CTV reports this morning, “When federal and provincial energy ministers meet in Charlottetown this week, forging a national energy strategy is conspicuously absent from the agenda. The topic was all the rage this summer, with business groups, environmentalists, aboriginal groups and almost all the premiers saying the time has come for Canadian leaders to hash out a solid plan on how they will handle the country’s natural resources. …Now, as the provinces come together once again, and are joined by the federal government’s Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver, top-level talks toward a national energy strategy appear to have been downgraded to ‘discussions for collaboration’.”
There are plenty of obstacles in the path of Alberta premier Alison Redford’s call for a national strategy, which for her is about facilitating the increased production and export of tar sands bitumen. Ontario has balked at calling the tar sands a “responsible and major supplier of energy to the world” and have highlighted the impact of the tar sands on Ontario’s manufacturing sector; Quebec opposes a “coast to coast” plan because energy is an area of “provincial competence”, it also opposes controversial hydroelectric plans in Newfoundland and Labrador; British Columbia has made royalty demands that aren’t likely to be met on the construction of the Northern Gateway pipeline; while Manitoba says it “generally” supports the idea of a Canadian energy strategy as long as its focused on sustainability (not a term one associates with the tar sands). On top of this, Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes won’t even be attending the meeting in Charlottetown this week.
But, as CTV reports, “That’s not to say the national energy strategy is dead.”
The Council of Canadians has called for a very different national energy strategy, one that would set out a plan to wean the country off its dependence on non-renewable fuel sources. Our energy campaigner Andrea Harden-Donahue has stated, “One of the points the Council has been very clear on and continues to be clear on is that not only does Canada not have an energy plan, we’ve actually relinquished a lot of our control in the energy sector through free trade agreements like NAFTA, to the markets and to the interests of big oil and we find that problematic. We would say that any plan needs to be balanced with environmental protections concerning the production, transportation and consumption of energy. We are very wary and would oppose a strategy that allows business as usual — namely, the pursuit of an energy superpower status through increased exports to the U.S. based on unfettered ongoing fossil-fuel exploitation. The social and environmental costs of this we’re really seeing now, particularly in the tar sands.”
Our Charlottetown chapter will be engaged in many activities this week related to the energy ministers meeting and we’ll be providing updates on their work.
