Pipeline protestors need to be jailed

[eyeball]

42 minutes ago, Shady said:

Once we get a government that doesn't stand in the way of the oil industry, the industry will expand again.  As will jobs, revenue, and incomes.  

You mean a government that forcefully bulldozes a clear path for industry - like the third world hell-holes that investors apparently view as being safe havens of political stability. 

[Zeitgeist]

29 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

Sorry, but OECD rankings don't care about Canada's domestic squabbles.   Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol and then proceeded to fail miserably at emissions reductions, even compared to the United States, which was not a signatory.   Today, Canada still lags far behind Paris reduction goals, compounded by false eco-bravado and virtue signaling.   The BS is now plain for all to see.

 

 

But Trudeau has not won at this game or many others at all.   He is now recognized as a failure on many domestic and foreign policy files, regardless of Trump or Xi.    Energy, environment, and reconciliation have collided in spectacular fashion because Trudeau has not only failed on leadership and policy, he refuses to admit that he has done so, doubling down on more of the same.   The Alberta appellate court's carbon tax ruling (and expected SCOC appeal) may be the turning point in stopping the madness for a Canada where nothing gets done anymore.

But which is it?  Is Canada a failure at resource development or at climate action?  If it's both, and it's arguable that it is, bring forward solutions that allow economic growth whilst reducing emissions.  It's harder than you seem to think in an economy where, for many parts of the country, resource development is the bread and butter.  The Windsor-Quebec City corridor, BC lower mainland, and parts of the Maritimes are a different story.  It's easier to reduce emissions because resources aren't the economic mainstay there and there is an economy of scale that allows for major green projects to be viable, such as the deep water cooling of business districts and building rapid transit.  The far north is heavily reliant on resource development, traveling long distances, and utilizing a lot of power for heating.  There's wealth in the ground that can be tapped with an available workforce.  We can't just not do that kind of work.  Basically we have to cut emissions substantially in the regions where it makes economic sense to do so and recognize that other regions are on a different timeline, because these two kinds of places are very different, apples and oranges. 

[eyeball]

1 hour ago, Zeitgeist said:

The problem with Canada is that there are many Canadas. Regionalism has always been our challenge.  Provinces like BC, Ontario, and Quebec were and are making huge environmental gains.  Emissions dropped substantially in Ontario when coal energy production was ended.  Alberta is a totally different story. Even Northern Ontario is like another country compared to Southern Ontario.   

I guess you missed the two big CO2 emitting cement plants Quebec and Ontario snuck into production without environmental reviews.  The problem with Canada is that our governments are untrustworthy dishonest serial liars that neither Conservative nor Liberal political parties never ever do anything about. I've suggest outlawing in-camera lobbying many many times but accountability is something partisans only regard as being necessary for the 'other guy'.

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Having a national climate action plan is hard for Canada because there’s no one-size-fits-all approach on many issues.

No, its strictly due to conservatives not giving a shit about climate change. Full stop.

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Trudeau and the Feds are being reduced to domestic ciphers, trotted out for the cameras to deliver feel-good pablum as comfort food for public consumption.

That's right, forever trying to be all things to all people - deniers and alarmists at the same time in this case.

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It’s easy to win at this game when Trump comes across as brash and amoral and China is sending Muslims to re-education prisons and cracking down on quarantine breakers.

Yes there's nothing quite like having a stark naked emperor parading around in his fine new wardrobe to make it clear what's wrong here.

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Somehow he has salvaged an island of middle ground, but the waters are rough and the fascists are on the horizon.

Fascists, commies, terrorists, ufos...there's always some imminent threat coming over the horizon or worse hiding under your beds with you people.

Edited February 25, 2020 by eyeball

[bush_cheney2004]

4 minutes ago, Zeitgeist said:

But which is it?  Is Canada a failure at resource development or at climate action?  If it's both, and it's arguable that it is, bring forward solutions that allow economic growth whilst reducing emissions.  It's harder than you seem to think in an economy where, for many parts of the country, resource development is the bread and butter. 

