By Alison@Creekside This week Employment Minister Jason Kenney replaced the old LMOA, Labour Market Opinion Assessment, with the brand new LMIA, or Labour Market Impact Assessment — henceforth to be known as the LabourMinister Missing in Action program for its accelerated 10-working-day approval process to put TFWs in skilled trades. Remember those 270 unionized welders and pipefitters laid off from a Husky […]
oil sands
You’ve seen the ads — now play the game!
By Drew McLachlan If you live in British Columbia, odds are you’ve seen the video below about a million times. It’s not a Tourism BC advertisement or the new video for that chillwave band your coworker told you about — it’s one of the many ads produced for Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline, which are constantly […]
Northern Gateway: Time to build a firewall around B.C.
By Frank Moher In 2001, Stephen Harper was famously one of the signatories to an open letter encouraging then-Alberta Premier Ralph Klein “to build firewalls around Alberta.” The idea was that Alberta had to protect itself against the encroachments of the federal government. This morning it is BC’s turn to defend itself against a predatory […]
Oil sands doc is on key
By Rod Mickleburgh A guy walks into a bar . . . That’s pretty much how film-maker Charles Wilkinson came to make his seductive documentary, Oil Sands Karaoke, about, of all things, a karaoke contest in the heart of you-know-what country, Fort McMurray. After being distinctly underwhelmed by two earlier forays during the Vancouver International Film […]
This is exactly the time to talk about climate change
By John Klein (aka Saskboy) The Prime Minister infamously implored people to not “commit sociology” when Chechen-American thugs blew people up in Boston. The PM’s point was that he didn’t want people analysing the root causes of terrorism, out of supposed respect for the distant victims. With another deadly tragedy playing out in Alberta, there […]
Nexen: China nationalizes Canada’s oil sands
By David@Sixthestate.net Well, try that on for size. Let me be clear, says Stephen Harper: “Canadians have not spent years reducing the ownership of sectors of the economy by our own governments, only to see them bought and controlled by foreign governments instead. It is not an outcome any responsible government of Canada could ever […]
Why Mulcair is winning
By Montreal Simon OK. So I was wrong. When Christy Clark became the latest Con stooge to denounce Thomas Mulcair, for simply pointing out that the Dutch Disease is killing our manufacturing sector, I said it could only mean one thing. Big Oil and its Con puppets were scraping the bottom of the barrel. But […]
Minister Oliver goes oil drumming
By Alison@Creekside While in Washington oildrumming up K-XL support with US senators on tuesday, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver plumped for the Keystone XL pipeline in his keynote address to the 4th Annual United States Energy Association (USEA) Energy Supply Forum. Here is the quote chosen by Natural Resources Canada “for broadcast use”: “The future […]
Alykhan and Ezra’s ethical snake oil
By Alison@Creekside Alykhan Velshi’s wee blog Ethical Oil, named after Ezra’s book, has relaunched with an expensive new look and some spiffy ethical oil pop-up campaign ads to greet you when you enter the site. You can choose either good or evil — you know, conflict oil = woman being stoned to death vs. ethical […]
The Koch Brothers do Canada
By Alison@Creekside The Republicans on the US House Energy and Commerce Committee have drafted a “North American-Made Energy Security Act” — legislation which would ensure swift approval of the proposed $7-billion, 2,000-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to the Texas gulf coast, doubling tarsands exports to the US to over a million barrels of oil a day . “The […]
