[IPSM] Impacting Unimpaired: The SPP and TILMA are aimed directly at unimpeded extraction in the tar sands

[Macdonald Stainsby]

January 7, 2008
Impacting Unimpaired
New agreements like the SPP and TILMA are aimed directly at unimpeded 
extraction in the tar sands

by Macdonald Stainsby

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

Demonstrations against the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) 
began in the Summer of 2007, but several of the issues raised by 
anti-SPP organizers invoked déjà vu for many observers: informal 
agreements, secret talks, plans to do away with layers of national 
sovereignty in favour of corporate rules of engagement set to supersede 
labour organizing, environmental regulations or human rights. The 
laundry list of rule changes sounded a lot like debates of years 
past--the FTA, MAI, APEC, FTAA and NAFTA.

However, a deeper look at the driving force behind the new acronyms 
tells a different story, one of a world with new dynamics like peak oil, 
tar sands and the extreme measures that North American governments are 
attempting to use in the tar sands to keep an oil-dependent economy going.

Before the SPP became a larger issue nationally and continentally, the 
Trade, Investment & Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) had already been 
passed in British Columbia and Alberta. The agreement, having passed as 
legislation and set to be "phased in" by April 2009, plays a role 
complementary to the SPP and continues to be similarly criticized by 
many organizers for the anti-democratic way it has been implemented.

According to an analysis published by the Canadian Union of Public 
Employees, TILMA "encompasses provincial and local governments, regional 
districts, school boards, health and social services.

"Nearly every action by a government, now and in the future, is 
potentially constrained unless expressly excluded in the agreement. 
Measures are defined broadly and include any legislation, regulation, 
standard, directive, requirement, guideline, program, policy, 
administrative practice, or other procedure."

CUPE also describes the SPP as "another attempt of corporate America, in 
partnership with their political and corporate allies in Canada and 
Mexico, to reduce the power of government to protect citizens from 
profit-hungry business.

"Their intention is to scale down government regulations and controls 
that try to protect our society, culture and environment. Specifically, 
the SPP will minimize controls in areas like immigration, food and 
agriculture, natural resource exploitation, public services and 
entertainment."

TILMA is a new set of limitations on government's ability to regulate 
and the SPP is the removal of a pre-existing set of regulations. Both 
TILMA and the SPP have specific aims that go beyond the usual attempt to 
enshrine investors' rights and protect corporations from government 
regulations.

Both agreements pave the way--in many cases literally--for the largest 
industrial project in history to move forward: a project that calls for 
the extraction of over 170 billion barrels of recoverable oil from the 
tar sands of Alberta's Athabasca, Peace and Cold Lake regions.

The SPP and TILMA have anticipated popular resistance and preemptively 
removed the ability of governments to control the massive supply of 
energy, land, water and labour needed in the tar sands. They similarly 
preempt governments' ability to regulate the destruction and pollution 
that the "gigaproject" will create.

The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union (CEP) is concerned.

"As energy workers, we are compelled first of all to respond to the SPP 
energy agenda," the CEP said in a statement. "Through the SPP and the 
North American Energy Working Group, the governments of Mexico, United 
States and Canada have formed an unprecedented collaboration with energy 
corporations to promote the continental integration of our energy 
industries and infrastructures."

The result has surprisingly few benefits for Alberta or Canada. A 
massive, ecologically rich region will be reduced to an industrial 
sacrifice area. The synthetic crude that it renders will go south to the 
US. Royalties for Albertans and Canadians are minimal, and communities 
living in the vast area that will be strip-mined--Indigenous and settler 
alike--will be dismantled.

The "Oil Sands Experts Working Group," a part of the 2006 SPP meetings 
in Houston, calls the tar sands "a significant contributor to energy 
supply and security for the continent." According to the group, it was 
founded "when the three countries agreed to collaborate through the SPP 
on the sustainable development of the oil sands resources." The working 
group includes the US, Canadian and Alberta government representatives.

What does "sustainable development of the oil sands resources" consist 
of? The same SPP report says that it requires expanded "integrated long 
distance pipelines," plans for which are "already in place" to 
accommodate "the certain doubling of oil sands production to two million 
barrels per day by 2010.

"The five-fold expansion anticipated for oil sands products in a 
relatively short time span," the report says, "will represent many 
challenges for the pipeline industry."

