Energy

Sous le couvert de l'anonymat, les sources ont confié à l’Observateur national qu’un haut fonctionnaire leur avait demandé, au moins un mois avant que le pipeline soit approuvé, « de fournir une base juridiquement solide au cabinet afin qu’il donne son appui au projet Trans Mountain ».

Many scientists and environmental groups say it is unrealistic to measure the carbon intensity of biofuels without also measuring how the use of crops like corn or canola for fuel, instead of food, might be causing the conversion of land elsewhere in the world to agriculture to compensate for the drop in food crops.

If the case launched by First Nations is reopened or appealed, here is a sample of some of the relevant evidence released through access to information legislation and other public information gathered by National Observer over the past two years.

A lawyer representing the Tsleil-Waututh Nation has asked the Federal Court of Appeal to compel the release of the Trudeau government's Trudeau government Kinder Morgan secrets.

Officials have lifted an evacuation order on the city of Superior, Wisconsin where, one day earlier, an explosion at an oil refinery released black clouds of noxious smoke into the air, injuring 20 people and sending the 27,000 residents of the city fleeing. The explosion has residents of Burnaby questioning how our city would handle such a disaster.

“I guess that's something that wouldn't have fazed me at all if the Harper government was still in power,” the public servant told National Observer. “But given the change in government, seeing as how we were told to provide serious advice, I was rather shocked at being given that kind of direction. It's not something that I would have expected from a Liberal government.”

As Canada's attention is increasingly focused on the polarizing oil exports debate, another contentious energy export has been quietly gaining momentum.

The B.C. government is asking the courts to decide whether the province can legally regulate the transportation of hazardous substances like diluted bitumen through the province.

The job of journalists is not to be popular, or go along to get along, but to pursue facts that matter – then let them fall ‘without fear or favour’. Which brings us to Canada’s bitumen bubble, and missing-in-action media coverage, which amounts to malpractice.

Canada’s fossil fuel industry will soon have to make sure a potent form of its carbon pollution doesn't escape from its operations, in order to protect the environment, clean the air and save over 10 billion dollars in avoided climate change costs, according to new federal rules.

The threat of diluted bitumen spills has been flagged as a major concern by scientists, First Nations and British Columbia. Federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna told her provincial B.C. counterpart she has a plan to address this concern.

Coal workers and their communities need to be included in the government's coal phase-out discussions, say labour leaders, in order to build trust around environmental initiatives and craft policy that is better connected to real anxieties and concerns.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and NDP MP Guy Caron have fired off a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, urging him to release all of the government's secret cabinet records related to its review of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sidestepped questions raised in the House of Commons on Tuesday about secret instructions delivered in 2016 to public servants working on the federal review of the Trans Mountain expansion project.

The "black letter" of the law changes all the time. Biological and geophysical realities change, but not in ways that we can control -- unless we are influencing them. Climate change is us, and the protesters against Kinder Morgan are acting on that premise.