It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
TORONTO -- Starbucks Canada says it's raising wages and benefits amid “critical staffing shortages'' and a renewed commitment to the well-being of its workers. Beginning in January, the company says its starting wages will be increased to a dollar above provincial minimums, while workers who have been with the company a year will receive a six to 10 per cent pay hike.
It says the wage boost, which will impact about 20,000 workers, will bring the hourly pay for baristas to between $13 and $20.45, depending on location and tenure, while shift supervisors will earn between $15.85 and $24.95.
Starbucks also says it's providing every hourly worker in Canada with three paid shifts off per calendar year for sick days or family care, along with ongoing perks such as free coffee, a subscription to a meditation app and health and dental care.
The higher wages and benefits come as the coffee company says it has added recruiting specialists to address “critical staffing shortages and difficulties'' in some markets.
Starbucks, which refers to workers as partners, says it's also investing in additional training and new technologies and processes to improve day-to-day tasks in its coffee shops.
The company says the operational and wage investments are designed to retain and recruit the best people and “affirm Starbucks as one of the very best jobs in retail.''
Lori Digulla, senior vice-president and general manager of Starbucks Canada, says the company's investments will improve wages, training and in-store experiences for workers.
“We have been through some of the toughest times our world has ever seen and although we are still living through this immense change, we are moving forward thoughtfully and courageously to always be a company that cares for its people,'' she said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Our partners are the heartbeat of Starbucks and what will always remain is our commitment to sharing our success with our partners.''
Starbucks has about 963 company operated stores and 441 licensed stores in Canada.
Loblaw Makes Its Profits by Paying Workers Poverty Wages
For Canada’s third-richest family, the Westons, the pandemic has meant windfall profits. Now, workers at Loblaw-owned supermarket chain Real Canadian Superstore are threatening a strike for better pay and conditions.
On September 24, 97 percent of Alberta’s Real Canadian Superstore workers voted to strike.
10.28.2021 Ten thousand Real Canadian Superstore workers across Canada’s westernmost prairie province, Alberta, appear poised to strike against pandemic pay cuts by Loblaw Companies Ltd. Even after Loblaw reported a banner year in profits and revenue, the company refuses to reinstate their $2 per hour “hero pay.”
This past summer, after over a year of rapid profits, Loblaw decided that its unionized Alberta Superstore workers were due for wage and hour cuts. Superstore’s August 2021 offer, posted on the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Local 401 website, would have cut the hours qualifying for “night premium pay” and cut guaranteed hours for staff. The union pushed for the company to reinstate the $2 per hour “hero pay” it cut last summer, but management refuses to budge.
On September 24, 97 percent of Alberta’s Superstore workers voted to strike. The company responded by retracting its main demand for hours cuts and offering an immediate wage increase of up to $0.90 per hour instead, plus an increase of as much as 1.5 percent in the first year of employment. This minor improvement is only about half the rate of the hourly pay it cut last spring. The latest struggle is yet another chapter in the company’s ongoing efforts to maximize the “flexibility” of its operations by busting unions, cutting wages, and gutting job security.
“The Well-Being of Our Colleagues Remains Our Top Priority. Be Well.”
The cutback led to a strike by workers at Loblaw-owned Dominion grocery stores in Newfoundland. The strike lasted twelve weeks, persevering in the face of a heavy police presence and threats of arrest. The workers, unfortunately, only won a $0.35 increase in the first year.
In lieu of pay increase, all 220,000 workers received a note from the company’s scarf-enthusiast CEO, Galen Weston Jr, justifying the cut on the grounds that management was “confident our colleagues are operating safely and effectively in a new normal.” Lest he seem cold, Weston ended his letter by assuring the low-wage workers: “Your safety and the well-being of our colleagues remain our top priority. Be well.” To date, thirty of Alberta’s forty Superstore locations have reported COVID-19 outbreaks.This struggle is yet another chapter in the company’s ongoing efforts to maximize the ‘flexibility’ of its operations by busting unions, cutting wages, and gutting job security.
Immediately following the wage cut, Bloomberg reported, the company’s shares rose by 2 percent. One Desjardins Securities analyst called the cut “a slight positive for the industry as wages account for the majority of the pandemic-related costs.” Throughout 2020, according to the company’s most recent annual information form, Loblaw’s revenues grew to $52.7 billion. Loblaw reported a profit of nearly $400 million and raised its dividend by 3.2 percent. As of April of this year, Galen Weston Jr increased his own reported wealth, as part of Canada’s third-richest family, from $8.8 billion in March 2020 to $13.4 billion.
It may seem strange that an enterprise as large and as profitable as Loblaw Companies Ltd. is willing to provoke two strikes involving tens of thousands of workers in order to block a $2 pay increase. However, it is in keeping with management’s long-standing strategy of keeping workers’ expectations low.
The same month the company introduced its $2 pay cut, Weston coauthored a report for the Business Council of Canada entitled “We’ve Flattened The Curve, Now What?” The authors of the report complained about the money the federal government had spent supporting workers left unemployed by the effects of COVID-19. These supports, they argued, meant that “employees lack incentives to return.”
