The folks from The Line are too nice. The thin cv for our soon to be newest Supreme Court Justice is an embarrassment and the nomination has DEI fingerprints all over it. This is not a move for the better. The Supreme Court should be supplied with the cream of the crop, lawyers on the final leg of a brilliant career. The only diversity in this equation should be a broad range of legal experience, not filling imaginary quotas.
I actually feel sorry for Ms. O'Bonsawin. As The Line editors point out, she may well become a splendid Jurist and one we can all be proud of. But if I were her, I would get more satisfaction obtaining a seat on the Supreme Court through merit than because progressives wanted DEI boxes ticked off.
The Constitution mandates the numbers of Supreme Court Justices and further, allots the numbers of seats by Province. The current opening is a seat allotment to Ontario.
It would stand to reason that the best LAWYER be nominated, and if required someone able to bolster areas of law that are under represented at the SCC. The retiring Jurist had broad expertise in criminal law. The nominee has no obvious areas of expertise in any area of law, and has embargoed the release of her PhD theses.
Picking jurists for cultural or symbolic reasons is a political decision, but not surprising from the Trudeau Government. Trudeau has shows nagging recurrences of poor judgment in making nominations for sensitive appointments. Time will tell if this appointment is a winner.
I seem to recall another indigenous female lawyer, with integrity and experience in government, what was her name again.....
Seriously, it's hard to imagine another government in Canadian history less likely to be concerned about appointing someone with a thin to non-existent CV.
Thank you for the comments on our latest Supreme Court justice. As a retired lawyer, I can speak up in a public forum.
As you say, her CV is think to the point of transparence. I have never known of anything so likely to bring the administration of justice into disrepute as this kind of nomination. This, at a time when many in the general public are losing faith in our institutions (and rightly so, I increasingly suspect).
Many years ago, Richard Nixon nominated Harrold Carswell to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was widely derided by the legal profession for his mediocrity. In his defense, Nixon said: "Well, mediocre people need to be represented too." (Carswell's nomination did not succeed.)
Lawyers who want to become judges apply for the position. No one goes looking for likely candidates. At least they generally don't, tho I know Harper did. While I'm sure she is there because she's 1st Nation's I don't have a big issue with that. Her CV might be skinny but she's on the other side of the bench now and there is no reason she won't perform splendidly.
Any little thing, real or imagined, seems to set people off. They are wallowing in the losing faith in our institutions pointing their fingers and gleefully shouting, "I told ya so!"
- The lovely bike story and the doufus shouting at Freeland were both quintessentially Albertan. This is a province filled with generous big-hearted people along with redneck loudmouths who put brawn before brains. Sometimes they are the same people on the same day.
- Promoting people based on their identity or to satisfy a special interest is risky and can backfire. Brenda Lucki was promoted over several other senior and well-thought of people who didn't fit the profile, and maybe didn't have the right relationship with certain Liberals. It puts the appointee in a tough spot and does a disservice to both the individual and the institution when they fail.
- The new SCC appointment can potentially be on the bench for 27 years and it's very disturbing to hear that she has been overturned by appeal courts on a basic Charter error. Administrative-oriented lawyers seem to get named to superior courts fairly often (politics...), and they can struggle with criminal law for several years while they gain experience (and ironically, they are tasked with some of the most difficult cases, like murder trials by jury).
- And please use quote marks when using 'world stage' in an article. It's an irritating term of art that has crept into the political lexicon, used by politicians to promote their own sense of self-import.
Thanks as always for your great work. The Line really is the best and keeps getting better.
I am a ferocious Alberta Separatist. I’ve watched the decades long battle that Ottawa and Central Canada wage on the Western oil producers. As mainland BC is leaf Licker central, they are excluded from the onslaught. Not so much northeastern BC, which is very much like AB and Sask. entrepreneurial and free spirited.
That said I thoroughly enjoy The Line. I disagree a great deal with a great deal of their articles…but the reporting is as factual as can be considering many of their sources and they always try to be impartial. I read the articles eagerly. So keep up the good work.
If you think The Line is reporting ("the reporting is as factual as can be") you are misunderstanding what is delivered here. This is analysis and opinion on the news (reported elsewhere) primarily through a centre-right lens. It's not supposed to be unbiased -- but it is pretty upfront about where the bias lays and, I think, pretty honest about the strength and weaknesses of various arguments from the left and right.
In many ways "reporting" has nearly ceased to exist. There is "recording" - video or transcription of the statements of people verbatim; and opinion/analysis, which can be divided into working with original documents (eg Rupa Subramanya in the travel ban case), opinion/analysis based on "recording", and opinion/analysis based on other opinion/analysis.
Reporting like Rupa's and Matt's on the Trucker Convoy, where they walked around, asked questions, and recorded their observations and thoughts while trying to figure out what was really going on, is increasingly rare.
In many ways "reporting" has nearly ceased to exist.
