Today I was joined by Hannah McKinnon of Climate Action Network Canada and Ben Powless of the Indigenous Environmental Network on the third day of our lobby-busting tour of EU Embassies in Ottawa. As mentioned in my previous blog, our purpose is to challenge the arguments being brought forward by Canadian lobbying against the EU Fuel Quality Directive (FQD) in the interests of ensuring future markets for the tar sands. Canadian lobbying efforts include being the only non EU member to engage in the FQD consultancy process, over 110 lobbying meetings in 2010 alone, reports and advertisements. For more information on the FQD including an action alert collecting pictures of Canadians, see our webpage.

The Council of Canadians is organizing this tour alongside Climate Action Network Canada and the Indigenous Environmental Network.

Thus far we have met with the Embassies of Poland, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway (not an EU member, but we wanted to discuss the broader tar sands advocacy strategy), Austria, Italy and Germany, with more to come next week.

Through this process we’ve learnt at least three embassies have been lobbied already by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and/or the Canadian government. Also confirmed is the status of the Directive before a committee of experts and how untypical it is for this committee to take so long to deliberate over a Directive that has the recommendation of the EU Commission. Amongst other reasons, this speaks to the heavy handed Canadian lobbying (efforts we hope will backfire) on this Directive (part of the broader EU FQD policy).

Coming out of these three days of meetings – outside of having a greater appreciation of various EU countries history and culture – we certainly have heard a number of opinions on this Directive. By in large, we are feeling more confident of support for the Directive and that the information we have provided, including an open letter from civil society organizations representing millions of Canadians, will be shared.

The UK Embassy declined our invitation, explaining that they don’t see there being ‘much more to add at this stage’ noting that deliberations are currently happening in Brussels.  The UK, home to British Petroleum which is heavily invested in the tar sands, was the first (that I remember) to vocalize criticism of the Directive and reflect the language of Canadian lobbying efforts. This is something our friends, the UK Tar Sands Network have continued to expose and challenge in relation to ongoing Canada European trade negotiations (Check out their tar monster!).

The Sacramento Press reports, “Catarina de Albuquerque, the Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation for the United Nations human right council, has issued a four-page memo warning Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson that local officials could be violating the human rights of the homeless people living within the city. In the January 23rd dated letter, de Albuquerque says that the current policy of evicting the homeless from their ‘tent cities’ and denying the homeless with safe access to clean water is, in effect, prohibited discrimination based on their economic and social status.”

Gwyn Frayne

The Comox Valley Echo reports, “Students at North Island College bashed climbing student debt and tuition at rallies on all four main campuses on Wednesday, including the Comox Valley. …The students protested what they say is an unacceptable rise in student debt - approaching $15 billion in federal loans, according to the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) - as well as a lack of provincial and federal funding for post-secondary education. They claim the overall trend means reduced access to education, and an unnecessary burden on the next generation.”

“Gwyn Frayne of the local chapter of the Council of Canadians said the cost of education has soared since she and her children were students. ‘Now I’m not sure that all my grandchildren will be able to go to college, and that’s not right,’ she said.”

The Tyee reports, “The British Columbia government is considering creating two foreign trade zones, one in the Vancouver region (the Port of Vancouver and the Vancouver International Airport) and one in the north (the Port of Prince Rupert and the Prince George Airport). The scenarios for zones where companies could bring goods into Canada without immediately paying tariffs on them are outlined in the report Feasibility of a British Columbia Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) Program that Intervistas Consulting Inc. prepared for two B.C. ministries (the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation and the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure). …The zones would allow companies to bring goods or materials in from other countries to be assembled, customized or repaired in the province, said the report. The companies wouldn’t have to pay any tariffs until the final products were put on the Canadian market. And if they were shipped out of Canada from the FTZ, they wouldn’t be subject to Canadian tariffs at all. …Other industries might use the zones to warehouse goods, avoiding import taxes until they are ready to sell the goods, it said.”

The one-year license issued by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to Bruce Power to ship radioactive waste on the Great Lakes expires tomorrow, Friday February 3. This is a major campaign win and means those shipments cannot take place anytime soon. For an overview of our campaign, please see the key dates below:

September 30, 2011: Council of Canadians Ontario-Quebec regional organizer Mark Calzavara delivers a petition with more than 101,000 names to Queen’s Park demanding that Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty do the right thing and put a stop to the planned shipments of nuclear waste on the Great Lakes, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=10868.