This complaint was not without precedent. Back in 2018, Loblaw rejected a credit union proposal to pay its workers a “living wage” — described in the proposal as “the income necessary to support families in specific communities.” Notably, the directors opposed the motion because it would “oversimplify” the ways in which Loblaw sets compensation “and restrict its competitive flexibility.”
This flexibility is dependent on a workforce desperate for poverty wages. That the paltry offerings of federal COVID-19 supports worked to interfere with the company’s modus operandi is a sad testimony to its business strategy of exploiting destitution and need. Building an Empire Through Low Pay and Labor Discipline
The scale of Loblaw’s enterprise is vast. Through its long history, it has grown its profits enormously by keeping wages low. Soon after its wartime expansion, the company was, Gerald Caplan notes, a prominent donor to the red-baiting Public Informational Association. The association waged a campaign to block both the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the growing Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and to prop up George Drew’s Tories.
Loblaw wasn’t able to stop the rise of CIO organizing, but by the mid-1950s, the company, by then the largest chain in Canada and headed by the “Barnum of Supermarkets,” had settled with a number of CIO union locals. Late ’90s president and McKinsey & Co alum Richard Currie explained company strategy through these decades as a “huge capital investment program” pumped “into large high-volume stores, where union costs were not quite so much a determinant of profitability.”
In his history of UFCW Local 401, Defying Expectations, Jason Forster writes about the ways that Loblaw co-opted organized labor in order to expand the scale of its operations. The company did this in part through a program of closures and consolidations. However, Loblaw sometimes voluntarily recognized unions in order to buy peace and hobble radical labor organizing. This strategy could last only so long as demand was high.
By the early 1990s, that consumer demand tapered off. “We had a problem,” wrote Currie, for the Ivey Business Journal. “Weak management had allowed the store asset base to erode and had provided fertile opportunities for labor unions.” In the ’90s, sales were slipping, and revenue was uneven.
In a period of “slow growth,” Currie argued: “Profit improvements in the 1990s are likely to come primarily from bottom-line cost reductions and lowered breakeven points rather than from the top-line sales and margin expansion strategies much more common in the 1970s and 1980s.” For workers, that meant cutbacks — or, in Currie’s words, stretching “variable costs.”
The company demanded major cuts to wages and job security, provoking four high-profile strikes across Ontario and Quebec. Undeterred, the company reported that the negotiations were a success and its return on investment rose far about the TSX average. When Currie resigned as CEO, he collected a $10 million payout and left behind a management team dedicated to his vision. Loblaw would continue to “reduce operating and labor costs in order to maintain earnings in light of lower prices and increased competition.”
Throughout this period, the company also proved an eager supporter of right-wing provincial attacks on unions, workers, and the poor. Galen Weston, the CEO of Loblaw’s parent company, donated over $34,000 to Mike Harris’s ultra-right-wing Ontario Tory campaign. Harris also named Galen’s wife, Hilary Weston, Ontario’s lieutenant governor.
Poverty Wage Profits: The Long Game
In 2006, Galen Weston Jr took over as CEO in advance of, as Maclean’s noted, “an imminent strike by unionized workers in Ontario.” A last-minute agreement averted the strike, which was prompted by management’s attempt to reclassify stores in an effort to cut wages and benefits. In 2010, 1,700 workers in Sarnia, Chatham, and Windsor were moved to strike against company cuts of up to 25 percent to wages and benefits. At the time, Loblaw’s public relations vice president justified the cuts by saying it would help the company obtain “operational flexibility.”
Ultimately, the deal that averted that strike also froze the wages of part-time employees. In each successive annual report since then, the company has spelled out for its shareholders that it is “willing to accept the short-term costs of labor disruption in order to achieve competitive labor costs for the longer term.” This admission casts all Loblaw labor disputes in a different light — Loblaw expects strikes and factors arm-wrestling at the bargaining table into their long-term business strategies.
In 2013, the company provoked strikes at its Real Canadian Superstores in Alberta. As the Alberta Federation of Labour notes, the company’s demands for hours reductions and a 40 percent pay cut for new hires spurred a 97 percent vote in support of industrial action and a subsequent three-day province-wide strike. In the end, the 8,500 Alberta workers won some small wage increases for full- and part-time staff and improvements in health and benefit coverage.
In 2014, the company purchased Shoppers Drug Mart for $12.4 billion. In the aftermath of the sale, the Globe and Mail reported, management campaigned against an effort to automatically certify Shoppers outlets in Manitoba with its existing unionized grocery stores.
Loblaws operates an internal monitor system for potential union drives at its non-union stores. It is part of the company’s comprehensive anti-labor grand design. What better way to lower the cost of labor then to never allow it to rise in the first place?The company has underlined to its shareholders its ‘willing to accept the short-term costs of labor disruption in order to achieve competitive labor costs for the longer term.’
Loblaw has recently explored the possibility of an automatedfulfillment order system. It has been clear that it doesn’t intend to create unionized jobs in the process. During an earnings call, the company’s president told one analyst that “from a union perspective, we wouldn’t see that.”
