My Bad Relationship With The NHL

I feel like I'm writing a letter to Dear Abby... See, I'm stuck in a bad relationship, I love her, but she takes off months, even a year, for no good reason, then comes back and expects that we'll pick up like nothing ever happened...

Her name is the NHL.

Let me say that I am a big hockey fan, I have been since I was about 10 years old. Growing up, my family had season tickets to the New Jersey Devils; I've ridden buses to Montreal to see a game; when I became the Sports Editor of my college newspaper, I quickly claimed the hockey beat for myself, even though my school had only a club-level team and they were, honestly, fairly bad; in short, I love the game. So you would think that I'd be overjoyed by the news that the NHL's latest labor stoppage came to an end late last week, just in time to salvage part of the 2012-2013 season.

But I'm not. Some of it is anger and frustration with the league over its third labor stoppage in 18 years, a largely pointless fight between millionaires and billionaires over how to carve up league revenues that last season topped $3 billion. But in a bigger sense, my lack of enthusiasm comes from the realization that getting back together after a breakout often seems great as an idea, though the reality is usually disappointing.

People are joyful over the idea that the last-minute labor agreement saved the 2012-2013 season. But let's not kid ourselves, the season is already lost.  Sure, the teams will take to the ice in an ersatz 48-game schedule, as they did in 1995, but this season will be looked at as far from legitimate. The New Jersey Devils won their first Stanley Cup following the shortened 1995 season, but the only reason that championship has any validity today is because the Devils went on to make the playoffs every year for the next decade and win two more championships in 2000 and 2003; without them, the Devils 1995 Cup win would be in the record books with a very big asterisk.

Nor am I looking forward to seeing the quality of the product on the ice this year. Getting ready for a full NHL season is usually a month-long affair of training camps and exhibition games; this year that process is being compressed down to a week – players will report to their teams this weekend and begin play on Jan. 19^th, not in exhibition games, but to launch the 48 game season.  Some players will be coming to these mini-camps from professional leagues in Europe, others from stints in the minors, others still with no playing time since their seasons ended last April or May. The teams won't gel as cohesive units, injuries are far more likely because of poor physical conditioning; in short, the 2013 season promises to be a sloppy one.

And even more disturbing are some of the moves the league is discussing for the future. Lost in the hubbub of the labor crisis were two proposals floated by the NHL: expanding the playoffs to 20 teams and expanding the league itself to 32; both are awful ideas. A 20-team playoff format will likely add another round to the playoff structure and will stretch the season deeper into June, considering that the 2011-2012 playoffs didn't end until June 11^th, another round could push the end of the Stanley Cup finals almost to the official start of summer – kind of silly for a “winter” sport. It also makes the regular season more irrelevant since 20 out of 30 teams, or 2/3 of the league would be guaranteed a spot in the post-season. Expansion is also a terrible idea, especially since part of the reason for this year's labor lockout was the league's contention that roughly 2/3 of the teams were losing money. Seattle and Quebec City have emerged as the frontrunners in the expansion talks, and while both would be fine additions to the NHL, it would make more sense for them to host teams relocated from some of the NHL's weaker cities like Phoenix or Columbus, OH than to add more teams to what many fans consider to be an already bloated league.

The rationale for these moves is money – expansion franchises must pay a fee to the league, which results in a few million dollars being funneled into the coffers of every NHL team, a hallmark of the Gary Bettman era; while more teams in the playoffs will give four more owners a chance to earn a little more revenue by hosting additional home games for their teams. Whether these moves are good for the quality of the league or the sport is irrelevant if there's a quick buck to be made. And that brings me back to my point about being stuck in a bad relationship. The NHL is never going to change, but in terms of hockey, they are the only game in town, and, unfortunately, the NHL knows that too.  

Is Canada Turning Into The United States?

Jokes about the similarity of the two countries have gone on for decades, but some recent moves by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper do beg the question: is Canada turning into the United States?

Environmental and civil rights groups in Canada are up in arms over new proposals from Harper to reform the regulations that manage Canada's natural resources.  The Harper government says that the reforms are meant to reduce redundancy and streamline the approval process for projects in Canada's energy sector, which will benefit all Canadians through lower energy prices and increased exports; environmentalists say the changes are just meant to remove environmental protections, particularly those blocking the expansion of Oil Sands operations in Alberta.  Harper's plan will have the largest impact on a proposed pipeline that will run west from the Oil Sands region through British Columbia to the Pacific Ocean, where tankers can be loaded with the heavy Oil Sands bitumen for shipment to China.  Currently, the pipeline route would have to be evaluated for its environmental impact on each watershed it will cross, and there are many of them in British Columbia; the Harper proposal would mandate that environmental approval would only need to be sought where the pipeline crossed an “official” watershed, a far smaller number.

Harper is presenting this as a net good for Canada: increased exports that will boost the Canadian economy, more jobs and more domestic energy security; opponents say that it is a massive handout to Big Oil and that environmentally sensitive, though not federally-protected, lands will be destroyed by the pipeline.  The Harper government is also putting Canadian environmental groups under closer scrutiny.  Officially, the closer look is meant to uncover donations from foreign sources, which in many cases would be a violation of Canadian law; but again, opponents say that the official story is merely a smokescreen and that the investigations are simply an attempt to silence groups opposed to Harper's policies. 

These investigations come on the heels of a new law passed in Quebec that gives authorities the power to block public demonstrations.  The law follows weeks of street protests by college-aged youth in Quebec protesting hikes in the tuition at provincial universities.  Again, the government and civil libertarians take differing views of the new law: authorities in Quebec say that the law will only be employed in extreme circumstances, noting that the tuition protests have dragged on for weeks, with the protestors refusing to compromise on a proposed deal regarding tuition and that the continuing protests are having a negative impact on the economy in a number of Quebec's cities; civil rights groups though see the new law as nothing more than an attempt to limit the public's right to free speech and assembly and to eliminate dissent.

