What does it say about a country that it will sell its future prosperity for short term corporate gain? That's what happened with the energy provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which commit the vast bulk of our future oil reserves to meet the needs of the United States, our own requirements notwithstanding. Now that we're nearing the end of our conventional reserves, the staggering shortsightedness of NAFTA is plain for all to see.
EDMONTON—A report on the Athabasca tar sands released today by Alberta’s Parkland Institute, in conjunction with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Polaris Institute, warns of the potential enormous economic, social, and ecological threat from Athabasca tar sands development.“We have been working on developing a comprehensive energy security strategy for Alberta and Canada,” says Parkland Director Gordon Laxer. “Any such strategy must begin with a thorough analysis of the development of Alberta’s tar sands.”
Fuelling Fortress America: A Report on the Athabasca Tar Sands and U.S. Demands for Canada’s Energy highlights the need for a coherent Alberta and national energy strategy. Neither government is doing the analysis or public consultation necessary to develop policies to meet the world energy crisis—let alone ensure a secure supply of energy for Canadians.
“The Athabasca tar sands project is the centerpiece of a continental energy plan to send massive new oil and gas supplies to the U.S.,” says Tony Clarke, Director of the Polaris Institute. “Canada is sitting back and letting George W. Bush and the big oil companies dictate our energy policy.”
Since the signing of NAFTA in 1992, gas exports to the US have sky rocketed from 41% to 56% of our total Canadian production, and oil from 44% to 63% of production. What’s more, as US exports continue to balloon, NAFTA prevents us from reducing this share to meet Canadian priorities. [Emphasis mine.]
“We have less than a 10-year proven supply of both conventional oil as well as natural gas remaining, yet most of the tar sands oil is earmarked for export to the U.S., and most of the natural gas from the Artic—by way of the yet-to-be-built Mackenzie Valley pipeline—is also intended for the U.S. market or to fuel extraction of the tar sands crude,” says CCPA Executive Director Bruce Campbell.
I rail a lot against corporate-controlled governance on this blog, and agreements like this are the central reason why. The long term interests of the citizens of Canada have been subordinated to the needs of the United States and the petroleum industry to the point that our future prosperity is severely threatened. Corporations are answerable to their shareholders only, and see national interests as nothing more than a barrier to their profitability. Agreements like NAFTA allow them to remove themselves the laws and regulations of the federal government and become supra-national entities that exploit our resources without fear of consequence.
Thank you, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, for ensuring that this energy-rich country will be desperate for oil in the next couple of decades. It is a tribute to the Canadian people that we have survived both these prime ministerial disasters with our country relatively intact. Yet their legacies reach on into the future, jeopardizing generations to come. I think I feel a book title coming on: The Mulroney-Chretien Years: A Study in Multi-Generational Screw-Ups.
Yeah, I know, this is pretty bleak for a late Friday post, but cynicism isn''t regulated under NAFTA (yet), so I think I'll indulge myself a bit.
Tim,
I hate the way fossil fuels are being used, and think that we will very soon need to start greatly worrying about the incredibly intensive fuel use in modern agriculture. Our "incredibly productive" mass agriculture of today is incredibly productive but extremely inefficient from a "fuel-per-ton-of-grain" point of view. Many people realize the devastating economic effects of inflation and transport costs in oil crises, but what happens if we can't fuel our tractors?
With all of that said, and my fundamental opposition to the status quo noted, I would raise this objection: we can't stop the "year of the car crash" from coming in 30-50 years - and Canada will still have its more difficult to extract energy reserves, and continue to be hydrocarbon rich relatively speaking.
How do we draw the line between the economic cost and big-picture green policy by saying "We're not extracting and exporting this resource, they're just going to put it into fucking SUVs?" It isn't an argument I'd like to try making in Alberta.
On the other hand, "someone else will supply them" is an argument traditionally used by arms traffickers and other unsavoury types, and that seems a not-inappropriate analogy given the known costs of fossil fuels.
So, eh, poser, that.
NB: for that matter, should we be building SUVs and exporting them to the US? Materials and parts for them? Hydroelectric power used to power SUV factories? It's almost bleakly amusing how we're making good money off of screwing ourselves over, but what is the political solution to that?