In 2017, Weston Jr, playing to type on a conference call, asserted that Ontario’s increased minimum wage was an “aggressive” financial “headwind.” Loblaw claims to have a “good relationship” with the unions representing its workers, but for decades, the company has worked to undermine organized labor in the name of “flexibility.”
Any gains workers win in pay, benefits, or improved job security today will become the basis for the bargaining power they’ll have tomorrow. This will, in turn, empower them to stand up to management’s demands for cuts.
Loblaw is able to guarantee its profits by continually suppressing the demands of its workers — this is the source of the Weston family’s wealth in Alberta and everywhere else in Canada. Workers employed by the Loblaw empire in other parts of the country should take note of this latest strike effort. If workers can win in Alberta, they win across the rest of Canada, too.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mitchell Thompson is a writer, researcher, and occasional radio producer in Toronto.
State denies permits for power plants in NYC, Hudson Valley Bloomberg
Buck Ennis Power plant in New York City
State environmental officials denied required air permits Wednesday for natural gas power plants in New York City and along the Hudson River, saying both would be inconsistent with statewide greenhouse gas emission goals.
The denials of Title V air permits for NRG Energy’s Astoria Replacement Project in Queens and the Danskammer Energy Center in the town of Newburgh were announced separately by Basil Seggos, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
The pair of decisions marked a victory for clean air advocates who argued the plants would produce unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions as the state transitions to cleaner renewable energy. New York state is attempting to dramatically slash greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades under its 2019 climate law.
“Both would be inconsistent with New York’s nation-leading climate law, and are not justified or needed for grid reliability. We must shift to a renewable future,” Seggos tweeted.
NRG had proposed replacing an oil-burning power plant with cleaner-burning natural gas plant. The company said that it was reviewing the state's decision, and that the project would have provided immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
“New Yorkers deserve both cleaner air and reliable energy to ensure the lights stay on for our small businesses, homes, schools and hospitals when they need it most,” NRG Energy Vice President of Development Tom Atkins said in a prepared statement. “That’s what this project would have delivered.”
He said the current Astoria plant will continue to operate.
Danskammer Energy was seeking to build and operate a new natural gas-fired power generation facility at an existing power site about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of New York City.
An email was sent to Danskammer seeking comment.
The permit denials were praised by Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Bill de Blasio and other elected officials, as well as by environmental groups. Scenic Hudson President Ned Sullivan said the Danskammer decision was the “first real test case” for New York's new climate law.
“This is a major victory both for the Hudson Valley and New York state,” Sullivan said.
U.S. Supreme Court to hear bid to curb federal power to limit carbon emissions
LAWRENCE HURLEY AND VALERIE VOLCOVICI WASHINGTON REUTERS
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 29, 2021
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a bid by states, including coal producer West Virginia, and industry groups to limit federal power to use the landmark Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions from power plants.
The court’s decision to take up the case could complicate efforts by President Joe Biden’s administration to issue new and more stringent regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The announcement came two days before Biden arrives in Glasgow, Scotland, for the UN COP26 climate summit, where he had planned to reassert U.S. leadership on climate change. His predecessor Donald Trump withdrew Washington from the Paris climate agreement.
The high court will hear a case brought by 20 states and various industry groups, including coal interests, to review a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to strike down a Trump-era rule intended to constrain regulation of carbon emissions from power plants.
The appeals court had ruled against Trump’s Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule which was challenged by states and groups that supported the Clean Power Plan of former President Barack Obama. That rule would have given the Environmental Protection Agency power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions mainly from coal-fired power plants.
In 2016, the Supreme Court blocked Obama’s regulation – the centrepiece of his strategy to combat climate change – from taking effect but never ruled on its lawfulness.
“We are extremely grateful for the Supreme Court’s willingness to hear our case,” said West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who led the lawsuit.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said on Twitter that the agency “got to work” after the DC Circuit struck down the Trump rule and “will continue to advance new standards to ensure that all Americans are protected from the power plant pollution that harms public health and our economy.”
The court will likely hear the four combined cases in its current term, with a ruling due by the end of June.
On Thursday, Biden secured a deal with Congressional Democrats around a $555-billion framework to carry out elements of his climate agenda that he had hoped would boost U.S. credibility ahead of the COP26 talks.
But tough intraparty negotiations led Democrats to drop a key clean-electricity proposal that would have slashed power plant emissions by encouraging a rapid shift to renewable energy. Losing that Clean Electricity Payment Program put pressure on the EPA to come up with new power plant regulations.
The Supreme Court case will delay that effort.
“As a practical matter, this will almost certainly prevent the Biden Administration from moving forward with a new rule to regulate carbon emissions from the power sector,” said Jeff Holmstead, a former assistant administrator and lawyer at Bracewell.
Ben Levitan, a senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund, which is a party to the case, said the group will “firmly defend EPA’s authority and responsibility to protect American families from the clear and present danger of climate pollution emitted by power plants.”
Canada underestimating carbon emissions from forestry sector, report suggests
A new environmental report suggests that Canada could be drastically underestimating the carbon emissions from the forestry sector. The report also noted that while Canada's reporting model is used worldwide, it may not be the most accurate way of assessing the industry's true carbon footprint.
