Friday, March 06, 2020

OPINION | If you're going to evoke the legacy of Peter Lougheed, get it right

 CBC 23 hours ago

This column is an opinion from Sara Hastings-Simon, a research fellow at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.

Last week, the Government of Alberta announced a new policy in the Throne Speech that was not detailed in the budget.

Evoking the legacy of Peter Lougheed, there was a promise that "Alberta is prepared to invest directly and support companies and Indigenous groups, when necessary, to assure the future of responsible resource development."

But, if we truly want to be "like the government of the late premier Lougheed," we can't simply invest public money to grow production of oil from the oilsands as he did.

Context matters, and much has changed in the decades since.

Instead, we should apply the same thinking to the different situation we face today.

In doing so, the history of Lougheed's approach can guide us in making public investments that open up access to more of Alberta's natural resources, from hydrogen to lithium to agri-food and more, just as his investments in the oilsands was critical in unlocking that industry.

The Alberta context

The global context in both periods is complex, with the oil embargoes and restructuring of the international industry in the 1970s, and the energy transition today, but there is a clear difference in the Alberta context.

While today the oil industry in Alberta is dominated by oilsands production, when Lougheed came to power in 1971, the oil industry in the province was one of conventional oil. So much so that there were limits in place to oilsands production to protect the conventional industry.

The Conservation Board, the government entity responsible for approving new oilsands facilities, had even rejected new oilsands projects on the grounds that they threatened the existing conventional industry. 



A shift in government policy to allow for more oilsands production was possible in part because of the decline in conventional reserves that became clear in the early 1970s, as production outpaced the finding of new reserves.

Lougheed acknowledged this threat to the incumbent industry head on. He spoke of the need to make good use of the remaining revenues in light of what he called an eight-to-12 year horizon for conventional industry growth. He even raised royalty rates to increase the government's ability to do so.
Moreover, he did not heed the call of many in the conventional industry at the time who wanted a primary focus on enhanced oil recovery to increase production from this existing industry.

Growing something new

Instead, his investment in the future of resource development was primarily directed toward growing something new in the oilsands, through direct investment in both technology development and construction of the industry.

In doing so, he acknowledged the critical role of the incumbent industry in the economy, both historically and in funding future economic growth, while simultaneously acknowledging the larger opportunity beyond.

While the factors underpinning the threat are different, the oilsands industry today more closely resembles that of the conventional industry in Lougheed's time. Therefore, following the lessons from Lougheed's actions requires more than simply repeating the same investments he made.


Lougheed's public investment in the oilsands was far from support for an existing industry. Rather, it was a strategy that used the public wealth generated by the existing industry to unlock new and different resources in the province.

In doing so, he walked a difficult line in industrial policy, working with existing strengths and competencies within the province but applying them to new challenges that were adjacent to the core activities of the incumbents of the day.

Alberta's natural resource wealth provides an opportunity to make similar investments in today's context. For example, unlocking production of the hydrogen that is abundant in the oilsands resource, or the critical metals and minerals found within the province like the lithium required for batteries, are both new ways to use our natural resources to power the world.

Building on the province's core competencies, including engineering and technical skills, we can responsibly develop these resources. The same is true for the natural resources that support our agricultural system and the potential for significant growth in the agri-food industry.

PETER LOUGHEED WAS A PROGRESSIVE (CONSERVATIVE) AKA A LIBERAL

1984 NEP AND PETROCAN CREATED JOINTLY BY ALBERTA AND OTTAWA

Well respected across the political spectrum in Alberta, Lougheed's government provides important lessons we can use today about the need for direct government investment in developing our resources, but we must get the lessons right.

Lougheed did not shy away from the difficult truth of the future that Alberta faced at the time. He spoke of his despair of short-term thinking, and the need to ensure long-term prosperity for Alberta.

And he understood that investing the wealth that came from the public's ownership in the existing resource industry was critical in realizing this prosperity in new ways.

I believe we would indeed be wise to follow his legacy today in our investments in Alberta's resources.
---30---


Supreme Court of Canada will not hear B.C. groups' challenges against Trans Mountain pipeline expansion

CBC March 5, 2020

The Supreme Court of Canada has declined to hear five B.C.-based challenges against the approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

Groups determined to overturn the project — two First Nations, environmental organizations and teenage activists — had argued a previous judicial review of the pipeline's re-approval by the federal government was unfairly denied by a single judge from the Federal Court of Appeal in September.

The Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, B.C. Nature and several youth climate activists applied to the country's highest court for leave to appeal the dismissal last fall.

The Supreme Court declined to grant the leave in a decision posted Thursday. As is custom, the court did not provide reasons for its decision.

For one of the groups, the ruling marks the end of its six-year legal fight against the pipeline.

5 groups were originally among 12

Twelve groups originally filed challenges against the project with the Federal Court of Appeal last year.

On Sept. 4, the court only agreed to take up six of those appeals. It chose just to hear challenges based on the issue of whether the federal government consulted Indigenous peoples adequately before approving the project for a second time in June.

The federal court declined to hear the second part of the overall dispute: arguments centred on environmental concerns and claims of government bias. Several of the applicants argued the National Energy Board didn't do enough to address environmental and marine concerns when it green-lit the project, while the two First Nations said the federal cabinet couldn't objectively approve or deny the project because they own it.

The four teenaged activists had said Ottawa did not fully consider the pipeline's potential impact on climate change before approving the project.

View photos

Maggie MacPherson/CBCMore

The Squamish Nation and the Tsleil-Wautuh Nation were among the groups who succeeded at the federal court in September, but pressed ahead to the Supreme Court of Canada because they thought concerns around bias and the environment should be heard.

"Obviously, this pipeline has become a political issue as much as a legal or economic issue," said lawyer Eugene Kung, who was not named in the application to the Supreme Court but has previously worked to stop the expansion project.

"What the applicants are looking for is just that the laws of Canada be applied when this project is approved. They've said that it hasn't, and that has very real consequences."
View photos Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press


The Raincoast Conservation Foundation, one of the groups which lost its bid Thursday, has long been fighting the pipeline on the basis that the project would further threaten B.C.'s southern resident killer whales.

The foundation cannot pursue its legal challenge further, as there's no court higher than the Supreme Court of Canada.

"This scenario should serve as a wake-up call," Margot Venton said in a statement Thursday. "If the government is allowed to shirk its responsibilities [to at-risk species], then there is something fundamentally wrong with how Canadian species protection works in practice."

Rebecca Wold Gage, 13, said she and the other activists were "devastated" they will not have their day in court.

"I feel like I have failed the generations of the future by not being able to stop this pipeline," Wolf Gage said in a statement.

The sixth group whose challenges were dismissed in federal court in September did not join the other five in pursuing leave to appeal with the Supreme Court.

The proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion would carry nearly a million barrels of refined oil products and crude oils from Alberta to the B.C. coast every day. The Crown corporation that now owns the line has previously said the expansion will be finished by mid-2022.

A statement from Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage said Thursday's decision "clears the way" for the project to be finished, though she said recent blockades at pipeline and rail sites elsewhere in Canada "continue to be a concern" for the national economy.
It's up to all Wet'suwet'en people to work through agreement: Bellegarde

The Canadian Press March 5, 2020



VANCOUVER — Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde says it's up to all Wet'suwet'en people to work through the draft agreement struck on Sunday between their hereditary chiefs and senior Canadian officials.

The agreement is the result of four days of negotiations, held in response to the hereditary chiefs' opposition to the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline in northern British Columbia that sparked solidarity protests and blockades across the country.

A joint statement by representatives of Wet'suwet'en Nation, the province and the federal government acknowledged they had not come to an agreement on the pipeline, and the company was expected to resume its work this week.

But they say the focus of the draft agreement is Wet'suwet'en rights and land title.

Bellegarde says it's an opportunity to resolve unsettled issues dating back to a 1997 Supreme Court of Canada decision that recognized the hereditary chiefs' authority and the exclusive right of Wet'suwet'en peoples to the land, but fell short of recognizing the territorial boundaries.

He says it's up to Wet'suwet'en people themselves to find the balance between hereditary chiefs and elected chiefs, which will take time, and those talks should include all those in the community.

"They haven't had this formalized since 1997 (with) the Delgamuukw-Gisday'way decision," Bellegarde told The Canadian Press on Wednesday after delivering a keynote address during a seminar on the repatriation of Indigenous cultural objects and ancestral remains at the University of British Columbia.

"It's important for them to have that time and space to bear fruit from this agreement and that's the dialogue I've had with the prime minister."

Aboriginal rights and title are already recognized and affirmed through many Supreme Court decisions, Bellegarde added.

"Let's get the executive and legislative branches of government, start to keep up with judicial branch is saying."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2020.

The Canadian Press

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version misspelt Wet'suwet'en in the headline and in the story.