 

Then stop pretending that it was ever possible to do so just for climate change brownie points.   Virtue signaling inflated expectations has set the stage for massive failure, even when there are small gains.  Invest in what can be done, not in what can't be done.   Reconciliation never meant destroying Canada's resource based economy.   Majority of FNs don't want that either.

 

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.... There's wealth in the ground that can be tapped with an available workforce.  We can't just not do that kind of work.  Basically we have to cut emissions substantially in the regions where it makes economic sense to do so and recognize that other regions are on a different timeline, because these two kinds of places are very different, apples and oranges. 

 

It goes beyond that....capital projects are blocked or stalled because so many obstacles are easily put in the way and weak leadership refuses to do anything about it.    Even the "green energy" Muskrat Falls project has turned into an expensive fiasco.

[Dougie93]

6 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:

Canada is being pushed to choose as well. The Green Fascists are making a big push. 

Merely filling the void left in the wake of failed state Confederation.

Entropy is the nature of the universe, womp-womp.

[Dowell]

I don’t believe that people should be able to cause damage to other people with impunity, especially by unlawful means. I am surprised that I have not heard of anyone seeking damages in a civil legal action.

[cougar]

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From which we can determine the natives in the area didn't care what they had to say and wanted the pipeline and the money and jobs that would bring.

You want to present it like it is a couple of rogue hereditary chiefs that are messing with the whole country.

If that were the case, you wouldn't be seeing the level of support demonstrated across the country.

Most people do not get easily brainwashed with promises of jobs and prosperity.

 

Edited February 25, 2020 by cougar

[cougar]

3 hours ago, eyeball said:

like the third world hell-holes 

The unfortunate thing is, those hell-holes are still on the same planet affecting the same climate we have in our magnificent, majestic, first-world, royal Canada.

[Rue]

Whatever the issues are, copycats are now showing up at railroad tracks and most of them are not even indigenous peoples showing this has become an exercise for self-entitled guilty white folk who don't work. If they really cared this is not the way to go about offering constructive dialogue. This is what sheltered silver spoons do using indigenous people or the cause of the day to have their tantrums. At the end of their displays, these  twats will go back home to Mama and dinner waiting.

[cougar]

9 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:

I want to see the broken apartheid system end and the Indigenous flourish.  You want to maintain it and take away their job opportunities in the name of saving the planet, the very definition of a colonial attitude.  

What you are missing in your line of thinking is that nobody can flourish in a sick planet and environment.    People have been able to live off the land / jobless for thousands of years.  You will not be able to live without clean water, food and air for a single hour! (think about the air first)

[Zeitgeist]

14 minutes ago, cougar said:

What you are missing in your line of thinking is that nobody can flourish in a sick planet and environment.    People have been able to live off the land / jobless for thousands of years.  You will not be able to live without clean water, food and air for a single hour! (think about the air first)

Is your air and water not clean?  Do you have food?  I do know that good food, clothing, and housing can be very expensive and we need jobs to pay for them.  If some people can't work and need to live off of government aid, the people who are working need to pay for that aid through their taxes.  The fewer people who work, the more the people who are working have to pay, but of course, if the taxes get too high, the jobs flee, and now everyone gets to live in a universally poor dystopia.  The Soviet middle class lived like our poor, in ugly pre-fab housing complexes.  We talk about the right's "Right to Work" being a race to the bottom on wages, which I think it is, but the left has its own version of the race to the bottom.  It's called the desire to have job-killing major tax hikes to provide more government hand-outs.  I do think that this marriage of convenience between the green radicals and the socialists/communists, is what the latter is all about.  Make doing business, especially resource development, next to impossible through regulation and taxation, to pay to uphold broken systems of institutionalized dependence, such as the reserve system.  Jobs are the road to self-sustainability and true independence for all.  Preventing resource development is stealing the possibility of true self-sustainability from Indigenous peoples.  A productive economy with advanced manufacturing/mining technology and a strong information tech sector are the paths to a greener future, because they will create and finance new green technologies and ways of building and operating communities.