Climate change means Arctic may no longer be a safe haven for nesting birds
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New predators, diseases and shifting weather patterns
A polar bear causes chaos in a colony of thick-billed murres, photographed on Coats Island (Appatuurjuaq), Nunavut in July, 2011. (Kyle Elliott)
Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of a CBC News initiative entitled Our Changing Planet to show and explain the effects of climate change and what is being done about it.
Wildlife research scientist Paul Smith is a lot like the birds he studies: every spring, when the ice recedes, he migrates north to the Arctic. But while he's been able to adapt to the changing climate, the nesting birds have not been so lucky in the face of new threats.
Historically, in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, when migratory birds would sit on their nests in June and July to incubate their eggs, polar bears were still out on the ice eating seals.
These days, Smith has witnessed an earlier ice melt that leads to bears coming to shore sooner. That means the birds' breeding ground becomes a snack bar.
"The bears are swimming onto islands where there are nesting colonies of birds, and gobbling up thousands of eggs," said Smith, who works for the National Wildlife Research Centre at Environment and Climate Change Canada.
An eider duck is pictured on Southampton Island, Nunavut. Polar bear incursions on the birds' nesting colonies have increased by more than seven times since the 1980s, according to a study co-authored by Smith and Grant Gilchrist. (Grant Gilchrist/Twitter)
In recent years, Inuit elders have reported seeing more bears near their communities, which has led to deadly attacks in some cases. Smith and his fellow research scientists stopped sleeping in tents and now stay in small cabins, surrounded by electric fences.
"One bear can eat a thousand eggs in a sitting, and wipe out an entire nesting colony island, and that's it for that year for those birds," Smith said.
It's a lose-lose situation — the eggs are not enough to substitute a polar bear's traditional diet of seals, which they can't access once the ice melts — and yet the loss of all those eggs is a major blow to the local population of birds.
New predators, parasites and pathogens
A polar bear enjoys a snack of eider eggs on East Bay Island, Nunavut, in 2017. (Evan Richardson/Environment and Climate Change Canada)
A recent qualitative review paper argues that the introduction of new predators is one example of how climate change is eroding the benefits of northward migration for birds, insects and other species around the world.
The authors suggest the Arctic is no longer the safe harbour for breeding and nesting that it once was.
Research scientist Paul Smith, left, is pictured with long-time research assistant Josiah Nakoolak, right. Smith has been doing summer fieldwork in the Arctic for the past 20 years in collaboration with local Inuit experts. ( Grant Gilchrist/Environment and Climate Change Canada)
He said it's difficult to know what will happen if climate change continues at this rate — some birds might stop migrating or migrate differently, while others may not be able to adapt.
One of the studies cited by the paper has had some of its claims contested by other scientists, including Smith, who said the new report exaggerates some specifics, such as the rates of predation of shorebirds.
Still, Smith said the report raises important ideas about climate change and the benefits of migration.
Have questions about COP26 or climate science, policy or politics? Email us: ask@cbc.ca. Your input helps inform our coverage.
"Migratory birds definitely are susceptible to climate change more so than other animals, because they're travelling through a whole bunch of different environments throughout the year," Smith said.
Migratory shorebirds in decline
The rufa red knot has one of the longest migrations among bird species, and its numbers are in steep decline. During an annual count in the spring of 2021, conservationists found numbers of the shore birds had dropped to the lowest since tallies began 40 years ago. (Submitted by May Haga)
The Arctic is warming at more than twice the global average, and how that factors into the decline of certain bird populations is a topic experts say should be studied more — especially when it's well known that these species are already dealing with more pressures and threats along their flight north.
Ted Chesky, naturalist director with Nature Canada, said climate change can, for instance, change the dates when certain insects hatch. This means food might not be available at a specific location where birds stop on their flight north.
"The birds arrive, and there's no food there. You're driving across a long distance and you get to a gas station and you're almost out of gas, and there's nothing there," Chesky said.
Every year, the terracotta-orange coloured birds travel 30,000 kilometers round-trip between Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago at the southernmost tip of South America, and the Canadian Arctic, where they breed. The red knot has one of the longest migrations of the bird kingdom, and that makes the bird more vulnerable to the ripple effects of climate change along its journey.
"Basically, they're travelling along the entire length of the hemisphere — expecting certain conditions at certain times — and everything is out of whack because of climate change," Smith said.
Researchers say they're concerned about what will happen if, year after year, the birds that survive their risky journey north arrive in the Arctic only to discover the weather or food supply isn't favourable for nesting.
"Sometimes, they'll even just turn around and start their leisurely migration back because they know it's not worth the energy," Chesky said. "If that happens over successive years, then you start losing generations of birds."
Eider ducks survive cholera, only to face new predator
Even when birds do survive or adapt to new threats in the Arctic, it's often only one of several shifting conditions they're up against.
Grant Gilchrist, a research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, was part of a team of scientists who worked with Inuit experts to investigate an avian cholera outbreak that was killing off an Arctic colony of eiders, birds that had never been exposed to it before. Their findings were published in 2016.
