
Pollution Pricing Act went into effect. The law levies a charge
on gasoline, other fossil fuels and on "industrial polluters." It
is said to only apply in provinces such as Ontario that have no
carbon-pricing regime of their own that meets national standards.
The Ontario Court of Appeal is currently hearing Ontario's
appeal to scrap it on the grounds that the Act is
unconstitutional as it infringes on provincial jurisdiction. It
says the federal government is grabbing new powers that would
allow it to regulate when people drive or where they live.
Federal lawyer Sharlene Telles-Langdon argued that the federal
power is merely aimed at providing a national measure because the
provinces cannot manage on their own. "There is a gap in Canada's
ability as a nation to meet the challenge as it now faces," she
said. The levy is a "regulatory charge" not a tax, Telles-Langdon
told court, because its "dominant purpose" is to modify behaviour
rather than raise revenue. If the court rejected that
explanation, she said, then the charge can be characterized as a
legitimately enacted tax.
Other provincial governments contesting the carbon tax
include
Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick.
National Post columnist Andrew Coyne writes:
"Incoming
Conservative governments that wouldn't dream of, say, breaking up
the bureaucratic-union stranglehold on the public schools, feel
no qualms about abolishing carbon taxes. What might have been a
choice between regulation and carbon pricing has instead become a
choice between regulation-plus-pricing, on the left, or
regulation-only, on the right: between needlessly-costly and
maximum-costly. Conservatives could and should have argued for
carbon taxes as a replacement, not only for regulation, but for
other taxes, using the revenues collected from carbon taxes to
slash personal and corporate tax rates. But that opportunity,
too, was passed up, so count higher income taxes as another cost
of the Conservative carbon tax obsession."
 In this way, attempts are
made to line Canadians up pro and
con the carbon tax. In fact, the issue of the environment brings
into focus who controls the economy and who makes the important
decisions, and how the people have to turn that around by
striving for their own empowerment through democratic renewal.
This begins with representing what they themselves have to say
and speaking in their own name to lay their own claims on
society, not making themselves spokespersons for the claims of
others.
Canadians, especially the youth, are profoundly
concerned
about the environment. They need political forums where they can
set the discussion themselves. Anything less is to permit
themselves to be deprived of their own voice and political
representation. In other words, instead of actually providing
society with an aim on the basis of which it can go into the
future on a sound basis, they remain vulnerable to being yoyo's
for whatever the political parties which form the cartel party
system in the service of the rich put forward. The aim of
political work must be to be effective in a manner which
guarantees the future of the planet and humanity. The ruling
class is self-serving in favour of paying the rich and refuses to
deal with the problems.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 14 - April 20, 2019
Article Link:
Grandstanding of the Parties which Form the Establishment
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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