The Arrogance of Those Who Control the Decision-Making Power
Vancouver, June 18, 2019.
"Sell a country! Why not sell the
air, the clouds,
and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit
make them all for the use of his children?"
- Tecumseh
Standing with many of his Cabinet colleagues, including
the
Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna, Prime
Minister Trudeau issued a statement on June 18, approving the
Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX). He called it "an important step on
our path toward reconciliation with Indigenous peoples" and a way
of "creating jobs, diversifying markets, accelerating our clean
energy transition, and opening up new avenues for Indigenous
economic prosperity."
 The Prime Minister said,
"We have a responsibility to ensure
that the decisions we make today move us toward a cleaner,
sustainable economy. Major resource projects can move forward,
but only if we do so in a way that protects the environment and
respects Indigenous rights. The TMX project is a significant
investment in Canadians and in Canada's future that will create
thousands of good, middle class jobs, maintain the highest
environmental standards, and fund the clean energy solutions that
Canada needs to stay competitive on the global stage."
To assist the Trudeau government's image as a socially
responsible steward of the country and world's environmental
health, the Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine
McKenna, only one day before the official approval of TMX, called
on the House of Commons to pass a non-binding motion to declare a
national climate emergency in Canada, which it did 186 votes to
63. McKenna's motion asked the House to recognize that "climate
change is a real and urgent crisis, driven by human activity" and
to "declare that Canada is in a national climate emergency which
requires, as a response, that Canada commit to meeting its
national emissions target under the Paris Agreement and to making
deeper reductions in line with the Agreement's objective of
holding global warming below two degrees Celsius and pursuing
efforts to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius."
What are Canadians to make of this climate emergency
motion
and TMX approval? Big energy companies will take a non-renewable
resource out of the ground in Alberta and sell it to Trans
Mountain Corporation (TMC). TMC will transport the oil through a
pipeline to the west coast, and transfer some of it to another
pipeline down to Washington State and other amounts via tankers
to other parts of the U.S. west coast and possibly Asia.
 Questions abound. Is this
socially responsible stewardship of
the environment? Where does the right arise and reside to sell
the earth and its non-renewable oil and gas? Many Indigenous
peoples have not given their consent to the TMX. People concerned
with the health of Mother Earth decry the TMX as backsliding on
Canada's commitments to reduce greenhouse gas.
Regarding TMX, Environment and Climate
Change Canada (ECCC) calculates that the Alberta greenhouse gas
emissions from producing and processing oil associated with
shipping the 590,000 additional barrels of oil a day in the new
pipeline would produce the equivalent of 13 to 15 megatonnes (Mt)
of carbon dioxide a year, or 15 million metric
tonnes. The ECCC appraisal does not include downstream emissions
from refining the heavy oil in the U.S. or elsewhere or
combustion in final use. Fifteen Mt is the equivalent of adding
3,750,000 passenger vehicles on Canadian roads. ECCC had already
projected that under its reference case that Canada would miss
its 2030 Paris emissions target by a long shot -- by 79 Mt, or 15
per cent. Using ECCC's data, Gordon Laxer's report, "Beyond the
Bailout," calculates that "adding another 13 to 15 Mt to Canada's
emissions total would push Canada another three percentage points -- or
18 per cent -- off its Paris target."
Many Indigenous peoples and their organizations have not
consented to the TMX and vow to oppose it any way they can.
The municipal governments of Vancouver and Burnaby as
well as
the BC provincial government have been vocal opponents of the
TMX.
Even though the Trudeau government says the pipeline to
tidewater opens up oil sales to Asian markets, the TMX represents
further integration of Canada's production into the U.S. war
economy. The U.S. west coast and beyond, deep into the Pacific, is
dotted with military bases and military production facilities,
such as Boeing, that demand huge amounts of oil to function. With
declining supplies of heavy oil from Alaska and the current
boycott of Venezuelan heavy crude, the U.S. west coast demands
Canadian heavy oil. The scores of U.S. west coast oil refineries
are designed to refine heavy oil to produce gasoline, jet fuel
and other energy products to feed the insatiable U.S. military
and current car culture.