Meanwhile, Canada is also flexing its military muscles.  Canada is sending 1,400 military personnel, along with five ships and a submarine, to participate in the biannual “Rim of The Pacific” military exercise; all at a time, Toronto's Globe and Mail notes, when the Canada's Defense Department is cutting back on its overall budget.  Canada is also in negotiations for a place in southeastern Asia to host a military “hub” as they're calling it.  The hub would be a way for Canada to have a military presence in a region that is rapidly growing in economic and strategic importance; a likely candidate is reported to be a small port facility next to an airfield in Singapore. Canada's Defense Minister Peter MacKay said that the hub would signal “Canada's intention to reassert our credentials in the Pacific.”

MacKay's announcement followed on the heels of a statement by his opposite number in America, Leon Panetta that the United States was planning to base 60% of its naval forces in the Pacific by 2020. But when you pair Canada's desire for their own slice of the military pie in southeast Asia with Harper's pro-business, and according to critics anti-environmental, energy policy, and new laws that are having a chilling effect on public protests that employ some of the same strategies as the PATRIOT Act, you're seeing policies coming out of the Canadian government that are looking very American.

Durban FTW?

The latest round of negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (or UNFCCC) wrapped up over the weekend.  Actually the talks, meant to strike an agreement on a follow-up to the Kyoto Protocols that limit global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, were suppose to end on Friday, but went on for an additional day and a half to allow delegates to hammer out a final agreement.

This is being spun in a lot of the media coverage of the talks as a win for the environment, since for the first time all of the 195 nations in attendance agreed in principle to be bound by legally-binding caps on future greenhouse gas emissions.  But you need to read past the headlines on what was actually agreed upon for the full story: first a three-year band-aid was slapped on Kyoto, extending the provisions of the soon-to-expire treaty out to 2015; then the UNFCCC parties agreed to “discuss” a legally-binding pact that would impose emission caps on major GHG emitters that would kick in by 2020.  String that all together and you get an agreement with more wiggle room than a six-year old's front tooth.

The parties in the UNFCCC were to have spent the past two years negotiating a replacement for the Kyoto Protocols to go into effect in 2013, once Kyoto expires.  But the negotiating sessions – Copenhagen, Mexico and now Durban – have all been exercises in delaying action until the next round of discussions.  There's no reason to think this pattern is now going to change during the next three years of “discussions”, especially since the core disagreements remain: the big polluters of the developing world, China and India, argue that it is not fair that they be held to the same emissions standards as the developed world, while the developed world's top emitter, the United States, ably assisted by our less polluting, but more vocal sidekick, Canada (which just pulled out of Kyoto entirely), argue that any future agreement is meaningless unless it binds all top emitters – be they developed or developing – to the same standard.  It's hard to see either side moving from their position during the next three years, not to mention that even if President Obama, in a second-term effort at legacy-building, were to sign onto a binding agreement, it is unlikely Congress would ratify it since some Congressmen view Global Warming as something akin to voodoo and/or a Commie plot to enslave America.  Durban also established a $100 billion fund to help developing nations to offset the costs of climate change (another reason why it is viewed as a “win”), though one country who feels that they may be entitled to payment from the fund is mega-wealthy Saudi Arabia, who argue they should be compensated for possiblefuture reductions in crude oil sales as the world moves on to greener sources of energy.

Frankly, I have a hard time then viewing Durban as anything more than another kick of the proverbial can down the road.  As a friend said, when it comes to the topic of climate change, there are no adults in the room to make the hard choices necessary to actually accomplish something.  Countries will talk about the need to mitigate climate change, but will stop short of any action that could impact the quality of life at home (and thus reduce their leaders chances of staying in power).  And until the day comes that nations/leaders can act in the global interest rather than their own self-serving ones, we'll see more Durbans and more empty promises of change “sometime” down the road.

Canada Takes Up Role As Green Villian

Perhaps the most interesting thing to come out of the United Nations-sponsored climate change talks this week in Durban, South Africa so far is that for once the United States isn't being cast in the role as the anti-green bad guy.  No, this time that role is being ably played by Canada.

It is an odd place for Canada, which typically is seen as one of the most responsible players on the global stage, usually pushing an agenda of mutual cooperation.  But the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has staked out an aggressive environmental position ahead of these talks, complete with rumors that Canada may withdraw completely from the landmark Kyoto Protocols, the international compact aimed at curbing the emission of climate-changing greenhouse gases (GHGs).  A key source of contention has been Canada's Oil Sands, which the Harper government touts as a valuable source of crude oil from a stable and friendly country and which the environmentalists condemn as just another way to tie the world to the existing fossil fuel economy for decades to come, while also being a major source of GHG emissions in their own right.

In Durban, Canada is also balking at an agreement for developed countries to establish a fund to help poorer developing nations to mitigate the impacts of climate change that their countries may be experiencing.  Environment Minister Peter Kent took a decidedly un-Canadian tack in discussing the fund, saying: “there is a fairly widely held perception in the developing world of the need for guilt payment” as part of any future climate agreement.  It is part of a larger position taken by the Harper government that Canada will not sign onto any future climate change agreement that does not also require firm reduction commitments from developing nations as well.  Typically, the burden for GHG reduction has fallen on the developed world, since it is argued (usually by the developing nations themselves) that requiring the same level of intensity from developing nations in reducing GHG emissions would stifle their fragile economies and potentially trap countless millions of people in poverty.  And, the developing nations further argue, since much of the historic emission of GHGs came from the developed world, the burden in reducing it should be theirs.