Turkey is Learning Why NATO Membership Matters

Sinan Ulgen,Bloomberg Thu, Mar 5 2020

HERSTORY BARBARA BUSH ON A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO ABORTION


THE SATANIC TEMPLE DEFENDS A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE


Majority of Canadians unhappy with Trudeau's handling of blockade crisis: poll

 The Canadian Press Wed, Mar 4, 2020
For Australia's Muslims, Indonesian seafaring history gives a sense of belonging

GOVE PENINSULA, Australia (Reuters) - Centuries before Captain James Cook claimed Australia for Britain in 1770, Muslim Makassan sailors from Indonesia regularly traveled thousands of kilometers across open sea to trade with Aboriginal people in Australia’s far north.
 
An undated aerial handout photo of a traditional Indonesian 'Prau' vessel going through waters, from the Anu Hanifa Institute. Anu Hanifa Institure/Handout via REUTERS

Now, a voyage in a specially constructed replica boat has rekindled ties between the Makassans from Sulawesi island and the Yolngu clan in northeast Arnhem Land, providing a powerful message about belonging for young Australian Muslims.

The project is the brainchild of the Abu Hanifa Institute, an organization promoting education, identity and inclusiveness for Muslims in Sydney.

“We ran a workshop with young people and we asked them what it meant to be an Australian and many people really could not identify with that concept,” Abu Hanifa’s Sheikh Wesam Charkawi told Reuters.

“They felt that the discourse that they hear on a daily basis - ‘Go back to where you came from’, ‘You don’t belong here’, ‘Love it or leave it’ - that it alienated them.”

Muslims make up less than 3% of Australia’s population and many report experiencing prejudice or hostility regarding their faith.

The story of the Australia’s “First Nations’” 60,000 year-plus history on the land and their long and deep relationship with the Makassans resonated with many Muslim youth. The two peoples traded sea cucumbers, exchanged ideas and language, inter-married and lived among each other from the 1500s or possibly earlier, according to historians.

The story helped young Muslims “understand that your religious ancestors had a connection with the First Nations people in Australia from well before 1770,” Charkawi said.

The 15 meter (50 foot) vessel was built by Makassan craftsmen on a beach in Sulawesi using traditional methods and local timber.

Launching the boat was just one of many challenges the project had to overcome.

“On the day, we didn’t realize how we were going to get it (into the sea) then all of a sudden, hundreds of people turned up and they began pushing this thing, digging the sand with their own hands - not with shovels, but their own hands - to try and push this vessel into the sea,” Charkawi said. “Eventually, they made it happen.”

With no engine to rely on, the vessel and its 12 Makassan crew sailed for 25 days to make the near-2,000km (1,200 mile) journey to Darwin.

From there, it sailed to the Gove Peninsula, in northeast Arnhem Land, where it was met by hundreds of Yolngu and other Indigenous people from around the area, performing songs and ceremonies of welcome.

Muslim and Aboriginal leaders both wanted to share the history more widely, including getting the story of the Yolngu and Makassan relationship into school curriculums.

“This is a unique and very important thing,” said Timmy ‘Djawa’ Burarrwanga, an Aboriginal leader who shared the Makassan story with visiting young Muslims and helped spark the project.

“They are family, they are people that gave something to us. A special gift,” he said at the welcome ceremony.
Charkawi, whose institute is producing a documentary about the project to air later this year, said the arrival was an emotional experience.

“The atmosphere was amazing, it was breathtaking,” he said. “They’d come out with their children, they’d come out with their elderly, with people who couldn’t walk, who were in wheelchairs, so the whole community had rallied behind this event.”
HERSTORY
Meet the female squad who clear out Vietnam's unexploded bombs 


THOSE ARE AMERICAN ORDINANCE WHERE ARE THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS TO HELP

Minh Nguyen

QUANG TRI, Vietnam (Reuters) - Two petite women in protective gear walk slowly down an empty field in Vietnam, carrying a large metal detector that clicks and whirrs, searching for unexploded ordnance.


Members of all-female landmines clearance team listen to their captain before their morning work at a bombs and landmines exhibition in Quang Tri province, Vietnam March 4, 2020. Picture taken March 4, 2020. REUTERS/Kham

Medic and safety officer Nguyen Thi Ha Lan supervises her teammates, the “landmine girls” as they are known, preparing to detonate a cluster bomb left behind from the war with the United States that ended in 1975.

It is one of many underneath the soil in Quang Tri province, north-central Vietnam.