[cougar]

58 minutes ago, Zeitgeist said:

The Soviet middle class lived like our poor, in ugly pre-fab housing complexes. 

Our poor live on the streets, my friend.  Don't compare them with middle class Russia or even the poor Russians.

This wealth is an illusion.  Utopia.

 

I do not want to go into the jobs debate.   jobs-immigration-climate change-wealth  Been there, done that.

Edited February 25, 2020 by cougar

[Argus]

23 hours ago, eyeball said:

They live in their own unceded territory and govern it according to their own traditions and our's. In some cases the system we imposed on them takes precedence in others it doesn't. Wet'suwet'en is not in Canada as much as it's surrounded by it.

That's sputtering drivel. All native reserves are a part of Canada, and all natives are Canadian and subject to Canadian laws.

The Wet'suwet'en have no more right to tell the RCMP to get lost than the Toronto city council. And btw, the Wet'suwet'en councils have NOT asked for the RCMP to leave. Your continued insistence that hereditary nobility takes precedence over elected representatives is astonishing for someone on the far left, but in accordance with the way the left can twist beliefs entirely around to suit any particular argument.

"Power to the people hereditary nobility!"

Edited February 26, 2020 by Argus

[Argus]

3 hours ago, cougar said:

You want to present it like it is a couple of rogue hereditary chiefs that are messing with the whole country.

Five of fifteen hereditary chiefs.

3 hours ago, cougar said:

If that were the case, you wouldn't be seeing the level of support demonstrated across the country.

The chattering classes (academics, media, politicians) have been wringing their hands with guilt for the last thirty years, constantly braying to anyone who is in range that Canada is a horrible place and its entire history is one of brutality, oppression and abuse of the poor, innocent native. Of course some people, especially the young and stupid have bought into this and have been busily wringing their hands in anguish over their ancestral guilt, too.

Jonathan Kay puts it very well here, in explaining how the elites have been busily trying to deny Canada - well, excluding Quebec, of course - even has any legitimacy as a country.

While it’s convenient to blame Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s indecisive leadership for the crisis, these events do not arise in a vacuum. Rather, they follow on years during which our political, academic and journalistic elites denounced Canada itself as an ugly scar on traditional Indigenous lands. Trudeau himself has spent much of his time in office pledging himself to somehow absolve Canada of this original sin, and one suspects that his exit plan from politics involves him becoming some kind of dean of reconciliationology at a Canadian university.

Canada survived Quebec separatism in part because our elites mobilized a massive campaign of propaganda to convince citizens of the enduring importance of the Canadian project. But in regard to resolving the grievances of Indigenous peoples, those same elites are now committed to the exact opposite project: a whole vocabulary (“settler,” “neocolonial,” “appropriation,” etc.) and daily land-acknowledgment liturgy is broadcast 24/7 on the CBC, fetishized on social media and even broadcast as part of the morning announcements at public schools. Ultimately, this is why Trudeau felt checkmated by five Wet’suwet’en activists trying to torpedo a pipeline deal negotiated by their own legitimate elected band council. We’ve spent years declaring that Canada is garbage, hoping that an attitude of self-abasement would somehow lead us to “reconciliation.” We forgot that when garbage talks, no one listens.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jonathan-kay-canadas-cultural-elites-have-seen-the-enemy-and-it-is-canadians

 

[eyeball]

2 minutes ago, Argus said:

Blah blah bla

Your continued insistence that hereditary nobility takes precedence over elected representatives is astonishing for someone on the far left, but in accordance with the way the left can twist beliefs entirely around to suit any particular argument.

Indigenous forms of government take precedence over colonially imposed forms of government. Have you read the UNDRIP btw?

Put yourself in their shoes for a minute - imagine someone coming into your country and making the legal system your culture and civilization produced subordinate to, oh let's say...Sharia for example.

See how easily you ignore the very same principles you also swear by?