Katepwa Lake

CBC reports that the Brazilian mining giant Vale plans to build a potash mine near the town of Kronau, Saskatchewan that would start operations in 2015. CBC notes there are concerns “about the mine’s environmental and social impacts” but highlights that large volumes of water would be needed to separate the potash from other minerals. “As there is no water source near Kronau, Vale wants to build a 70-kilometre water pipeline from Kronau to Katepwa Lake in the Qu’Appelle Valley. The company wants to pump more than 40 million litres of water — the equivalent of 15 Olympic-sized swimming pools — out of the lake every day.”

Hannah, Clayton & Andrea outside Polish embassy.

What a whirlwind day. I just returned from a series of four meetings with EU Embassies in Ottawa, with more to come over the coming days. These meetings are part of a lobby-busting tour organized by the Council of Canadians, joined by the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) and Climate Action Network Canada (CAN Canada).

Our purpose is to meet with EU Embassies and challenge the arguments being brought forward by Canadian lobbying against the EU Fuel Quality Directive (FQD). The tour came to being after being informed that CAPP had requested meetings with at least one Embassy in Ottawa, and as part of our ongoing efforts to challenge Canadian lobbying against this policy.

I was joined today by Clayton Thomas Muller, Tar Sands Director with IEN and Hannah McKinnon, Political Director with CAN Canada.

The EU FQD is a policy aimed at reducing emissions from the transportation sector, the only sector where emissions have increased over the past two decades. It does so by obliging suppliers to reduce the lifecycle greenhouse gas intensity of transport fuel by 6% by 2020 compared to 2010.

The Canadian and Albertan governments joined by industry active in the tar sands – as revealed in access to information documents outlining a Pan European Advocacy Strategy – have engaged in a well-funded PR campaign targeting the EU FQD. This is because the policy includes a default value for bitumen (what is produced in the tar sands) that recognizes it is a high carbon fuel, thereby discouraging it’s use.

While this lobby often argues this is discriminatory, in fact, the policy applies to bitumen produced anywhere, includes values for other high carbon unconventional crudes (shale oil, gas to oil, coal to oil) and even has a provision that allows a tar sands producer to demonstrate their crude is less emissions intense resulting in a different value being applied.

Canada-EU free trade negotiations should be halted until a number of concerns raised by labour and civil society groups have been addressed, says a letter to European and Canadian parliamentarians sent this week by the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) and the Trade Justice Network.

“At the forefront is the concern that public authorities and local jurisdictions’ ability to provide and regulate public services will be undermined in this Agreement,” says a NUPGE statement. “Anything not being explicitedly excluded from the agreement will be deemed to be fair game for corporations once this agreement is signed. As the signatories state, ‘Both EU and Canadian citizens need to see broad exclusions of public services from any agreement as well as sufficient policy space to define and regulate public services in the future.’”

The concerns raised in the letter are reinforced by documents leaked last week showing that Canada is proposing very weak protections for existing public services, in particular those like water, transit and waste management which are delivered at the municipal level. Click on “read more” to see the main points raised in the letter to EU and Canadian members of parliament.

I had the pleasure of attending, in person, a meeting with fellow members of the Sandy Pond Alliance

Sandy Pond Alliance meeting, January 2012

(S.P.A.) last week in St. John’s NL. Although the agenda was long, our efficient chairperson (Ken Kavanagh) guided us through the meeting. We covered off many important updates on the case including the cross examination of our expert witness, biologist Dr. John Gibson, by Vale (who is an intervenor in our case against the Government of Canada), which had concluded the day prior (see the latest updates on this here: http://canadians.org/blog/?p=13098). Organizationally, there was a lot achieved over the past year, including the creation of a new website (www.sandypondalliance.org) and a successful benefit concert. Work continues as a new board was elected at the meeting, and with money to be raised for the court case as well as the expectation that the case will wrap up around June.

Across Canada, people are taking a stand in support of public water and against the privatization of our water resources. It is time to unite and get rid of bottled water.

We would love for you to join the Coalition for Bottled Water Free Communities (made up of the Canadian Federation of Students, the Sierra Youth Coalition, the Council of Canadians, the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Polaris Institute) in the countdown to Canada’s third Bottled Water Free Day! On March 15 2012, campuses and communities across Canada will be mobilizing to take action to kick the bottle and back the tap! We want you to be a part of it!