To accomplish this, the report concludes, "Governments are encouraged to 
streamline the regulatory approval process and better manage the risk to 
both pipeline and energy projects.

"Canadian governments have already gone a long way to co-ordinating and 
streamlining the environmental and regulatory approvals, but more needs 
to be done."

TILMA sets up a free trade zone between Alberta and B.C. that "breaks 
down barriers" for all industries. April 2007 saw the official beginning 
of the TILMA agreement, sold as giving Alberta and B.C. a "competitive" 
way to deal with Ontario's vast size advantage. In reality, TILMA turns 
the provinces into locations where corporations can sue any person or 
entity that tries to legislate or otherwise invoke regulations that 
would make investment more "troublesome." The agreement bans measures 
which "impact or impair" investment and allows even an individual 
investor the right to sue governments to knock down such "impediments" 
and receive compensation for loss of revenue.

What can be seen as an impediment under TILMA is extensive. Under NAFTA, 
corporations can "challenge" legislation that affects their profits. A 
third party then rules on the "dispute" at hand. This has seen Canada 
paying to maintain some of its legislation around tobacco and 
environmental regulations, for example.

TILMA, however, starts on the assumption that the investor is correct. 
Unlike the resolution process seen in Chapter 11 of NAFTA, the current 
agreement includes an automatic up-to-$5 million penalty for a 
government body (at any level other than federal) that violates the 
rules of "free access" for capital. For example, if a city blocks the 
construction of a building for reasons of heritage, costing a 
corporation a projected $4 million, then the governing body that invokes 
the regulations "impacting or impairing" owes that corporation $4 million.

Article 3 of TILMA reads, in part: "Each Party shall ensure that its 
measures do not operate to restrict or impair trade between or through 
the territory of the Parties, or investment or labour mobility between 
the Parties." The agreement has specifically designed protocols for 
hearings to be held if one or more of the signatories are in breach of 
the agreement.

These secretive deals and agreements are taking place during the single 
largest energy policy shift in North America since the peaking of US 
domestic oil production in the seventies.

Internationally, the US is in a scramble for remaining oil reserves. 
Chinese demand for oil continues to grow. Disasters such as hurricanes 
and war--and the fact that only one barrel of oil is discovered for 
every nine that are used--have brought oil prices to record highs since 
the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. With an economic and military 
structure that needs vast supplies of hydrocarbons everyday, North 
American energy concerns have found the oil "boom" in Northern Alberta 
that was expected in the aftermath of a regime change in Iraq.

In response to Chinese interest in the tar sands, US energy expert 
Irving Mintzer blurted out, "The problem with the Chinese is that they 
don't know that the Canadian oil is ours. And neither do the Canadians." 
In the same breath Mintzer noted, "One provocation for rethinking US 
energy policy will be when Chinese investment in Canadian tar sands and 
Venezuelan oil development make it increasingly difficult for us to get 
access to the resources."

That hypothetical situation has come about more quickly, since the Iraqi 
resistance has cut off access to "stable" flows of petroleum and 
Venezuela has reduced its contribution to US energy markets by one 
third. The US has shifted their boom from Baghdad and Kirkuk to Fort 
McMurray and Grand Prairie. Many Venezuelans who oppose their country's 
socialist government have re-settled in Alberta.

Whether led by Liberals or Conservatives, Canada has been more than 
willing to help this shift. Approvals for tar sands operations and newly 
designed agreements help to take Tar Sands development to unfathomable 
levels of expansion.

The industry that extracts bitumen and then crude oil from tar sands was 
once aiming to get to production levels of one million barrels per day 
(bpd) by 2012. Last year, the average already surpassed 1.3 million. The 
swiftly rising price of oil and the near-impossibility of a long term 
drop in price has suddenly allowed a major shift towards producing this 
oil, which is only profitable at a barrel price of at least $30.

The production process of the synthetic oil is unlike anything else: 
there are huge labour and energy needs currently unavailable to the 
producers, needs that are being drawn up and planned through TILMA and 
the SPP.

The US Department of Energy and Natural Resources Canada had another 
secret meeting, along with US energy corporations, in February 2006. 
Some details of the meeting were leaked earlier this year to the CBC. 
The agenda: to reduce labour and environmental rights in order to ramp 
up production from the Athabasca, Peace and Cold Lake tar sands to five 
million barrels per day.