Kent, and the government he represents, have taken an aggressive stance in dealing with the climate change issue, one that has angered environmentalists and their supporters.  But like most arguments, there is a grain of truth within it.  Kent notes that in the developing nations pool are countries like China and India – relatively well-off countries but demanding to be treated like the poorest nations in the world.  There is clearly a difference between China, now the world's second-largest economy and its top GHG emitter, and a place like Bangladesh.  Dirty, coal-fired power plants have helped to drive China to annual growth rates of 8 to 10% per year; and not caring about GHG emissions, at least until very recently, has been another way that China has kept their production costs artificially low and their exports abnormally cheap.  China is happy to act like an emerging superpower when it comes to doling out foreign aid in Africa or throwing their weight around militarily in the Pacific Basin, but when called on to act like a member of the top nations club in terms of leading on the environment (or in another area, like human rights), China shrinks back and hides behind the “developing nations” tag – I'm not sure what the Chinese word for hypocrisy is, but this is certainly a good example of it in action.

You can find a lot to criticize in Minister Kent's approach towards Durban, and PM Harper's overall environmental position, but at least on this issue they have a valid point – if the global community is serious about tackling climate change, then it is time to expect the top emerging economies in the world to start acting like they belong at the big table and do their part, even if it means their economy at home may suffer a bit.

Canada vs. The Greens

Canada's Conservative government isn't making many friends among the environmentalists these days.  As a major United Nations conference on climate change opens in Durban, South Africa, there are persistent rumors that Canada is planning to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocols – the international agreement regulating the emissions of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) blamed for climate change.  While the Canadian government already announced last year that it wouldn't abide by its GHG commitments, “unsigning” the agreement would be a blow to the future of the Kyoto Protocols and would be a pretty heavy blow to the talks just underway in Durban.

Kyoto is scheduled to expire at the end of 2012.  Talks on a follow-up agreement to Kyoto have dragged on, in part because of a fundamental split between developed and developing nations.  Canada  has taken the position that any future agreement needs to include caps on emissions by countries like China and India.  For their part, China and India (and other countries) have replied that they are still “developing” nations and that hard caps on GHG emissions could stifle their economic growth, and add that since the developed nations are responsible for much of the existing levels of GHGs in the atmosphere, it isn't fair to hold the developing countries to the same standard (it is something of a dubious argument, but it is one they are sticking to).

Canada has yet to officially confirm that they are indeed dropping out of the Protocols, though that hasn't stopped critiques from the environmental lobby from rolling in against the Conservatives.  Canada has seen a jump in their GHG emissions since 2009, largely because of development of the Oil Sands reserves in northern Alberta, a project the Canadian government credits for much of the country's current economic health.  But the Oil Sands are also a prime target of environmental lobbying both in the United States and Canada since not only do the Oil Sands contribute to GHG emissions and disrupt the environment in northern Alberta, but they also represent a new and vast source of crude oil at a time that environmentalists are pushing for a “green” energy economy. The most recent fight over the Oil Sands has been the Keystone XL pipeline that would link the Oil Sands with refineries along the Gulf Coast of the United States. 

Speaking of the Oil Sands, Canada has possibly gained an ally in an ongoing fight with the European Union over the Oil Sands.  The EU has been openly discussing barring the import of any petroleum products from the Oil Sands on the grounds that it is a “dirty” source of oil and that the GHG emissions from Oil Sands extraction and production is unacceptably high.  The Canadian government has been aggressively pushing back, arguing both that the Oil Sands do not emit as many GHGs as critics claim and that it is unfair to single out the Oil Sands from other so-called sources of heavy crude oil, like imports from Venezuela, among other nations, since all heavy crude requires extensive processing to turn it into gasoline and other petroleum products.  According to a report, the United Kingdom though is “secretly” siding with Canada.  Liberal Democrat minister Norman Baker was quoted as basically agreeing with the Canadians, saying:  “We believe that means tackling all highly polluting crudes equally, not simply oil sands from one particular country. These certainly represent a problem, but so do other crudes, and it makes no environmental sense to ignore these.”  Canada currently doesn't send any Oil Sands products to Europe, but it does not want to lose Europe as a potential market and the government fears that an EU ruling could set a precedent that would make Oil Sands products more difficult to sell on the open market.  And while I can't imagine China for one caring much about the GHG footprint of the Oil Sands, they could demand steep discounts for Oil Sands products if they know Canada doesn't have many other viable markets.

Now Here's A Reason To Oppose The Keystone XL

The Keystone XL pipeline project, which would bring bitumen down from Alberta's Oil Sands region to refineries along the United States' Gulf Coast, has been in the news a lot lately.  Opponents are trying to block approval of the US portion of the pipeline since they argue that Oil Sands crude production is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, destructive to the arboreal forests in Alberta and that the pipeline puts the American heartland and the massive Ogallala Aquifer at-risk since bitumen is highly corrosive, making pipeline leaks more likely, and difficult to clean when it spills.  Late Thursday they may have won a partial victory as the Obama Administration requested an additional review on the potential impacts of the pipeline which will likely punt any final yea or nay decision out past the 2012 presidential elections.  Of course a delay is not a denial and it's quite likely the pipeline could get the green light late next year or early in 2013, especially if a Republican wins next year's presidential elections, so the protests against the pipeline continue.

In an earlier post, I was critical of the protesters, not so much because I whole-heartedly support the pipeline idea, but because I find a lot of their rationale incredibly parochial – if we Americans refuse to build the Keystone XL, those silly Canadians will stop ruining their environment.  Of course Oil Sands production began before the Keystone XL project was even thought up and Canadians have a couple of Plan B's in mind in case Keystone XL is blocked.  One is to build pipelines west to the Pacific, where the bitumen can be shipped off to always energy-hungry China; the other is to build “upgraders”, a kind of refinery that converts heavy, lower-value into light, valuable synthetic crude oil (SCO) that can be processed like natural crude oil and which fetches a premium on the open market. In fact, some Canadians are wondering why they're even shipping out the lower-cost bitumen and not the higher-value SCO in the first place.

