[Slander] What a Friggin' Jerk

Ed Sellmach: Selling-Out Alberta one Barrel at a Time

They taught me at work to "attack the issue, not the person." But, what if the person is the issue?

You see, Alberta's Premier, Ed Stelmach, is a jerk. His local monikers "Steady Eddie" and "Honest Ed" are totally inaccurate. A more appropriate nickname would be "Sellmach", as he has done his best to sell out Alberta and its people - barrel by barrel, dollar by dollar. The definition of a "jerk" is "a foolish, rude, or contemptible person." These characteristics best describe the qualities of our sell-out Premier.

How else can you explain his self-proclaimed pay raise of 34%!? While study after study shows that the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer in Canada, good ol' Ed Stelmach pumps an additional $1.3 million annually into the salaries of a handful of political elites in this province - to the Speaker of the House, Cabinet Ministers and their assistants, and the leader of the opposition - the very people who just so happen to be the very ones who have the power to enact such a pay raise!

The Premier's salary was just injected with an additional $54,000 per year. That is $10,000 MORE than the average Joe makes in this province in a whole year, and even the latter statistic of the average annual salary is inflated in this province by the highly paid energy industry and related sectors. Thanks to back door, secret discussions with friends regarding his own desires, the Premier now makes $213,000 a year - more than any other Premier in the country. Oh, and did I mention that elected officials are allowed to claim 1/3 of their earnings as 100% tax free?

Liberal Opposition Leader Kevin Taft was also given a gigantic raise, equivalent to an additional $42,000 per year. This move (to give the opposition leader a pay hike) is a typical Stelmach tactic to shut-up and buy-out the opposition. Luckily Taft has a little more common sense, and he has promised to donate the extra $42,000 to charities - charities that are already fledgling in this province thanks to decades of funding cuts from a government with money pouring out of its coffers.

If you're not yet convinced that Stelmach's plan is conniving, avaricious and downright jerky, check this out: As it turns out, the retirement payouts resulting from this pay hike are an additional part of the plan. As reported in the Edmonton Journal, "The provincial formula essentially hands Mr. Stelmach another $63,000 a year in deferred payout. If he merely makes it to the end of his first term, and quits or loses office, he is eligible to collect $1.1-million."

That's right, Stelmach's new plan means he - a public servant - could retire a millionaire in just four years from now. And while the price of oil continues to climb higher, the plans to keep going with the dirtiest and most destructive oil extraction operation in the world also continue. Pretty soon we might just get another citizen's tax cheque for $400 dollars - a little "fuck you" gift from the province symbolizing the foolish selling off of our precious resources, the annihiliation of our ecology and the erosion of the public interest. Thanks Ed.

[List] 10 Reasons Why Alberta's Climate Change Plan is a Total Joke

In January 2008 the Government of Alberta released its new Climate Change Action Plan. The original plan of 2002 (the first of its kind in Canada) has been reworked, revamped and perfected. As an additional effort to curb emissions in the province, the government implemented its carbon intensity reduction plan for industry in 2007, based on a carbon credit system. Given all the work our government has done on climate change, one would assume that Alberta is doing its part to tackle global warming. Upon closer inspection, however, it is evident that the action plan is seriously flawed. It appears to be specifically designed to allow the continued emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) within the booming energy industry - Now that's a joke!

Albertans should not accept this kind of dishonest propaganda from our elected officials. We should ask that a better plan be brought into effect immediately - a real working strategy that will put a halt to this province's embarrassing environmental and climatological destruction. Here are ten reasons why the climate change plan is a total joke:

1) The plan allows crude oil production to double over the next 12 years! The only word to describe this is "insanity". The province currently produces approximately 2 million Barrels Per Day of crude oil and equivalent. Stelmach's conservatives want to see that production grow to 4 million Barrels Per Day by 2020. Every Albertan knows that the production of crude oil is dirty business, especially when it requires the removal of copious amounts of sand and other contaminants. And let us not forget that the final product - the vast majority of which we ship to the United States - will eventually get burned only to unleash even more greenhouse gases into our dying atmosphere. A real climate change plan would put an immediate moratorium on bitumen extraction. Knowing that Stelmach intends to double oil production while pretending to be serious about climate change is symptomatic of the collective joke he is playing on us.

