The Canadian Parvasi - Issue 31

The International News Weekly CANADA
April 20, 2018 | Toronto 04
Carr downplays tanker traffic risk,
says legislation not developed yet
The Canadian Press
OTTAWA : The federal
Liberal government hasn't
yet "landed" on its promised
legislative option to
push the Trans Mountain
pipeline expansion forward,
says Natural Resources
Minister Jim Carr.
Justin Trudeau's government
is "actively pursuing"
legislation that will
reassert Canada's constitutional
authority to build
and expand pipelines, the
prime minister promised
Sunday after an emergency
meeting with the feuding
premiers of B.C. and Alberta.
However, it hasn't yet
figured out what it will look
like.
"We're looking at legislative
options," Carr said
Wednesday on his way into
the daily question period.
"We haven't landed on one
yet."
Government officials
say it's not even yet clear
which department will take
the lead on the bill — Natural
Resources, Finance or
Justice.
The plan, Carr said, is
for legislation that would
enhance the federal jurisdiction
over pipelines
— something the government
says is already crystal
clear, which is why it
has balked at the idea of
launching a time-consuming
reference to the Supreme
Court of Canada.
Trudeau also dispatched
Finance Minister
Bill Morneau to strike a
deal with pipeline builder
Kinder Morgan to assuage
investors now skittish
about a project laden with
possible court delays.
Kinder Morgan declared
earlier this month
it was halting all non-essential
spending on the expansion,
giving the government
until the end of May
to ensure the project would
go ahead.
The expansion would
build a second pipeline
alongside an existing one,
doubling its capacity to
carry diluted bitumen
from Alberta's oilsands to
Kinder Morgan's Westridge
Marine Terminal in Burnaby,
B.C., where it would be
loaded onto oil tankers for
export.
The hope is most of it
would be shipped to Asia,
opening up new markets
for Canada's oil beyond
the United States, Canada's
only real oil customer — a
situation Trudeau says
forces Canada to take a big
hit on the price it gets for
the resource.
Fearing the many environmental
unknowns that
surround diluted bitumen,
B.C. wants to restrict the
pipe's capacity until more
is understood about how
the material might behave
in a marine environment,
how it can be cleaned up
and how a major spill
might impact ocean life.
B.C. Attorney General
David Eby said his government
will file a court reference
by the end of April to
determine if it can to stop
the flow of dilbit, as diluted
bitumen is known, on the
grounds of its own jurisdiction
over environmental
concerns.
Not only does the oil
itself pose a risk while in
transit, environmental
critics say, the expansion
would increase oilsands
development, exacerbating
climate change. On
Wednesday, Greenpeace activists
welcomed Trudeau
to London in a protest that
featured a mock pipeline
carrying "Crudeau oil."
Many environmental
groups fear an increase in
tanker traffic out of Burnaby
along marine routes
that are at times extremely
narrow, worsening the risk
of a major spill.
Carr played down that
risk Wednesday, saying the
expansion would only increase
traffic by about one
tanker a day, "surrounded
by the most stringent marine
policy in Canadian
history."
Trudeau has said he
only approved the pipeline
in the context of balancing
the need for environmental
protections with the need
for economic growth. The
government's $1.5-billion
Oceans Protection Plan
is designed to account for
such spills, he said, suggesting
the government
would make additional investments
if need be.
Meanwhile, a new online
survey by Angus Reid,
conducted over the two
days following Trudeau's
Sunday meeting with the
premiers, shows a modest
increase in the number of
respondents who support
the pipeline, compared to
a similar survey taken in
February.
The polling industry's
professional body, the Marketing
Research and Intelligence
Association, says
online surveys cannot be
assigned a margin of error
as they are not random and
therefore are not necessarily
representative of the
whole population.
Despite Trudeau's progressive
rhetoric, Canada not immune to
populism: Experts
The Canadian Press
OTTAWA : Prime Minister Justin Trudeau might
see his country as a beacon of hope in a roiling sea
of polarization and angry nationalist sentiment, but
Canada is far from immune, experts warn.
Just as he did Tuesday at the French National
Assembly, Trudeau likes to portray Canada as a
place where progressive values flourish — free
trade, ethic diversity, immigration, environmental
protection and gender equality. "At a time when the
political movements exploit the real anxiety of their
citizens, Canada has chosen to be against cynicism
and embrace audacity and ambition," he said.
A sizable proportion of the Canadian public believes
otherwise, research suggests.
Ekos Research and The Canadian Press teamed
up earlier this year to gauge populist sentiment in
Canada. Fewer than half of respondents — 46 per
cent — expressed views that reflected an open-minded
perspective of the world and each other, while
30 per cent landed in the "ordered" category, which
means feeling economically and culturally insecure.
25 per cent expressed "mixed" views.
The survey, an aggregation of polls conducted
with more than 12,000 Canadians, carried a margin
of error of plus or minus 0.9 percentage points, 19
times out of 20. Its results suggested there is indeed
fertile ground in Canada for a populist movement to
take hold. Canada has largely staved off the negative
politics of pessimism and xenophobia that are major
areas of concern in the U.S. and parts of Europe, said
Ekos president Frank Graves. But that doesn't mean
populist sentiment isn't brewing north of the border.
"Those forces are very much at work," Graves
said, noting the icy reaction to Trudeau's remarks
from right-wing National Front leader Marine Le
Pen.
Health committee cheers idea of national pharmacare program, but cost an issue
The Canadian Press
Manpreet Minhas
Barrister & Solicitor
REAL ESTATE
Rupinder Minhas
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OTTAWA : A parliamentary
committee is recommending
that prescription medications
be publicly funded across Canada
under a universal pharmacare
program.
After two years of work
that included hearing from 99
witnesses, the House of Commons
health committee
says it believes a
national pharmacare
program would deliver
better health
care for Canadians at
a better cost.
The report includes 18
recommendations that it describes
as a blueprint for establishing
a single-payer, publicly
funded prescription
drug coverage program
for all Canadians.
But there was
disagreement among
the all-party committee about
just how much such a program
would cost and how it should
be implemented.
Committee chair Bill
First
Consultation
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Casey says the advisory group
established by the federal government
to study the idea will
be helpful in working out the
complexities of bringing such a
program to life.
Regardless, the committee
was unified in saying it hopes
a national program will be
implemented, saying the status
quo is not an option.
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