In a column in The Guardian, Sen. Bernie Sanders hits on a much better reason to oppose the Keystone XL – namely that little, if any, of the Oil Sands bitumen will actually be used in the United States.  The Oil Sands are being touted as a hedge against more unreliable sources of imported oil (i.e. the OPEC nations).  But internal documents from Valero, the refining company most invested in seeing Keystone XL completed, show that the company plans to convert the Alberta bitumen into gasolene and diesel fuel that they will then ship out to Latin America and Europe.  The reason is that their refinery in Port Arthur, TX is in a special enterprise zone where no export taxes are charged, so shipping the gas/diesel abroad is more profitable than selling it in the US, plus Europe has a much larger market for diesel than does the United States.

That argument knocks the legs out from the Oil Sands argument in the US – namely that they will provide America with a source of imported oil from a stable and trusted ally.  It also makes opposition to the pipeline a lot more palatable - why should the United States put its environment at-risk so a private company can make profits selling products from our “domestic” oil abroad – than some fantasy that if we “tell” the Canadians to stop exploiting the Oil Sands they actually will.

Update: According to Toronto’s Globe and Mail, Canadians are pissed about the delay decision.

Perry (and Washington) On US Foreign Policy

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry was in New York today giving a speech where he accused President Barack Obama of not only single-handedly setting out to destroy the United States, but to destroy Israel as well. The backdrop for Perry's speech was the United Nations General Assembly meeting where the Palestinians are widely expected to petition the UN for full member-nation status. Perry contends that the Palestinians wouldn't be taking such a step if Obama hadn't thrown Israel under the bus.

"Simply put, we would not be here today, at the precipice of such a dangerous
move, if the Obama policy in the Middle East wasn't naive, arrogant, misguided
and dangerous,” Perry said.

As we've seen from last week's special election in Queens, New York to fill the seat of disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner, potentially sabotaging America's relationship with the world's billion-plus Muslims by vetoing Palestine's petition to the UN just isn't enough to make some people believe that Obama isn't anti-Israel. Perry's fellow presidential candidate, businessman Herman Cain, has also said that he would make support for Israel the bedrock of his presidency.

Since candidates, particularly Republican candidates, love to wrap themselves in the words of the Founding Fathers, it’s a good time to print what George Washington himself had to say about “foreign entanglements”:

A passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite Nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite Nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the Nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.

Now none of what I'm saying should be taken as an anti-Israeli position; I think that the only places US presidential candidates should be speaking of defending so passionately are parts of the United States itself. But if we are talking foreign policy, I can easily think of a list of places of far more strategic/economic importance to the United States than Israel that these candidates should be focusing on, for example:

Mexico – the country with which we share thousands of miles of border, which is currently locked in bloody battle with the militias of a group of powerful drug cartels.
China – the nation many feel will soon join America in the Superpower Club.
Canada – the other nation with whom we share thousands of miles of border, who also is our largest trading partner and a major energy supplier; just because the Canadians are quiet doesn't mean we can ignore them.
The European Union – gripped by an economic crisis that could drag our country into a recession, or a depression.
Saudi Arabia – the country that still exports more of the black sticky stuff we're addicted to than anyone else in the world.

Those are just five off the top of my head. You could probably make a case for Russia, Brazil, India, Japan and even Somalia as having more real importance to the United States than Israel. Yet an outsized portion of our foreign policy efforts remain focused on the US-Israel relationship. And at least in the early days of the campaign, it seems like Israel will take center stage in our foreign policy debates as well.

Parochial Pipeline Protest

Even though its most famous resident is currently not at home, dozens of people are camped outside the White House, many with the express purpose of getting arrested, all to protest the construction of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. The US State Department is expected to issue their official recommendation on the Keystone XL pipeline, which, if approved, would bring up to 700,000 barrels of oil from the Tar Sands region in northern Alberta, Canada, to waiting refineries along the US Gulf Coast, every day. The White House protests are being organized by an umbrella group called Tar Sands Action, which claims to have 1,500 people signed up to get arrested outside of the White House. The group also has the support of a number of celebrities, while some well-known politicians, including California Representative Henry Waxman, have also voiced their opposition to Keystone XL to both the White House and State Department.

Environmentalists on both sides of the border are up in arms over Keystone XL, since they say it will lead to a massive expansion of operations in Alberta's Tar Sands region. While the Tar (or Oil) Sands contain vast amounts of bitumen, getting it out of the ground and transformed into usable petroleum products is a labor-intensive, and polluting, process. Traditionally, oil sands deposits near the surface were strip mined and the bitumen was “cooked” out of the dirt; today producers more often are employing a method called Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (or SAGD), which injects high-pressure steam deep below the surface to liquify the bitumen so that it can be recovered like a traditional crude oil deposit. While SAGD has far less impact on the surface of the Alberta prairies, it uses vast amounts of water, much of which returns to the surface contaminated and in need of treatment. The bitumen pumped to the surface also either needs to be mixed with other petroleum products to make it liquid enough to ship through pipelines or processed by “upgrader” units on-site to turn it into synthetic crude oil (SCO), which looks and acts like traditional crude. The whole process has turned swaths of the rural prairie into industrial sites, with some of the indiginous First Nations tribes in the region reporting spikes in cancer rates and other illnesses, which they blame on the Tar Sands industry.