In Canada we have a media landscape that stacks the deck against any reporting that does what reporting is meant to do, i.e. hold the powerful to account.
That follows from the fact that all traditional private media are bleeding red ink with only the state propaganda organ, aka the CBC, being flush with cash.
People working in the industry can see which side their bread is buttered on and will understand that promoting points of view that run counter to the official narrative served up 24/7 by the CBC will very quickly doom any chance of being welcomed into the warm embrace of the state broadcaster.
This is at least a partial explanation of why so much of what passes for journalism in Canada is nothing but woke addled happy talk.
It's rare because it's expensive. Ideally, you want someone following a beat, building sources and background knowlege, all of which comes together during a hot news cycle. But, the current state of the industry essentially wants to throw a few reporters at everything --TV wants videographers that are reporters, camera and sound people -- that cover everything. You can't expect the same depth if your beat is essentially everything.
What's worrisome to me is there does not appear to be a business model for quality journalism, which is critical to keep power (of all kinds) accountable. Online, the best business model seems to be generating the most superficial, emotional (even if it's wrong!) content possible. It's the tabloid model writ large and it's corrosive to the broader civic conversation.
In that seems to be a tremendous opportunity and maybe I need to be patient for someone to break out by providing affordable, high quality coverage. Given the natural bias even good reporting has, though, you need LOTs of different outlets doing solid journalism at scale; right now, we're going to opposite direction.
All of which to say: I can see the challenge but not (yet) the solution which is depressing. The Line is a bit of hope, a model for providing quality opinion and analysis. But that doesn't seem expandable to news gathering (although nothing would make me happier than to have them figure this out!)
With the amount of raw recording going on (between legacy media acting as stenographers and live streamers capturing all angles), and the ease (thanks to the internet) of access to original documents, maybe we actually need more opinion/analysis and less reporting as such. The key is that the opinonators and analysts have to actually do their homework - consider the evidence on all sides, think things through logically, etc. That way we can use the power of the internet to increase the productivity of reporting.
Maybe legacy media becomes a paid subscription service with access to unfiltered video, and gets rid of all their anchors/analysts and broad cast shows. Then serious thinkers can look at the footage and documents and try to figure out what is going on.
I am thinking of the best Team Reality people on Covid - Berenson, Gato Malo, Vinay Prasad - and the Line and Blacklock's here at home.
We might be in a better position if the Harper government hadn't done so much to damage public support for pipelines by gutting environmental regulations, targeting charities that agitated against the oilsands, and creating a carbon policy that was all over the map.
And here's something a lot of people probably don't want to hear-more and more investors and companies are actually demanding carbon taxes and solid climate policy. Here's what Teck Frontier had to say about it:
"However, global capital markets are changing rapidly and investors and customers are increasingly looking for jurisdictions to have a framework in place that reconciles resource development and climate change, in order to produce the cleanest possible products. This does not yet exist here today and, unfortunately, the growing debate around this issue has placed Frontier and our company squarely at the nexus of much broader issues that need to be resolved. In that context, it is now evident that there is no constructive path forward for the project. Questions about the societal implications of energy development, climate change and Indigenous rights are critically important ones for Canada, its provinces and Indigenous governments to work through."
"At Teck, we believe deeply in the need to address climate change and believe that Canada has an important role to play globally as a responsible supplier of natural resources. We support strong actions to enable the transition to a low carbon future. We are also strong supporters of Canada’s action on carbon pricing and other climate policies such as legislated caps for oil sands emissions."
There is not one single energy or mining company in the world, let alone Canada, that believes in or wants a carbon tax. What is pushed out the door by the PR team is not what the board or exec wants nor believes. It is what is required to continue to do business in a world that has swallowed the existential climate catastrophe line that is honestly, laughable. Count the business jets at the next Davos get together to find how many of the doomsayers actually believe their own rhetoric. Is climate change real? Probably. Is it existential? Not hardly. Can it be better fixed, without a cash redistribution policy. Without doubt.
Humankind actually sent someone to the moon. Regularly floats a bunch of humankinds around the world in a space station. Has satellites travelling past Pluto and exploring Mars. Developed a vaccine…no, multiple vaccines for a really bad flu, in months. You don’t think humankind can’t figure out a way to solve GHG without taking billions of dollars from the working class and redistributing it to…you guessed it. The Davos crowd. Seriously???
Your opinion of Harpers energy policy is not even worth bothering getting into. And has the feel of something out by the Trudeau, Kinsella, Horgan, The Tyee, CBC misinformation teams. Just to name a few. Sooo, yea…no.
Isn't the whole purpose of the free market for businesses to answer to their customers' demands? If customers demand that energy companies support things like carbon taxes and lowering emissions, then that's what they'll publicly support.
"existential climate catastrophe line that is honestly, laughable". I'm curious where you think Phoenix and Vegas are going to get water as Lake Mead plummets. As your glaciers increase their rate of melting, you will discover that you also have a significant water problem. It's a lot easier to put a rocket on the moon then it is to remove billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere, or turn billions of litres of seawater into something you can drink.
