Category Archives: Environment

Environment, First Nations, NDP

NDP Leader Attacks First Nations, Activists

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In a shameful move, the labour-based New Democratic Party in New Brunswick republished an aggressively titled op-ed article on its website, “Don’t Negotiate Till Threats End!”. The article was taken down and replaced by similarly problematic editorial, “Reality Check: The Law is the Law” written by the party leader in the province, Dominic Cardy.

The articles chastised activists who joined a highway blockade with members of Elsipogtog First Nations, trying to stop exploratory drilling on their lands. To Cardy’s credit, he recognizes the problem with relying on the government to safeguard the environment asking “why should we expect them to have the courage to use the law [against the shale gas industry]” (though it’s more likely a question of will rather than courage.)

But in the next paragraph, he puts on his policeman’s hat and gives the reader a stern tautological legal lesson, “Any blockade… must end… because the law is the law. [Activists] have an equal responsibility to stand up against law breaking and vandalism”. He didn’t mention whether he had a plan to crack down on the menace of littering or jay-walking.

Cardy attempts to resolve the cognitive dissonance of respecting the ‘rule of law that can’t be trusted’ by revealing his actual plan to stop shale gas: an NDP government led by him.  The environment is to be saved by electing him as premier, or not at all. Aside from opposing shale gas though, it is difficult to see how the party under his leadership would substantially differ from the current regime. Cardy is a proponent of the right wing “Third Way” movement within the Socialist International. He took the lead in pushing for a lesser role for labour in the federal party, and looks up to imperialist war criminal Tony Blair.

This ahistorical diatribe is especially disappointing, coming from an NDP leader because it betrays the party’s own history. Participants in the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, which brought the city to a grinding halt, likely wouldn’t have cared much for Cardy’s “the law is the law” attitude when they were savagely attacked by the police and thrown in prison. One of those participants, J.S. Woodsworth, later went on to become the first leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, predecessor of the modern day NDP.

This identity crisis is not new for the party, but it is accelerating at an alarming rate. As capitalism descends deeper into crisis, it’s contradictions, which are fundamental features of it’s political reality, are highlighted by statements such as this. At a time when workers and the growing underclass are losing more and more at the expense of big business, the platform and actions of the labour bureaucrats and ruling class politicians who purport to represent the workers’ interests are getting more and more watered down and lacklustre.

Ultimately, it is not solely the fault of these social democrats that the party agenda is more and more accommodating to the status quo. The demands of workers can be advanced only when workers themselves raise them. In building unions, activists have created institutions capable of fighting for their interests, but the task of leading that fight can not be successfully delegated.  Left to its own devices, the labour bureaucracy develops petty interests of its own, putting their jobs and privileges above all else.

The NDP can be a vehicle for change and a voice for radical populist movements like Idle No More and the campaign against environmental degradation — but not by trusting politicians to take care of business. The task of achieving basic change can be fulfilled only by applying continuous pressure from the bottom up — by the people whose lives are directly affected by the plunder of global capital. We need a radical labour movement driven by, and for workers! To move forward, are obliged to struggle against the alienating effects of bureaucracy, especially in the NDP and the labour movement.

Analysis, Announcements, Canada, Environment, Events, Labour, NDP, Theory, Youth

Free PDF is available: Concessions No More! Fight to Defeat Austerity

Below is a copy of “Concessions No More! Fight to Defeat Austerity”, a collection of talks presented at Socialism 2013, the annual international educational conference hosted by Socialist Action / Ligue pour l’Action socialiste, held May 10-12, 2013 at the University of Toronto.