2) The plan projects an increase of nearly 30% GHG emissions over the next 12 years! A climate change plan is supposed to reduce GHG emissions, not allow them to skyrocket in astronomical proportions! At our current rate of approximately 210 Megatonnes of GHG emissions per year, Alberta is by far the worst global warming culprit in the country. Yet the climate change plan expects an increase of nearly 60 Megatonnes of GHGs by 2020! That's a 30% increase of greenhouse gases within a timespan that is equivalent to 5% of the entire industrial era (when this climate change problem started). A functional climate change strategy would start reductions now, not allow a grace period of more than a decade for polluting corporations to unleash unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide.

3) The plan only pays lip service to alternative energy. Alternative energy should be the main focus of our climate change strategy. We should be investing as much as possible RIGHT NOW into renewable energy technologies. We have lots of sun in this province. We have lots of wind. We have locations that are perfect for geothermal energy generation. And best of all, we have a wealth of the most important resource required for green energy production: Highly trained, innovative and hard working people! The province should have spearheaded and invested in these alternative energy industries years ago. Instead, they are so obsessed with the money to be made from fossil fuels that they still have not published their implementation plan for alternative energy production! For crying out loud - we're still burning coal to power our society! Our climate change plan should provide a framework for us to eventually source 100% of our energy from green sustainable sources. Instead, the Stelmach plan expects that by 2050, we'll only replace 18% of our dirty energy sources with alternative green sources. It's a real shame.

4) The plan only calls for a reduction of 14% of our GHG emissions in a period of 45 years! This is far too little, far too late! The government's highly-funded communications department is leading us on, by saying it will cut emissions by "50%", meaning a reduction of "200 Megatonnes". But in fact, if you read beyond the headlines it is clear that they only intend to cut emissions by 14% of 2005 levels! That equals less than 30 Megatonnes of real emission reductions from the base year of 2005. This is because they are asking for a 50% reduction of projected levels for 2050. It is absolutely ludicrous to claim that they will reduce emissions that are totally avoidable in the first place! A real climate change plan does not try to reduce emissions that could be created, it tries to reduce emissions that already exist! The irony is that if we adopted the government's plan for reducing GHG emissions by 200 Megatonnes today, we could be nearly carbon neutral by 2050! Instead, with Stelmach's current plan we'll still be producing more emissions in 2050 (after full implementation of the plan) than every other province managed to produce in 2005 (with the exception of Ontario).

5) The plan relies way too heavily on carbon capture and storage technology. The three main ways to reduce emissions, according to Stelmach, are by increasing efficiency and conservation (which will account for 12% of planned reductions), using alternative energy (18% of planned reductions), and finally, adopting carbon sequestration practices (accounting for 70% of our planned reductions!). This puts an overwhelming amount of faith in a technology that has not yet even been put to use in the province! We're talking about a proposed 140 Megatonnes of GHGs that will be captured every single year, and we don't yet have a place to store all of this! Some experts note that plants that are set up to capture carbon actually use 25% more energy than those plants that just let it float away. Here's another joke for you: When the oil companies tell you that their operations are "carbon capture ready", all this actually means is that they have left space on their industrial plants where they can build the appropriate carbon capture facilities when they are required to do so. However, they are not required to do so. Further, a carbon pipeline will have to be built between the plants that emit CO2 (which happen to be all over the province) to the right location for storage (a location that needs to be chosen based on the appropriate geological formations (where the carbon is pumped underground). Such a pipeline is estimated to cost at least $5 billion in Alberta, and nobody appears to want to foot the bill. The climate change plan should put a moratorium on projects that create high emissions until the carbon capture technology and infrastructure is already fully in place.