What large energy companies actually want (other than no rules and zero taxation) is predictability and a level playing field. They can and are building carbon reduction strategies right now and have been doing so for a while. The US private sector has been spectacularly successful in reducing their carbon footprint because a careful combination of sticks and carrots have made in financially lucrative in doing so. Texas (Texas!) now generates more wind power than any other state in the union.
Well, no company anywhere wants to pay ANY taxes let alone a carbon tax. So your logic is a bit specious there. They are not however, dumb, they know the writing is on the wall. Any business whose primary function is to combine hydrocarbons with oxygen and dumping the exhaust into the atmosphere without some repercussions is not going to be around for very long.
The rate of change over the last 200 years is the issue. It started with the industrial revolution. We're getting exactly what was promised. Bigger more damaging storms, bigger temperature swings, with a shortening of the cold seasons. It's there if you choose to see it.
Except I remember the big oil boom from 2004, back when the Liberals were in power federally, Stephen Harper was still on the Opposition benches and Albertans were making money hand over fist.
So what was wrong with the old pre-Harper oil regulation system that he felt he had to drastically alter it? That system gave us a bunch of oil booms with far less political protest than we see today, so why did Harper decide to make the changes he did?
Michael Cleland, former CEO of the Canadian Gas Association, flat-out said that Harper's bungling made things worse in terms of public support:
Interesting & insightful, thx. Wish you were covering Saskie politics, there’s some (well more than some) of the usual crazy stuff going on - $500 cheques sent out, limited COVID stats, accusing the Feds of trespassing.
Except that the constant repetition of equally vacuous comments has forced us to accept the reality. We always thought that nothing could be emptier than the vacuum of space. Trudeau has forced a reconsideration.
Actually, its all too believable -- "budget will balance itself", "You'll forgive me if I don't think about monetary policy", "she experienced it differently", "thank you for your donation", "larger-than-life leader who served his people for almost half a century”, "peoplekind", drinkbox water bottle thingy", "We decided to take on that debt to prevent Canadians from having to do it. " etc.
Well there is NO business case. Since he's set the regulatory hurdles are so high that construction cannot be done economically and he hasn't got the balls to fight Quebec anyway we will continue to sell at a discount to the US who can mark it up and sell it to Europe. What good would the extra royalties and taxes do for our healthcare and defense anyway?
If serving a political party or political consultant does not count, then I think Singh, with five years of law practice, counts as the "Thick CV" guy of our political choices, unless Rob Ford, of the large family business, wants to go federal.
To put it mildly, Trudeau, Scheer, and Poilievre between them don't have as thick a (non-political) CV as the new judge, in terms of years of professional-level work. (Trudeau's lifeguarding counts zero, Poilievre's time at Alberta Report, just months). But voters imagine them competent for the highest office.
Erin O'Toole served in the forces for many years, then "nearly a decade" of legal work. But his party fired him. So much for "CV". O'Toole's total was under 15 years before politics, I think with the other three, we could crack 20 years of total professional, non-political work experience, Singh would take us to 25. The judge has 27: as much as Trudeau, Singh, Poilievre, and O'Toole, all put together.
I would love it if someone would ask Dr. Lewis what her opinion is of the mandatory vaccine programs which eliminated Small Pox, and practically wiped out Polio. Also, her take on the fact that lack of mandatory vaccines have seen a resurgence of measles, and other childhood diseases.
It is beyond the power of the PM or the federal government to promise gas to Germany.
There is no way to get it to them without pipelines and there is no way to build a pipeline to the east coast given current environmental regulations and the opposition of Quebec.
Independence for Alberta is obviously no answer as we would have to raise a pretty big army to occupy the ROC and protect the pipeline.
Its at the point where I am embarrassed to be a Canadian. Andrew Coyne called Justin Trudeau a sanctimonious phony, but I think it applies to the country in general. "Canada is back" , "The world needs more Canada", is all performative BS. We talk big and then do nothing and hope that bigger actors will sort things out and be nice to us in the process. Why should they?
I would like to live in a country that had some intestinal fortitude, standing up to dictators, pursuing an independent foreign policy, supporting our allies, developing our economy and enriching all Canadians. That country exists only in imagination.
How can any rational person not see the increase in severe weather disturbances? It amazes me that people ignore what 99% of scientists agree on & struggle to find that one scientist to quote.
If 1000 mechanics were asked whether a car was safe to drive & 999 said it was dangerous - would it be wise to pack your family in for a road trip on one dissenting opinion?
My view is that the above article applies to quite a few contributors in the comments section here. A number of them could look at a report of extreme weather events like that posted at Carbon Brief:
I often wonder about the severe weather occurrences. Is there a substantial increase in events, or do smartphones with cameras and social media platforms make us aware of them instantly?
