TC Energy seeking to sell off $5B in assets in 

2023 to fund future projects

The Canadian Press Nov. 9, 2022

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TC Energy Corp. is looking to divest $5 billion in assets next year, as the Calgary-based pipeline operator seeks to pay down debt and fund new projects.

In a conference call to discuss third quarter financial results Wednesday, chief executive François Poirier said TC Energy will seek to sell off non-core assets and minority interests to help finance its larger expansion goals without taking on large amounts of debt.

"We are opportunity rich," Poirier said. "And being opportunity opportunity-rich means we expect to sanction additional high-quality growth projects that will further differentiate TC Energy as an industry leader. So there is a need to balance our sources and uses of capital without the reliance on further external equity."

Poirier declined to provide specifics around which assets could be up for sale, though he said that the greenhouse gas emissions profile of individual assets will be a factor as the company seeks to reduce its carbon footprint. 

In addition, he said a divestiture program will give TC Energy the capacity to move faster with some of its efforts to reduce its emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, and reach the target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The company is exploring a carbon capture transportation and sequestration system in partnership with Pembina Pipeline Corp., and also has a partnership with Irving Oil to explore the development of low-carbon hydrogen opportunities.

On Wednesday, Poirier said he was encouraged by last week's federal fall economic statement, which pledged government support for the development of clean technologies as well as a new tax credit for hydrogen development.

"We've been working very hard to develop our capabilities in some of these new low-carbon areas," Poirier said. "Clearly, the incentives that have been presented both in the U.S. and Canada are going to accelerate our opportunity set in our low-carbon businesses."

TC Energy reported Wednesday that its third-quarter profit rose compared with a year ago as its revenue gained more than 15 per cent.

The company said it earned net income attributable to common shares of $841 million or 84 cents per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30, up from $779 million or 80 cents per share a year earlier.

Revenue for the quarter totalled nearly $3.80 billion, up from $3.24 billion in the third quarter of 2021.

During the quarter, TC Energy resolved a long-standing dispute with LNG Canada over projected cost overruns for the Coastal GasLink pipeline project, which TC is building to ship natural gas to the LNG Canada export terminal currently under construction near Kitimat, B.C.

The revised project agreements reflect a new total cost estimate for Coastal GasLink of $11.2 billion, up from $6.6 billion.

In August, TC Energy announced a strategic alliance with Mexico's state-owned electric utility for the development of new natural gas infrastructure in central and southeast Mexico.

As a result of that agreement, TC Energy announced it will go ahead with construction of the Southeast Gateway pipeline, a 715-km offshore natural gas pipeline to serve the southeast region of Mexico. That project is estimated to cost US$4.5 billion, and be complete by mid-2025.

GREENWASHING

TC Energy spending $146M to build solar power project in Alberta

The Canadian Press OCTOBER 2022

TC Energy Corp. says it is spending $146 million to build its first Canadian solar power project.

The company says the Saddlebrook solar project will be located near Aldersyde, Alta., south of Calgary.

It will have the capacity to generate 81 megawatts, enough energy to power 20,000 homes annually. 

TC Energy says it has obtained all regulatory approvals and permits and construction is expected to be finished next year. 

During the construction phase, the company says the project will involve about 140 workers. 

Two full-time TC Energy employees will work at the facility once it is in operation.

TC Energy, Indigenous partners fall out after

end of Keystone XL


Robert Tuttle, Bloomberg News

AUGUST 2022

An Indigenous-backed energy company is seeking $50 million (US$38.2 million) from pipeline operator TC Energy Corp. after a falling out between partners on the now-abandoned Keystone XL project.

Natural Law Energy Inc., a group representing a number of Indigenous communities in Western Canada, is asking for “financial compensation for all the losses of income and the lost opportunities for future income” associated with an investment agreement signed in November 2020, according to a letter signed by Natural Law Chief Executive Officer Travis Meguinis and seen by Bloomberg News.

Natural Law agreed that year to invest as much as $1 billion in Keystone XL. US President Joe Biden pulled a key permit after taking office in January 2021, squelching plans to complete the 830,000-barrel-a-day pipeline.