6) They got the numbers wrong. The provincial government projections for GHG growth and reductions suggest that in 2005 Alberta produced 205 Megatonnes of GHGs. However, the federal agency which tabulates emissions suggests that this is a very low estimate. In its "2005 Greenhouse Gas Inventory", Environment Canada indicates that Alberta produced more that 235 Megatonnes of GHGs in 2005. That our provincial government is underestimating our 2005 emissions by 30 Megatonnes is a frightening thought. First of all, our government could potentially be lying to us about the emissions to downplay the province's leading role as contributor to climate change. Secondly, the entire plan's projections are based on the calculations for 2005 emissions. Within the provincial schema, the "business as usual" model projects GHG emissions to climb from 205 Megatonnes in 2005 up to approximately 375 Megatonnes by 2050. But if Environment Canada is right in its figure of Alberta's 2005 emissions, we're in for trouble: the recalculated projection would bring the 2050 emission level back to 205 Megatonnes after a 50% reduction. The punchline? This is the very amount of emissions that the province is claiming we need to reduce! Rather than underestimate the amount of emissions currently produced, the climate change forecast model should overestimate the amount we currently produce, in order to "play it safe" and ensure our impact is not worse than we expect. Instead, thanks to this underestimation mistake on our government's behalf, we will see NO REDUCTIONS of 2005 levels by 2050!

7) Companies can easily buy their way out of dealing with climate change. As part of the Climate Change and Emissions Management Act, the large GHG emitting companies in the province are required to reduce their emissions by 12% each year. While this is an excellent policy - in principle - the system that is set up to ensure that this happens is severely flawed. The system is based on carbon credits - a company gets a credit when it reduces emissions. But what if a company is not able to actually reduce annual emissions by the target 12%? In this case, the company has the option of buying a credit at the rate of $15/tonne. This rate is way too low - it allows companies to easily buy their way out of dealing with global warming. The money from these carbon credit purchases goes into the province's Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund. After 2007, we now know that companies are opting to just pay the low rate rather than actually reduce emissions. The fund now has $40 million. That may sound good - but it's actually bad news: First of all, it means that 12.7 Megatonnes of CO2 that should NOT have been emitted were actually emitted! Secondly, $40 million is "chump change" relative to the massive profits in the oil industry - an industry that often deals in "billions" of dollars. What this means is that the companies that pollute are just absorbing the cost emitting carbon dioxide into their regular operating costs.

8) The carbon credit system only targets the top few emitters, and allows other emitters to continue polluting without any requirement to make reductions. The legislation only calls for companies that produce over 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas per year in the province. That equals approximately 100 companies mostly in the energy, electrical and chemical industry. But what about the companies that produce 90,000 tonnes of GHGs a year? Or even 20,000 tonnes (which is an awful lot of climate changing gas!). In short, nothing - only those companies that produce over 100,000 tonnes per year are required to take part in the carbon credit system. This has caused me to think twice about recent media reports about energy companies that "split" (rather than merge) into two subsidiary companies. It is common for energy companies to set up new subsidiary companies to operate new projects (such as the "Fort Hills Energy Corporation" or the "Albian Sands Energy Corporation", which are both subsidiaries of other common energy companies). I sometimes wonder if by spreading the work across different corporate entities, they are avoiding their responsibilities in reducing emissions (and they can thereby save money). The requirement to reduce emissions by 12% should apply to ALL polluters, not just the few worst polluters.

9) The culprit companies can merely channel costs to the Alberta citizen rather than suffer the costs themselves. The government expects the "costs of compliance" for companies attempting to reduce emissions to total $177 million. In other words, it costs money to reduce emissions. Rather than foot the bill themselves, however, the government has no regulation on whether companies can merely increase the prices of their products (and thereby pass the cost on to the consumer). In fact, they invite companies to simply charge more for the final product (electricity, for example). While it is a good idea for consumers to pay a premium on products that cause high emissions, it is not right for companies to merely shrug off the costs of dealing with climate change. There should be regulations in place that require companies that produce emissions to pay for it, at least in part. We need to make it less lucrative to be in the business of planet killing, and more profitable to be leading the way in sustainable energy creation.

