Trading blows: tar sands critics in Brussels face-off with Canada’s PR machine
On 12th July the UK Tar Sands Network organised an event at the European Parliament: ‘Trading Tar Sands: How the Canada-EU free trade agreement will affect social and environmental policy in the EU and Canada’. We found that tar sands are a hot topic in Brussels right now, given that the EU-Canada free trade negotiations (CETA) are in town, and the disagreement over whether or not to include tar sands in the EU’s Fuel Quality Directive has reached boiling point.
The meeting was co-hosted by two MEPs, Keith Taylor (Green, member of the Trade Committee) and Kriton Arsenis (S&D, member of the Environment Committee), and a good number of other MEPs turned up. Inevitably, so did Canada. Jeanette Patell, who works on Economic and Trade Policy at the Canadian mission sat blank-faced making furious notes, as the speakers subjected her country’s actions to a devastating and comprehensive critique. It can’t have been a comfortable experience.
Keith kicked off, explaining that the CETA negotiations are the most ambitious trade talks either party has ever attempted, and outlined two particularly worrying aspects. The first is Canada’s request to include an investor-to-state dispute process, which would grant investors new legal rights to challenge perfectly legitimate public health policies, such as attempts to better regulate tar sands development for social or environmental reasons. He called for the investor-to-state dispute mechanism, which could set a dangerous precedent, to be removed from the negotiating table.
Secondly, he pointed to the need for the Fuel Quality Directive to accurately reflect tar sands’ high greenhouse gas emissions. “It is vital that within the EU’s Fuel Quality Directive (FQD), tar sands should be allocated a value that accurately reflects the greenhouse gas emissions that are emitted during production and use,” he said. “At present, certain factions within the European Commission are hesitating to take this important step, due to the enormous pressure exerted on them by the Canadian government, as well as by supporters of the Canadian position, such as the UK. This attempt by trade negotiating partners to undermine crucial EU climate policy is simply unacceptable and the Commission must stand firm.”
Jess Worth from the UK Tar Sands Network expanded on the second point. She put the tar sands in context, explaining that they are essentially a carbon bomb that humanity cannot afford to detonate. Nevertheless, Europe’s modest attempts to reduce the carbon intensity of fuels used across the continent are being attacked by Canada, which does not want the EU to assign a greenhouse gas value to tar sands that recognizes its significantly higher emissions, because this would strongly discourage its future use in Europe and set a precedent for similar legislation being passed around the world.
She urged MEPs to fight back, and rebutted the main arguments that Canada is currently using:
- As EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has stated, the FQD is not a discriminatory measure against tar sands. The FQD sets greenhouse gas values for other non-conventional sources of petroleum too, such as biofuels and coal-to-liquid, and is open to including more as they become commercially viable. The EU is also open to differentiating between the different GHG intensities of different sources of conventional oil.
- This is certainly not unfairly singling out Canada – it applies to all sources of tar sands oil, whether from Venezuela, Russia or, in the future (unless we stop it), Madagascar, Congo, Trinidad & Tobago and others.
- The tar sands greenhouse gas value that the Commission has set is based on sound, peer-reviewed science.
- The EU imports only a very small amount of tar sands oil at the moment, via Texas. But if the Keystone XL pipeline gets built, Europe could become a significant market for dirty oil. It’s therefore very important the EU gets this policy passed soon.
- If we don’t, and carry on lumping together tar sands oil with conventional oil its much higher emissions will be hidden and this will undermine the whole aim of the Fuel Quality Directive, which is to reduce the EU’s emissions from transport by 6% as part of its Kyoto commitments.
Jess then handed over to Dr John O’Connor, the physician from Alberta who was Fort Chipewyan’s doctor and first raised the alarm over the high incidence of rare forms of cancer hitherto unseen in the largely indigenous population living downstream from the tar sands. For his pains, the authorities tried to take his license away. He did not mince his words.
‘The Canadian government has been purposefully misleading the world about the harmful health impacts of the tar sands for years,’ he explained, detailing the complete lack of effort by the government to undertake credible health studies to look into whether the industry was in fact affecting public health. ‘There is now no doubt that it is,’ he revealed, and this has been backed up by several independent scientific studies into pollutants in the water and local environment. ‘Canada has no moral credibility any more,’ he concluded. ‘Canada is a health hazard.’