Natural Law’s memorandum of understanding with TC Energy included possible equity stakes in other projects, according to Meguinis’s letter. But no deals came to fruition and TC Energy informed Natural Law that it intends to end the investment agreement, the company said in an email.

“Following the termination of the Keystone XL Pipeline project, TC Energy sought but was unsuccessful in identifying other commercial opportunities for investment with Natural Law Energy that met our shared goals and interests,” Calgary-based TC Energy said in a statement emailed to Bloomberg. “We have a long-standing relationship with the signatory Nations and remain committed to working directly with each Nation to understand their priorities and seek future opportunities to work together.”


'BAD FAITH'

Companies including TC Energy and Suncor Energy Inc. have turned to alliances and equity partnerships with Indigenous groups in try to overcome overcome opposition to building new projects. Energy infrastructure is seen by some people as a threat to Indigenous land and their traditional resources, though others back their involvement in pipelines as a way of alleviating poverty in those communities.

After Keystone XL’s cancellation, TC Energy and the Alberta government sought US$15 billion in compensation from the US government in a request for arbitration filed in November.

Natural Law was excluded from participating in the case and wasn’t told that such action would be brought, according to Meguinis’s letter. “This bad faith activity had damaged financial and economic opportunities for Natural Law” and its participating Indigenous groups, he wrote.

Meguinis declined to comment on his letter. “I don’t want to put any of our nations in jeopardy,” he said by phone. A phone call to Chief Alvin Francis, president and co-founder of Natural Law, through the offices of his Nekaneet First Nation wasn’t returned. An email to Chief Leonard Standing On The Road, director and co-founder of Natural Law, wasn’t returned.

After Keystone XL was canceled, Natural Law shifted focus to acquiring an equity stake in the Canadian government-owned Trans Mountain Pipeline. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has said it plans to sell the pipeline, which it bought from Kinder Morgan Inc. to save an expansion project running from Alberta to the Vancouver area.

Natural Law is seeking a 100 per cent stake in Trans Mountain and is competing with four other groups including Project Reconciliation, Nesika Services and Western Indigenous Pipeline Group, which has partnered with Pembina Pipeline Corp.

Consumer insolvencies rise 22.5 per cent compared with last year

The Canadian Press

Statistics Canada says consumer insolvencies rose 22.5 per cent in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, marking the largest percentage increase in 13 years.

The federal agency says consumer insolvency filings increased 2.3 per cent quarter over quarter.

However, consumer filings were down 25.5 per cent compared with the third quarter in 2019.

Bankruptcy filings by both businesses and consumers were down throughout the pandemic because of government subsidy programs.

PROOF OF THE NEED FOR A SOCIAL WAGE; UBI

IT WORKS FOR ALL

But filings have been rising steadily as subsidies ended, inflation persists and interest rates have been increasing rapidly.

Inflation in September was 6.9 per cent.

In Turkish-Russian relations, the Ukraine grain deal is not the point

November 7, 2022

Yörük Işık



The Ukraine grain export deal, which Turkey helped mediate over the summer, was saved last week to much fanfare, apparently after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan again intervened; but it is only a very small part of a much bigger problem. The central issue remains lifting Russia’s illegal blockade of Ukrainian ports, so Ukraine can freely trade with the world. That, not the grain deal per se, would do the most to resolve the global food crisis. The international community should not necessarily put energy into renewing the deal, because Russia has never truly engaged with it seriously and instead used those negotiations as a tactic to delay and distract from its wartime activities. Russia will almost certainly try to create a new crisis before the 120-day agreement expires on Nov. 22.

Russia’s veto over freedom of navigation in the Black Sea

While being on speaking terms with the Russians keeps the door to diplomacy open, it fails to address the critical underlying problem created by the grain export deal. The de facto situation is that Russia effectively has a say over who comes in and out of the Black Sea — an infringement of the fundamental law of the sea concept of freedom of navigation. The grain deal may be safe today, but it risks normalizing Russia’s blatant violation of international law in the Black Sea. Under the current arrangement, which Kyiv and Moscow each signed with the United Nations but notably not with one another, Russia is permitted to inspect international vessels of sovereign nations traveling to and from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. Even though Ankara had helped to mediate this outcome, it is an outrageous situation that should not be acceptable to Turkey.