Opponents of Keystone XL and the Tar Sands in general have a point - operations in the Tar Sands reserves have an obvious impact on the environment – though some claims made by their opponents, such as calling the Tar Sands the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet, are wildly overstated (the Tar Sands produce a fraction of the GHG emissions of the US coal industry). But exploitation of the Tar Sands has been a boon to Alberta's economy and has helped not only to position Canada as a major energy exporter, but also to bring the Canadian dollar to parity with the currency of their southern neighbors. And that's where the parochialism kicks in. Implicit within the American protests against Keystone XL is the idea that if TransCanada is not allowed to build a new pipeline to reach refineries in the American south then the brakes will be put on expansion of Tar Sands operations. This is ridiculous. With global demand for oil growing and traditional super-large fields in places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait maturing, more attention is falling on non-conventional deposits like the Tar Sands. So as long as oil prices remain above the $50-60 range (roughly the breakeven point for Tar Sands production) the folks in Alberta will keep the Tar Sands reserves in production. The only question will be where that oil goes. Proposals already exist to build or expand pipelines westward from Alberta to Canada's Pacific coast where Tar Sands bitumen or SCO can then be loaded on tankers headed anywhere, but most likely to China. In fact some in Canada are arguing that even if Keystone XL is approved by the State Dept. that a Pacific Coast outlet is a wise business move so that Alberta will not be subject to the whims of the American market.

So in short, protests by groups like Tar Sands Action aren't going to actually stop oil production in the Tar Sands, but they may succeed in preventing America from getting access to a needed source of crude oil from a close and stable ally.

Why No Love For Canada?

They had national elections in Canada this week, but unless you're a Canadian this news likely comes as something of a surprise to you. The elections received barely any coverage in the United States, which is disappointing since they turned out to be something of a game-changer for our neighbors to the north: The Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, won a solid majority in Parliament; the perennially third-place New Democratic Party (NDP) became the official opposition party after the near collapse of the once powerful Liberals; meanwhile the separatist-minded Bloc Quebecois (which advocates independence for Quebec) lost almost all of their seats, while the Green Party elected a member of Parliament for the first time ever.

All in all, it was a pretty momentous election, which makes the lack of any meaningful coverage in the United States all the more confusing. The United States and Canada share the world's longest demilitarized border, and Canada is the United States' top supplier of imported oil - you would think that we in the US of A would then at least care a little bit about what's going on up there. But the United States has long had a parochial attitude towards Canada, as if their main responsibility was to dance to our tune, or as Homer Simpson once quipped when Bart suggested they go to Toronto: “why should I leave America to go to America Jr.?” From the other side of the border, the Canadians have also had fun with the idea of living in America's perpetual shadow, the comedy show Kids in the Hall once did a skit where a character described Canadians to an unknowing foreign foil as “an American without the gun.”

Unfortunately this comical attitude has a way of affecting serious issues, like our political discourse. Take for example recent moves by some members of Congress to block the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. As proposed, the pipeline would carry synthetic crude oil from the Oil Sands region of Alberta to refineries along the US Gulf Coast. But the crude production from the Oil Sands region has a reputation for being hard on the environment in northern Alberta and for being a major source of greenhouse gas emissions (though this claim is actively disputed). Environmentalists in the US, with the backing of a group of Senators, have been working to block the authorization of construction of Keystone XL on environmental grounds, with the implicit assumption being that without access to US markets, this crude from the Oil Sands just wouldn't be produced. The Canadians though have a different take on the matter and now are just looking into an alternative pipeline route that would carry the production from the Oil Sands westward instead to the Pacific Ocean and eventually onto China.

The point here is that despite our perception of Canada as our over-polite, over-eager little brother who is always glad to follow in our footsteps, Canada is in fact its own country with its own culture, motivations and politics. And their path isn't necessarily the same as ours, so maybe we ought to pay a little more attention to them.

Back To Blogging

You may have noticed, well hopefully noticed, that there haven’t been any updates to the site in a couple of weeks. Apologies for that, several events came together that disrupted the normal writing schedule. But as things get back to normal, so too will updates to the blog. And while there has been a lot of international affairs coverage in the news of late focusing on the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster in Japan and the rebellion in Libya there have been a host of other important events going on around the world in relative obscurity, including both Ivory Coast and Sudan edging towards civil war, a spat between Russia’s power duo of Putin and Medvedev, Obama’s South American tour and the possible collapse of Canada’s government. So stay tuned over the next few days as we get back into the swing of things.

Canada's Ethical Oil

The government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is taking a new tack in marketing their petroleum products by adopting the term “ethical oil”. Critics say though that it is simply a bold ploy to market what in reality is very dirty oil to a reluctant American market.

Much of the Canadian oil exported to the United States (Canada is the largest single supplier of imported oil to America) comes from Canada's oil sands region in Alberta. As discussed in earlier posts, oil sands crude is a very heavy, very dense oil that requires extensive processing to extract and prepare for shipment – a process that is taking a heavy toll on the environment in northern Alberta. Canadian firm TransCanada is proposing to build a new pipeline across the United States to refineries along the Gulf Coast specifically to process oil sands crude, but several members of Congress have been working to block approval of the Keystone XL pipeline on environmental grounds.

That's where the ethical oil argument comes in. Originally proposed last year by Canadian writer Ezra Levant and now apparently adopted by the Harper government, the ethical oil argument is that it's better for the United States to buy oil from the peaceful, human rights-respecting Canadians than it is to buy it from regimes like Saudi Arabia or Venezuela that support radical Islamic fundamentalism or are openly hostile to the US. “Canada is a very ethical society and a safe source for the United States in comparison to other sources of energy,” Harper said in a statement last Friday. Meanwhile groups like the Sierra Club say that Harper's government should put more effort into ensuring that oil sands production is in line with environmental regulations in Alberta rather than into marketing efforts.

Canada's View: Third World America

I always it fascinating to read foreign press accounts of current affairs in the United States, to see what things look like from the other side of the fence so to speak.  This latest report from Canada's newsweekly MacLeans though is downright depressing. Titled “Third World America”, it argues that the United States is teetering on the brink of a systemic financial collapse, not a mere recession, and a plunge into the status of becoming a true Third World nation.

