Kinder Morgan and the myth of national interest
https://www.nationalobserver.com/20...amaze-us-vancouver-aquarium-and-retire-whales
“Trudeau’s Choice: jobs or whales” says the
Globe and Mail article from November 27. I see it lying there on the coffee shop table and suddenly my blood pressure escalates faster than a Trump twitter battle. It appears that the old media, and perhaps a good many Canadians east of the Rocky Mountains, profoundly misunderstand British Columbia and its opposition to Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline. Perhaps they also underestimate just how serious we are in that opposition. We will not let this project happen, period.
In the months and years ahead, the federal government and the multinational oil companies will learn just how vigorously and passionately British Columbians will defend our shared interests, as we stand together on the right side of history, though we may be cast as standing on the wrong side of "national interest".
https://www.nationalobserver.com/20...amaze-us-vancouver-aquarium-and-retire-whales
“Trudeau’s Choice: jobs or whales” says the
Globe and Mail article from November 27. I see it lying there on the coffee shop table and suddenly my blood pressure escalates faster than a Trump twitter battle. It appears that the old media, and perhaps a good many Canadians east of the Rocky Mountains, profoundly misunderstand British Columbia and its opposition to Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline. Perhaps they also underestimate just how serious we are in that opposition. We will not let this project happen, period.
In the months and years ahead, the federal government and the multinational oil companies will learn just how vigorously and passionately British Columbians will defend our shared interests, as we stand together on the right side of history, though we may be cast as standing on the wrong side of "national interest".
I want to unpack this term for a moment, the national interest, as it was a cornerstone of the pro-pipeline argument put forward by the NEB and Alberta's political elite.
Riddle me this. How is a multinational corporation, headquartered in Houston Texas and transporting diluted tar to China, in Canada’s national interest? If you answer me that it’s “Alberta oil” I refer you to decades of Canadian energy companies being acquired by foreign corporations from
Abu Dhabi, Thailand, Norway, Malaysia, even a $15 billion dollar takeover by the
Chinese state-owned CNOOC recently.
In this era of neoliberalization it is absurd to make an argument that this project is in the national interest. It’s bordering on Orwellian double-speak, another one of those phantoms of decades past that somehow makes its way into today's debates. But perhaps that's fitting, as by siding with a sunset industry Alberta's politicians and the Prime Minister have signaled that they are living in the past.
Calgary's Mayor Nenshi even attempted to shame and rebuke British Columbians recently by evoking our province joining confederation with the promise of being a gateway to the Pacific for the rest of the country. To that, let me just say it’s not the 1800s anymore.
When that deal was made to dispossess Indigenous people of their lands and resources on behalf of a European Royal Family and investors in Ontario, the ocean was not acidifying beyond the point of ecological habitability, and average monthly and yearly temperatures weren’t inching towards levels unseen since before human civilization.
Interestingly enough, when Mr. Trudeau's father was Prime Minister, discussion of nationalizing (a portion of) the industry, like Norway did to build the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, led to political hysteria that to this day has continued to enable western alienation and prairie populism to shape Canadian federal politics. Albertans were threatening to leave confederation over it.
http://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/12/02/opinion/kinder-morgan-and-myth-national-interest
