Parkland in the Media: Op-eds
Harper must get fired up to deal with fuel shortage
The Edmonton Journal
January 26, 2012

Lack of contingency plans for likely international oil crisis will leave Canada in the cold

By Gordon Laxer

Smallpox is a scary disease. It kills a fifth of those infected, and scars and blinds many survivors. Canada has been smallpox free since 1962 and the world since 1977. But, Canada has a smallpox contingency plan. So does Britain. The chances of a smallpox outbreak are remote, but I am happy to pay taxes so Canada can employ people to fight its return. That's what governments are for.

Canada stands on guard for just about every other imaginable disaster too. Click onto Public Health Canada's "Get Prepared," and you find detailed advice and plans on a long list of emergencies. But there is one glaring omission. Canada has no plan to deal with an international oil shortage even though one is almost certain to hit soon.

Just think about Iran closing the strait of Hormuz after a U.S. attack - 40 per cent of ocean-bound oil shut in at one blow. Canadians, who face special conditions of long cold winters, would be immediately affected. Some could even freeze in the dark.

This country imports half its oil, and a growing portion comes from OPEC countries. We are as dependent on Middle East oil as the U.S., yet have no plan to direct domestic oil to Canadians. Canada is the only country in the 27-member International Energy Agency without strategic petroleum reserves.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's reply to Peter Mansbridge in a Jan. 16 interview reveals why Canada has no oil plan. He doesn't believe in one. Mansbridge asked, "Does it not seem odd that we're moving oil out of Western Canada to either U.S. or new markets to Asia when a good chunk of Canada itself doesn't have domestic oil?"

Harper replied that "on a certain level it does seem odd," but that "the fundamental basis of our energy policy is market-driven." He added that "we're the only supplier that is secure."

Secure sure, but for whom? Canada promises the United States oil security. The U.S. has its own energy security and independence plan which includes giant strategic petroleum re-serves in salt caves on the Gulf coast. If Canada is looking after U.S. oil security, and the U.S. is looking after its own oil security, who is looking after Canadians?

"We don't dictate (that) pipelines go here or there," Harper said. That's the problem. Enbridge's Line 9 used to take western Canadian oil to Montreal. Ottawa allowed the line to be reversed in 1999 so that instead of supplying western Quebec with domestic oil, the pipeline now brings imported oil into Ontario.

Proposals are afoot to re-reverse Line 9 to ship domestic oil to Montreal again. It sounds good, but only a small portion would remain in Canada. Most would flow on to Portland, Maine. to be sent anywhere. Ottawa has the power to decide that all of that oil remain in Canada. (And let me make clear: only Canadian conventional oil please. Alberta's oilsands release too many greenhouse gases.)

The federal government gives no directives that Newfoundland oil go first to Atlantic Canadians. Instead most is exported and Atlantic Canada imports more than 80 per cent of its supply. This may make sense for big corporate oil, but doesn't make sense for Atlantic Canadians. Canada is the only International Energy Agency country that takes a pure corporate market stance. The other 26 members treat oil as a security issue. "Security trumps trade" - Hillary Clinton's catchphrase after 9/11 - captures the oil issue well. It means government actions take precedence over markets to ensure that oil, the lifeblood of modern societies, flows uninterrupted. Despite its oil abundance, Canada is the most insecure IEA member. In place of Harper's "laissez-faire, don't-care" ideology, Canada would do well to copy the U.S. "energy security and energy independence" plan. Put Canadians first.

The IEA was set up in the 1970s to counteract the threat of the OPEC oil cartel to the industrial countries. The Paris-based agency requires that all its members have strategic petroleum reserves to deal with international oil-supply crises. It exempts net oil exporters on the assumption that its few members who are net oil exporters will supply their own people first, before exporting. Norway does this. Canada does not. Mr. Harper explained to Peter Mansbridge why.

Harper is abdicating as prime minister, and talks as if he is the CEO of an oil transnational. He says Iran scares him, but refuses to bring in a plan to protect eastern Canadians. Let the market do it. Mr. Harper's shirking of responsibility recklessly plays with Canadians' economic and even physical security. Ambulances, hospitals and fire trucks don't work without oil. Nor do the furnaces of people who heat their homes with oil, as half of Atlantic Canadians do.

CEOs of oil corporations must by law deliver profits to their shareholders. They are not charged with providing for people during international oil shortages. That's the responsibility of prime ministers. When will Stephen Harper stop thinking as an oil CEO and start acting like he is prime minister of Canada?

Gordon Laxer is a political economy professor, and the founding director and former head of Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta.

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

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Power Struggle Over Afghanistan

Former UN envoy says if negative trends are not reversed through better coordination, Afghanistan faces civil war.