Gilchrist said it's impossible to know definitively whether the spread of avian cholera was caused directly by climate change.
Since that study, the eiders have developed antibodies and fewer members of the colony are dying off as a result of the disease. But, that's not the only threat the local population is facing.
"The colony is not recovering," Gilchrist said.
That's because polar bears are eating their eggs, which has resulted in "almost complete reproductive failure of the colony for the last five to seven years," he said. In other words, the eiders' offspring aren't surviving.
Experts say it's difficult to predict exactly what will happen to birds who rely on the safe haven of the Arctic to breed, but they generally agree that if the world continues on the path that it's on right now, it doesn't bode well.
The complex domino effects of climate change on vulnerable species is exactly why, researchers say, it is essential that leaders commit to measures to cut emissions and slow the rate of climate change, while also putting conservation measures into place to protect vital habitats.
"Major societal change in the way we live, making our economies more circular, respecting nature, these things are all a fundamental part of where we've got to go," Chesky said.
WATCH | Arctic nations discuss the perils of a warming climate:
Alberta has much on the line as UN climate conference gets set to begin
By Amanda Stephenson The Canadian Press Posted October 30, 2021
Oilfield pumpjack on an oil well, foreground, and wind energy turbines on a wind farm near Carmangay, Alberta on Sept. 10. 2020.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS IMAGES/Larry MacDougal)
As world leaders descend on Glasgow this week for the start of the 2021 UN Climate Conference, Alberta, the Canadian jurisdiction with perhaps the most on the line, will be watching.
COP26, as it is known, will be the most significant global climate change summit since Paris in 2015.
At that time, Canada committed to reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, with the aim of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
That target led directly to a number of actions taken by the Trudeau government, including the introduction of a federal price on carbon and a clean fuel standard that is on the way.
The federal government has since raised the bar for its own emissions reductions ambitions, saying it now aims for a 40 to 45 per cent reduction by 2035. To help meet that target, the government has announced five-year emissions reductions targets for the oil and gas industry as well as regulations around methane.
These types of policy implications are the reason why many in Alberta — home to Canada’s oil and gas industry — will be closely watching to see what comes of the Glasgow summit.
“It’s important. It does have influence on policy and the development of the resources,” said Tristan Goodman, president of the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada, a lobby group that represents oil and gas companies.
Goodman said while in the past, the oil and gas industry may have looked to the UN climate summits with a sense of trepidation, that’s no longer the case. Since Paris, Goodman said, the industry has undergone a sea change in its understanding of the climate change issue, with many companies making net-zero commitments of their own and investing in everything from hydrogen to carbon capture and storage to wind power.
“Most of the energy companies in Canada, they know they’re going through an energy transition. And they’ve moved well past acceptance of that, into looking at the opportunities,” Goodman said.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) will send its own delegation to the Glasgow summit, including CAPP president Tim McMillan.
However, neither Alberta Premier Jason Kenney nor any of his cabinet ministers will attend the climate summit. In an email, Environment Minister Jason Nixon said the UCP government is avoiding non-essential travel right now, adding, “one more politician flying into Glasgow is not going to make any meaningful difference.”
Nixon said Alberta takes climate change seriously, pointing to the province’s own methane reduction targets as well as its ahead-of-schedule phase-out of coal-fired electricity.
But he said Alberta, and the province’s energy industry, are frustrated with Canada’s “ever-changing emissions targets” and needs clarity and predictability when it comes to climate policy.
NON PARTISAN MEANS 'CONSERVATIVE' GARY WAS A CABINET MINISTER IN THE ALBERTA PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE GOVT OF RALPH KLEIN Gary Mar, president and chief executive of the Calgary-based non-partisan think tank The Canada West Foundation, said many Albertans are concerned that COP26 will mean an evermore aggressive push towards the total phase-out of fossil fuels. He said the energy industry is making real strides on emissions reductions, but it’s foolish for anyone to suggest it can flip on a dime overnight or be replaced tomorrow by renewables.
“You can’t actually make a transition just by taking things away. You actually have to know what it’s going to be replaced by,” Mar said.
READ MORE: Guilbeault says he is ‘cautiously optimistic’ about UN climate summit Critics, however, say Alberta is not doing all it can on the climate front. The province doesn’t even have an overall emissions goal in place, said Simon Dyer, deputy executive director of the Pembina Institute, a clean-energy think tank.
“Alberta is responsible for the largest proportion of Canada’s total emissions, the oil and gas sector is the largest single economic subsector, so Canada cannot achieve the emissions reductions it needs to achieve without the jurisdiction that’s responsible for the largest portion of those emissions,” Dyer said.
Dan Balaban, chief executive of Alberta-based renewable energy company Greengate Power, said Canada needs to use the Glasgow summit as a prompt to move past talk and into action. He said it’s important to get government funds flowing to the renewable energy sector, though that may involve tough choices.
“There are all sorts of industries that are out there vying for government support of some kind. The fossil fuel industry as well as the renewable energy industry,” Balaban said.
