Prime Minister Harper, Premier Campbell!

The Canadian People Have the Right to Know!

 What Is the Agreement Between BP Petroleum and the Harper Government to Explore the Canadian Arctic?

How Far Advanced Are Plans for Drilling Off the Coast of BC?

No BP Disaster on Any Canadian Coastal Waters!

Don Currie, Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism

April 30, 2010

A corporate capitalist crime of unprecedented proportions is underway in the Gulf of Mexico off the south-east coast of the USA.  The crime has been committed against 11 workers who died on an explosion on a Transocean Limited Deep Water drilling rig.  Transocean Limited, the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor and was drilling on contract to British Petroleum (BP) on the Macondo project in the Mississippi Canyon 252 area approximately 40 miles off the Louisiana coast when the explosion occurred sinking the rig and triggering the disaster.  BP owns 65% of the project with partners Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Mitsui & Co. holding smaller stakes. 

The health and livelihood of millions of US citizens (many of whom are without public health care), tens of thousands more engaged in the coastal inshore fishery and millions of US workers and their families living and working in the coastal communities of Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas are at risk.

The people of the USA have entrusted their governments with the responsibility to enact laws to protect the coastal flora and fauna from off shore drilling activity.  It appears that BP Petroleum was successful through its Big Oil lobby in Washington to get around those laws and drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico without the latest in scientific, engineering and technological safeguards.  It is safe to assume that is the case since President Obama has temporarily reversed his ill considered policy of permitting off shore drilling in all US coastal waters.  The President has ordered a halt to all such drilling activity until inspections can take place to determine whether current drilling practices underway in the whole Gulf area are of a technically safe high standard or are of the type that permitted the BP disaster now unfolding.

As the working people of the USA rally to save their coastal communities, their jobs, and the natural living beauty of their part of the world, the corporate perpetrators of the crime are busy employing an army of lobbyists, lawyers and corporate media spinsters to protect their profit interests in the courts and to allay growing public outrage.

The US disaster may not be confined to the coastal waters and continental USA and may yet harm countries in the Caribbean and eastern Canada.  The likelihood of this gusher continuing for months is very real.

What is the Federal Government, and all provincial and regional authorities responsible for Canada’s coastal waters doing right now by way of a review and update of all agreements between all governments and corporate interests with whom deals have been signed for exploration and development in Canadian waters?

Is there any threat posed by the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to Canadian coastal waters or land?

The Canadian Federal Government issued three licenses to BP Petroleum to explore for oil in Canada’s Beaufort Sea Arctic region 180 kilometers from Tuktoyaktuk.  The agreement is under a deal with the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, which is active with several oil interests operating in the regions offshore. 

The Members of Parliament must immediately demand an accounting by the Harper Government and in particular from Environmental Minister Jim Prentice as to the details of all of the safety and environmental agreements and standards that have been signed with major oil and gas exploration companies now working in Canadian coastal waters.

The lesson of the BP fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico is that it could have been prevented.  It happened because of government agreement to relax standards, or failure to enact them.  Unelected lobbyists appear to have more influence over government than the elected representatives of the people.

There is a growing contagion of corruption at all levels of government and a willingness to give corporate investors whatever they ask for.

The result is scorn by bean counters and investor gurus and corrupt politicians for high public standards, for the latest in science and technology, for the competence of engineers, technologists, skilled workers, trained government inspection agencies, first responders, all of the people that really know what is going on at the point of production and who are silenced by an elite group of irresponsible wealth and privilege who want no restraint on the pursuit of maximum profit.

They are the criminals…these are the same types that ripped of the working people with a gigantic mortgage scam and laughed about it in emails…

That is what must change… The people can run industry without profiteers, but not without workers!

Put Monopoly Under Control!

Left Turn Canada!