The community’s around me have all published history books that are full of anecdotal information about blizzards, floods, hailstones as big as tennis balls and tornadoes. In 1910, that would have been localized information that would have taken weeks and months to percolate far and wide. Today we have storm chasers that know more about the formation of F-series funnels than Environment Canada, and post the pictures on social media.
The news for a couple of years straight was not about Ft. Mac burning down, then a lot of California, then Australia, then a lot more of California, then Australia again, then BC...because people noticed the fires on their cellphones.
In BC, the heat dome killing several hundred, burning down a town, and filling the whole province with smoke so bad you couldn't drive across it, was noticed without cellphones, and the completely unprecedented five Pineapple Expresses taking down multiple bridges, that got our full attention as well.
No replies, please, on whether this is "evidence" of your favourite theory. The point is whether the public sees a problem. If the public "sees a problem" in error, go ahead and protest that. Many of the most-liberal thought the public was in error about the dangers of Iraq and Afghan-planned terror strikes, and spent multiple trillions to avert that danger, killed over a million people. The war went ahead anyway, and now, so is a major industrial-strategy conversion, because the public is convinced there is a problem, just as Bush convinced them of imminent threat from and Iraq/Al-Qaeda nuclear conspiracy.
I doubt if it is as harmful a mistake as the American terror wars.
Sure the public sees a problem, and that’s good for engagement in a process to work together to solve problems.
My view is that seeing endless horror stories about extreme weather events doesn’t an apocalypse make. These extreme weather events have always been part of civilization, but today we have a technology to instantly record and distribute the news far and wide.
The RCMP have taken a big hit here in Nova Scotia. The failures at the scene and the obfuscation afterward has left many to have no faith in the ability of the force to do their job. This is a top down problem which politicians have shaped by not appointing qualified people to the head of the force, lucki is just one of those commissioners that were more political than competent. She has to go.
The MCC report could have been written two months after the events by anyone with a brain. Instead it's a pork barrow commission milking the public purse and obfuscation the narrative by filling it with irrelevant issues.
"Is appointing an Indigenous jurist important in a very profound way? Of course! Are there institutional barriers that impede many Indigenous Canadians from having the typical c.v. of a Supreme Court judge? To be sure! But many others were closer. The name that your Line editors hear most often is U of T prof John Borrows. Yet he was ineligible because he doesn’t speak French fluently. He is bilingual (speaking Ojibway), but that’s not the right kind of Laurentian bilingualism for this government."
Hmm, I wonder if the Line editors would be saying that if Trudeau appointed an Indigenous justice who was bilingual in an Indigenous language and French, but didn't speak good English. Never mind that French has had a constitutional recognition in this country since before Confederation, or that millions of Canadians have French as a mother tongue, that apparently doesn't matter for a Supreme Court judge.
I've never understood why some Anglophones seem to expect Francophone Canadians to be the only ones expected to be bilingual, or expect Quebec to be the only province that supports its official language minority while French minorities in the rest of the country are expected to speak English.
It's funny how, in making space for Indigenous people at the highest levels of our institutions (which should obviously happen!), French is expected to be the language that gets shunted aside. Would we accept a Governor General that speaks good French and, say, good Cree or Michif, but not good English? Probably not, so why don't people have the same concerns about a lack of French?
So I take it you'd have no problem if similar things happen to English in places like Richmond, B.C., where English speakers complained about everything from board meetings to store signs being only in Chinese? Or what about the increasing use of Spanish in the U.S. itself, to the point where some Americans think they need to make English an official language? If English starts getting squeezed out in certain places, will that be all right with you?
And there are plenty of immigrants who give a rat's ass about French, notably those who come from French-speaking countries like Haiti, France and the Congo. It gives us a bigger pool of immigrants to draw from. Incidentally, one of Stephen Harper's best actions as Prime Minister was his reforming our immigration policies to give priority to people who already spoke good English and/or French.
I just filled out and sent in my CCP leadership ballot. I waited so long because I was hoping, desperately, someone would come to stand out (positively) in this race. Instead, for the first time ever, I was left with a contest where I ended up disliking ALL the candidates more than when the race began. Between that, and Jagmeet Singh's ongoing determination to play the title role in 'Mr Trudeau's Poodle', I figure Justin Trudeau's got the next election in the bag! Poor Canada...
The folks from The Line are too nice. The thin cv for our soon to be newest Supreme Court Justice is an embarrassment and the nomination has DEI fingerprints all over it. This is not a move for the better. The Supreme Court should be supplied with the cream of the crop, lawyers on the final leg of a brilliant career. The only diversity in this equation should be a broad range of legal experience, not filling imaginary quotas.
I actually feel sorry for Ms. O'Bonsawin. As The Line editors point out, she may well become a splendid Jurist and one we can all be proud of. But if I were her, I would get more satisfaction obtaining a seat on the Supreme Court through merit than because progressives wanted DEI boxes ticked off.
The Constitution mandates the numbers of Supreme Court Justices and further, allots the numbers of seats by Province. The current opening is a seat allotment to Ontario.