What the Turkish government seemingly fails to understand is that Russia’s full-scale aggression toward Ukraine upended the entire post-World War II European political landscape. And the idea that mediation may help Russian President Vladimir Putin sign a peace deal in Ukraine “on terms that would not be too shameful for him” may be a total misreading of the new landscape that came into being after Feb. 24, 2022.

Putin’s about-face on the grain export deal

Turkish pro-government media outlets have hailed President Erdoğan’s role in encouraging Moscow’s return to the U.N.-brokered deal on Ukrainian grain exports, after Putin suspended its participation on Oct. 29. Russia announced that this decision was purportedly in retaliation for a “massive” Ukrainian drone attack on the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea.

“I called Putin; they opened the grain corridor,” Erdoğan said in a live interview on Nov. 2, broadcast on the pro-government channels A Haber and ATV, referring to his phone conversation with the Kremlin leader the previous day. Turkey’s president, who has sought to play a mediating role between Moscow and Kyiv since the start of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, framed the revival of the grain deal as justification for his continued outreach to Putin.

Yet Ukrainian commentators saw Moscow’s about-face return to the grain export scheme as a sign of weakness amidst Ankara’s own growing role in the region. Serhiy Sydorenko, the editor-in-chief of the reputable foreign affairs website Yevropeyska Pravda, said on YouTube that Putin “fell flat on his face” by returning to the grain deal because he needs the Turkish president’s international support. “Erdoğan pressed an ultimatum to Putin: return to the grain deal.” Sydorenko continued, “…because the grain deal is everything for Erdoğan, he bet very much on it. For him, it is about international prestige, about relations with the Gulf and North African countries.” Whereas Putin, the Yevropeyska Pravda editor added, realized that the world was “not afraid” of his bravado and so was chastened into backing down. “ ‘Russia’s greatness’ was just enough for one smack on the head from Erdoğan,” an advisor to the Ukrainian presidential office, Oleksiy Arestovych, posted on Facebook.

The foundations of current Turkish-Russian ties

Ankara clearly condemns Moscow’s ongoing war of aggression, as it has since Russia’s original 2014 invasion of Ukraine — even as some other European allies were trying to formulate deals that would effectively hand Crimea to Russia. And it has notably sold and transferred weapons systems to Ukraine that have played a crucial role in defending against the Russian onslaught. Yet so far, Turkey has not joined the Western sanctions against Russia, and it has even sought to further deepen trade ties with Russia in recent weeks by discussing additional natural gas deals and construction of a second nuclear power plant.

The Turkish media and political landscape is also awash in uncritical parroting of Russian talking points and disinformation. This tendency begins right at the top. For example, Erdoğan contrasted his vision for bilateral relations with the Kremlin with the approach of leaders he met at the recent European Political Community summit in Prague, whom he rebuked for “badmouthing Putin.” “If you show such negative attitudes everywhere to the head of a state like Russia [...] it will retaliate. If you, as a leader, are attacked this way, would you approve of it?” Erdoğan asked rhetorically. He also said he and Putin had raised the issue of prioritizing grain transfers to “Djibouti, Somalia, and Sudan,” where, he asserted, “people are dying from hunger.” In fact, this year’s commodities crises across Africa and the Middle East were sharply exacerbated, if not outright sparked, by Russia’s unprovoked aggression toward its sovereign southwestern neighbor; and this precarious economic and humanitarian situation in the Global South can only be truly solved when Russia stops its illegal blockade of Ukrainian ports. The crisis is deepened and complicated further by Russia stealing Ukrainian grain and selling it on the world market as if it were its own. Once again, Putin the arsonist is acting as the firefighter.