Jasmine Thomas, from Saik’uz First Nation, which is a member of the Yinka Dene Alliance in British Columbia spoke with passion and power about the opposition to tar sands developments from many First Nations across the affected regions. She argued that the legal baiss for Canada’s tar sands developments rest on shaky legal foundations, given the unique legal rights that Indigenous communities have to be consulted about what happens on their traditional territories. These rights are currently not being upheld by the companies operating in the industry and the provincial and federal governments, and the industry is therefore currently subject to several lawsuits from First Nations. CETA, she fears, could further erode those rights. ‘The rights of oil corporations should not be prioritized over the Aboriginal and Treaty rights of the local First Nations,’ she stated, and ended with a quote from her grandmother, an elder and traditional healer: ‘If we look after the Earth, it will look after us. If we destroy it, we’ll destroy ourselves.’
Jasmine was followed by Scott Sinclair, a trade expert from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He detailed the ways in which CETA could undermine attempts to regulate the tar sands, either by the Alberta and federal government, or by pressure from outside investors and markets such as the EU. The main concern is the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, which would allow investors and corporations to take governments to unaccountable closed tribunals if they felt a piece of regulation interfered with their ability to make profits. This currently exists under NAFTA, and Canada wants it included in CETA, despite having lost several cases brought by US corporations that successfully challenged Canada’s own environmental regulations under the same mechanism. This could make future regulation of the activities of European oil companies and investors in the tar sands far more difficult if not practically impossible, argued Scott. The best way to avoid this risk would be not to include an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism in the agreement at all.
He also suggested that, given Canada’s history of aggressively lobbying on the issue, it would be completely reasonable for the EU to insist on a ‘reservation’ within CETA that would ensure that the Fuel Quality Directive could not be challenged through the agreement.
Scott was followed by Stuart Trew, Trade Justice campaigner with the Council of Canadians. Stuart outlined the growing opposition to CETA within Canada amongst trade unions and environmentalists, and how the concerns relate not just to tar sands but to local procurement, labour rights, and, especially, water. He emphasized once again the path that Canada has chosen – that of becoming an ‘energy superpower’ – which lies behind so many of its actions these days.
There was then an opportunity for people to ask questions. Now it was Canada’s turn to have its say. We were expecting a powerful onslaught we would need to respond carefully to. Instead, Jeannette came up with a series of complaints that were weak, had already been refuted, or side-stepped the most pressing issues that had been laid out.
Firstly she claimed there is no tar sands fuel currently coming into the EU – which Jess had already pointed out is not true. Jeanette clearly hasn’t read Greenpeace’s ‘Tar Sands in your Tank’. This was her basis for claiming that the EU was ‘singling out one source of oil and ignoring others’, which Jess had also already explained is not accurate – the Fuel Quality Directive sets targets for other unconventional feedstocks as well as tar sands, and is explicitly set up to be able to add more further down the line.
She totally side-stepped the issue of Aboriginal rights being violated and the legal challenges currently underway from First Nations by simply stating that ‘10 per cent of oilsands workers are aboriginal’. Oh well everything must be fine then.
On the health impacts of tar sands so devastatingly laid out by Dr O’Connor, she admitted she wasn’t an expert and wasn’t in a position to refute anything he said. She did half-heartedly read out a bit of text from a Royal Geographical Society health study that had found no conclusive proof that there was a link between contaminants in the water and cancer, elegantly ignoring the numerous studies that have concluded that there is.
Her final riposte, as Keith asked her to wind up, was that Canada is not aiming to become an ‘energy superpower’ but a ‘clean energy superpower’! General disbelief and derisive chuckles swept the room.
The meeting was closed by co-chair Kriton Arsenis MEP, who set the record straight (again) on the Fuel Quality Directive by laying down a challenge to Jeannette: ‘Name the other sources of fuel we don’t have a value for and we’ll go after them!’ He reiterated the Environment Committee’s firm commitment to see a tar sands value in the FQD – otherwise, he said, MEPs will not vote for it. He also expressed his shock at the wide-ranging potential reach of CETA and its threat to sovereignty. He called into question the advisability of entering into another legally-binding treaty with Canada, given that it has already broken its commitments under the Kyoto protocol. “This is a chance to call upon Canada to change its current policy and comply with international agreements that we commonly sign, but Canada doesn’t always respect,” he concluded. “It is unthinkable to consider that a country which provocatively violates a legally binding climate change agreement that we have jointly signed could be a reliable partner in any other agreement.”
So it seems that Canada’s reputation is currently hitting new lows in the European Union. We also understand that later that day the CETA negotiations stalled. There is a critical internal EU meeting this Friday to try and make some headway on the Fuel Quality Directive, and it seems both sides are entrenching their positions ever more firmly. It’s impossible to say, at this stage, which side will prevail.
We will be watching closely as events unfold. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter for latest updates, or sign up to our email list for a newsletter every week or two.
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