New federal environment minister says his climate plan is not a ‘secret agend
By Mia Rabson The Canadian Press Posted October 27, 2021 The new federal environment minister is reassuring Albertans that he is not going to try to kill jobs in oil and gas. Steven Guilbeault co-founded an organization named in a recent inquiry looking into critics of the province's oil sector. But as Breanna Karstens-Smith reports, he is promising to work with the province.
OTTAWA — Newly minted Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said Wednesday there is nothing “really new“ in the political rhetoric between Alberta and Ottawa around climate change this week, and shrugged off any suggestion his appointment will make that relationship more difficult than it already is.
Guilbeault is a former environmental activist from Quebec who has called the oilsands “dirty” and argued that pipelines and oil and gas expansion are not compatible with meeting Canada’s climate goals.
Elected in 2019, he was appointed to cabinet but not to the environment post many expected. Instead, he spent the last two years as minister of heritage while former cleantech CEO Jonathan Wilkinson shepherded through net-zero climate legislation and stronger greenhouse gas targets in the Environment Department.
There was talk in 2019 that Guilbeault’s appointment would have rubbed salt in the open sore that was the Ottawa-Alberta relationship. But that all changed Tuesday when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau majorly shook up his inner circle, moving Wilkinson to Natural Resources and Guilbeault into Environment.
“I was never promised anything and I never asked for anything either,” he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
But rub salt in the wound it has, with Conservative MPs critical of the decision and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney warning that Guilbeault’s appointment to the environment portfolio sent a “problematic message” to his province about Ottawa’s plans for the oil and gas sector. He called Guilbeault’s “personal background and track record” on climate and oil and gas concerning.
Guilbeault dismissed any suggestion he will make the job of Ottawa-Alberta relations more thorny, pushing back with his own criticism of Kenney for skipping the United Nations COP26 climate talks that start next week in Scotland.
“I’m disappointed that Jason Kenney won’t be in Glasgow, other premiers will be there,” he said in a post-cabinet scrum Wednesday.
And he said Kenney using his appointment to pick a fight with Ottawa on climate action is just new lyrics to the same old song.
“Alberta has been trying to pick a fight with us on climate for quite some time,” he told The Canadian Press.
“They’ve taken us to court on carbon pricing, they’re taking us to court on environmental impact assessment. There’s nothing really new or surprising about that.”
Canada’s climate plan also isn’t changing with him in charge, said Guilbeault, noting it was not secret before and it’s not secret now that the plan is to curb emissions from every sector, including oil and gas.
Among his first priorities will be legislating or regulating an emissions cap on oil and gas, and then setting targets to force them downward over the next 30 years, in five-year increments.
The details of how and when are yet to be developed but Guilbeault said Wednesday the cap will be set at “current emissions” and go down from there.
The oil and gas industry produced almost 200 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2019, more than one-quarter of Canada’s total emissions. Catherine Abreu, executive director of Destination Zero, said climate action won’t be successful without getting those down.
She said the political will to do it has not been there before.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has instead tried to balance support for the fossil fuel sector with climate policy, without much success. Canada’s emissions are likely lower than they would have been without Trudeau’s climate policies, but they’re still about seven million tonnes higher than they were when he took office.
Almost all of that growth is due to oil and gas extraction and road transportation.
Guilbeault’s first job will be to sell Canada’s climate plan on the global stage. On Monday, the United Nations COP26 climate talks kick off in Glasgow.
Guilbeault is no stranger to COP meetings — this will be his 19th. But it’s his first from the government side of the table. He said Canada, like everyone else in the world, needs to do more to slow global warming, and that’s the message Canada will be pushing in Scotland.
The COP26 meetings, delayed one year by COVID-19, are intended to finalize the rule book for the Paris accord, including on such matters as how carbon emissions trading can work between countries, and what each country has to report about progress toward climate goals.
WOW THEY AGREE Kenney, Notley both upset with Trudeau's choice of environment minister
Premier Jason Kenney and NDP leader Rachel Notley both express concerns about Canada's new environment minister on Oct. 26, 2021.
A pair of rival Alberta politicians had a rare moment of agreement on Tuesday: both are unhappy with the prime minister's pick for environment minister.
Steven Guilbeault, formerly a leader of Greenpeace Quebec and co-founder of Equiterre, was appointed to the position by Justin Trudeau Tuesday.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said he was worried Guilbeault would impose a "radical agenda that would lead to mass unemployment."
Both Equiterre and Guilbeault were mentioned in the final report of a commission, struck in July 2019, to look into allegations that environmentalists were accepting foreign money to fund campaigns aimed at impeding expansion of Alberta's oilsands, a major source of greenhouse gases.
The inquiry found Canadian environmental groups were exercising their democratic rights of free speech when they accepted foreign funding for campaigns opposing oilsands development, which the Alberta government has coloured wrong depite not being illegal. Equiterre, the report's commissioner wrote, sought to "frustrate" oil sands development.
Guilbeault left Equiterre in 2018.
"I hope that he will send a signal that he is willing to work constructively and cooperatively with us, as partners, in reducing greenhouse gas emissions while growing the economy," Kenney said.