It would stand to reason that the best LAWYER be nominated, and if required someone able to bolster areas of law that are under represented at the SCC. The retiring Jurist had broad expertise in criminal law. The nominee has no obvious areas of expertise in any area of law, and has embargoed the release of her PhD theses.
Picking jurists for cultural or symbolic reasons is a political decision, but not surprising from the Trudeau Government. Trudeau has shows nagging recurrences of poor judgment in making nominations for sensitive appointments. Time will tell if this appointment is a winner.
I seem to recall another indigenous female lawyer, with integrity and experience in government, what was her name again.....
Seriously, it's hard to imagine another government in Canadian history less likely to be concerned about appointing someone with a thin to non-existent CV.
Oh, you mean Justin Trudeau? He of the CV that's translucent?
Thank you for the comments on our latest Supreme Court justice. As a retired lawyer, I can speak up in a public forum.
As you say, her CV is think to the point of transparence. I have never known of anything so likely to bring the administration of justice into disrepute as this kind of nomination. This, at a time when many in the general public are losing faith in our institutions (and rightly so, I increasingly suspect).
Many years ago, Richard Nixon nominated Harrold Carswell to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was widely derided by the legal profession for his mediocrity. In his defense, Nixon said: "Well, mediocre people need to be represented too." (Carswell's nomination did not succeed.)
And they certainly are, in Trudeau and his entire Cabinet of potted plants - er, Ministers.
Lawyers who want to become judges apply for the position. No one goes looking for likely candidates. At least they generally don't, tho I know Harper did. While I'm sure she is there because she's 1st Nation's I don't have a big issue with that. Her CV might be skinny but she's on the other side of the bench now and there is no reason she won't perform splendidly.
Any little thing, real or imagined, seems to set people off. They are wallowing in the losing faith in our institutions pointing their fingers and gleefully shouting, "I told ya so!"
A couple of observations:
- The lovely bike story and the doufus shouting at Freeland were both quintessentially Albertan. This is a province filled with generous big-hearted people along with redneck loudmouths who put brawn before brains. Sometimes they are the same people on the same day.
- Promoting people based on their identity or to satisfy a special interest is risky and can backfire. Brenda Lucki was promoted over several other senior and well-thought of people who didn't fit the profile, and maybe didn't have the right relationship with certain Liberals. It puts the appointee in a tough spot and does a disservice to both the individual and the institution when they fail.
- The new SCC appointment can potentially be on the bench for 27 years and it's very disturbing to hear that she has been overturned by appeal courts on a basic Charter error. Administrative-oriented lawyers seem to get named to superior courts fairly often (politics...), and they can struggle with criminal law for several years while they gain experience (and ironically, they are tasked with some of the most difficult cases, like murder trials by jury).
- And please use quote marks when using 'world stage' in an article. It's an irritating term of art that has crept into the political lexicon, used by politicians to promote their own sense of self-import.
Thanks as always for your great work. The Line really is the best and keeps getting better.
I am a ferocious Alberta Separatist. I’ve watched the decades long battle that Ottawa and Central Canada wage on the Western oil producers. As mainland BC is leaf Licker central, they are excluded from the onslaught. Not so much northeastern BC, which is very much like AB and Sask. entrepreneurial and free spirited.
That said I thoroughly enjoy The Line. I disagree a great deal with a great deal of their articles…but the reporting is as factual as can be considering many of their sources and they always try to be impartial. I read the articles eagerly. So keep up the good work.
If you think The Line is reporting ("the reporting is as factual as can be") you are misunderstanding what is delivered here. This is analysis and opinion on the news (reported elsewhere) primarily through a centre-right lens. It's not supposed to be unbiased -- but it is pretty upfront about where the bias lays and, I think, pretty honest about the strength and weaknesses of various arguments from the left and right.
In many ways "reporting" has nearly ceased to exist. There is "recording" - video or transcription of the statements of people verbatim; and opinion/analysis, which can be divided into working with original documents (eg Rupa Subramanya in the travel ban case), opinion/analysis based on "recording", and opinion/analysis based on other opinion/analysis.
Reporting like Rupa's and Matt's on the Trucker Convoy, where they walked around, asked questions, and recorded their observations and thoughts while trying to figure out what was really going on, is increasingly rare.
In many ways "reporting" has nearly ceased to exist.
In Canada we have a media landscape that stacks the deck against any reporting that does what reporting is meant to do, i.e. hold the powerful to account.
That follows from the fact that all traditional private media are bleeding red ink with only the state propaganda organ, aka the CBC, being flush with cash.
People working in the industry can see which side their bread is buttered on and will understand that promoting points of view that run counter to the official narrative served up 24/7 by the CBC will very quickly doom any chance of being welcomed into the warm embrace of the state broadcaster.
This is at least a partial explanation of why so much of what passes for journalism in Canada is nothing but woke addled happy talk.