Sure, you can dismiss some of that as hyperbole, or perhaps even an innate Canadian inferiority complex, but the examples that make up the first third of the article are pretty telling. My personal favorite is the course being offered to county managers by Purdue University explaining how to breakup a paved asphalt street into gravel to save on road maintenance costs.  But along with offering up some economically-fueled horror stories, the MacLeans piece tries to get to the root causes of America's current economic decline.  Michael Bernstein, an economic historian at New Orleans' Tulane University laid the blame at the feet of conservative icon Ronald Reagan.  “We have been involved for three decades now in paring back public commitments and public spending, and that started with the Reagan revolution,” Bernstein said. “We are living with the outcomes and consequences.”

Interestingly one of Reagan's former staffers, Clyde Prestowitz, who served as a trade official to Reagan and later helped negotiate the NAFTA trade agreement, put the blame on American trade policies, specifically the United States' habit of trading economic favors for perceptions of national security.   Prestowitz said that the US was too willing to swap economic agreements in exchange for the right to put a military base in a foreign country or for support at the United Nations.  He also blasted the US government for not challenging other countries, most notably China, on currency manipulation – keeping their currency artificially “cheap” to give them an unfair advantage in the import/export markets.  Prestowitz also noted that other countries were willing to protect “key industries” the feel are important to their national well-being with heavy subsidies; the US, by contrast, has been dedicated to the advice of Adam Smith and has been more than willing to let jobs and industries go abroad in this era of globalization.

Smith was an 18^th century Scottish economist who popularized the idea that some nations would be better at producing a specific good than others (for example France can produce wine better and cheaper than England), so it makes economic sense to buy goods from the countries that do the best job of producing them rather than trying to produce every good your society needs yourself; it is the basic idea behind globalization, and one embraced by American economists and politicians, particularly conservative ones.  But the 21^st century is much different and much more complex than Smith's 18^th, we wouldn't follow 18^th century medical advice (where a doctor would likely have you slapping a leech on your forehead to “re-balance your humors”), does it make sense then to follow 18^th century economic advice, especially when, as Prestowitz notes, other countries aren't playing by the same rules?

The MacLeans article points to the need for some new and different thinking from America's leaders, both political and economic, if we are to reverse this financial slide.  Sadly it looks like we're not about to get any. 

More Fighting Over The Oil Sands

Canada's news magazine Macleans is out with another piece detailing the ongoing angst in the US government over whether or not to commit to importing oil from Alberta's oil sands region for the foreseeable future. The fight shaping up pits the Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA) against the State Department; the EPA wants to conduct a thorough review on the impact increased reliance on the oil sands will have on the United States, particularly in light of a recent oil pipeline spill in Michigan courtesy of one of the oil sands biggest corporate investors, Calgary's Enbridge Co. The State Dept., meanwhile, is trying to fast-track approval of a major pipeline expansion project, the Keystone XL that would link the oil sands in Alberta with the US Gulf Coast; the State Dept.'s position is that since America needs the oil, we might as well get it from a reliable ally.

We've talked about the oil sands numerous times here before. But in short, the environmental lobby is up in arms over the possibility of anything that will increase production in the oil sands region. The critique is that refining the synthetic crude produced by the oil sands results in far more greenhouse gas emissions than does refining a similar amount of natural crude oil; not to mention that a lot of the oil sands are currently strip-mined from the surface, a process causing damage to the Alberta prairie lands.

But the oil sands are also a symbol of a much bigger debate going on within Washington. Macleans repeats a point we made here in an earlier post about the oil sands pipeline projects: namely that a pipeline represents a decades-long commitment to buy oil from a specific market, since it will take years and years for the billions of dollars invested in the construction of the pipelines to be recouped. The “green energy” proponents in Washington then are dead-set against seeing Keystone XL, or any other oil sands-related project for that matter, move forward since it is in essence a pledge by the United States to buy oil, and a lot of it, from Canada for decades to come – something they say will work against moving the United States from a petroleum-based economy in any sort of meaningful way.

Canadian Pipeline Sparks Protests

Catching up on a few recent stories brings me around to this one from last week about protests over a proposed oil pipeline project that would bring crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands region all the way across the United States to ports in Texas along the Gulf of Mexico. Of course the Gulf of Mexico and oil have been in the news a lot lately thanks to BP’s ongoing spill. Advocates for Canadian oil have used that disaster to their favor – using Canadian oil, they argue, would keep the Gulf free from the possibility of future BP-style accidents.

Not so fast, reply the critics, including US Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, who is leading a bloc of 50 members of the House in opposing the Keystone XL pipeline expansion project. They, along with environmental activists in Canada and the United States, point to reports of the toll oil production from the oil sands have taken on the environment in Alberta, which show that oil sands are far from a “green” source of energy (unlike other methods where oil is drilled and pumped from a reservoir, oil sands oil is locked into the soil – sometimes called “tar sands” – and is mined before being cooked out of the sand in a complex process to produce a kind of crude oil). Waxman is asking the Obama administration to hold off on approving the Keystone XL project until a full assessment on its environmental impact – both in the US and Canada – can be done. It’s worth noting that the administration last year though approved a similar oil pipeline project dubbed the “Alberta Clipper,” the administration’s reasoning is that whatever environmental costs caused by oil sands production were offset by the ability for the United States to have access to a stable source of oil from a reliable ally.

Terry Cunha a spokesman for TransCanada – the company behind the Keystone XL project – put it bluntly: “Quite honestly, the reality is the U.S. has a large need for crude oil,” adding that it’s better to get that oil from “a reliable neighbor.” Waxman thinks that’s part of the problem - that Keystone XL just furthers America’s dependence on oil, and that the pipeline’s approval would be a step away from the Obama administration’s pledge to cut greenhouse gases and develop environmentally-friendly alternative sources of energy.