10) The province's climate change plan is designed to keep the oil industry growing. Why else would a climate change plan allow emissions of GHGs to increase by so much? Why else would the plan not come into effect for 12 years? Why else would the plan rely so heavily on carbon sequestration and storage (rather than reducing carbon emissions in the first place?). The reason is that this government is addicted to oil, and oil revenues and investments. They can't think outside the box. They worry that if they fail to make the business climate attractive for investment that the world will end or something. But what they don't realize is that they are playing a genuine role in destroying the planet, destroying the future of our civilization. The free market is not going to solve our climate change crisis. It's time for our climate change responsibilities to come first - before the oil industry. Maybe then we might see an "oil reduction" plan that shows how we will wean ourselves off of this dirty 20th century commodity and move onto cleaner, better things. Right now we've got things backwards.

So there you have it - 10 reasons why the very people we voted into office are playing a crude joke on us! It's high time that this province - by far the worst culprit in the country for emissions - get serious about climate change. Our atmosphere is already approaching 385 parts per million of Carbon Dioxide. We are playing with fire, and it may already be too late to reverse the damage. We need politicians who will take climate change seriously NOW, and we need a Premier who has the guts to take on the oil companies, not one who acquiesces to their every desire.

[Equation] Lakes of Tar = Death

[Photo caption: View of Syncrude plant and tailing "pond" in Northern Alberta. Not long ago this land was covered in ancient forests that acted as an important lung for the planet]

It's as simple as adding things together. What do you expect to occur when you bulldoze miles upon miles of previously untouched forest, then dig out a series of gigantic holes, and fill them with toxic, sludgy, tar-filled waste-water? To top it off, these massive carcinogenic lakes (which are visible from space) happen to be located within the migratory path of many species of bird and other wildlife, and just happen to be a couple of kilometers upstream from human-inhabited areas.

If the answer isn't obvious to you yet, you may want to revisit your basic arithmetic skills. The answer is "death". You get "death" when you build man-made lakes of carcinogenic sludge. It's that simple.

Hence my lack of surprise when I woke up to today's news. A flock of some 500 ducks, en route to its summer habitat, was flying by Fort McMurray, when it located a series of lakes - which seemed perfect for a rest. These were not the first birds to think it might make a good rest stop, but they were the first (at least that we know of) to have NOT been properly warned ahead of time that these were not real lakes of fresh water, but rather that they were the carcinogenic lakes of tar-water mentioned above. In fact, most days there are birds of various species trying to make a stop in the famous "tailings ponds" of Northern Alberta - the liquid waste product of copious amounts of water used to produce crude oil - but - the companies which produce these toxic seas employ a number of sophisticated tactics to convince birds to stay away from them. They use scarecrows, for example, and large air canons (which are loud enough to scare the shit out of any animal).

For some reason, however, these ducks were not given the air canon warnings, nor did the scarecrows seem to do their job. So all 500 of them landed in one of Syncrude's tailings ponds.

Well they're dead now - at least the majority of them are. If any survived, they are now covered in sticky tar and are no longer capable of using their wings. And if they manage to get rehabilitated by rescue workers, maybe - just maybe - they will continue to thrive, only to get struck with cancer at a later date, having been exposed to extremely dangerous contaminants... just like the people of Fort Chipewyan.

What's that? Are you saying the people of Fort Chipewyan have been struck with cancer, having been exposed to dangerous contaminants from the oil sands?

YES. THE PEOPLE OF FORT CHIPEWYAN, and other communities located on the Athabasca River, downstream from Fort McMurray, ARE DYING FROM CANCER AT ABNORMALLY HIGH RATES!!!

This is why a Doctor by the name of John O'Connor, some 7 years ago, reported with grave concern that a number of people had acquired cholangiocarcinoma - a rare form of cancer that usually impacts less than 1 in 100,000 people. Yet here were up to 5 people with it, in a population of 1200!!! Medically speaking, this is extreme cause for alarm. Yet as many of you reading this will know, O'Connor raised the issue publicly, and was then fired by Health Canada for causing unnecessary public panic.