The fragility of a personalized relationship

Erdoğan and Putin have met face-to-face four times in the past four months, at each opportunity pledging closer trade and energy ties amid the economic turbulence aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In particular, Erdoğan is counting on discounted energy offers from Putin ahead of key elections scheduled for June 2023, in the hopes that this can help resolve Turkey’s current financial crisis, which has featured the sharpest inflationary surge the country has experienced since World War II. Gönül Tol, the head of MEI’s Turkish Studies program, has also suggested that Putin could further interfere in Turkey’s internal politics by green-lighting a new Turkish military offensive in Syria just before next year’s elections.

However, as Kommersant business daily columnist Dmitry Drize warned last month, Russia’s bet on the Turkish president carries risks: Ankara could easily change course if Erdoğan loses the elections. This outcome would prove to be a serious blow for Moscow, as the relationship is more personalized than institutionalized, and it would harm Russia in both the economic and security spheres.

The value of Turkey’s imports from Russia more than doubled in the first nine months of 2022 compared to the same period last year, with trade ministry figures showing Russia topping the list of countries that Turkey imports from. Energy purchases accounted for most of the rise, especially since the re-invasion of Ukraine and Europe’s self-imposed embargoes on Russian hydrocarbons: Turkey has become one of the biggest buyers of Russian crude and coal.

The value of Turkish exports to Russia has also risen sharply, particularly now that Turkey has turned into one of the few remaining logistical links to the outside world for Russia. Indeed, reports reveal that likely dozens of Western companies are bypassing international sanctions by accessing the Russian market via Turkey.

There has additionally been an unusual uptick in capital flows of unknown origin to Turkey. The country logged a “record high” of $28.3 billion in “net errors and omissions” in the first eight months of this year, likely from Russian oligarchs looking for safe places to park their wealth or from Russia’s state enterprises, such as Rosatom transferring dollars to finance its construction of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in southern Turkey. In either case, such inflows of liquidity are extremely welcome as Turkey seeks to finance its large current account deficit with questionable and unorthodox financial policies.

Finally, there are the military prestige considerations for the Kremlin. For Russia — which suffered major battlefield defeats in Ukraine since February and whose Black Sea naval forces are in worse condition than all four of its other fleets and flotillas — Ankara keeping the Turkish Straits closed represents an unintended lifeline of sorts. When the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian war began, Turkey quickly invoked its rights under the 1936 Montreux Convention and closed the Bosporus and Dardanelles to all naval traffic not home-ported in the Black Sea — Russian, Ukrainian, but also that of outside powers. By keeping out all extra-regional naval vessels, this continued closure of the Straits actually helps prevent Russia’s further humiliation in the Black Sea, were the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to expand its presence in the region substantially.

Time for NATO to show its flag

So far, arbitration efforts and phone calls from Erdoğan have done little to change Putin’s political-military calculations. If Russia won’t respond to diplomacy, then it is time for NATO to put a meaningful defensive naval presence into the Black Sea to protect merchant traffic going to and from Ukrainian ports — and not just because the Alliance stands on the side of Ukraine. By keeping Ukraine’s ports open, the Euro-Atlantic community would address the larger question: maintaining freedom of navigation in the Black Sea, which has implications for all other littoral states, including NATO members as well as strategic partner countries like Georgia. But it would also go a long way toward easing the systemic pressures on global commodities markets that have so greatly harmed countries in the Middle East and across the Global South over the past year.

Yörük Işık is a geopolitical analyst based in Istanbul, where he runs the Bosphorus Observer, a consultancy analyzing maritime activity on the Turkish Straits. He is also a non-resident scholar with MEI’s Turkey Program.

The image is courtesy of the author.


The Middle East Institute (MEI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-for-profit, educational organization. It does not engage in advocacy and its scholars’ opinions are their own. MEI welcomes financial donations, but retains sole editorial control over its work and its publications reflect only the authors’ views. For a listing of MEI donors, please click here.

From tweets to 'toots': Twitter users flock to alternatives after Musk's takeover

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press

Nov 8, 2022

Thousands of Twitter users are in search of new places to congregate and share thoughts online after Elon Musk's purchase of the social network last month.

While the Tesla and SpaceX leader mused about charging for verification and laid off hundreds of Twitter workers last week, people started flocking to these alternate platforms.

