On December 4, the Harper government appointed Richard Morgan to the International Joint Commission (IJC). The commission, established by the U.S. and Canadian governments, is a bi-national body responsible for the Great Lakes and other shared bodies of water. Morgan was sworn into office at a ceremony in Washington, DC yesterday.
What are Morgan’s qualifications? According to his resume, Morgan served as an executive assistant to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, helped with the North American Free Trade Agreement, has provided consulting services to Shell, Valero and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, and played a key role in the talks that lead to the creation of the Conservative Party of Canada. This appointment of a Conservative partisan and adviser to oil corporations and their primary lobby group only serves to undermine the important work of the IJC.
The Council of Canadians has called for the prohibition of tar sands bitumen shipments on tankers on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. We have spoken against the proposed tanker shipments starting from Lake Superior advocated by U.S.-based Calumet Specialty Products Partners and have opposed TransCanada’s proposed Energy East pipeline export terminal in Cacouna, Quebec, as well as the Suncor bitumen shipments from the port of Sorel-Tracy, Quebec.
We’ve also highlighted that as community opposition to pipelines grows, corporations are increasingly moving bitumen by rail and given the costs of transport on water are looking at using our waterways too. Calumet had calculated that it would cost $3.50 a barrel to ship oil on the Great Lakes compared to $9.00 a barrel by rail. That’s a dangerous equation for those of us who see the Great Lakes as a commons and public trust, not a tar sands and fracked oil shipping route.
Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow has stated, “There are competing visions of what the Lakes are for and who they serve, and one vision – the wrong one – is winning. Some see the Great Lakes as a watershed that gives us all life and livelihood and is a living ecosystem to be nurtured, protected and preserved for future generations. But too many others, including some governments, see the waters of the Great Lakes as a huge resource for our convenience, pleasure and profit.”
It should also be noted – while the United Nations climate summit takes place in Lima, Peru – that the largest part of the drop in Great Lakes water levels has been attributed to climate change. More than 40 million people rely on the Great Lakes for their drinking water and Barlow has described falling water levels as a threat to the human right to water. But earlier this week Prime Minister Stephen Harper said it would be “crazy” to regulate carbon emissions from the oil and gas sector at a time of falling crude oil prices. This despite the fact that Canada will likely emit 727 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2020 rather than the weak target of 611 million tonnes promised by Harper at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2010.
We call on Mr. Morgan to respect the Great Lakes as a living ecosystem and to act for water and people in his new role, not in the interests of Shell, Valero, CAPP and the Harper government.
Further reading
Liquid Pipeline: Extreme energy’s threat to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River by Maude Barlow (released March 2014)
Our Great Lakes Commons: A People’s Plan to Protect the Great Lakes Forever by Maude Barlow (released March 2011)
