Via Email: https://sencanada.ca/en/contact-information/
Dear Senators,
RE: Request to Reject Bill C-69
We appreciate your review of our submission.
Our Organization
We are a group of earth, atmospheric, solar scientists, Professional Engineers, and economists who work with a network of international experts in related fields. We have been reviewing and commenting on Kyoto Accord-related policies since 2002. We do not represent any industry. Our purpose is to provide insights on climate and energy policies to policymakers and the public.
Canada is a Resource Nation – Bill C-69 Hampers our Global Competitiveness
Canada is competing on the world stage as a provider of resources. None of our competitors is hampered by climate change legislation.
Since 2015 and Canada’s signing of the COP21 Paris Agreement, Canada’s reputation as a stable investment environment has steadily declined.
In April of 2018, Houston energy investment banker, PPHB, stated that, in their view, Canada had become ‘hostile’ to investment.
Robert Lyman is an energy policy consultant, former public servant of 27 years and former diplomat of 10 years. He has written an in-depth critique of the proposed changes to the National Energy Board, which has culminated in Bill C-69.
We ask you to review and consider his work.
LINK to Robert Lyman’s report:
Canada Subject to a Green Trade War via the Tar Sands Campaign and others
Prior to the 2015 signing of the Paris Agreement, Canada was a very reliable investment destination. The National Energy Board had been operating for almost 60 years. Investors and industry participants appreciated the clear rules and guidelines and fair adjudication process, particularly as many energy infrastructure projects take decades from initial investment to operation and returns on investment.
However, investment markets have been skewed by the plan of the foreign ClimateWorks billionaire foundations which have been funding Canadian Environmental Non-governmental Organizations and environmental charities to disrupt the Canadian investment and energy markets.
Concisely put, a group of 13 billionaires make a plan to create a global cap and trade system and put $12 trillion in vested interest renewables on the grid world-wide, to ‘prompt a sea change in the global economy.’ They employed McKinsey & Company, the world’s most influential management firm, for consulting fees on the order of $42.4 million, and employed various other data analysis groups to help implement their ‘Design to Win’ plan. They were following a method developed by the ill-fated Enron.[1]
ClimateWorks Foundation – WikiLeaks
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/fileid/57594/16165
Matthew Nisbet
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcc.524
We do not find any evidence that Canada ever agreed to such foreign influence.
Here are some examples that show economic devastation.
- “To initiate three distinct but interrelated efforts concerning tar sands in Alberta to enhance the ability of Greenpeace Canada to more effectively launch and deliver its ‘Phase Out Tar Sands Campaign’; secondly to leverage the growing interest of ranchers and landowners in limiting unbridled oil and gas exploration and production in southern Alberta; and thirdly to conduct specialised opinion research and media work to identify messaging for these and other efforts that will generate maximum information value among Albertans.”
- West coast Environmental Law $97,131 to push for a legislated tanker ban on the west coast.
- In 2009, some $5 million was dumped into Quebec via the group Global Climate Change Action to ‘mobilize civil society’ and push for ‘rapid action to save the planet from dangerous levels of climate change.’
Further evidence of economic damage can be found in this letter: https://blog.friendsofscience.org/2018/10/12/an-open-letter-to-the-minister-of-finance-on-the-matter-of-changes-to-the-charities-act/
Ten pivotal grants
By 2013, the Tar Sands Campaign was in full swing, also funded by ClimateWorks partners (as well outlined by the research of Vivian Krause]). As Counterpunch reports, the objective was:
“Enroll key decision makers while isolating opponents” : We will not make the decisions to slow and clean up the tar sands – those in positions of authority will.”
IF the objective was to truly ‘clean up the oil sands’ that would be admirable and we would see these millions being co-invested with industry and ENGOs to advance R&D in oil sands related processes, tailings pond reclamation/effluent management – potentially Zero Liquid Discharge, but this is not what these groups have done.
Instead they have blockaded access to ports and shredded the stellar reputation of the oil sands worldwide. And we see that ‘those in positions of authority’ are indeed also slowing and blocking oil sands operations, through things like Bill C-69.
Very easy to block Canada’s access to ports.
Blockadia has been easy to do because of Canada’s geography. Also, Canadian mentality is such that decades of anti-oil propaganda from the ENGOs funded by foreign interests have made Canadians virtually immune to understanding how energy is provided world-wide.
This is a Green Trade War.
