Categories
Alberta Politics

the hypocrisy of ethical oil’s chiquita banana boycott.

Ethical Oil
Ethical Oil?

If you have been paying any attention to Canadian politics on Twitter or have tuned into any of the Sun Media outlets over the past few days, you will have undoubtably noticed that the greenwashing website “Ethical Oil” has launched the Great Canadian Banana Boycott. Reacting to the Chiquita company’s decision to direct its transportation providers “to avoid, where possible, fuels from tarsands refineries,” the website is urging Canadians to boycott Chiquita bananas and related products.

Inspired by conservative political pundit Ezra Levant‘s book by the same name, the Ethical Oil website purports to “encourage people, businesses and governments to choose Ethical Oil from Canada, its oil sands and other liberal democracies.” The website suggests that “ethical oil” is a “fair trade” alternative to “conflict oil” exploited in some of our world’s more politically oppressive and environmentally reckless countries.

Pointing to Chiquita’s chequered past as the United Fruit Company, the website and its opportunistic political supporters, including Wildrose leader Danielle Smith and a handful of Conservative Party Members of Parliament have joined the fray pledging personal boycotts.

Starting with Mr. Levant, the Ethical Oil mantra has becomes a rotating door for young conservative activists. Until recently, the website was maintained by Alykhan Velshi, a former staffer to Conservative Minister Jason Kenney. Mr. Velshi now works as director of planning for Prime Minister Stephen Harper‘s office. The website’s current spokesperson, Kathryn Marshall, is a former organizer with the Wildrose Party Club on the University of Calgary campus (her husband Hamish Marshall is a pollster and the former Manager of Strategic Planning for Prime Minister Harper).

There is no doubt that countries Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Nigeria have earned their reputations for having horrible human rights and environmental records, but I have never heard Ethical Oil directly challenge the multinational oil companies that operate in those countries. Many of the same companies that exploit “conflict oil” from these oppressive countries also happily operate in Alberta’s oil sands and employ many thousands of Canadians.

The multi-national oil company Royal Dutch Shell is a 60% owner of the Athabasca Oil Sands project. Shell also has significant operations in Saudi Arabia and is well-known for its unethical actions in Nigeria.

According to repots from The Guardian newspaper:

Court documents now reveal that in the 1990s Shell routinely worked with Nigeria’s military and mobile police to suppress resistance to its oil activities, often from activists in Ogoniland, in the delta region.

The company has been sued many times over its conduct in Nigeria. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) say oil companies working in the delta, of which Shell is the largest, have overseen a “human rights tragedy”. Most of the alleged human rights abuses, they say, follow the companies’ refusal to abide by acceptable environmental standards.

On November 9, 2011, Amnesty International called on Shell to make an initial $1 billion payment to clean up oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

Even Suncor, a company with deep roots in Alberta’s oilsands, only recently withdrew its foreign workers from energy operations in Syria. Despite decades of human rights abuses, Suncor only slowed down its Syrian operations (formerly run by Petro-Canada) when the European Union and the United Nations imposed sanctions on the country.

As the Ethical Oil website denounces and promotes boycotts of companies that question the environmental record of Alberta’s oilsands, the website does nothing to promote a boycott of unethical oil producers, like Shell, that make billions of dollars exploiting their definition of ‘conflict oil.’

The arguments put forward by Ethical Oil are misleading and disingenuous. They compare bananas to oranges and drive the debate away from the real issue – our unsustainable dependence on fossil fuels and the incredible environmental toll that multinational oil companies are enacting both overseas and in Alberta’s oilsands.

Categories
Alberta Politics

alberta candidate nomination update – november 2011.

The Progressive Conservatives have opened their nomination process, leading a number of candidates to declared their interest in opposition held constituencies. This first wave out of the floodgates have allowed me to update the list of declared and nominated candidates for the next provincial election:

Calgary-Buffalo: Dawna Haslam announced on her Facebook profile that she will be seeking the Progressive Conservative nomination in this downtown constituency. Buffalo has been represented by Liberal MLA Kent Hehr since 2008, and has been represented by both opposition and government MLAs over the past twenty years.