 Also notable with regard to
the U.S. war economy and its
constant wars to destroy countries the U.S. cannot control is
Brown University's "Costs of War" project, which focuses
specifically on "post-9/11 wars" and their impact on greenhouse gas
emissions. It estimates the U.S. military has been
responsible for 1,212 million metric tons of greenhouse gases
between 2001 and 2017. Emissions from "overseas contingency
operations" in just Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria have
accounted for more than 400 million metric tons of CO2. In one
year alone, 2017, the report says, "the Pentagon's emissions were
greater than all emissions from Sweden or Denmark."[1]
For working people, the TMX approval is clouded with
lack of
information and more importantly no viable alternative to address
their concerns for employment and security of their well-being
and that of their communities, in particular in the energy
producing regions of Alberta. The decision to support the export
of bitumen or not becomes overwhelmed with the insecurity of the
oil and gas sector at this time. Those in control of the economy
and governments have developed no alternative economy that
favours the working people and humanizes the natural environment.
This puts working people in a difficult, if not impossible,
situation. The decision to support the TMX and similar carbon
energy projects becomes a form of blackmail.
The energy giants and governments of Alberta and Canada
have
not developed an alternative to the current direction that is
causing harm to the environment and feeding the U.S. war economy.
They have not used the revenue from past production to invest in
an alternative economy that favours the people and Mother Earth.
This means that working people in the energy and construction
sectors, if they say no to TMX and other similar carbon energy
projects, are faced with sacrificing themselves for the health
and well-being of the natural environment and being forced to
fend for themselves in a socialized economy, which they do not
control.
The federal and Alberta governments have put no viable
alternative in place that favours the working people and
environment and makes Canada a zone for peace. To proceed with
selling the earth and its oil in such a situation of constant
wars and climate change, and without the consent of those
directly affected is socially irresponsible. It reflects the arrogance
of the narrow private interests which control the decision-making
process. More importantly, it reveals the need to empower the people so
that they and not these narrow private interests control the
decision-making process. Those currently in control can act with
impunity because the liberal democratic institutions are based on
arrangements which vest the decision-making power in an artificial
person of state who the government represents. It claims to act in the
name of the people and in the national interest but the people decide
nothing. They certainly do not set the aim of the economy or the
society.
 The people only have control
when they speak in their own name, develop their own thought
material and build their own organizations on this basis. They do
not have recourse to the liberal democratic institutions such as the
cartel parties and legislatures because those institutions have been
overwhelmed by powerful global private interests and the new conditions
of control they have imposed. Hypocrisy, deception, self-interest and
class privilege are their main features when it comes to the interests
of the people.
The people are faced with both the individual and
collective
decision to investigate and analyze the concrete conditions and
fight for what is right and just within the situation. The
organizing of people in their own institutions in defence of
rights with actions with analysis is a path to empowerment.
Integration into the war economy is wrong! Make Canada a
zone
for peace! Fight for a new pro-social direction for the
economy!
Destruction of the planet with socially irresponsible
plunder
of the country is wrong and must be opposed.
Proceeding with projects without the consent of those
affected
and in the case of TMX, the Indigenous peoples and their
territories, is wrong and must be opposed.
TMX is not in the national or people's interests and
must be
opposed!
Oppose the hypocrisy and conceit of those who claim to
govern in the name of the people but serve the rich, preserve the
division of society on a factional basis and are unaccountable.
Organize to change the direction of the economy and for democratic
renewal! Let everyone speak and act in their own name!
Note
1. "Costs
of War," Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown
University, 2011-2019.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 23 - June 22, 2019
Article Link:
The Arrogance of Those Who Control the Decision-Making Power
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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