Meanwhile still other critics of Keystone XL have emerged, with some industry analysts to the North voicing concerns that Canada is becoming too dependent on America as a market for their oil and pushing for pipelines to Canada’s Pacific coast that would allow them to export oil to the rapidly growing Asian market as well.

Canada’s Faux Clean Oil Alternative

Government officials in Canada apparently are hoping that the uproar over the ongoing, oil-spill fueled ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will provide a boost to their domestic petroleum industry. Canada’s Environment Minister Jim Prentice was quoted in MacLean’s magazine as saying that environmental risks from Alberta’s oil sands were “probably less than the kind of risks associated with offshore drilling.” In other words, getting oil by mining the plains of Alberta is better for Mother Earth than drilling holes in the Gulf seabed.

But as we explained in this post from last year, even when everything goes right, getting petroleum from Alberta’s oil sands is a very, very dirty process. As you might have assumed from the name, the oil sands are vast tracts in northern Canada where oil has been locked into soil deposits near the surface of the Earth. Rather than drilling wells, the oil sands are strip mined from the Alberta plains; but that is only the start of the process. The sands are then cooked down to release a sludge, which is refined into crude oil, which can then be refined again into gasoline or other petroleum products. The refining generates a lot of air pollution, the mining scars the plains and according to the indigenous Cree First Nation tribes who call the oil sands region home, the rise of the oil sands industry has caused a spike in cancer among their people.

Demand for oil sands-sourced petroleum has been growing in recent years – last year the US government agreed to build the “Alberta Clipper” pipeline that, when completed, will bring 800,000 barrels of oil sands oil into the United States every day; demand has also grown from Europe as well. For now, Canadian government officials are happy to promote the oil sands as a spill-free petroleum alternative, meanwhile environmental groups like Greenpeace plan to step up their campaign against the oil sands, noting that one of the biggest investors in Alberta’s oil industry in recent years has been BP.

So Much For The Olympic Spirit

Before the 2010 Winter Games were even brought to a close, the host city’s hometown newspaper, The Vancouver Sun, took the opportunity to rip into the next host city of the 2014 Games, Sochi, Russia. Last Saturday the Sun ran this piece describing Sochi as bleak place whose Games are almost certainly to be wracked by terrorist-fueled violence. The Sun’s article is built solely on the assessment of Alina Inayeh, an analyst for the German Marshall Fund of the United States. According to Inayeh, the Sochi Games will be the first ever held in “a war zone region”, an area that she says is “home of the Chechen wars and violent feuding that surfaced after the breakup of the Soviet Union and continues to date,” and that the Games are sure to be a target of terrorists who are based nearby and “if you want to do a terrorist attack, the Olympic Games gives you the most attention you could possibly get.”

Okay, there are just a few problems with Inayeh’s Sochi rundown…

To start with Sochi would not be the first time the Olympics were held in a “war zone”, that distinction goes to the 1988 Summer Games of Seoul, South Korea, since North and South Korea only signed an armistice in 1953 to end the combat of the Korean War - the two sides have never signed a formal peace treaty, so technically the two nations still are at war. Second, while the Northern Caucasus region of Russia has been wracked by fighting, first from two wars in Chechnya and now by an insurgency in the neighboring republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia, in 15 years none of that fighting has touched Sochi, so it’s hard to argue that Sochi itself is in a “conflict zone” (Sochi was similarly untouched by the August 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia which is just down the Black Sea coast from Sochi). And finally, while Inayeh is right that the Olympic Games do provide a high-profile target for would-be terrorists, it is striking that she skips ahead to Sochi and totally ignores the 2012 Summer Games in London as a prime terror target. Let’s remember that in 2005 London suffered the “7/7 attacks” of July 7th, where four British Muslims carried out a series of coordinated suicide bombings on London’s mass transit system killing 52 and wounding 700 others. It would seem if you want to make the Olympics-as-terror-target argument, you should start with the host city that actually has suffered from a mass terror attack first.

The week before the Vancouver Sun piece ran I had dinner with a friend who was born back in the old Soviet Union, since the Games were underway the Olympics came up in our discussion. She remarked that watching the American coverage of the Games she noticed a bias by the US sportscasters against Russian athletes in the various events, it was like the Cold War had never ended she said. After reading this screed from the Sun, it’s hard to argue against that point of view.

Speaking of Russia and the Olympics, there has been a swift reaction on the part of the Russian government over the Russian team’s worst-ever showing in a Winter Games; Russia finished sixth in the medal count and failed to win gold in two events where Russia traditionally dominates: ice skating and hockey. The head of Russia’s Olympic committee resigned on Thursday after more-or-less being ordered to by President Dmitry Medvedev. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Russia should have seen a better return on its investment in athletic training programs at the Games. He did admit though that the once-formidable Soviet-era system of athletic schools and training centers had largely collapsed and wondered aloud where the $117 million Russia spent on its Olympic athletes actually went. “Maybe the money we invested wasn't put where it should have been put, but somewhere else, where those who had it wanted it to go?” Putin said.

The answer seems to be into the pockets of the heads on Russia’s various sports federations as well as into some gaudy displays of self-promotion in Vancouver. According to Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper, Russia’s official delegation at the Vancouver Games included dozens “guests” that included actors, entertainers and politicians while Russia spent lavishly on building “Russia House”, a 10,000 sq ft temporary exhibition pavilion described as the most expensive of its kind ever at an Olympics. Meanwhile, Russian luger Albert Demchenko, who won silver at the 2006 Turin Games, had to take up a collection from his friends and family to repair his beaten up sled so he could even compete in Vancouver, his request before the Games to the Russian luging federation for a new sled had not been answered.

Canada’s Last World War One Vet Passes Away

Since there are so few living veterans of the First World War left, whenever one passes away I think it’s worth noting here. Last Friday Canada lost their last WWI vet when John Babcock, age 109, died.