Now, I have not been to Fort Chip myself, but I was at an event regarding the Tar Sands here in Edmonton that was attended by a number of Fort Chip residents. I WILL BE FOREVER HAUNTED by the appeal by one of them - a woman in her 40s: Addressing the audience with tears pouring down her cheeks, she PLEADED with us to do whatever we could to stop the death of her community. She listed case after case, person after person, with the familiarity of their first names - her friends and family members who had either died or will soon die of cancer. Her sadness turned to anger... "this is not normal" she screamed at us, referring to attempts by our provincial and federal governments to shrug off the public health disaster as a typical health issue that is unrelated to the tar sands operations.

The extremely powerful PR assault led by the oil industry and the provincial and federal government is winning. They have managed to block the story of genocide in Fort Chip from filtering into the everyday car driver's head. They have somehow managed to convince us that slowing tar sands production will mean economic collapse - despite the clear warnings by economists that climate change will more likely wreak global economic havoc. And perhaps this is what makes the story of the ducks all the more bitter for me. Part of the story is that this "duck disaster" comes just as Stelmach's PR squad is returning from an international propaganda tour - the goal of which was to convince elites around the world that the tar sands operations are sophisticated, GREEN, oil-exploitation procedures - where EVERY CARE is taken to ensure the environmental, climatological and ecological sustainability of the land. Not only do the deaths of these birds prove the sheer absurdity of Stelmach's lies, they also demonstrate the simplicity of the equation of death involved in the tar sands gigaproject. We must hold Stelmach accountable for his crimes. Let us never forget the deaths that have been a direct result of this, either animal or human!

After hearing of those poor dead ducks, a friend of mine asked in desperation - "what will it take for the government to realize it has to stop the tar sands"? Our country is so racist towards first nations people that it seems the death of a native community will not halt tar sands expansion. I highly doubt the bird story will do anything either, other than arouse more temporary anger. But within the increased production intended by the Stelmach Conservatives lies their own demise. This provincial government, already the greatest emitter of carbon emissions in the country (thanks to oil production), has already begun to drive itself into a dark tunnel of history. Alberta oil is so dirty that even American politicians are threatening to stop buying it, given the horrendous environmental and climactic impacts of converting bitumen into crude oil (California already has a law to forbid the buying of Alberta oil). So to answer the question "what will it take"? I think it will take one of two things: Either a) it will take unprecedented amounts of environmental destruction and climactic trauma for to the point that it's no longer worth it to feed gas into their SUV so they can drive to the store to buy their things - because the things won't be there anymore (or at least they'll be totally unafordable). In this scenario it will take economic collapse - which already seems pending, or b) it will take smart citizens to foresee this industrial collapse before it happens, and start acting NOW to reduce the amount of harm we will face as a civilization from global warming and the economic meltdown it will throw upon the world. Which doomsday scenario do you choose?

[Synopsis] Imagining the Green Tar Sands

It's a Tuesday Morning, and I'm listending to Sounds Like Canada, a CBC radio show hosted by Shelagh Rogers. She's talking to a guy named Murray who's involved in some program at the University of Alberta, and a guy named Simon from the Pembina Institute in Calgary. The show is about "greening" the Tar Sands. Murray is an environmental consultant for tar sands corporations, trying to find a way to make operations more green. Simon, for the most part advocates against the tar sands, since it is such an environmental disaster for which no amount of "greening" can do the trick.

Simon takes the lead. We hear how the tar sands are visible from space and the total mining area is the size of three cities of Calgary. We learn about the tailing "ponds", which are more actually like tailing "lakes" that hold dangerous contaminants that we don't know what to do with. We learn how the Athabasca River has approximately 16% of its volume diverted at Fort Mac, simply for use in the energy industry. We learn how despite a major lack of environmental assessment, both the provincial and federal governments are pushing through with approval of new projects as quickly as possible....