It's rare because it's expensive. Ideally, you want someone following a beat, building sources and background knowlege, all of which comes together during a hot news cycle. But, the current state of the industry essentially wants to throw a few reporters at everything --TV wants videographers that are reporters, camera and sound people -- that cover everything. You can't expect the same depth if your beat is essentially everything.
What's worrisome to me is there does not appear to be a business model for quality journalism, which is critical to keep power (of all kinds) accountable. Online, the best business model seems to be generating the most superficial, emotional (even if it's wrong!) content possible. It's the tabloid model writ large and it's corrosive to the broader civic conversation.
In that seems to be a tremendous opportunity and maybe I need to be patient for someone to break out by providing affordable, high quality coverage. Given the natural bias even good reporting has, though, you need LOTs of different outlets doing solid journalism at scale; right now, we're going to opposite direction.
All of which to say: I can see the challenge but not (yet) the solution which is depressing. The Line is a bit of hope, a model for providing quality opinion and analysis. But that doesn't seem expandable to news gathering (although nothing would make me happier than to have them figure this out!)
With the amount of raw recording going on (between legacy media acting as stenographers and live streamers capturing all angles), and the ease (thanks to the internet) of access to original documents, maybe we actually need more opinion/analysis and less reporting as such. The key is that the opinonators and analysts have to actually do their homework - consider the evidence on all sides, think things through logically, etc. That way we can use the power of the internet to increase the productivity of reporting.
Maybe legacy media becomes a paid subscription service with access to unfiltered video, and gets rid of all their anchors/analysts and broad cast shows. Then serious thinkers can look at the footage and documents and try to figure out what is going on.
I am thinking of the best Team Reality people on Covid - Berenson, Gato Malo, Vinay Prasad - and the Line and Blacklock's here at home.
We might be in a better position if the Harper government hadn't done so much to damage public support for pipelines by gutting environmental regulations, targeting charities that agitated against the oilsands, and creating a carbon policy that was all over the map.
And here's something a lot of people probably don't want to hear-more and more investors and companies are actually demanding carbon taxes and solid climate policy. Here's what Teck Frontier had to say about it:
"However, global capital markets are changing rapidly and investors and customers are increasingly looking for jurisdictions to have a framework in place that reconciles resource development and climate change, in order to produce the cleanest possible products. This does not yet exist here today and, unfortunately, the growing debate around this issue has placed Frontier and our company squarely at the nexus of much broader issues that need to be resolved. In that context, it is now evident that there is no constructive path forward for the project. Questions about the societal implications of energy development, climate change and Indigenous rights are critically important ones for Canada, its provinces and Indigenous governments to work through."
"At Teck, we believe deeply in the need to address climate change and believe that Canada has an important role to play globally as a responsible supplier of natural resources. We support strong actions to enable the transition to a low carbon future. We are also strong supporters of Canada’s action on carbon pricing and other climate policies such as legislated caps for oil sands emissions."
https://www.teck.com/news/news-releases/2020/teck-withdraws-regulatory-application-for-frontier-project
TL;DR: The Alberta government shit the bed by opposing carbon pricing and we lost the Teck Frontier Mine because of it.
Yea…no.
There is not one single energy or mining company in the world, let alone Canada, that believes in or wants a carbon tax. What is pushed out the door by the PR team is not what the board or exec wants nor believes. It is what is required to continue to do business in a world that has swallowed the existential climate catastrophe line that is honestly, laughable. Count the business jets at the next Davos get together to find how many of the doomsayers actually believe their own rhetoric. Is climate change real? Probably. Is it existential? Not hardly. Can it be better fixed, without a cash redistribution policy. Without doubt.
Humankind actually sent someone to the moon. Regularly floats a bunch of humankinds around the world in a space station. Has satellites travelling past Pluto and exploring Mars. Developed a vaccine…no, multiple vaccines for a really bad flu, in months. You don’t think humankind can’t figure out a way to solve GHG without taking billions of dollars from the working class and redistributing it to…you guessed it. The Davos crowd. Seriously???
Your opinion of Harpers energy policy is not even worth bothering getting into. And has the feel of something out by the Trudeau, Kinsella, Horgan, The Tyee, CBC misinformation teams. Just to name a few. Sooo, yea…no.
So I remain a staunch Alberta Separatist.
Isn't the whole purpose of the free market for businesses to answer to their customers' demands? If customers demand that energy companies support things like carbon taxes and lowering emissions, then that's what they'll publicly support.
That sounds like it's just capitalism at work.
Which is fine if there wasn’t political influence and special interest pushing a particular agenda.
"existential climate catastrophe line that is honestly, laughable". I'm curious where you think Phoenix and Vegas are going to get water as Lake Mead plummets. As your glaciers increase their rate of melting, you will discover that you also have a significant water problem. It's a lot easier to put a rocket on the moon then it is to remove billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere, or turn billions of litres of seawater into something you can drink.