NDP Leader Rachel Notley agreed with Kenney before quickly adding it's his government's job to sell Alberta's industry and environmental initiatives.
"I share some of the concerns about some of the historical positions taken by that minister in the past, some of his anti-pipeline commentary, that is certainly troubling," she said.
"After 30 years of fighting climate change outside of government, I am humbled and I am honoured to be given the opportunity to accelerate our fight against climate change as Canada’s new Minister of Environment and Climate Change," Guilbeault tweeted.
The new minister said one of his first assignments was to attend an upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Scotland.
Notley said Kenney or Environment Minister Jason Nixon should join him there to promote Alberta's industry.
Nixon called Guilbeault a "radical environmentalist" and invited him to come out west so he can see Alberta oil and gas operations for himself.
Some environmental groups applauded Guilbeault's appointment.
With files from CTV News Edmonton's Chelan Skulski and The Canadian Press
Oilpatch concerned as former Greenpeace activist Steven Guilbeault named environment minister
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said Guilbeault’s appointment sent a 'very problematic' signal to the province
Author of the article:Geoffrey Morgan Publishing date:Oct 26, 2021 •
Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault speaks during a press conference in Ottawa, Canada on Oct. 26, 2021.
PHOTO BY LARS HAGBERG/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES FILES
CALGARY — A former activist is the new environment minister in Canada and the oil and gas industry is extremely concerned.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau picked Steven Guilbeault, a former Greenpeace activist and founder of the Quebec environmental group Équiterre, to be the country’s next environment minister Tuesday in a move that oil patch insiders say is disappointing and concerning.
Guilbeault, who was previously heritage minister, succeeds Jonathan Wilkinson at Environment and Climate Change Canada. Wilkinson is the country’s new Natural Resources Minister.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said Guilbeault’s appointment sent a “very problematic” signal to the province, which is the largest oil-and-gas-producing region in the country.
“I certainly hope that the new minister, Minister Guilbeault, will quickly demonstrate to Alberta and other resource producing provinces a desire to work together constructively on practical solutions that don’t end up killing hundreds of thousands of jobs, but his own personal background and track record on these issues suggests somebody who is more of an absolutist than a pragmatist,” Kenney said. “I hope that I’m wrong about that.”
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney in Edmonton on Oct. 26, 2021.
PHOTO BY GREG SOUTHAM/POSTMEDIA
One energy executive, who declined to speak on the record, said they would wait to see the mandate letters for Guilbeault and Wilkinson before they make any conclusions but they are concerned that Guilbeault will now have the power to start and stop major project reviews under the Impact Assessment Act.
There are also concerns about Guilbeault’s hostile history to oil and gas extraction. He vehemently opposed the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion from Alberta to B.C. and has previously been arrested for protesting oil and gas infrastructure.
“This will be very concerning and frustrating for everyone who’s part of the natural resource economy in Canada,” said Heather Exner-Pirot, a fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, adding that a former Greenpeace activist “will have significant influence on how we go forward with our resource development.”
La Presse newspaper once dubbed Guilbeault “the green Jesus of Montreal.”
“The background is concerning,” said Jeremy McCrea, who covers Canadian oil and gas stocks for Raymond James.
“It’s the perception that that’s the kind of person that will have more of a voice in the Trudeau cabinet,” he said, adding it could add to the “political headwinds for an investor that’s worried about the political landscape here.”
This will be very concerning and frustrating for everyone who’s part of the natural resource economy in Canada HEATHER EXNER-PIROT
Guilbeault scaled the CN Tower in Toronto in 2001 while working with Greenpeace to unfurl a banner that called Canada and former U.S. president George Bush “climate killers.”
“After 30 years of fighting climate change outside of government, I am humbled and I am honoured to be given the opportunity to accelerate our fight against climate change as Canada’s new Minister of Environment and Climate Change,” Guilbeault said in a social media post Tuesday.
Greenpeace applauded both Guilbeault’s appointment and Wilkinson’s shift to the natural resources portfolio on Tuesday.
“Minister Guilbeault knows the file, he knows the key players and he understands just how much is at stake,” Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist at Greenpeace Canada, said in a statement. “He’s also a practical person who knows the rules, which is important because implementing and raising the Liberal government’s climate commitments is going to take the whole government pulling hard in the same direction.”
Mount Royal University political scientist Duane Bratt expected “heads exploding” in both the Calgary oil patch and in the Alberta Legislature on Tuesday.
“They’ve just flown a huge red flag in front of the Kenney government and some elements of the oil patch,” Bratt said.
Bratt said the appointment comes immediately before the global COP26 climate conference in Glasgow begins this weekend and is likely intended to signal Canada’s commitment to reducing emissions. “They’re walking in with tougher targets and a stronger commitment to climate change,” he said.
The Calgary oil patch has made the case in previous years that emissions can be reduced without cuts to crude oil production, which is a case the industry and the provincial government will need to make again to the incoming environmental minister.
“The question is sometimes framed as to whether or not we should have a fossil (fuel) free future. That is the wrong question, the correct question is whether we should have an emissions free future,” said Gary Mar, president and CEO of the Canada West Foundation. “Energy is good, it’s the emissions that are bad.”
