March 2007

BC–Alberta agreement also creates hurdles for endangered species and curbing pollution

Sierra Legal
March 30, 2007

VANCOUVER, BC – Key aspects of environmental regulation from municipal to provincial lawmaking will be turned upside down this Sunday April 1st when the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) comes into force. Although the aim of the agreement is to turn Alberta and BC into an economic powerhouse, a legal analysis of TILMA by Sierra Legal reveals it could seriously threaten the provinces’ endangered species and jeopardize potential initiatives to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

TILMA sets rules for all governments within the trade zone (including, in 2009, municipalities) and allows individuals and corporations to sue BC or Alberta for up to $5 million if its rules are broken, even if a government, including local governments, is acting to help the environment. The agreement does include some environmental exemptions regarding water and the promotion of renewable and alternative energy, but other government measures (laws, programs, policies) aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants, or protecting endangered species cannot overly restrict trade or investment. No input from environmental groups or the public is required in coming to such a decision.

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Your monthly media supplement of seven recommended readings from beyond the Briarpatch.

Get the B-List in your inbox: go to www.briarpatchmagazine.com and scroll down the right-hand column.

The Ugly Canadian
by Yen Chu
Relay #16
March/April 2007

Over 40 years later, the Ugly American still speaks to geopolitical events in our world today. The plot in the film practically mirrors Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan.

http://www.socialistproject.ca/relay/relay16_chu.pdf

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by Heather Wokusch
CommonDreams.org
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” – George W. Bush, September 2002

“This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous… Having said that, all options are on the table.” – George W. Bush, February 2005

The Bush administration continues moving closer to a nuclear attack on Iran, and we ignore the obvious buildup at our peril.

Russian media is sounding alarms. In February, ultra-nationalist leader Vladimir Shirinovsky warned that the US would launch a strike against Tehran at the end of this month. Then last week, the Russian News and Information Agency Novosti (RIA-Novosti) quoted military experts predicting the US will attack Iran on April 6th, Good Friday. According to RIA-Novosti, the imminent assault will target Iranian air and naval defense capabilities, armed forces headquarters as well as key economic assets and administration headquarters. Massive air strikes will be deployed, possibly tactical nuclear weapons as well, and the Bush administration will attempt to exploit the resulting chaos and political unrest by installing a pro-US government.

Sound familiar? It’s Iraq déjà vu all over again, and we know how well that war has gone.

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“It is logical to expect that we will go somewhere fairly similar to Afghanistan and do much the same sort of activity.”

By Jon Elmer

TORONTO, Mar 22 (IPS) - Following closely behind their counterparts in the United States and Britain, Canada’s Department of National Defence is preparing a comprehensive counter-insurgency field manual for its soldiers and officers.

The manual will guide Canadian Forces doctrine and training well into the future, according to a draft edition obtained by IPS.

A 250-page publication, the field manual outlines the principles and practices of fighting the kind of insurgencies that have come to define warfare for the Western powers in the 21st century, in places like Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The manual has been two years in development and is scheduled for release later this year. In it, insurgent wars are characterised by their tendency to be local and often popular movements, rather than the traditional military conflicts between states. This type of irregular warfare has confounded U.S. and NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively, where growing insurgencies have taken a bloody toll on local populations as well as Western troops, and signs of success are few and far between.

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“All over the world, autocratic-minded rulers [...] have learned that de facto control of the political content of television is perhaps the most important lever of power in our day. They have learned that it does not matter politically if 15 or even 25 percent of the public is well informed as long as the majority remains in the dark. The problem has not been censorship but something very nearly censorship’s opposite: the deafening noise of the official megaphone and its echoes—not the suppression of truth, still spoken and heard in a narrow circle, but a profusion of lies and half-lies; not too little speech but too much. If you whisper something to your friend in the front row of a rock concert, you have not been censored, but neither will you be heard.”Jonathan Schell, The Nation, August 14, 2006

Media concentration. The manufacture of consent. Canadian content. CBC cutbacks. Shock-jock talk radio. The blogosphere. Embedded reporting. The indymedia movement. The recent folding of Clamour, LiP, and the Independent Press Association south of the border….

Briarpatch Magazine invites submissions on the above and much more for its June/July “focus on the media” issue. Read the rest of this entry »

After accusing Liberals of using Employment Insurance fund as a ‘partisan piggy bank’, Harper Conservatives are now doing the same thing.

National Union of Public and General Employees
March 9, 2007

Ottawa - A criminal complaint has been filed against Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative cabinet for misusing the now-staggering $51-billion surplus in Canada’s national Employment Insurance (EI) fund.

The surplus, which the Conservatives howled that the Liberals were abusing when they were in office, has mushroomed by $7 billion since 2004 and continues to grow at a spectacular rate - fed by ongoing worker contributions and interest gains.

Yet the Tories are behaving the same as the Liberals behaved, putting the surplus into general revenue where it can be used for anything and not specifically for the benefit of unemployed workers as the law requires.

The RCMP has confirmed that the complaint was lodged March 7 by a lawyer representing the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU).

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March 7, 2007
Canoe.ca

ABBOTSFORD, B.C. (CP) - Lax safety standards are at play in the deaths of three women as a van loaded with agricultural workers crashed and flipped over on a rain-slicked Trans-Canada Highway, a farmworkers union spokesman says.

The van carrying 17 women between 20 and 50 years of agoe hit two trucks truck east of Vancouver early Wednesday and 14 occupants were injured. The van rolled and came to rest impaled on a concrete median, crushing the middle of the vehicle.

Several people were ejected and some victims had to be airlifted to hospitals in the region.

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Come out and help us launch the “Briarpatch does gender” issue in style at the Infringement Cabaret this friday!

Oooh la la…

(Please forward to interested parties.)

Burlesque! Commedia dell’Arte! Hoola Hoops! Sketch Comedy! And More!

Artistree Productions is pleased to present:
‘The Infringement Cabaret: Twisted Love’

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Physician raised concerns about high cancer rates downstream from oil projects

Monday, March 5, 2007

CBC News

A small Alberta community is rallying behind a local doctor residents believe is being silenced by Health Canada because he raised concerns about high rates of cancer near the booming oilsands.

Health Canada officials have filed a complaint against Dr. John O’Connor.

O’Connor alerted the media last year to what he believed was a disproportionately high incidence of colon, liver, blood and bile-duct cancers in patients who live in Fort Chipewyan, a small community downstream from major petroleum refineries.

In filing the complaint against O’Connor with the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons, Health Canada did not explain the action, but said the doctor was causing undue alarm.

Meanwhile, physicians who work alongside O’Connor in Fort Chipewyan believe officials are targeting their colleague because his comments potentially threaten billions of dollars of investment in the province’s oilsands.

“I am absolutely shocked that they would treat a physicians of this calibre like this. There’s a deliberate attempt to beat him down or shut him up,” the area’s head nurse, George MacDonald, said.

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By Chris Arsenault
Thursday February 22nd, 2007
Here (New Brunswick)

It’s a common perception south of the border that we Canadians are taxed to death by a pseudo-socialist nanny state.

In the lousy 1992 Tom Selleck movie, Mr. Baseball, the main character is terrified of being moved to Canada due to higher taxes and instead ends up being shipped off to Japan.

And, as call-centre workers, baristas, kitchen staff and office employees trudge off in search of old T4 forms from jobs quit months ago, the idea of paying taxes, especially higher taxes than Americans, may seem unnerving.

Add a well-funded choir of voices like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the Fraser Institute screaming about ‘tax rage’ and one could easily assume that Canadians are taxed to death.

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