What large energy companies actually want (other than no rules and zero taxation) is predictability and a level playing field. They can and are building carbon reduction strategies right now and have been doing so for a while. The US private sector has been spectacularly successful in reducing their carbon footprint because a careful combination of sticks and carrots have made in financially lucrative in doing so. Texas (Texas!) now generates more wind power than any other state in the union.
Well, no company anywhere wants to pay ANY taxes let alone a carbon tax. So your logic is a bit specious there. They are not however, dumb, they know the writing is on the wall. Any business whose primary function is to combine hydrocarbons with oxygen and dumping the exhaust into the atmosphere without some repercussions is not going to be around for very long.
The rate of change over the last 200 years is the issue. It started with the industrial revolution. We're getting exactly what was promised. Bigger more damaging storms, bigger temperature swings, with a shortening of the cold seasons. It's there if you choose to see it.
Except I remember the big oil boom from 2004, back when the Liberals were in power federally, Stephen Harper was still on the Opposition benches and Albertans were making money hand over fist.
So what was wrong with the old pre-Harper oil regulation system that he felt he had to drastically alter it? That system gave us a bunch of oil booms with far less political protest than we see today, so why did Harper decide to make the changes he did?
Michael Cleland, former CEO of the Canadian Gas Association, flat-out said that Harper's bungling made things worse in terms of public support:
https://archive.canadianbusiness.com/business-news/lax-climate-policy-hasnt-resulted-in-energy-super-power-status-for-canada/
Interesting & insightful, thx. Wish you were covering Saskie politics, there’s some (well more than some) of the usual crazy stuff going on - $500 cheques sent out, limited COVID stats, accusing the Feds of trespassing.
“My predecessor wanted you to know Canada for its resources. I want you to know Canadians for our resourcefulness,” Justin Trudeau. Jan 2016.
Fail - can't deliver our resources and resourcefulness has been undermined since the only thing we export well are our best and brightest.
The sheer vacuity of Trudeau's comment defies belief.
Except that the constant repetition of equally vacuous comments has forced us to accept the reality. We always thought that nothing could be emptier than the vacuum of space. Trudeau has forced a reconsideration.
Actually, its all too believable -- "budget will balance itself", "You'll forgive me if I don't think about monetary policy", "she experienced it differently", "thank you for your donation", "larger-than-life leader who served his people for almost half a century”, "peoplekind", drinkbox water bottle thingy", "We decided to take on that debt to prevent Canadians from having to do it. " etc.
Ok I'll say it "what about Harper"
Well there is NO business case. Since he's set the regulatory hurdles are so high that construction cannot be done economically and he hasn't got the balls to fight Quebec anyway we will continue to sell at a discount to the US who can mark it up and sell it to Europe. What good would the extra royalties and taxes do for our healthcare and defense anyway?
If serving a political party or political consultant does not count, then I think Singh, with five years of law practice, counts as the "Thick CV" guy of our political choices, unless Rob Ford, of the large family business, wants to go federal.
To put it mildly, Trudeau, Scheer, and Poilievre between them don't have as thick a (non-political) CV as the new judge, in terms of years of professional-level work. (Trudeau's lifeguarding counts zero, Poilievre's time at Alberta Report, just months). But voters imagine them competent for the highest office.
Erin O'Toole served in the forces for many years, then "nearly a decade" of legal work. But his party fired him. So much for "CV". O'Toole's total was under 15 years before politics, I think with the other three, we could crack 20 years of total professional, non-political work experience, Singh would take us to 25. The judge has 27: as much as Trudeau, Singh, Poilievre, and O'Toole, all put together.
I love the snark too...
"It brought warmth to her cold heart"
This one is rich.
I would love it if someone would ask Dr. Lewis what her opinion is of the mandatory vaccine programs which eliminated Small Pox, and practically wiped out Polio. Also, her take on the fact that lack of mandatory vaccines have seen a resurgence of measles, and other childhood diseases.
It is beyond the power of the PM or the federal government to promise gas to Germany.
There is no way to get it to them without pipelines and there is no way to build a pipeline to the east coast given current environmental regulations and the opposition of Quebec.
Independence for Alberta is obviously no answer as we would have to raise a pretty big army to occupy the ROC and protect the pipeline.
Its at the point where I am embarrassed to be a Canadian. Andrew Coyne called Justin Trudeau a sanctimonious phony, but I think it applies to the country in general. "Canada is back" , "The world needs more Canada", is all performative BS. We talk big and then do nothing and hope that bigger actors will sort things out and be nice to us in the process. Why should they?
I would like to live in a country that had some intestinal fortitude, standing up to dictators, pursuing an independent foreign policy, supporting our allies, developing our economy and enriching all Canadians. That country exists only in imagination.
How can any rational person not see the increase in severe weather disturbances? It amazes me that people ignore what 99% of scientists agree on & struggle to find that one scientist to quote.