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Mastodon

Mastodon has been one of the biggest winners of the surge away from Twitter. German programmer Eugen Rochko, who launched the platform in 2016, posted Monday that Mastodon hit 1,028,362 monthly active users.

The open-source, decentralized — not run by any one entity — social network is setup so users join servers, which are run by volunteer administrators and operate with their own rules. The platform has many of Twitter's features like hashtags and supports audio, video and photos, but rather than send tweets, users post "toots."

BlueSky

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has been at work on BlueSky, an app that is decentralized and runs on blockchain — a system where transactions are recorded across several computers linked in a peer-to-peer network. 

It's unclear how the platform looks and what features it has because it has yet to launch, but it already has a waiting list for its beta testing program.

Discord

This social platform has long been a hit with gamers, who use Discord to congregate in topic-based channels, where the company says they can share thoughts "and just talk about your day without clogging up a group chat." Discord users can create private or public channels to exchange voice or text messages. 

Instagram

The photocentric platform has been around since 2010 and only grown in popularity since Meta Inc. purchased it two years later. Instagram lets users post photos to their profile or curate them in a "story," which disappears after 24 hours. Users are also known to apply filters to their images, giving the photos more enhanced colours or adding animations like falling snow. 

Reddit

Reddit operates with a forum-like structure, where people can post to "subreddits," feeds organized around topics. There are standard subreddits for topics like Toronto or Canada, but more zany ones like Explain Like I'm Five, where people explain complex ideas in simple language. Most Reddit users don't reference their real names in their usernames, allowing them to shield their identities when posting.

Tumblr

Tumblr was started in 2007 as a microblogging site allowing users to share multimedia and text posts. Their posts are organized on blogs that they can make public or keep private.

The platform was purchased by Yahoo Inc. for US$1.1 billion in 2013, before Verizon acquired Yahoo! in 2017. Tumblr changed hands again in 2019, when Verizon sold it to Automattic, which operates the WordPress blog service.

LinkedIn

The platform founded in 2003 is meant to be work-focused with users compiling their job and volunteer experience in resume-like pages. Users befriend one another by asking each other to “connect.” On the platform, they network, share work updates and promotions, access job postings, and share news stories.

TikTok

TikTok has grown immensely from its beginnings of popularized karaoke-style videos where people dance and lip sync. The social network's bite-sized clips are served up by an algorithm that appears to know what people want to see without having to search for it. It was founded by Beijing tech company ByteDance in 2016, but its August 2018 merger with similar social media platform Musical.ly catapulted it to success in North America. Donald Trump, a former U.S. president, once tried to ban the app, claiming its owner posed a security threat because it could be helping China spy on users.

#ABOLISHMONARCHY

Eggs tossed at King Charles III as York protester shouts anti-slavery comment
By Doug Cunningham

Britain's King Charles III (L) greets people in London on September 17. Wednesday in York a protester threw eggs at the king and the queen consort. The eggs missed and North Yorkshire Police said they arrested a 23-year-old, who remains in custody. Photo by Neil Hall/EPA-EFE

Nov. 9 (UPI) -- A protester has been arrested for allegedly throwing eggs at King Charles III and the queen consort during a royal visit in York. North Yorkshire Police said a 23-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of public offense and remains in custody.

The protester allegedly yelled "this country was built on the blood of slaves" as the eggs were tossed, missing both royals.

"A 23-year-old man was arrested on a suspicion of a public order offense following an incident on Micklegate in York. He currently remains in police custody," the North Yorkshire Police said in a statement.

Police did not identify the man.

RELATED Britain's royal family can't keep ignoring its colonialist past, racist present

A video of the incident shows the eggs missing as the crowd began booing and shouting "God save the King." Police grabbed the man.

King Charles remained unfazed and continued shaking hands with the public. He was in York for a traditional ceremony officially welcoming the king to the city.

According to the BBC, a witness to the egg tossing, Kim Oldfield, said Camilla flinched a little bit when the booing started but the police quelled the incident really quickly.

RELATED King Charles III makes first state visit to Northern Ireland as monarch

The role of Britain and the royal family in the slave trade has been raised in some of the nations where King Charles III remains head of state, with some calls for reparations. During a Caribbean tour earlier this year by Prince William and his wife, Catherine, activists there called for the reparations and for the monarchy to apologize for slavery.