I don't raise this as an apology for inaction, I just don't know what the answer is. We should be striving harder, through government regulation to make our trade free, fair, humane, and green, but the central problems of fairness, human rights, and greenesss often lie with people who disagree with our politics (as Canadian progressives. It isn't as though all Canadians agree with these premises either - the CPC would predictably label them a rock-throwing-anarchist's manifesto)
I'm not even really pissed of that we will need to convert to a greener lifestyle, it is the principle I have issue with: one of our natural resources is being tied to the nees of another country ot the detriment of our own.
It is oil today, but it will be water tomorrow.
Did you happen to read the Macleans on water a while back? Mind you, this was before I knew about the whole Kenneth Whyte takeover business, but it was an interesting article.
The gist was, we do have a ludicrous amount of the world's water, and if we take a hardline stance vis a vis the Americans, they're liable to steal a lot more of it via the great lakes and shared subterranean resources than we want, so it makes more sense to sell them at least as much as they can steal anyway.
I'd have to hear different arguments, but I do get the impression that the political consensus against "privatizing, commoditizing and exporting water" is a bit ideologically blinkered. Private water in water-starved South America is criminal; but if it is being commoditized globally and we sit on 1/7th the freshwater replenishment or whatever, we aren't really good global citizens by hoarding either.
I don't think we should get sucked into selling our resources cheaply to the US; but neither should we hoard when it doesn't serve objective purposes, socially or environmentally.
Tim - so "on the mark". The whole concept that by meeting Industry Interests First, we are somehow meeting the needs of 'the People' is utterly skewed and abstract. It is a Big Lie that has run away with the hard-earned humanist principals we inherited as a culture. That the two concepts were so easily married, is evidence only of how successful the ruling classes have been through time, in manipulating the minds of the masses.
How does Jean Chretien get lumped with the likes of Brian Mulrooney?
Just wondering.
Re selling water to the US, prohibiting the sale of water is not just hoarding it. If we start selling off water, the insatiable American demand will keep growing, and the pressure to send more and more water south would become impossible to resist. In fact, it would become a national security issue with the yanks, and we would essentially be forced to provide it to them, just as we will with our oil supplies, whether we want to or not.
The problem with diverting water south is that it would result in regional lowering of water tables. This means wetlands would dry up. Wetlands are not only some of the biologically most diverse and productive places in Canada, but they also act as giant sponges, absorbing precipitation and runoff, preventing sudden and disastrous flooding. You can't change the groundwater regimes of an area without consequences, usually severe ones. Water is the lifeblood of the earth, and all ecosystems have evolved in equilibrium with their water regimes. You change the regime, you change the ecosystem. We are already seeing irreversible ecosystem changes from global warming, and every year drought becomes more common in many areas. To lower the water tables would only exacerbate this trend. This is serious business.
Americans need to learn to balance their water needs with their own supplies. We should not be helping them out while they overpopulate and farm what are essentialy desert areas. It would be the height of stupidity and foolishness to open the door to selling our water to the US, but I fully expect our so-called leaders to cave to their demands and make a deal, which, like much of the NAFTA, will be to Canada's ultimate detriment.
It will take a lot of sustained pressure from Canadians to prevent this.
It's all well and good to say that the Americans should evacuate Las Vegas - it is a pretty silly way to manage water resources. Do you suppose they're going to?
Not before they tap cross-border aquifers and end up damaging Canada's water table, or draining water from the Great Lakes system from their side.
By contrast, if we decided on a rational amount of water we could sustainably export (or do we in fact need 1/7ths of the world's supply annually?) and mitigate these effects.
Adopting an ideologically anti-American stance isn't going to get us out of the double-bind of sharing a water system with these people; they have uniltaral options that we have to forstall.
I have no idea what the economics of moving water are like now, but I assume "draining marshlands" is not the only economically feasible way to marshal Canadian water resources for national ends.
Pardon the formatting and grammar.
Jason, I think you need to take a more global view of the water issue, a more ecologically-based one. We take it for granted that the Americans will keep on trying to push the envelope when it comes to water. (And this applies to all humans, not just yanks, but right now we're talking about them.) And no, I don't suppose they will evacuate Las Vegas. As their population grows, their demand for water will become insatiable. They will pressure Canada for more and more, and most of that will come from tapping supplies in southern Canada, the most populated regions. At some point, the negative effects in Canada will become all too obvious, but it will be too late. They benefit, we suffer.