socialism conference book final

Canada, Environment

Corporate Greed, Gov’t Collusion fueled train disaster

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by Barry Weisleder
Lac-Mégantic fell victim to a deadly combination of greed, deregulation, and a mad rush for energy profits that devalued the environment and human life. Five years ago the small Quebec town was not even on the route for shipping ‘fracked’ shale oil from North Dakota. But since the boom in dirty, unconventional fuel, energy companies in pursuit of record profits are using a wide range of means to convey this oil to market. That includes rail. In 2009, companies shipped 500 carloads of crude oil by rail in Canada; this year, it will be 140,000. New oil-dedicated rail lines, truck routes and the use of barges on waterways are now under consideration. These are among the ways to get around the growing popular movement to block pipelines from the Alberta tar sands.
Thirty years of neoliberalism have fostered corporate recklessness. Ottawa, and other governments in Canada, and elsewhere, have freed the owners from environmental, labour and safety standards, and oversight. It opened the public sector for private profit-seeking.
The railway in Canada is a prime example. Through the mid 1980s, the publicly-run industry was highly regulated. But Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney enacted ‘reforms’ that deregulated the sector, and allowed companies to rewrite safety rules. What followed was an era of cost-cutting, massive lay-offs, speed-up on the job, and eventually, the full privatization of companies and rail-lines.
The Liberal government completed the transition by turning over what regulation remained to rail companies themselves. A rail safety report issued in 2007 concluded: Canada’s rail system was a disaster in waiting to happen.
It’s no wonder that today’s oil and rail barons so easily cut corners. They’ve been using old rail cars to ship oil, despite the fact that regulators warned the federal government they were unsafe, as far back as 20 years ago. A more recent report by a federal agency reminded the government that the cars could be “subject to damage and catastrophic loss of hazardous materials.” All were ignored. To top it off, the federal government gave the go-ahead last year to Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway to operate with just one engineer aboard their trains. In the 1970s, North American freight trains usually carried five-man crews constantly. As companies cut crews, workers competed for the scarcer jobs, which drove down wages – including, eventually, the wage of the one person left running the train.
The over-riding issue, beyond malfunctioning brakes or weak regulation, is the mad scramble for resources whose reckless exploitation dooms a fragile planet. The profit system is the culprit, driving the doomsday machine.
The road to meaningful change requires re-regulation of the industry, linked to public ownership under workers’ and community control, and a rapid transition towards green energy generation. That won’t come from any government enquiry, but only from a raucous social movement that forces it onto the public agenda.
The U.S. residents of Fairfield, Maine, 160 kilometres across the border from Lac-Megantic, Quebec, took up this challenge in July. Several got arrested blockading a train carrying North Dakota fracked oil to the refinery in New Brunswick, Canada. Their message was: End the reliance on oil.
The deaths of nearly 50 people in the July 6 train derailment and explosion touched a nerve, on a continental scale. It sent bureaucrats and politicians scurrying.
Canada’s Transportation and Safety Board called for an urgent review of railway safety procedures. It issued two safety advisories on July 19, echoing ignored recommendations from a 2011 Auditor General’s report. New Democratic Party transportation critic Olivia Chow demanded an emergency meeting of the House of Commons Transport Committee. Conservative MP Larry Miller, the committee chair, brushed aside her request.
In response to mounting pressure, the Conservative government, through Transport Canada, imposed a series of country-wide directives on July 23 which it claimed set more rigorous standards of brake application and procedures for leaving trains unattended. It also outlawed one-person crews, which were standard with Montreal, Maine and Atlantic. Meanwhile, Quebec police raided the headquarters of MM&A in Farnham, Que., after the firm failed to pay more than $4 million (as of July 30, close to $8 million) in disaster cleanup bills, forcing the town and the provincial government to pick up the tab.
Law suits, court challenges, enquiries and studies will, no doubt, drag on for years. Justice, however, will require more than those avenues have to offer.
Canada, Environment, First Nations

Tar Sands Toxic Deeds Go Unpunished

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Less than 1 per cent of the environmental violations arising out of Alberta’s tar sands have been penalized. So says a survey by Kevin Timoney, a biologist and environmental consultant, and Peter Lee of Global Forest Watch.
The authors of the 677-page report found the same problems recurring again and again, suggesting that the province’s claims to having strict control over the industry’s environmental impact are false.
“What we’re seeing is the tip of the iceberg”, said Timoney, who filed a massive number of Freedom of Information applications, starting in 2008, in order to see details of breaches of environmental regulations and conditions that were kept under wraps in Alberta Environment’s data library in Edmonton.
Timoney and Lee eventually compiled a list of 9,262 infractions since 1996 – ranging from spills into the Athabasca River, to excessive smokestack emissions, to the discovery of random waste dumps in the bush.
Nearly two-thirds of the violations were of air quality, usually involving emissions of gases like suphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide in excess of the hourly limits on the tar sands facilities.
Of the total number of incidents, about 4,000 were reported as “alleged contraventions” – a breach in a facility’s license conditions. Since 1996, the Alberta government took action in 37 of those cases for an enforcement rate of 0.9 per cent.
The median fine was $4,500. Call it a minor cost of doing this dirty, but highly profitable business.
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