If 1000 mechanics were asked whether a car was safe to drive & 999 said it was dangerous - would it be wise to pack your family in for a road trip on one dissenting opinion?
I don’t know the degree to which your question is rhetorical, but you might find the linked article worth reading: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/01/why-smart-people-are-more-likely-to-believe-fake-news
My view is that the above article applies to quite a few contributors in the comments section here. A number of them could look at a report of extreme weather events like that posted at Carbon Brief:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-affects-extreme-weather-around-the-world/
and provide a semi-plausible explanation about why you shouldn’t believe it.
I often wonder about the severe weather occurrences. Is there a substantial increase in events, or do smartphones with cameras and social media platforms make us aware of them instantly?
The community’s around me have all published history books that are full of anecdotal information about blizzards, floods, hailstones as big as tennis balls and tornadoes. In 1910, that would have been localized information that would have taken weeks and months to percolate far and wide. Today we have storm chasers that know more about the formation of F-series funnels than Environment Canada, and post the pictures on social media.
The news for a couple of years straight was not about Ft. Mac burning down, then a lot of California, then Australia, then a lot more of California, then Australia again, then BC...because people noticed the fires on their cellphones.
In BC, the heat dome killing several hundred, burning down a town, and filling the whole province with smoke so bad you couldn't drive across it, was noticed without cellphones, and the completely unprecedented five Pineapple Expresses taking down multiple bridges, that got our full attention as well.
No replies, please, on whether this is "evidence" of your favourite theory. The point is whether the public sees a problem. If the public "sees a problem" in error, go ahead and protest that. Many of the most-liberal thought the public was in error about the dangers of Iraq and Afghan-planned terror strikes, and spent multiple trillions to avert that danger, killed over a million people. The war went ahead anyway, and now, so is a major industrial-strategy conversion, because the public is convinced there is a problem, just as Bush convinced them of imminent threat from and Iraq/Al-Qaeda nuclear conspiracy.
I doubt if it is as harmful a mistake as the American terror wars.
Sure the public sees a problem, and that’s good for engagement in a process to work together to solve problems.
My view is that seeing endless horror stories about extreme weather events doesn’t an apocalypse make. These extreme weather events have always been part of civilization, but today we have a technology to instantly record and distribute the news far and wide.
The RCMP have taken a big hit here in Nova Scotia. The failures at the scene and the obfuscation afterward has left many to have no faith in the ability of the force to do their job. This is a top down problem which politicians have shaped by not appointing qualified people to the head of the force, lucki is just one of those commissioners that were more political than competent. She has to go.
The MCC report could have been written two months after the events by anyone with a brain. Instead it's a pork barrow commission milking the public purse and obfuscation the narrative by filling it with irrelevant issues.
"Is appointing an Indigenous jurist important in a very profound way? Of course! Are there institutional barriers that impede many Indigenous Canadians from having the typical c.v. of a Supreme Court judge? To be sure! But many others were closer. The name that your Line editors hear most often is U of T prof John Borrows. Yet he was ineligible because he doesn’t speak French fluently. He is bilingual (speaking Ojibway), but that’s not the right kind of Laurentian bilingualism for this government."
Hmm, I wonder if the Line editors would be saying that if Trudeau appointed an Indigenous justice who was bilingual in an Indigenous language and French, but didn't speak good English. Never mind that French has had a constitutional recognition in this country since before Confederation, or that millions of Canadians have French as a mother tongue, that apparently doesn't matter for a Supreme Court judge.
I've never understood why some Anglophones seem to expect Francophone Canadians to be the only ones expected to be bilingual, or expect Quebec to be the only province that supports its official language minority while French minorities in the rest of the country are expected to speak English.
It's funny how, in making space for Indigenous people at the highest levels of our institutions (which should obviously happen!), French is expected to be the language that gets shunted aside. Would we accept a Governor General that speaks good French and, say, good Cree or Michif, but not good English? Probably not, so why don't people have the same concerns about a lack of French?
So I take it you'd have no problem if similar things happen to English in places like Richmond, B.C., where English speakers complained about everything from board meetings to store signs being only in Chinese? Or what about the increasing use of Spanish in the U.S. itself, to the point where some Americans think they need to make English an official language? If English starts getting squeezed out in certain places, will that be all right with you?
And there are plenty of immigrants who give a rat's ass about French, notably those who come from French-speaking countries like Haiti, France and the Congo. It gives us a bigger pool of immigrants to draw from. Incidentally, one of Stephen Harper's best actions as Prime Minister was his reforming our immigration policies to give priority to people who already spoke good English and/or French.
I just filled out and sent in my CCP leadership ballot. I waited so long because I was hoping, desperately, someone would come to stand out (positively) in this race. Instead, for the first time ever, I was left with a contest where I ended up disliking ALL the candidates more than when the race began. Between that, and Jagmeet Singh's ongoing determination to play the title role in 'Mr Trudeau's Poodle', I figure Justin Trudeau's got the next election in the bag! Poor Canada...