Stephen Harper wages war on environmental activists

http://www.straight.com/article-607641/vancouver/harper-wages-war-environmental-activists

Stephen Harper wages war on environmental activists opposing Northern
Gateway Pipeline Project

Vancouver protesters gathered outside Science World to air their
concerns during a recent visit by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. -
Stephen Thomson photo


Why won’t the prime minister shut up and allow the regulator to do its job?

By Matthew Kalkman, February 16, 2012

Sometimes I feel like I am in a terrible nightmare and I can’t wake up.
I had that feeling again when I read the story about fellow citizens
being labelled by a Prime Minister’s Office official as “enemies of the
government of Canada” solely for the issues they had with our
government’s environmental policy. This nightmare only continued with
the release of secret memos branding aboriginal communities as
“adversaries” in the Enbridge pipeline debate, and took on global
proportions when the attacks persisted during Prime Minister Stephen
Harper’s trip to China. I gave myself a pinch, and yet still found I was
in a country that was more and more difficult to recognize as the
progressive Canada we all felt we inhabited. We now see Harper’s attack
machine—which mastered its tactics against former Liberal leaders like
Michael Ignatieff and Stéphane Dion—being pointed at Canadian citizens
who care about having an honest discussion on our environment. This has
become all too Orwellian.

The federal government empowered a Joint Review Panel under the Canadian
Environmental Assessment Act and the National Energy Board Act to rule
on the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline Project. Enbridge hopes to
build two 1,177-kilometre pipelines between Alberta and Kitimat to
facilitate the export of oil to Asia.

The PMO’s criticism of environmental groups that are intervenors in the
regulatory process of the pipeline hinders the integrity of the process
itself. It also calls into question the ability of charitable
foundations, which fund intervenors, to have views that differ from the
Harper government. This is failed leadership.

The government should not be meddling in the jurisdiction of the
regulator, which was created to ensure arm’s-length decision-making on
the environmental-review process. Moreover, the very fact that Harper
has not taken seriously the responsibility to consult with aboriginal
communities will certainly cause legal tension in the future, with the
Save the Fraser Declaration having already built a wall of opposition to
the pipeline.

The purpose of setting up the Joint Review Panel process was to make
sure that the decision would focus on what is best for the country, and
not on what is best for the special-interest groups supporting Harper’s
reelection. For the regulatory process to work effectively, it must be
able to make conclusions that are free from government interference.
Within the realm of judicial independence—and the Joint Review Panel is
a quasijudicial tribunal—former Supreme Court of Canada chief justice
Brian Dickson stated the law very clearly in the case of R. v. Beauregard:

“Historically, the generally accepted core of the principle of judicial
independence has been the complete liberty of individual judges to hear
and decide the cases that come before them: no outsider—be it
government, pressure group, individual or even another judge—should
interfere in fact, or attempt to interfere, with the way in which a
judge conducts his or her case and makes his or her decision.”

This interference by the PMO has led three nonprofit environmental
organizations to file a motion with the panel asking to “determine if
recent statements by the Prime Minister or by the Minister of Natural
Resources who is responsible for the National Energy Board constitute an
attempt by those Ministers to undermine or have had the effect of
undermining the Panel hearing process”. One can only hope that this
regulatory body—which is headquartered in the same city Stephen Harper
represents in Parliament—can make a decision without fear of having it
overturned at the cabinet table.

This attack is only the beginning of the assault on the
environmental-assessment process, and a continuance of Canada’s
withdrawal of leadership on the environment. What is our country’s plan
on climate change, now that Harper has pulled us out of Kyoto? The
answer is that we have no plan. My time as a delegate at the United
Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen led me to the
realization that our government has completely ignored the long-term
threats to our country.

This inspired me to write the book New Liberalism, which calls for the
adoption of what I call “timeless freedom”. This is the notion that we
must preserve the freedom we enjoy today for future generations. Through
no effort of our own, we were born into the most fortunate of
circumstances, and we have a moral obligation to ensure that same level
of freedom for our children and grandchildren.

Our next progressive government must make it a priority to bring forward
a new politics of sustainability and intergenerational equity. This
means we have to tackle climate change, the growing debt and deficits,
and the growing inequalities in our society to enable a better future
for all Canadians. The first step is to ensure the independence of our
regulatory decision makers.

Matthew Kalkman is a recent graduate of the London School of Economics
and is working as an intern at a nonprofit environmental legal organization.

--
Jamie Kneen, Communications & Outreach Coordinator, MiningWatch Canada
http://www.miningwatch.ca/