Last Modified: 18 Jan 2012 12:43

On March 6, 2010, I boarded my last flight out of the Afghan capital as the UN envoy.
Two years had passed since my arrival in Kabul. At that time the most urgent task had been to bring some order to a chaotic international engagement in Afghanistan. I had arrived with hopes of being able to make a difference and help shape a strategy that could finally work. Now I was tired and bitter: tired from two dramatic years of a constantly worsening security situation, political disagreements and personal rivalries, as well as the media attention that followed it all; bitter from the strong feeling that I had not achieved what I had come to achieve.

The previous day, I had said farewell to President Karzai during a small ceremony in his palace. Our relationship had been close and friendly for almost two years. The farewell ceremony had been a rather formal event. Karzai was disappointed in me because he believed I had not stood up strongly enough against the United States and other foreigners who had interfered so blatantly in the presidential elections. And I was disappointed in him because he had become more dependent on the warlords and powerbrokers that had destroyed Afghanistan in the past, and should not be allowed to contaminate its future.

But the most important reason for my bitterness was my ever-growing disagreement with Washington's policy towards Afghanistan, which was increasingly dominated by military strategies, forces, and offensives. Urgent civilian and political requirements were treated as appendices to the military tasks. The UN had never been really involved or consulted by Washington on critical strategy-related questions, nor had even the closest NATO partners. More importantly, Afghan authorities had mostly been spectators to the formation of a strategy aimed at solving the conflict in their own country.
During a visit to Washington shortly after the Obama administration had taken over, one of the senior ministers of Karzai's government sent me a text message.
"Neocolonialism," it read. That was all. In my opinion, the US strategy was doomed to fail.

Narrow outlook

As my plane circled over Kabul, gaining altitude before flying over the mountains that surround the city, I looked down on the capital for the last time. Kabul had become a fortified city with a constant proliferation of concrete walls, sand bags, barbed wire, road- blocks, security checks, bomb-sniffing dogs, and speed bumps. The city I was leaving was very different from the one in which I had walked freely around during my first visit in September 2003. As a result of the worsening security situation, the ability of the UN and other civilian organisations to operate across the country had become severely limited.

I have long been fascinated by Afghanistan's beauty and by its people, and I have missed them both every day since I left the country. During my many flights around the country, I used to look out of the window to see how much snow had fallen on the mountain ranges and to see the colour of the ground beneath me. Would the crops be sufficient this season? Would there be more food shortages, or would there be floods? Would we reach vulnerable areas with emergency aid in time?

On a helicopter trip over the central Bamiyan province, I could see a man and a woman with their donkey, high up on a mountain ridge. We flew almost close enough to see their faces, and still the distance between us felt indescribable. Voter registration for the presidential and provincial elections was taking place and my days were filled with challenges related to the election process. The two people below me had far more important concerns than how they would get their registration documents. We lived so close to each other, but we existed in two very different worlds.

In so many meetings with foreign dignitaries, I had to come back to some basic facts to illustrate the challenges we were facing. Afghanistan is a country with weak and sometimes non-existent institutions. Its infrastructure is so poor that 3,000 donkeys were hired to bring election material to remote parts of the country during the 2009 elections. The illiteracy rate is still around 70 per cent, and in remote villages, it can be hard to find anybody who can read or write. Afghanistan lacks the middle class that is required for sustainable development to take place quickly. A significant part of the country is engulfed in an armed conflict. All of this combined makes rapid progress impossible.

Yet, we have been eager to set deadlines that would permit us to withdraw our international engagement and declare success. As a result of our inability to understand the country and therefore to formulate workable strategies, support for our engagement in Afghanistan has declined. We are trapped between an impatient public and a growing insurgency in a country where quick fixes do not exist.

We have become impatient and so have the Afghans. Dr Sima Samar, the leader of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), wrote to me in late 2010 that the Afghan people are losing hope. More than a year later, they have little hope left. So many sacrifices have been made in terms of lives and suffering; yet, a solution to the conflict seems to have slipped even further away.

My two years as UN envoy were - at that time - the two most dramatic years since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Since leaving my post, I have argued that if the existing negative trends could not be reversed, they would become unmanageable and it could be too late. Today, the negative trends seem to continue.

Certainly, the additional 60,000 international troops - an astonishing number - that arrived in Afghanistan since President Obama was inaugurated have stemmed the growth of the insurgency in some parts of the country. But the Taliban has not been defeated, not even significantly degraded. Afghanistan is going through a period of profound uncertainty.

The tension between Karzai and key partners in the international community has increased. The conflict between the government and the National Assembly led to a political standstill, threatening the entire political system. The friction between Afghanistan's ethnic groups has intensified. And efforts to bring the Taliban into political talks have not brought tangible results, but experienced a damaging blow when the Chairman of the High Peace Council, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was killed in September 2011.