Ric McIver Calgary PC Calgary-Hays
Ric McIver is seeking the PC nomination in Calgary-Hays

Calgary-Hays: Long-time Alderman and defeated Mayoral candidate Ric McIver is seeking the PC nomination in this south east Calgary constituency. Mr. McIver will face current MLA Art Johnston and former PC constituency President Alex Girvin. First elected to the Assembly in 2004, Mr. Johnston was defeated by Rick Fraser in the May 2011 nomination contest for the new Calgary-South East constituency.

Calgary-Hawkwood: Former MLA Shiraz Shariff is said to be seeking the PC nomination in this new north west Calgary constituency. Mr. Shariff was first elected as the MLA for Calgary-McCall in a 1995 by-election and served until he was defeated by Liberal Darshan Kang in 2008.

Calgary-Mountain View: Energy company owner and past Alberta Party leadership candidate Chris Tesarski is seeking the PC nomination. Mr. Tesarski was briefly a candidate for the Alberta Party leadership earlier this year before dropping out and endorsing Alison Redford for the PC leadership. Mountain View has been represented by former Liberal leader David Swann since 2004.

Calgary-Varisty: Former Nexen senior executive Donna Kennedy-Glans is seeking the PC nomination. Readers may remember Ms. Kennedy-Glans for her unsuccessful bid to wrestle the Calgary-West federal Conservative nomination from ultra-conservative Member of Parliament Rob Anders in 2010. The nasty contest saw conservative pundit Ezra Levant descend on Ms. Kennedy-Glans labelling her a “Liberal saboteur.” Seeking the PC nomination in Calgary-Varsity may be less of a bloodsport.
Varisty has been represented by Liberal MLA Harry Chase since 2004 and with his retirement, the Liberals have nominated Carpenters’ Union leader Bruce Payne to carry their flag. This will be a race to watch.

Edmonton-Centre: The NDP have rescheduled their nomination meeting to November 9, 2011. Past federal candidate Nadine Bailey is expected to be acclaimed.

Edmonton-South West: Matt Jeneroux is seeking the PC nomination in this new constituency which will be created from parts of the Edmonton-McClung and Edmonton-Whitemud constituencies in south west Edmonton.

Grande Prairie-Smoky: Three-term PC MLA Mel Knight has announced that he will not seek re-election. No candidates have officially declared themselves in the contest to replace Mr. Knight as the PC candidate, but some names of potential candidates being suggested include City of Grande Prairie Alderman Kevin O’Toole, Greenview Councillor Tom Burton, and Grande Prairie County Reeve Everett Macdonald.

Duane Stevenson has entered the Wildrose Party nomination contest in Grande Prairie-Smoky, challenging Todd Loewen. Mr. Stevenson is the General Manager of Nitehawk Recreation Area.

St. Albert: Local businessman Steve Khan has joined the PC nomination contest against Jeff Wedman and incumbent MLA Ken Allred.

West Yellowhead: The Wildrose has nominated forester Stuart Taylor as their candidate. Mr. Taylor is not to be confused with the other Mr. Taylor nominated to stand in this constituency Alberta Party leader and Mayor of Hinton Glenn Taylor.

Categories
Alberta Politics

wildrose alliance draft policy proposals.

Wildrose Alliance leader Danielle Smith at a January 2010 press conference.

In less than a year, the Wildrose Alliance Party has skyrocketed from the political fringes to having three MLAs in the Assembly and challenging the dominance of the 39-year governing Progressive Conservative Party in many polls. Since the selection of Danielle Smith as their leader in October 2009, many questions have been raised about where the new leader and her party stand on important policy issues. The party has slowly started to release some new policy positions and one of Ms. Smith’s most common responses is that her party would be reassessing many of their positions at their June 2010 policy convention.