They may, as you said, take it anyway, and damn the negative effects on our water tables and our feeble protests. But that is an entirely different thing from collaborating with them on the destruction of our own ecosystems. What kind of a mentality is that!? They're going to take it anyway, so let's just give it to them so they won't hurt us?? So if a woman is threatened with rape, she should just lie there and take it without a fight??
Sorry, but I don't buy into that attitude. America is living in a fantasy world, obliviously ignorant of the train wreck a'comin'. I see no reason why we should get on that train with them.
And I'm not anti-American, just anti-American-stupidity.
By contrast, if we decided on a rational amount of water we could sustainably export (or do we in fact need 1/7ths of the world's supply annually?) and mitigate these effects.
You mean like the way we decided on a rational amount of oil we could sustainably export? How's the 'mitigation' of that coming along?
And I just read that Maclean's article on their site. I wouldn't believe most of what it says. The perspective of that article, and of Maclean's in general, is a pro-corporate, pro-privatize everything, to hell with reality and ecological consequences, bias. The idea that we are being selfish and unhumanitarian for not wanting to sell off our water makes me just about barf.
Don't expect anything like the truth from Macleans.
I know; my sister occasionally dumps hers on me, and I knew something about it didn't smell right, and sure enough, I found out about the editorial takeover and subsequent morphing of it into another Whyte mediocrity.
Nevertheless - their points about the Americans having unilateral options (and our having the water supply of 10 or 11 normal countries) both stand. If someone can demonstrate that we can't safely export to them, that's one thing, but controlled sale is superior to their unilateral theft.
As for oil, you sound to be on a fairly high horse, Garnet, but I don't hear your plan. What's the formula for how much extractable oil to just not extract? How are the economic consequences sold to the electorate in our democracy?
I'm not saying strong conservation measures shouldn't be taken or that increasing supply will not increase demand; these are big worries. But just muttering darkly about the perfidy of our capitalist overlords doesn't really advance any public debate over what is to be done.
Charles: Chretien promised to renegotiate NAFTA during the 1992 election campaign. He tinkered with meaningless aspects of it and declared his work done, then signed it in 1994. He is as much to blame for it as Mulroney.
Western culture, paricularly in North America, has now become firmly embedded in a kind of obsessive-compulsive commercialism rivalling that of Turkish rug merchants. Everything is for sale. Step right up.
Deal making is now the highest virtue. That which the deal is made over is of less significance.
Determining how to make the best deal, how the economic power relationships coalesce, how the negotiations are managed, how payments are managed, how violations are determined and punished, all the commercial mechanics of the thing take pride of place.
The thing being dealt is secondary.
It's almost as if, once the possibility of a deal over something hoves into view, considerations regarding the desireability of dealing the particular item fly out the window.
Jason, in case you're still around, here's a link to a publication by Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians that pretty much lays out why our water should not be for sale. It covers the whole gamut. I highly recommend it.
http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/BlueGold
As for Canada selling our water before it gets stolen, I still say nix to that, for several reasons:
First, if we sell it, we will have no moral or legal ground to stand on should we ever want to stop selling it. We would then be forced to continue shipping it south, even though it has become apparent what a disastrous mistake it was in the first place.
Second, water is not like oil or mined minerals. The only things on earth that need oil and mined minerals are humans. No natural ecosystem will be damaged once a mine closes or all the oil is gone (except, of course, for the areas that were affected during the exploration, pumping/mining, and exporting of those things, and of course from all the air and other pollution that burning oil produces. But given time, most sites will come back to some kind of functioning vegetated state.) It is a false analogy to say that since we ship our oil and other stuff south, why not water?
Water isn't like exporting lumber, either. Given proper forestry practices, other trees will grow in the same place. But when a basin loses a certain percentage of its water, it can never be naturally replaced unless precipitation increases to make it up. We can't count on that happening; in fact, the opposite is more likely.
Third, I for one will not accept that we should let ourselves be bullied by the yanks. Their water shortages are mostly of their own making, and they need to learn how to use what they have more wisely (and so do Canadians, for that matter). They have no right to expect us to screw ourselves for their sake.