I still hope that it is not too late to turn the trends and to find a solution to the conflict that brings peace and protects the progress and reforms that have been made over the last decade. But to find this solution would require very significant changes in the way we approach Afghanistan and the conflict. We must recognise that - even after 10 years - short-term deadlines will not lead us closer to, but further away from, a solution to the conflict. And we must place political initiatives above military offensives. There is still - in spite of the setbacks - no acceptable alternative to a policy of dialogue and reconciliation with the insurgency.

At the Bonn conference in December 2001, all the Afghan participants managed - after 20 years of conflict - to come together and agree on a new interim administration, with the assistance of Afghanistan's neighbours. Ten years later, a policy of national unity and a strong involvement of the country's neighbours are urgently needed. It may be unappealing to many - inside and outside Afghanistan. Perhaps, it is too late and no longer even realistic. But the only alternative could well be a civil war of the kind we experienced in the early 1990s, which led to the birth of the Taliban movement.

Kai Eide, a senior Norwegian diplomat, is the former United Nations Special Representative to Afghanistan (2008-2010).
This piece is based on an excerpt from his new book Power Struggle over Afghanistan, published on January 18 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Source:  Al Jazeera

UK Politics

12 January 2012

Scotland would be 'worse off outside UK' - Osborne

Chancellor George Osborne has said Scotland would be worse off financially if it chose to leave the UK. Mr Osborne told ITV News he did not believe an independent Scotland would be as "prosperous" as it is now.He also questioned whether Scotland alone would have been able to bail out the RBS and HBoS banks in 2009.But Scotland's deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon said it already "paid its own way" and would be even better off as an independent country.

The SNP administration in Edinburgh, which wants to leave the UK, has said it would prefer to hold a referendum on Scotland's constitutional future by the autumn of 2014, describing the poll as the most important decision facing the country for 300 years.

National debt

Amid a row over the timing of the poll and what question will be asked, Scottish first minister Alex Salmond and the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties have all called for a debate on the substance of whether Scotland should remain within the UK or go its own way.

Mr Osborne, who chairs the UK cabinet's Scotland committee, said he believed Scotland would not benefit economically from a break-up of the UK.

"I think the people of Scotland would lose out in terms of the Scottish economy," he told ITV News. "I don't think Scotland would be as prosperous as it would be as part of the UK.

He added: "If you look at the scale of the national debt, for example, that Scotland would have to take if it became independent, if you look at the fact it has an important banking industry as we know and you ask yourself 'would Scotland alone have been able to bail out the Royal Bank of Scotland or Halifax of Scotland'.

A spokesman for Scottish finance secretary John Swinney dismissed Mr Osborne's comments, suggesting Scotland's economy would be boosted by leaving the UK.

"When all Scotland's resources are included in our nation's economic output, an independent Scotland would be ranked sixth in the world league tables of OECD nations in terms of gross domestic product per head - ten places ahead of the UK," he said.

'Paying own way'

Economists have said the financial position of an independent Scotland could hinge on several factors, including its share of the UK's existing revenues from North Sea oil, its gold reserves and national debt as well as its liabilities in specific areas such as defence and welfare.

Scotland's deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon told the BBC One's Question Time, in an edition due to be broadcast later on Thursday, that both Scotland and England would be better off in the event of Scottish independence and would remain "close allies".

"Scotland is doing well and can do better with independence," she said. "Scotland is not subsidised at all. Scotland pays its own way and I won't hear anything else."

For Labour, shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander told the same programme that all parts of the UK "benefited from sharing risks, rewards, and resources".

And for the Lib Dems, former leader Lord Ashdown said a break-up of the union would not be a "happy circumstance" for all concerned.

He also suggested David Cameron had "bungled" his approach to the issue so far and could not remain as UK prime minister if Scotland voted for independence.

Early on Thursday, the Scottish Parliament backed calls for the terms of the forthcoming independence referendum to be decided by Holyrood. Mr Salmond and UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg will both be attending a summit of Irish and British leaders in Dublin on Friday.

George Dryden still determined to prove he’s Diefenbaker’s son

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Jan. 09, 2012 5:15PM EST
Last updated Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012 8:09AM EST
Sarah Hampson

Sit yourself down for an intriguing Canadian potboiler, a story that involves allegations of a clandestine, one-last-time tryst with a former prime minister, millions of dollars, bitter antipathy toward the man who raised him, a mother on the edge of dementia, and – steady now – an uncanny similarity of jowls.

And all of it is sitting here in front of me, wearing a suit, powerful cologne and a cloak of indignation.