The United States has reorganized their long-term plans for petroleum 
energy by setting a goal to get up to 25 per cent of their daily oil 
from tar sands based operations (in addition to Canada's conventional 
oil). In 2003, the US Department of Energy began declaring tar sands 
reserves part of their calculation of oil imported from Canada. This 
will include massive pipeline construction across territories within 
British Columbia, made nearly impossible to block by TILMA.

The SPP is setting the stage for the creation of a series of "super 
highways" that may extend from as far as Panama City north to Edmonton 
and branching off to the three "hot spots" of the Albertan Peace and 
Athabasca Regions and northeast British Columbia.

Along with the reduction in labour rights across both provinces through 
TILMA, the SPP will provide much-needed labour through the expansion of 
the "temporary foreign workers" program. The growth of Alberta's economy 
has already exceeded the available population of workers. Workers from 
the Maritimes are paid to fly to Fort McMurray from Moncton, Halifax or 
St. John's and work in camps in the tar sands.

The energy needs of production in the tar sands process--whether the 
strip-mining operations or the "in-situ" underground "Steam-assisted 
gravity Drainage" (Sag-D) procedure--are equal to almost a third of what 
is produced. (For comparison purposes, the crude in Iraqi reserves 
produces about 100 times the energy that is needed to pump it out.) 
Sag-D consumes more energy and water than strip-mining operations, 
setting the stage for the requisite equivalent of four to five billion 
cubic feet of natural gas per day required in tar sands operations if 
they become fully operational.

This reality is what is leading Energy Alberta to promote nuclear power 
for the Peace Region, where Sag-D has barely even begun to operate.

The two maps included show the plans for this vast expansion, both in 
terms of the importation of labour by highway and the construction of 
needed energy supplies by pipeline to get to the planned five million bpd.

The first one shows the flow of goods and labour. The aim of TILMA and 
the SPP is the immediate creation of far more labour inflow from places 
such as Mexico and China, most of it ultimately destined to work in the 
tar sands. Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) began using 500 
Chinese labourers on a "guest worker" program at their Horizons Oilsands 
Project last year. The SPP is a cost-effective means of importing needed 
labour and keeping costs down at the same time, through enacting 'labour 
mobility' and allowing non-citizen workers to be exploited at rates 
currently unreported.

The Alberta Federation of Labour points out that 2006 was the first year 
that the number of people admitted into Alberta who were not even 
allowed to apply to become landed immigrants (let alone citizens) 
exceeded the number of new immigrants. With agreements like the SPP in 
place, this will increase sharply. With TILMA, every time a labour right 
is undermined, it becomes the new bottom line.

According to Gil McGowan of the Alberta Federation of Labour, "Employers 
are using temporary foreign workers as a way to suppress wages and 
working conditions and to avoid legitimate unions...we oppose the 
importation of hundreds of workers just to complete a job and then 
sending them back home. That is exploitation."

The truly daunting reality is that the production level being proposed 
will have no other option: the only way to keep up with projected 
production rates is to bring in people from outside.

The guest worker programs keep non-status workers in camps where they 
are not allowed visitations by any union. The only means by which such a 
"guest" will be allowed to stay beyond the term of their contract (up to 
24 months) is if the employer applies, not the individual. Figures on 
pay and to whom it is delivered are not available and have not yet been 
obtained by organized labour in Alberta--we simply do not know how much 
migrant workers in the tar sands are being paid.

The "guest workers" may not end up only in the camps. The proposed size 
of tar sands expansion is such that constructing infrastructure for vast 
new energy "inputs" will take thousands of workers as well. Two 
pipelines of various gas are needed "in" to the tar sands for every 
pipeline going "out."
NAFTA trade corridors will be used to import labour and move equipment 
and goods to the tar sands.

The energy needed to go into the tar sands are slated to come from the 
natural gas in such places as Alaska's north slope, coal-fired mega 
plants in Alberta, proposed nuclear reactors in the Peace Region and 
near Whitecourt, along with the industrialization of the Mackenzie 
Valley (and much more). The outward shipping of bitumen-sludge (later 
converted to mock oil) entails corridors across Saskatchewan and 
Manitoba, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and more, all the way to Texas 
and Louisiana. These schemes, in particular the one known as the 
Keystone Pipeline headed by TransCanada, is already causing the AFL to 
warn of dire consequences for job loss and deregulation of currently 
union-run operations.