But Murray counters. One of the things he says resonates: He explains how the companies he works with (the same ones that just this morning reported world record profits) are very concerned about their environmental image (note that they are not necessarily concerned about the environment). And then he says it more clearly: "They are very concerned about how the company looks with their shareholders - the people who own the company." Murray's comment confirmed a long held suspicion of mine: The companies that operate within the tar sands, and their cronies within the Alberta Government DON'T CARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT. What they do care about is making it LOOK like they care about the environment.

Image is everything in the corporate world. This is something Naomi Klein taught us. If the operators at Syncrude really cared about the 500 ducks that died in their toxic lake of death, they would have closed up shop, or at least found an alternative way of dealing with toxic waste water. Instead, they spent who knows how much to publish "apology letters" in the major papers of the country. It's all about image.

If Stelmach really cared about greening up the tar sands, he would put a moratorium on bitumen extraction today. After all, we're talking about one of the dirtiest known industrial practices known to (wo)man: It involves stealing water from fresh resources, using extraordinary amounts of heat and energy, burning up precious natural gas supplies, all for the purpose of removing sand from of a deep underground source of tar, so that you can pump out synthetic heavy crude oil, so that people can keep driving their cars. This is as DIRTY AS IT GETS folks. But Stelmach DOES care about his environmental image. That's why he is wasting $25 Million worth of Alberta's tax-payer money to brand the tar sands as being environmentally friendly. What a joke.

It's all image I tell you... Branding yourself the right way allows you to keep bringing in the big bucks. It's not what you sell (read dirty oil), it's how you sell it (read $25 green oil sands project).

[Appeal] Harper, the Media, and the North American Leader's Summit

I wanted to share my discontent with the lack of coverage on the recent North American Leaders Summit in New Orleans. There has hardly been any coverage on the CBC website, which is a real shame in my opinion, given the potential for the CBC website to foment civic engagement in this country.

An internet search for the summit on CBC.ca brings up the following stories, considered "most relevant" by the search engine: a) a link to "Political Bytes", a blog from the CBC's parliamentary bureau with a few quirky anecdotes regarding the context of the meeting (absolutely nothing on content); b) an article about last year’s summit – which, as you may recall, was held at Chateau Montebello and was met by a determined group of more than a thousand protesters; and c) two dead link articles about this year's summit - you can't read them because they are no longer there! What's my point? We citizens are not being told what is being negotiated at these meetings. Furthermore, to find out even the most basic details of the summit, we have to go out and search for it on obscure blogs and sites that no one actually reads on a regular basis.

This is not good for democracy, though neither is it entirely the CBC's fault. This minority government has been playing a dirty game of media manipulation ever since Harper seized power with only 36% of the vote. The Conservatives are engaged in a web of political spin, carefully calculating every PR move from determining the exact timing of press releases (in order to divert attention away from unpopular issues) to outright refusing to talk to certain reporters (check out this video). You have to ask yourself what kind of dirt this government is trying to hide when it goes to great lengths to ensure only invited sympathetic journalists are allowed to show up at state-sanctioned press releases. But even worse – what kind of nation allows its “leaders” to sneak out of a hotel via fire-escape to avoid a media scrum that has been infiltrated by uninvited journalists? We need to raise a stink about the unacceptable wall of secrecy behind which the Harper government is hiding.

In addition to writing letters to the CBC News desk, I’ve taken it upon myself to try to find out what in god’s name Stephen Harper is offering to Bush on Canada's behalf at this summit. There are a few things that are obvious. For one, we know that Harper is pledging our country’s continued support in the empire’s so-called war on terror – which as we also know, is a war of terror that only serves to breed more terror in return. We play a major role in this American war through our “commitment” to Afghanistan, or should I say our commitment to warlord Karzai (the "mayor of Kabul") and his war against his Taliban enemies in Kandahar. So here we are, with 2500 Canadian soldiers armed to the teeth (facing a death rate of one soldier per month), engaged in "development projects" that help us turn the Afghan people away from terrorism. Little do we know the Afghan people think we are the terrorists, and they're going to use every tactic they can to get rid of us - the latest in a history of foreign invaders in their country. What are we doing there? Honestly? Other than watching the poppy industry grow and agreeing to do America's dirty work (which includes ratcheting support from NATO allies to join in the fight). The International Security Assistance Force has played a major role in relieving US duties in Afghanistan, thereby allowing them to continue to their mission of total human destruction in Iraq.