The man who would be John George Diefenbaker II, if he can get DNA tests to prove it, is telling his story in a breakfast joint on Bloor Street in Toronto, where he knows the waitresses by name and favours thick slices of white toast, washed down with dishwater coffee.

“Absolutely I would change my name [to Diefenbaker],” says George Dryden, straightening his collar a bit. “That’s what I am. I’m not a Dryden. They hate me. And I wouldn’t change it to Smith. Or Goldenberg,” he scoffs, surprised that anyone would question his desire to change his surname.

George Dryden’s story begins with his mother, Mary Lou Lonergan, an entertainer/socialite who was involved in conservative political associations in the sixties. She was single, in her 30s and reportedly “adored” Mr. Diefenbaker, who was married and more than 30 years her senior. There are photographs of them together at public events.

In 1967, she married Gordon Dryden. But her son believes that when she returned to Toronto from a six-week European honeymoon in the late fall of that year, she had a meeting with Mr. Diefenbaker, on the brink of retirement as leader of the opposition. (His six-year run as prime minister had ended in 1963.) “I think this was one last goodbye, and one thing led to another. Three months after she was married, I was conceived by Diefenbaker,” alleges Mr. Dryden.

The question of his paternity is related to a $30-million lawsuit, launched in 2010, against the man who raised him, Gordon Dryden, his mother and his brother, Barrie. He claims that Gordon Dryden knew or suspected that he was not his biological father and therefore not only mistreated him but breached his fiduciary duties, cutting him out of a windfall inheritance from an uncle’s estate. The lawsuit was dismissed late last year except for a defamation claim against Gordon Dryden. Lawyers for George Dryden are appealing the judgment.

“I never had a hug from Gordon Dryden. We were never close,” he says, adding that their antagonism worsened when he became a teenager. A paternity test in June last year proved that Mr. Dryden is not his biological father. The suggestion that he is Mr. Diefenbaker’s only biological son – Canada’s 13th prime minister had no children from either of his two marriages – was long rumored by members of Mr. Dryden’s family, because of similarities in appearance.

An attempt to get DNA samples from artifacts at Saskatchewan’s Diefenbaker Canada Centre came back inconclusive in late December. Members of the extended Diefenbaker family have so far refused to co-operate with information or DNA samples. “They’re worried about legacy...I’m not suing the Diefenbaker estate [for money],” he explains, indignant at the very thought. “The estate has been wound up for 35 years. And even if I could, I don’t think he had any money.”

The woman who could help clarify the facts, his mother, 77, is ailing and being kept from him by Gordon Dryden, a wealthy patriarch in his 80s, he says. “If I can spend an hour or two with her over a few days, she would tell me. I know that for a fact.” He saw her briefly last June and even though doctors said she was suffering from dementia, she was lucid, he explains.

The fact that his father could be Mr. Diefenbaker is what gives the story its sensational appeal. “It’s a story that could rewrite the history books,” his lawyer, Stephen Edell, says in an telephone interview.

But it doesn’t have an impact on his lawsuit, other than help him make sense of what he says has been lifelong antipathy from the man who happened to be an ambitious, powerful Liberal at the time. “They hated each other. They were enemies! And every time he looked at me, not only did he see John Diefenbaker, he saw that his wife was having an affair with the enemy! The innocence of my birth screwed me.”

But if the identity of his biological father has no bearing on the outcome of his court case, why he is spending on all his energy and time pursuing it?

“It has just been a year,” he retorts. “It’s not a life mission,” he says, dismissing the idea that he’s obsessed with finding out the truth. “It’s about finding out who my father is. If it’s not Diefenbaker, we’ll take another shot at who.”

But clearly, a famous last name would give him a coveted sense of belonging. “I’m confident that [Diefenbaker] is my father, because if he’s not I have no idea who it would be,” he admits.

And if he’s not able to prove he is the son of Mr. Diefenbaker through DNA or other means?

“We have new leads,” he offers conspiratorially.

Divorced with no children, the 43-year-old worked for a family business after high school, never attending university. After he left – having been pushed out of the real estate and investment firm by Mr. Dryden, he alleges – he started up his own marketing company. A few years ago, he decided to work as a self-employed legal consultant even though he has no formal training in law. Now, most of his time is spent working on the mystery of his paternity and on his court appeal.

He has read some biographies of Mr. Diefenbaker. “I would say I share general personality traits both good and bad,” he says. “The talking, the finger wagging, the jowls. Diefenbaker had a tendency to fly off the handle... I’m conservative and determined and not afraid to ruffle a few feathers.”

And if he did find out he’s a Diefenbaker, would he run for political office?

“One thing I’ve learned is not to count chickens before they hatch,” he offers after a moment’s hesitation. “But I’m open to any and all suggestions. If the country needed me, and I thought I could be of some assistance, I would be more than happy.”