[Argus]

Just now, eyeball said:

Indigenous forms of government take precedence over colonially imposed forms of government. Have you read the UNDRIP btw?

No. It has no legitimacy. And if passed by the Liberals, will be revoked by the tories.

And your absurd insistence that because natives governed themselves this way centuries past it can't change is again an example of the hypocrisy of the Left. Hereditary leadership is a relic of history. And it's certainly not something any group of people would willingly choose. I remind you the Wet'suwet'en people had the chance to actually vote these people into office and chose not to.

But by all means you go on chanting "Power to the aristocrats! Down with the people!"

 

[eyeball]

15 minutes ago, Argus said:

No. It has no legitimacy.

In BC it's the law. I guess if the Liberals refuse to declare BC illegitimate the Tories will have to do it.

It'll be fun listening to Alberta cheer Ottawa on in the wake of their Buffalo Turd.

[eyeball]

29 minutes ago, Argus said:

Hereditary leadership is a relic of history. 

Well, you better not tell that to the treaty holders that are sharing the governance of my region.

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But by all means you go on chanting "Power to the aristocrats! Down with the people!"

Not even the hereditary chief that was convicted of poaching herabouts was dumb enough to say that in his defense to either his own people or the BC court that convicted him.

Edited February 26, 2020 by eyeball

[Argus]

Liberals discover they are indeed funding an environmental group which has been opposing oil sands development - after denying it and being found out.

The Liberal government has been forced to apologize after coming clean about concealing nearly $200,000 in contracts awarded to an environmental group.

According to Blacklock’s Reporter, Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan said he was “deeply sorry” after the omission was discovered by a Conservative MP from Alberta.

https://torontosun.com/news/national/liberals-apologize-after-hiding-183k-in-contracts-awarded-to-environmental-group

[Argus]

26 minutes ago, eyeball said:

Well, you better not tell that to the treaty holders that are sharing the governance of my region.

Not even the hereditary chief that was convicted of poaching herabouts was dumb enough to say that in his defense to either his own people or the BC court that convicted him.

And yet here you are taking that position.

[cougar]

1 hour ago, Argus said:

But by all means you go on chanting "Power to the aristocrats! Down with the people!"

I see, it is the aristocrats we see in those rail blockades, while their people are sitting at home afraid to oppose them?

Argus I think you are very far from the truth and reality.  Industry is destroying the land and livelihood of those people and bringing increased risks to their women - those are all legitimate concerns.   Their land ownership has been recognized by the Canadian law.  Sending any construction workers and the RCMP on their territory without their consent will be trespassing.  They have endured enough , while forests on their land have been decimated without their permission, land has been occupied and sold to newcomers again without their permission  and now they want to put gas and oil pipelines through there , not for the good of the country or them, but for the profits of a few crooks.

Unfortunately we should re-arrange our lives and try to create other means of employment that are not 100% based on resource extraction and environmental degradation.  Canada does not need 300,000 immigrants a year.  When you realize this you will realize that we do not need to create 300,000 new jobs in a oil sand mine or a fracking operation.

[Zeitgeist]

3 hours ago, eyeball said:

Indigenous forms of government take precedence over colonially imposed forms of government. Have you read the UNDRIP btw?

Put yourself in their shoes for a minute - imagine someone coming into your country and making the legal system your culture and civilization produced subordinate to, oh let's say...Sharia for example.

See how easily you ignore the very same principles you also swear by?

But you’re undoing your own argument. Not all cultures and traditions are equally progressive and helpful.  I would imagine women’s rights mean something to you?  That’s why most democracies oppose the sexist theocracies of the Middle East and don’t want to see those values imported into their countries. Stop pretending that all Indigenous cultures and political systems are of equal value.  The idea of hereditary chiefs, except in a mostly ceremonial and symbolic way, is antithetical to liberal-democracy.  So which system do you support?  I watch our political leaders smudge and deliver land acknowledgments that bend the facts.  The reality is that the elders in your city are not the stewards of the land.  They are not maintaining the roads or expelling rodents.  The religious Indigenous ceremonies are interesting cultural attributes, but no, I’m not going to the shaman for medical advice or letting murderers go to the healing lodge instead of jail.  Get real.  This is the 21st century and we shouldn’t be fetishizing anachronistic practices and imbuing them with more regard because of guilt over echoes of a colonialism none of started and very few of us would support.