There are diverse interests participating. Some are pension funds that are deeply invested in renewables. These pension funds may also be investors in oil and gas or oil sands companies. One way to get more renewables on the grid, and thus provide decades of stable income/interest from special contracts for capacity market payments (where renewables are paid for what their potential capacity is, as opposed to their actual generation) or “Feed-In-Tariffs”, is to require the energy company to be more ‘green’ – and therefore finance/build these wind and solar farms. In doing so, consumers are sentenced to heat-or-eat poverty, while the pension fund gets the guaranteed income of fixed contracts, plus the multi-billion-dollar backend investment returns for the natural gas back-up plants, the transmission lines, IT infrastructure (often in the 9 figures), etc.
Some parties are interested in Canada as a ‘carbon sink’ wherein our vast boreal forest will be ‘carbon traded’ on world markets as an offset. Why should one group make money off Canadian forests absorbing carbon dioxide when presumably that carbon dioxide and the cash belong to all of us? This ‘carbon sink’ idea sounds interesting in principle until one considers the risk of forest fire. When a ‘guaranteed’ living offset goes up in smoke, creating VOLUMES MORE carbon dioxide, who would be liable for those billions of dollars of value in lost offsets, or penalties related to the additional emissions? Wouldn’t predatory terrorism be a simple way to crater our economy? Likewise, guaranteeing a living property as a carbon sink for 100 years is also guaranteeing wildfire disaster like those we have recently seen in British Columbia and California.
See full detail: https://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FoS_BurningQuestions_Health_Coal_Wildfires_Jan2015.pdf
Further, Blockadia may have been a strategic ‘pincer’ move by those parties interested in cap and trade, to force Canada’s economy into a corner until we are at such a level of economic distress that we say ‘yes’ to global cap and trade. In fact, this would surrender authority over our country to offshore interests and would likely also be the end of democracy here.
And lastly, Blockadia may also have been a strategy by various ‘vulture investors’– who have manipulated markets and public opinion to devalue our important resource shares, or to have others divest them, so that they can snap them up at a bargain price.
Geopolitical Considerations
There are also broader geopolitical aspects at work. The European Union has limited access to fossil fuels but is a highly industrialized region. It is curious that we refine Norwegian oil and Saudi Arabia oil on the eastern coast of Canada, that is shipped for miles across the ocean, but we cannot ship our oil by pipeline within our own nation or to ports in any direction. It is curious that the many European nations with whom we share common cultural, religious, economic and ethnic roots, continue to prefer to buy their oil and gas from nations with dubious human rights reputations which have no environmental standards comparable to ours. Germany buys natural gas from Russia, the UK buys Liquefied Natural Gas from Qatar, France’s TOTAL SA oil company pulled out of the Alberta oil sands ‘dirty oil’ and invested in Iran where young women are jailed and flogged for dancing alone or removing their head coverings; where gay people are subject to death penalties, where the state frequently threatens to wipe Israel or Europe off the map.
One must wonder who is behind the UK Tar Sands Net *or the Cooperative Bank of the UK (pg. 42-49) funding indigenous dissension in Canada about the oil sands. What of the International Funders of Indigenous Peoples? This is a group of foreign funders whose 9th Annual Conference featured speakers inciting indigenous people to engage in long-term constitutional battles. Participants stated that foreign environmental groups would partner with indigenous people to block Keystone XL for the purpose of shutting down the oil sands. This sounds like an economic trade war, staged from Canada’s own territory and subsidized by taxpayers via environmental charities!
*UK Tar Sands Net: “We receive funding from a variety of sources, including Artists’ Project Earth, Network for Social Change, Lush, Tides Foundation, Fondation Pour une Terre Humaine and private donations. Our average grant-size is £4200.” [$7,071.75 Canadian] UK tar sands net works with: Indigenous Environmental Network ,Rising Tide UK ,Platform , People & Planet , Council of Canadians , Greenpeace , Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation , London Mining Network
No Similar Blockadia in Competitor Nations
Please note that there is no such anti-oil activity going on anywhere else in competitor nations; no other competitor country has such self-imposed climate change regulations. Our government, media and non-profit journalism have been inculcated with hatred toward our greatest potential source of wealth and energy. We are a cold, vast country with massive need for fossil fuels to survive.
In short, Bill C-69 is associated with parties funded by these foreign influencers and it is against the interests of Canadians.
Paris Agreement is voluntary and non-binding – Let’s leave.
Some may argue that the Paris Agreement is international and under the umbrella of the UN. May we remind you that the Paris Agreement is non-binding and voluntary – there is no requirement to meet any of the targets and most of the nations have made no commitments of any substance. If we pulled out of Paris Agreement, all of these self-imposed obligations would fall away and we could return to practical operations with rational decision-making parameters for energy and infrastructure investors.