Once the team is ready to detonate, Lan warns people to clear the area. A siren goes off and then an earthshattering boom.

Lan is part of an all-woman explosive disposal team working under project RENEW (Restoring the Environment and Neutralising the Effect of War) — to help rehabilitate more than 60,000 hectares (150,000 acres) of agricultural land.

The area was one of the most heavily bombed of the war and the U.S. Department of Defence estimates that 10 percent of the 80 million tons of munitions used by the U.S army in Vietnam failed to detonate on impact.

For Lan, being part of the 16-member team has a special meaning.

At the age of 12, her mother Hoa lost both legs and an arm due to unexploded ordnance (UXO), while playing in her front yard.

She has spent most of her life in a wheelchair, but still raised two children. Lan’s younger brother works as a deminer in another RENEW team.

“When I look at the kids playing in my front yard, it reminds me of my mother and I used to cry silently inside,” Lan says.

“My job now enables me to have a stable life and the kids are able to play around me on Quang Tri soil and all over Vietnam too.”

In Quang Tri alone, there have been over 8,500 casualties from accidents involving UXO.

Nearly a third of the victims are children who mistake the round, tennis-ball sized cluster bombs for something to play with.

EOD teams such as Lan’s have helped clear over 5,600 hectares (14,000 acres).

Demining work is grueling and dangerous. Working under the scorching sun and temperatures that can reach 42 degrees Celsius (108 Fahrenheit) means that skins tan no matter how much sunscreen they use.

“It is an honour to wear the uniform of the project everyday, so even if we aren’t able to wear make up or a beautiful dress like everyone else, we all feel proud from the bottom of our hearts,” says Lan.

Slideshow (13 Images)

Lan also appreciates the camaraderie that the landmine girls share, working in such dangerous conditions.

There are still many explosives to be cleared. In August 2018, more than 1,400 items were found in an underground cache. But Quang Tri had no accidents last year. The plan is to clear the province of unexploded ordnance by 2025.
HERSTORY 
Florence Nightingale show presents nursing pioneer who told us to wash hands

LONDON (Reuters) - Victorian Britain took Florence Nightingale into its heart as the “Lady with the Lamp” who tended wounded soldiers, but a new exhibition shows her as a tough pioneer whose principles on hygiene underpin nursing today as the world battles coronavirus.

A photograph shows Florence Nightingale, 86, in bed at her London home in South Street, Mayfair, Britain in 1906. Elizabeth Bosanquet/FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE MUSEUM/Handout via REUTERS

The show at the Florence Nightingale Museum within London’s St Thomas’ Hospital marks the bicentenary of Nightingale’s birth into a wealthy family, and tells the story of how she fought her family’s opposition and social constraints to become the world’s most famous nurse.

“Florence Nightingale’s legacy is really, really important. Obviously, she was a forceful leader. And we need clear, visible, strong leadership today and certainly in modern nursing,” said Fiona Hibberts, from the Nightingale Academy, a nursing institution at the hospital.

The exhibition “Nightingale in 200 Objects, People & Places” will run for a year.

St Thomas’ is one of a handful of hospitals in Britain with a specialist ward for the treatment of coronavirus patients.

“The emphasis on sanitation, good hygiene, fresh air exercise, good food... no matter how much we advance, those fundamental foundational principles of Florence are still very much the basis of modern nursing,” said Hibberts.

“It’s the same old message. Wash your hands.”
Nightingale became famous after she and a small team of nurses traveled to modern-day Istanbul to treat British soldiers wounded in the Crimean War, in which British, French and Ottoman forces fought the Russian Empire.

In a filthy hospital set up in a barracks on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, she saws thousands of soldiers die from infectious diseases rather than their wounds, prompting her to try and improve conditions.

The lamp she used to tour the wards at night is on show at the exhibition, as is the nurses’ uniform she created.

“If Florence Nightingale herself was here, she would be supporting all that’s being said at the moment. She was absolutely into infection control, hand washing, being very observant,” said Yvonne Moores, Chair of the Florence Nightingale Foundation and Britain’s former national Chief Nursing Officer.

“She would also, bearing in mind her very, very long career, be encouraging people that have retired ... to think about the role that they might be able to play in coming back.”

Many retired doctors and nurses have reacted with alarm to a suggestion by the British government that it would call on them to help battle coronavirus if necessary.

Nightingale died at the age of 90 in 1910, continuing to work and to write late into her life.

The exhibition also recreates her London bedroom, allows visitors to smell her perfume and hear a recording of her voice.