While there are some thriving Indigenous territories/reserves, and good for them, in the most desperate ones we see the phenomenon of the prisoner who has become so accustomed to living inside the prison community that it’s almost impossible to think of living a life outside prison.  I’m not even proposing to free people who don’t want to be freed, but when you look at the Indian Act, status cards, and reservations, with their embedded colonial segregation, it’s no longer the non-Indigenous who want to keep this system.  There are many Indigenous who want to hold onto this status, which is incentivized by free though unsaleable land and tax breaks.  So the pressure to stay on the reserve and not marry outside your race is baked into the act.  

The more radical green movements that have joined these protests don’t seem to be helping the Indigenous because they have confused notions of what true Indigenous sovereignty really means (self-sustainability).  Total independence probably isn’t possible or necessary for many of the bands to feel that they are thriving and keeping their traditions alive.  First, let’s acknowledge the real dependence on and inclusion within Canada, and ascertain whether more or less integration is helpful.  Indigenous must make these decisions for themselves, but let’s not pretend that people are more independent than they really are.  

Don’t ascribe more significance to UNDRIP than it deserves. People wrote these blue sky documents, in some cases with inadequate appreciation of the complexities and impacts of implementation.  BC has shot itself in the foot with some of its moves, but that’s another story.  Canadians have their own way which isn’t identical with how international lawyers and foreign service personnel in New York may think about Canadian contexts.  The UN has many imperfections.  It can be helpful and unhelpful. 

Edited February 26, 2020 by Zeitgeist

[Zeitgeist]

5 hours ago, cougar said:

Our poor live on the streets, my friend.  Don't compare them with middle class Russia or even the poor Russians.

This wealth is an illusion.  Utopia.

 

I do not want to go into the jobs debate.   jobs-immigration-climate change-wealth  Been there, done that.

Well I lived in Russia for a while.  You’re right that the Soviet Union didn’t have as many street people, but middle class Soviet living standards were similar to our low income housing projects.  In fact, our low income public housing projects are nicer, though the occupants are not as sophisticated as the Soviet middle class were.  

[eyeball]

4 hours ago, Argus said:

And yet here you are taking that position.

I'm taking the position "Power to the aristocrats! Down with the people!" (your words not mine) while citing cases where these horrible all powerful aristocrats you're setting your hair on fire over are convicted and stripped of their power and chieftainship by their subjects?

https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/ucluelet-first-nation-chief-loses-status-over-poaching-of-elk-1.2227741

 

I guess you don't have a clue about how to even approach the topic of BC's enshrining UNDRIP but of course you haven't even looked at it and you're probably too stubborn to bother so...good luck trying to make sense while relying your own ill-informed and unfounded assumptions.

Like I said by the time you people figure out how to scrap the Constitution, rejig Confederation, liberate indigenous people from their overlords so you can finally get a pipeline built the rest of the world will be powering their homes with toilet powered fusion reactors.

Edited February 26, 2020 by eyeball

[eyeball]

1 hour ago, Zeitgeist said:

Stop pretending that all Indigenous cultures and political systems are of equal value.

I'm not, I'm saying they're equal and so is UNDRIP and BC's laws.

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...indigenous peoples are equal to all other peoples, while recognizing the right of all peoples to be different, to consider themselves different, and to be respected as such...

UNDRIP

Stop pretending your values are equal to their rights.

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BC has shot itself in the foot with some of its moves, but that’s another story.

Oh it's far from being just another story. But you and the rest of you conservatives just keep telling yourselves that because the longer you kick and scream and tear your hair out trying to deny and avoid reality while wafting everything back to the way it was in the Before Times...the rest of us will have tokamaks attached to our garbaraters.