Luckily for readers of this blog, a friendly political insider was kind enough to pass along a copy of the draft Proposed Policy Resolutions that will be debated at the 2010 Wildrose Alliance Annual General Meeting scheduled for June 25 and 26 in Red Deer.

The document includes some of what would be expected from a conservative political party in Alberta and has a slightly more moderate tone than expressed in that party’s fringe-right past. Here is a brief summary of a few of the proposals:

– Renegotiate federal equalization program.
– Create an Alberta Constitution.
– Former Reform Party Member of Parliament and current Senator-in-Waiting Cliff Breitkreuz proposes that party leaders should run in a province-wide election and that the leader who receives the most votes in a general provincial election will be sworn in as Premier of Alberta.
– Party member Randy Coombes proposes that his party ensure all law abiding and mentally fit Albertans enjoy the right to keep and bear arms in perpetuity.
– Member Peter Csillag proposes the stop of any and all public monies involved in the deliberate and intentional termination of pregnancies.
– There are a series of policies that could be dubbed the “Ezra Levant” section of the proposal which deal with freedom of speech and the Alberta Human Rights Act.
– Party Vice-President Jeff Callaway proposes the introduction of legislation to allow citizen-initiated referendums though a petition signed by at least 10% of the total voters of the last Provincial election in Alberta (which is quite a low number when you take into account the 40% voter turnout).
– The Medicine Hat and Cypress-Medicine Hat constituencies submitted policies calling for “a public consultative review with Albertans of the collective bargaining process in the public sector.”
– A proposal calls for the creation of a First Nations Forum to provide aboriginal citizens direct communication with government.

There are also policy proposals calling for the creation of “whistle-blower” legislation, educating Albertans in environmental stewardship, abolishing income-tax, supporting nuclear and hydroelectric power, and exempting seniors from paying a number of taxes.

Here is the full document.
Policy Resolutions 2010 Agm Preliminary

Categories
Uncategorized

the folly of a canadian culture war.

“Cosmopolitanism versus parochialism, secularism versus moralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, too bad. Go south and vote for Palin.” – EKOS Pollster Frank Graves‘ advice to the Liberal Party of Canada.

What a surprise, an Ottawa-based politico who called for a “culture war” in Canada shows his misunderstanding of western Canada. I generally try to avoid writing too much about the distant politics of Ottawa and I could really care less about what Mr. Graves thinks of Albertans, but it is the coverage by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on the above comments that concerns me. I am normally a defender of the CBC, but in this case, they got it all wrong.

During a taping of CBC’s Power and Politics with Evan Solomon last week, the broadcaster chose address Mr. Graves’ comment not by debunking them, but by perpetuating the myth of Albertans as a group of gun-toting crazy redneck oil barons by seeking a western response from an Albertan who is not just a conservative, but a fanatical conservative straw man. Enter Ezra Levant.


As a friend pointed out, none of the panelists on the program even discussed whether it was okay for the Liberal Party of Canada to use these kind of wedge issues in a “culture war,” as if to suggest that they simply accepted the idea that all Albertans were just as susceptible to these extreme wedge issues as Mr. Levant (to be fair, I did know Ian Capstick when he lived in Edmonton years ago and I hope that the politics of Ottawa have not diluted his memory).

Do Mr. Graves’ comments actually reflect an undercurrent within the Party he was advising? Whether or not it does, they do have an effect on that Party’s reputation in Western Canada. I am told that last week, the Liberal Party of Canada in Alberta cancelled a bus booked to travel from Edmonton to their upcoming annual convention in Lethbridge because they could not find 35 people in the 1 million person metro Edmonton region who wanted to make the trip.

Canada is a big country and it is easy, and dangerous, to allow regional divides define our already apathetic national politics. Just as most Ontarians are not latte drinking tax-loving socialists, most Albertans are not gun-toting crazy redneck oil barons. Mr. Graves’ “culture war” comments are not helpful for those he provides political advice for and they are not helpful for Canada.