The other corridor for sending sludge to refineries is slated to be 
across British Columbia, over the lands of the Carrier, Gixtsan, Haisla, 
Tsimshian and other unceded nations to a yet-to-be-constructed port to 
operate out of Kitimat, where oil could theoretically be shipped to 
California, Japan and China. The same port would serve to import 
"diluent" from Russia, a kerosene-like substance used to make the thick 
mud of bitumen flow like oil in a pipe.

"Pipeline ruptures happen, they're inevitable," says Gerald Amos of the 
Haisla Nation from Gitamaat Village on the Coast of B.C., where the 
construction of a Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) port is being planned.

"We just don't know the location yet...All of the proponents of the 
Gateway project and all the other pipelines which would mean more tanker 
traffic here point out that we've had tanker traffic here, big ships 
coming in for about 40 to 50 years now. I think you are talking about a 
substantially different ball game when you talk about supertankers."

This project, the "Enbridge Gateway," is currently delayed due to 
lawsuits launched by seven First Nations, Indian Act-mandated 
governments and the China National Petroleum Company's withdrawal from 
the project.

Other pipelines heading southward are the Alberta Clipper Project and 
the Spearhead Expansion Project, also led by Enbridge, a self-described 
"leader in energy transportation." In June of this year, the first new 
refinery in the United States in decades was announced. The map shows 
only some of the refineries planning to receive tar sands bitumen.

Under the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, every single project in 
the Athabasca, Cold Lake and Peace River tar sands region has been 
approved. TILMA will streamline the regulations in line with these 
projects across all of B.C. and Alberta. It will also mean the 
elimination of a long-time moratorium on oil and gas offshore tankers on 
the central coast of B.C.

Kitimat and Gitamaat Village, currently host to major Gray and Humpback 
whale migration, would see 330 super tankers of oil and gas a year 
migrating offshore, according to the Dogwood Initiative. Nations up and 
down the proposed corridor would see a loss of forest cover in areas 
where giant grizzlies still roam near ranchlands.

The oil and gas going to and from the tar sands would cross rivers and 
streams and the tankers will come near 1,000 salmon spawning areas. Upon 
completion, the entire 1,200-plus kilometre pipeline systems would 
provide 75 full-time jobs. Enbridge has quietly shifted gears towards 
building the infrastructure to send the current bump in oil production 
to Texas, promising to complete this project at a later date.

That later date may well coincide with the B.C. government's other 
"Pacific Gateway Strategy," designed to use TILMA, the SPP, the 2010 
Olympics and vast tar sands export growth to make the West Coast of 
Canada a major hub of de-regulated trade with Asia.

It could soon be illegal and not 'merely' politically difficult to 
regulate how these constructions go ahead. Environmental regulation, 
revenue for nations who approve the use of their lands, taxation for 
reclamation purposes, requirements on unionization for the 
construction--all of these things are being legislated and signed away.

With TILMA, Alberta and B.C. have united to ensure that the oil dug out 
of the earth is sent south, at an incomprehensible rate. The primary 
legacy of the project will be run-away climate emissions, the second 
fastest rate of deforestation on earth, the dismantling of previously 
won workers' rights, a sacrifice area in Alberta the size of Florida and 
the removal of meaningful democratic oversight at the community level.

The usual critiques of the SPP and TILMA are not inaccurate. Placing new 
developments in a global context, however, changes our understanding of 
what is driving this latest set of deals. Instability around the planet, 
dwindling reserves of oil, a collapsing American dollar and more are 
exposing imperial economic structures to a level of insecurity unknown 
in a generation. By lurching headlong in 2003 towards the Albertan tar 
sands, the US has made the rising price of oil work to their advantage, 
rather than its opposite; when the price of oil goes up, those who 
invest heavily in expensive, unconventional oil gain a larger foothold 
in market share.

The SPP and TILMA have been drawn up to increase and integrate this into 
a decades-long strategy for North American economic stability, a 
strategy that does not address our dependence on oil. Understanding the 
true nature of these plans allows people to make informed decisions 
about what to do during the rapid changes in energy politics--changes 
that will affect the entire population of North America (and the planet) 
for decades to come.

-- 
Macdonald Stainsby
Coordinator, http://oilsandstruth.org
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In the contradiction lies the hope.
    --Bertholt Brecht.