With files from the Canadian Press
Canadian oil producers eye new pipeline route to Gulf Coast as Marathon reverses Capline conduit
Canadian producers don’t have to be physically shipping on the Capline to benefit from the reversal
Author of the article: Geoffrey Morgan Publishing date: Oct 28, 2021 •
A storage tank at the Marathon Petroleum Corp. Catlettsburg refinery in Catlettsburg, Kentucky, U.S., on Oct. 18, 2016. P
HOTO BY LUKE SHARRETT/BLOOMBERG FILES
CALGARY — Canadian oil producers may soon enjoy higher prices for the crude they sell into the U.S. as a major south-to-north pipeline is in the final stages of a reversal — an under-appreciated event that could lift the prospects of the domestic oil industry.
Ohio-based Marathon Pipelines LLC filed tariffs for transportation of crude oil on its Capline pipeline from Patoka, Ill. to St. James, Louisiana for rates effective Oct. 25, according to RBN Energy, an energy markets consultancy.
Capline was the largest south-to-north flowing pipeline in the United States with a capacity of 1.2 million barrels of oil per day, but owner Marathon Petroleum has been working to reverse the flow since 2017, which would allow both heavy and light oil to flow from a storage hub in the U.S. Midwest to a major refining centre on the Gulf Coast. The company website notes that the reversal will be completed this year.
“They’re doing line fill right now,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Randy Ollenberger said of the Capline, adding that he expected the pipeline to shrink Western Canada Select discounts relative to West Texas Intermediate oil prices to US$10 per barrel. A barrel of WCS traded up 1.67 per cent Thursday to US$67.08, which implies a US$15.50 per barrel discount relative to the WTI price of US$82.58 per barrel.
“We don’t know who has contracts on the Capline, but we do think that everybody benefits in the sense that the spread comes in. You don’t have to be physically shipping on the Capline to benefit,” Ollenberger said, adding that he expects to see the impact of the line on the bottomlines of Canadian producers in the second quarter of 2022.
Oil producers contacted by the Financial Post said they expected the project would improve the returns of their barrels.
“I’m excited about it. I think the Capline reversal would certainly be a positive for Canadian producers and improve pipeline optionality, specifically for the heavier producers, but it’ll de-weight the entire pipeline system in Canada,” Grant Fagerheim, president and CEO of Whitecap Resources Inc., told the Financial Post, referring to problems where Canadian oil exports have exceeded pipeline capacity in the past.
Fagerheim said he would look at using the Capline to move more of his company’s oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast, adding the option of delivering oil to either the U.S. Midwest or the U.S. Gulf Coast provides some “insurance” for the oilpatch by providing a diversity of markets.
Credit ratings agency Fitch also expects the Capline reversal to draw crude oil from Canada, North Dakota and “mid continent” into the U.S. Gulf Coast.
To use the Capline, Canadian oil producers will need to ship their crude on Enbridge Inc.’s Mainline pipeline system to the U.S. Midwest, and then switch to the Enbridge’s Southern Access pipeline connected to the Patoka oil storage hub, which provides direct access to the Capline and a straight shot to the refineries of the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The Capline reversal is coming into service in tandem with Enbridge’s 760,000-bpd Line 3 replacement project, which the Calgary-based pipeline giant completed in September and is now fully operational. The Capline rates range from $1.75 per barrel for shippers committing to move more than 100,000 barrels per day on the line to $3.75 per barrel on a spot basis.
For years, Canadian oil producers sold the majority of their barrels to refiners in the U.S. Midwest. TC Energy Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline was proposed as a way to reduce the dependence on that market by taking 830,000 bpd directly to the U.S. Gulf Coast, which is home to the world’s largest concentration of heavy oil refineries.
At times when gasoline demand in the Midwest declined or refineries in the region were offline for maintenance, the Canadian heavy oil barrels, called Western Canada Select, suffered large — sometimes as high as US$40 per barrel — discounts relative to West Texas Intermediate benchmark.
The same thing happened when Canadian oil production outstripped pipeline capacity in late 2018.
The Capline reversal functions like a “mini Keystone XL,” said Rory Johnston, managing director and market economist at Price Street in Toronto, adding that it would provide oil producers the option to ship to the Midwest or the Gulf Coast.
“On its face, I don’t think it should have a direct narrowing impact (on WCS/WTI differentials) because it’s not really increasing egress from (Alberta) proper, but there is a pretty robust monopsony and buyer concentration for Canadian players in the U.S. Midwest,” Johnston said.
“It reduces the likelihood of big, big blowouts should you see issues like heavier maintenance (in the Midwest region) , for instance,” he said.
“This will certainly help to keep the differentials tighter than what we’ve seen in the past because you’ll have more egress optionality out of Western Canada,” said Martin King, senior analyst with RBN Energy, adding he expected the reversal could help differentials trade within the US$12 per barrel to US$14 per barrel range.
Marathon did not respond to a request for comment on when the reversed Capline would begin flowing large volumes of heavy crude oil. The project is scheduled to begin shipping small volumes of light oil this year, followed by heavier blends in 2022.
