[rad-green] Best way to forge unity is to get Canada to post-carbon future

*https://vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/oped-laxer-best-way-to-forge-unity-is-to-get-canada-to-post-carbon-future
<https://vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/oped-laxer-best-way-to-forge-unity-is-to-get-canada-to-post-carbon-future>*

*Vancouver Sun          November 5, 2019*

*Best way to forge unity is to get Canada to post-carbon future*

[image: image.png]
*Rather than accept the will of the 63 per cent of Canadians who voted,
Liberal, NDP, Bloc and Green for climate action, Kenney fans the flames of
western separatism to try to overturn the election results.*

*By Gordon Laxer *


EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Jason Kenney warned that the worst election
result would be a Liberal minority backed by the NDP. On Oct. 21, his
nightmare came to pass.

Rather than accept the will of the 63 per cent of Canadians who voted,
Liberal, NDP, Bloc and Green for climate action, Kenney fans the flames of
Western separatism to try to overturn the election results.

Canadians feel sympathy for the plight of Albertans who are hurting from
the 2014 oil price bust.

But be careful not to fall for Kenney’s emotional blackmail.

The high Conservative vote in Alberta was normal, not a blow to Canadian
unity. Conservatives got 69 per cent of the vote, 5.5 per cent above their
average in the five previous federal elections, when their vote ranged from
60-67 per cent. Federal Tory dominance in Alberta dates from John
Diefenbaker in the 1950s.

Many Albertans have lost their jobs, their homes, fear for the future and
are angry. But, many misdirect the object of their anger. Big Oil hasn’t
been their friend.

Kenney portrays himself as Albertans’ champion. He isn’t. His government is
spending $32 million on a war room and public inquiry to combat what he
calls a foreign environmentalist conspiracy against Alberta. Kenney is
right about a foreign campaign, if not quite a conspiracy. And it harms
Albertans.

But Kenney gets the culprits wrong. Big Foreign Oil, not foreign
environmentalists, have harmed Albertans by locking Alberta into narrowly
exporting oil derived from oilsands bitumen, one of the world’s most toxic,
high carbon-emitting resources.

Since the 1970s and ’80s, Shell and Exxon knew their business plan caused
climate change. Yet they and other Big Oil corporations talked Alberta and
Ottawa in the 1990s into giving them a sweetheart, next-to-zero royalty
regime and low corporate taxes. It left Alberta’s finances in a lurch and
an undiversified economy.

Alberta’s oilsands are a very poor job creator. $1.3 million in investment
in the oilsands produce one job. The oil industry across Canada directly
employs only 63,000 workers, 0.3 per cent of all Canadian jobs. Indirect
jobs from the oil industry are double that number. Thus the oil industry
accounts for about one per cent of all Canadian employment.

Now Big Oil corporations are shedding workers to maximize profits. Cenovus
Energy executive vice-president Kiron McFadyen wants to ‘de-man’ the entire
industry to achieve ‘zero manning.’

Alberta’s oilsands have no future. Big Foreign Oil knows it. In 2016, they
began to cut-and-run. Norway’s Statoil and U.S.-based Devon Oil fully
pulled out. Other foreign corporations partly pulled out: France’s Total
S.A., Holland’s Shell Oil and U.S.-based ConocoPhillips, Koch and Murphy
Oil.

Divestment from the oilsands and many conventional oil sites and pipelines
within Alberta have stuck Albertans with over $250 billion in environmental
liabilities — orphan wells and toxic tailing lakes. If they fail to make
Big Oil polluters pick up the tab for the mess they created, Albertans and
other Canadians will have to clean it up at public expense.

This year more wells were decommissioned in Alberta than new wells drilled.

Companies and industries that aren’t moving toward zero-carbon emissions,
warned Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, will be punished by
investors and go bankrupt.

As the world awakens to the climate emergency and moves off fossil fuels,
the Kenney government and Big Oil hold Alberta in a fossil-fuel belt. It
may soon resemble the rust belt — that swath of Midwest U.S. states of
abandoned factories and broken dreams.

If he truly advocates for Albertans, Kenney will embrace the future by
joining with Ottawa to manage a rapid phase-out of the oilsands in ways
that support oil workers and their communities’ shift to new industries and
jobs. Canadians everywhere would support that.

The best way to forge national unity is around a plan to get Canada to a
post-carbon future, not by holding on to the fossil-fuel past.

*Gordon Laxer is the founding director of the Parkland Institute and
political economy professor emeritus at the University of Alberta in
Edmonton.*

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