This goes for the rest of the world as well. The earth is fast reaching the point of no return as far as being able to support ever-increasing populations with ever-increasing desires for things that are or will be in short supply. This is something that the corporate types don't understand, and don't want to understand. And that's why we have to stand firm against selling our water.
Re water sales. If we dont sell it they will take it.
It should be sold through a Crown Corporation.
dh
dh:
What a spineless, defeatist attitude! Why don't we just call ourselves America's colony and be done with it??!!
The point is not to "have a spine" and make a proud nationalist gesture; the point is to mitigate the damage as America comes after our water one way or the other.
If there is no way to safely export any water, than that's one thing; I am willing to accept that Macleans is now a very tainted source of editorial opinion. But I think we are in fact eschewing our own responsibility for globalization if we pretend that NAFTA "makes" us export our resources. The US defies NAFTA for national interests; if we are being screwed out of our oil (or, in the future, water) than we must do the same.
In pointing out our water wealth, it's obviously important to remember that we also have a huge geographical area and a huge ecosystem that uses that water; I don't suggest plundering Canada's water, merely that the attitude of "never export water on principle" doesn't seem to be very logically founded. If the United States attempted to use any exports of water as an entering wedge to take more and more, we could simply legislate stern ecological standards for water use from the get-go. Noone wants Canada's water used to water the lawns of another band of suburbs in Las Vegas or something.
The US challenges this new ecological rule? Tough titty. NAFTA isn't a suicide pact, and if they don't like our ecological standards they can go suck eggs.
The trouble, of course, is that when the oil starts really running out we'll start using more coal, not more green energies. Then we are really screwed, unless we can come up with some alternative energy sources that are cheaper and more efficient than coal, and fast.
As fascinating as it is to discuss it's all moot anyway.
None of our habits are going to change until we get smacked upside the head by some enormous climatic cataclysm that cannot be denied as being connected to warming.
Unfortuantely said cataclysm will have to include hundreds of thousands of deaths, the elimination of entire coastal regions of the planet and an economic collapse that will eclipse any collapse that's come before it.
*Then* humanity may take climate change and environmental issues seriously.
I keep remembering that wonderful question "What was going through the Easter Islanders mind who cut down the last tree?"
Tim wrote: Chretien promised to renegotiate NAFTA during the 1992 election campaign. He tinkered with meaningless aspects of it and declared his work done, then signed it in 1994. He is as much to blame for it as Mulroney.
If you're assigning blame Tim I think you need to look very closely at Ed Broadbent's roll in the 1988 election. It was very much like the last election, where the NDP saved all their criticism for the Liberals and gave the Conservatives a free ride. You'll recall that election was about Free Trade and Liberal John Turner was against it.
Who says oil & water don't mix? ;-)
Wikipedia, in an interesting article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Oil_Sands)on the Athabaska oil sands has this to say:
"Geopolitical importance:
The Athabasca Oil Sands are now featuring prominently in international trade talks, with energy rivals China and the United States both in talks with the Canadian government for a bigger share of the oil sands' rapidly increasing output. Due to the United States' ignoring both a NAFTA court ruling and the WTO's ruling on the United States' putting import tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber in 2005, former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin sped up talks with the Chinese on exporting up to 400,000 barrels (60,000 m3) per day of oil to China by 2010. As output at the oil sands is expected to sextuple by 2030, the importance of these oil sands will only increase with time as cheap oil becomes less widely available."
As to water: "Canada is often called a "water-rich" nation, as we are the stewards of 9% of the world's renewable fresh water supply, and we have the longest ocean coastline of any country." (http://www.galileo.org/schools/crowther/science/blueplanet/future.html.) It takes a lot of water to keep the golfing greens green in say, Scottsdale,AZ.
Reasons enough for we in the Great White North to be just a little nervous: if we don't hand over as much as the yanks want, when they want it, they'll simply send in the jarheads to take it, as they have done in Iraq.
The ability of the US government to simply send in the jarheads anywhere for any reason is dwindling as we speak. Not only because it turns out that the jarhead resource isn't as renewable as formerly thought but because soon congress won't be giving any more unquestioning green lights.
Unless of course the US really does become a full out autocracy in which case all bets are off globally.
The US is not a "full out autocracy" yet - right?