Babcock lied about his age to join the Canadian military in 1915. Because of his youth he was assigned to a unit with other underage soldiers and remained in Canada for much of the war. By 1918 though he had been shipped off to England and his unit was preparing to be deployed to France when the armistice was signed on November 11th. Even though he never saw combat, by his later years Babcock became a living symbol for the 600,000 Canadians who fought, and 60,000 who died in WWI. But like other centenarian vets, Babcock was unsentimental about his service in what was then called “The Great War”.

With Babcock’s passing there are believed to be only three surviving veterans from World War One, including America’s “last doughboy” Cpl. Frank Buckles, age 108.

Sour Grapes On The Russian Olympic Menu

The Russian Olympic Team was extremely upset by the results of the men’s figure skating after the United States’ Evan Lysacek edged out Russia’s Evgeni Plushenko for the gold medal. I have to admit I think that Russia has something of a point: Plushenko apparently skated a more technically difficult routine, yet received lower scores than Lysacek.

But Russia’s Pravda.ru took Olympic criticism to a new level with this top-to-bottom ripping of the Winter Games: “Vancouver: Mutton Dressed as Lamb”. In it, the folks at Pravda not only light into VANOC (the Vancouver organizing committee) for the men’s figure skating judging, but also for the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili and the drug testing of a Russian skier while her event was still underway (somehow the failure of the Olympic torch to properly rise during the opening ceremonies avoided their critique). Pravda goes on to (somewhat bizarrely) suggest that Canada’s inability to stage a “successful” Olympic Games stems from their inferiority complex over being the United States “skinny and weakling bro”, and also from still being part of the British Commonwealth. They also infer that the figure skating judging was somehow influenced by Canada competing with Russia for dominance in the Arctic Sea.

All in all, it is a stunning mix of sour grapes and conspiracy theories. At the heart though is likely frustration over the generally poor performance of the Russian Olympic team, which is currently on track for their worst-ever Olympics. That is the last thing the Russians want heading into the next Winter Games, which will be held at Sochi, Russia. Countries always want to have a strong showing at the Games they host – even mild-mannered Canada launched an aggressive training program called “Own the Podium” ahead of the Vancouver Games. Russia’s only other experience as an Olympic host were during the massively-boycotted Moscow Summer Games in 1980, so the upcoming Sochi Games are a source of immense national pride. Of course Russia, traditionally a winter sports powerhouse, wants to have a strong showing for the home crowd – but the 2010 Games have so far been a pretty poor prelude of things to come, and perhaps the frustration is showing in some pretty odd ways.

Protesting Too Is An Olympic Event

Along with the thousands of athletes, legions of journalists and hoards of spectators that have all descended upon Vancouver for the Olympic games, another group has come to town: Olympic protesters. On Monday there was a minor diplomatic incident when a young American was arrested by the Vancouver police on charges that included assaulting a police officer and inciting violence after an anti-Olympics rally turned into a vandalism spree in downtown Vancouver.

The protesters have a stew of Olympic-related complaints: Monday’s incident started out as a demonstration against the “carbon footprint” of the Games, and their ultimate effect on global climate change; another popular topic for protesters has been the diversion of public funds to build temporary housing for Olympic athletes (the Olympic Village) rather than providing permanent shelter for the city’s homeless population. To illustrate their point, homeless activists went as far as to set up their own “Olympic village” of tents for the indigent in downtown Vancouver.

That thought reminded of the song “Gassy Jack” by the Vancouver-based band, The Evaporators (for a brief musical interlude, see the video below), which includes the line: “social housing for the needy / not lofts for the greedy.” The 21st Winter Olympics will wrap up next weekend.

Why Isn’t There Women’s Ski Jumping At The Winter Olympics?

The Winter Olympics are underway, and so to are the articles by sports columnists picking apart the Winter Games, like this one from Jeff Neuman of RealClearSports that asks: “Who Killed the Winter Olympics?” Neuman argues that the Winter Games have become a bloated, and ultimately not terribly interesting mess of events.

I can’t say that I totally agree with Neuman, but his column made me think about this report I saw this past weekend on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” about women’s ski jumping, or rather the lack of women’s ski jumping at the Olympics. Even though men’s ski jumping has been included in all 21 Winter Games, the women’s side of the sport is excluded. In fact, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has actively fought to keep the sport out of the Games, a group of women jumpers even tried, and failed, to sue the Vancouver Games organizing committee to force them to include their sport in this year’s Games.

According to IOC chief Jacques Rogge, the reason that women’s ski jumping isn’t included within the Olympic canon is because the relatively small number of women competing at the elite level of the sport – around 170 – would “dilute” the significance of the Olympic gold medal if it was awarded in this discipline. But ESPN notes that an even smaller number of women (about 125) are currently competing at the elite level in the relatively new sport of ski cross, yet their sport was included in the 2010 Games. Ski cross is the ski version of another fairly new sport, board cross – a seeming combination of downhill racing and roller derby, whose only Olympic moment of note so far has been the United States’ Lindsey Jacobellis hot-dogging her way out of a gold medal in the 2006 Games.

And that gets back to Neuman’s point. Traditionally the Winter Olympics were a collection of Alpine and ice sports largely dominated by a collection of northern European countries. In recent years though the Games have expanded to take in a whole collection of new winter sports (like ski/board cross), mostly created in the United States and not surprisingly dominated by American athletes. This may be good business for the IOC since massive US television contracts provide a large chunk of the their revenues, but it hasn’t necessarily improved the quality of the Games.

Of course adding in women’s ski jumping would be a simple matter of scheduling additional elements at facilities that would otherwise sit unused, it doesn’t require building entire new venues like has been the case for the snowboarding events. But it would also likely not bring any additional medals for the United States, and that’s why you probably won’t see women ski jumping at the Games anytime soon.