Likewise, the fundamental principle of the UN Charter is to advance the socio-economic health of nations – not to destroy it. Bill C-69, as written, will destroy Canada’s economy. No investor will take the risk of putting millions at stake, to have a project approved or disapproved at the whim of a political appointee. Well, unless the appointee is a green crony capitalist – and that is a serious problem in itself.
We are deeply concerned on this account, that Minister McKenna’s husband, Scott Gilmore, was a past recipient of a $765,000 Skoll Prize by Jeff Skoll, the producer of Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” This suggests a potential conflict of interest regarding the Minister’s demand to shut down coal and cap the oil sands, as Mr. Gore has been pushing for related policies via the UNPRI, where most pension funds are signatory and required to ‘comply or explain.’
Again, we find a connection between these ENGOs and the ClimateWorks partners and fundees also funding and skewing climate change reports from the International Panel on Climate Change, as outlined by Donna Laframboise.
In short, Canada must drop Bill C-69 and return to an evidence-based method of evaluating infrastructure and energy policies. We must stop this green trade war against Canada.
We urge you to reject Bill C-69 and return to the National Energy Board format which served Canada and investors very well for almost 60 years.
On the Topic of Climate Change
You have likely been told we only have 12 years to make drastic changes. This is NOT reflective of scientific thinking, but of ENGOs hyping the worst-case computer simulated scenario (RCP8.5) which does not in any way match current observations.
Furthermore, following the IPCC’s AR5 report of 2013, most scientists agreed that carbon dioxide was clearly not the main driver of climate change, not was it a viable ‘control knob.’ Global warming had stagnated since before the Kyoto Accord had been ratified, despite a large increase of carbon dioxide concentration. As many scientists have noted, it is not the AMOUNT of carbon dioxide (CO2) that is the issue, it is the so-called ‘climate sensitivity’ of CO2 (or the effect) that is the issue. In 1979, 39 years ago, the Charney report published by the US National Academy of Sciences estimated that a doubling of carbon dioxide would likely result in a rise of between 1.5° and 4.5° Celsius (2.7° to 8.1° Fahrenheit). The IPCC’s AR5 report gave the same range. Today, the evidence shows that is not true. The most recent observation-based estimate of climate sensitivity is that a doubling of CO2 would ultimately cause 1.1°C of warming, or just 0.7°C by 2100. These estimates account from the natural warming from the Little Ice Age (1500-1850), which was likely the coldest period of the last 10,000 years.
Likewise, scientists were concerned that additional CO2 would take centuries to be uptaken/absorbed by oceans, plants or the soil; in fact we find the planet has greened tremendously due to additional CO2, the equivalent to adding an all-green continent twice the size of mainland USA over 33 years to 2016. Carbon dioxide makes up a very small percent of atmospheric gases to begin with – some 4 molecules out of 10,000. Humans breathe out CO2 at 40,000 parts per million (ppm) with every breath.
Noxious Pollutants Should Be the Focus, Carbon Dioxide is not a Pollutant
To be clear, mitigating noxious pollutants should continue to be addressed by industry and governments, but carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and not the control knob that can fine tune climate.
Climate change should not be a central feature of energy and infrastructure assessments – they must stand on their own merits for the safe and reliable provision of essential services and the relative economic value to all Canadians.
Please reject Bill C-69 and return to the National Energy Board’s original format for approving energy and infrastructure projects.
Just as the ClimateWorks plan began by adopting the Enron method, so it appears this global plan will result in a similar collapse, as forecast by the CEO of Iberdrola, Feb. 22, 2018.
Consequently, the real sources of viable energy like oil, natural gas and coal will be ever more important to the world, and Canada should proudly stand and compete on the world stage.
Sincerely,
Friends of Science Society
You forgot to point out that not only is CO2 not a problem, but the whole man made climate change is false. The Earth’s climate is cooling due to a sun cycle (grand solar minimum). The Arctic ocean may be warming slughtly due to deep ocean volcanic activity over the past 10 years and that adds to the CO2 as well. But we need more CO2, not less. It’s not a pollutant.
Pollutants are left in the air by aircraft and are ever present now. Stop the pollution and stop wasting our treasure.
Excellent write up and explanation. Even the most scientifically naive should be able to now understand what/who is really behind this totally unreasonable pressure to alienate the trace gas carbon dioxide and destroy the Canadian economy.