Queen Elizabeth II was the target of eggs thrown in Auckland, New Zealand, as she visited in 1986. Two young women masquerading as crowd-control officers hurled what was described then as a "barrage of eggs" at the queen, splattering her coat.

ONTARIO

Broad union support for general strike unprecedented, labour experts say

Rosa Saba, The Canadian Press

Nov 8, 2022

Labour experts say a broad outpouring of support from unions for Ontario education workers in their fight with Premier Doug Ford was unprecedented and could galvanize workers at the bargaining table in the weeks and months to come. 

"By picking this particular fight, (Ford has) actually emboldened labour in a way that I've never seen before," said Canadian Labour Congress president Bea Bruske. 

The Ford government backed down Monday as it promised to repeal Bill 28, which made illegal a strike by the education assistants, librarians and custodians.

Fifty-five thousand Ontario education workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) walked off the job anyway on Monday, but agreed to return to the bargaining table — and to classrooms — to try and negotiate a deal with the government after Ford promised to repeal the bill. 

A provincewide survey from Abacus Data suggested broad-based support for a general strike, with 48 per cent of respondents saying they supported other unions in Ontario walking off the job to protest the way the province handled the negotiation with education workers in the province. 

Support was even higher among unionized workers: 65 per cent of private-sector union workers and 70 per cent of public-sector union workers said they supported other unions walking off the job.

Brock University labour studies professor Larry Savage said Ford's use of the notwithstanding clause to impose a contract on the workers represented by CUPE backfired. 

“I think it was widely seen as an abuse of power. And I think he paid the price for it," said Savage. 

Support for CUPE poured in from private- and public-sector unions, including the United Steelworkers and Unifor, which together represent more than 500,000 private-sector workers in Canada. 

The Labourers’ International Union of North America, which supported Ford during the provincial election, said in a statement last week that the use of the notwithstanding clause “sets a dangerous precedent."

“This is a show of unprecedented unity,” said Jen Hassum, executive director of progressive think-tank the Broadbent Institute. 

Savage said Ford will be unlikely to try and use the notwithstanding clause again soon at the bargaining table, such as with GO Transit bus drivers who were also on strike Monday. 

Savage believes three factors led Ford to revoke Bill 28: the broad support from other unions, polling showing public solidarity for the workers and the unprecedented appetite for a general strike, which reports suggested was in the cards before the province backed down from the legislation.

CUPE could strike again if it can’t reach a deal with the government, said Savage. But now it has more leverage.

“They've done something that most unions, frankly, have been unable to do over the last 20 or 30 years. And that's force a Conservative government to back down.”

In the coming weeks and months, Savage thinks Ford is unlikely to try to wield the notwithstanding clause in his dealings with other bargaining units — like the GO Transit bus drivers who also began their strike on Monday.

This unprecedented standoff will also likely give other union members and leaders more confidence in upcoming bargaining sessions, said Savage, especially if CUPE successfully negotiates a deal. 

Bruske said Bill 28 “would have been a sledgehammer,” and would have been used again if the unions had not fought it.

The labour movement in Canada has been internally divided for years, and bargaining power has eroded, said Stephanie Ross, associate professor and director of the school of labour studies at McMaster University.

But it’s clear unions saw Bill 28 as an “incredible overreach,” she said, bringing them together to fight for a core principle of union organizing. 

Letting the bill stand could have prompted an existential crisis for the labour movement, she said. 

Hassum said the conflict of the past week was rooted in Bill 124, which froze public sector wage increases at one per cent even as the cost of living rose by much more, while Ross said the pandemic and high inflation helped create a “sympathetic environment” for CUPE workers. 

Hassum said as income inequality continues to grow, the labour movement is seeing its power increase.

“This is a once-in-a-generation type of conflict,” she said. 

THE FORD GOVERNMENT AND THE CUPE EDUCATION WORKERS CAME TO A MUTUAL AGREEMENT TO RETURN TO THE BARGAINING TABLE ON MONDAY NOV. 8