Second, we know that Harper is working hard to make our border with the United States more porous to items like money and commercial goods and now commodified resources, while agreeing to block the flow of drugs and people with brown skin (like arabs who are unfairly stereotyped as terrorists and Latin Americans who are characterized as job-takers). You have heard the horror stories of groups of Latino immigrants who die in the Arizona desert trying to make it to the US to meet up with their families and earn a living wage. But have you heard of the violence in Southern Mexico faced by Central American immigrants? It is an extremely dangerous journey often resulting in theft, incarceration and death. The American administration knows all too well that it's difficult to keep the border open to trade while being simultaneously closed to immigrants and drugs, so Bush has convinced Calderon (and Fox before him) to militarize the southern border with Guatemala and Belize to stop the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who attempt the Northbound trek. In 2005, 240,000 illegal immigrants attempting to get to the US from Central America were arrested in MEXICO before even getting to the US border! Thanks to an increased military presence, the number of non-Mexican migrants trying to get into the US has dropped by more than two thirds in the last two years. In the meantime, we Canadians are doing our part to fend off the Arctic from grave threats to our sovereignty, such as Denmark. The result is what some are calling "Fortress America", one big hyper-militarized North American union with a continental security perimeter that allows only money and commercial goods (and the rich white men who control them) to travel in and out.

We also know, thanks to excellent work done by progressive interest groups such as the Council of Canadians, that the North American Leaders Summit is being used by the three states to further the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). As a post-9-11 corollary to NAFTA, the SPP has extremely serious implications for Canadian sovereignty - and yet we sit and watch it happening to us like a herd of cows lining up for the slaughter house. We already know the ways that NAFTA allows corporations to sue our government when it enacts health or environmental laws that cut into corporate profits (like when Canada was sued for $251 million by Ethyl Corp for banning a carcinogenic compound). NAFTA also locks in a proportion of the energy resources that we sell to the United States, making it extremely difficult to reduce energy exports for environmental purposes or to help deal with national shortages. The SPP takes it even further with clauses on continental regulation of agriculture and natural resources, prompting the Council of Canadians to argue that the SPP "will make independent Canadian policies on agriculture, the environment and energy impossible". Oh, and speaking of the environment, the people who brought us the SPP are also calling for an five-fold increase in energy production from the Alberta tar sands in order to help satiate America's desire for stable energy security (read "overconsumption problem"). Unfortunately, the tar sands gigaproject is perhaps the worst environmental travesty in human history. The very idea of using the equivalent of one barrel of oil and five barrels of water just to produce three barrels of tar sands crude is abominable.

If I may sum up my concerns in a final run-on question: What the fuck is our Prime Minister actually doing at these secret closed-door meetings with Bush and Calderon, and how many chips of Canadian sovereignty is he throwing on the poker table, and most importantly, why haven’t we Canadians heard anything about this from him in our publicly-funded media? Even a visit to the Conservative Party’s website yields nothing about the summit other than a few pictures of Harper, Calderon and Bush in their photo-op poses, shaking the hands of the few rare children who have actually been somewhat reintegrated into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

What did our Prime Minister have to say about regime change in Cuba and Venezuela? I want to read what our Prime Minister said about this in the news, not just an article mentioning that he will be talking about it! Don't we have a right to know how our tax money is involved in the long standing history of American imperialism in Latin America?

It is for these reasons that I am encouraging friends and family to demand more from our media, but more importantly, demand better from our elected officials. It's like we've forgotten that they're supposed to represent us and that we have the right to throw them in the garbage if they fail to do so. Well if one thing is clear from the New Orleans summit, it is that HARPER HAS FAILED, yet again, to act in the interests of the majority of Canadians. It's time we step in and stop the Conservative Party's secrecy and corporate cronyism, and bring in someone inspiring who wants to build a better world!