Harper Succeeding In Selling Canada As A Haven For Corporate Polluters

A Brief Commentary by Doug Draper

Even those who more often put Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper down have got to give him credit for at least one thing.

 He is doing an excellent job of selling Canada as a place where corporations can come and do business without worrying about environmental rules. And in that regard, Harper could not do much better than the free publicity he and his government received this June 3 in one of the most highly read and influential newspapers in the United States, The Washington Post.

In an article titled ‘Canadian Government Overhauling Environmental Rules To Aid Oil Extraction’, The Washington Post notes that while “for years Canada has been seen as an environmental leader on the world state, pushing other nations to tackle acid rain, save the ozone layer and sign global treaties to protect biodiversity, … those were the old days.”

In other words, those days are gone, according to the article, which goes on to say that Canada’s Harper government “is rewriting the nation’s environmental laws to speed the extraction and export of oil, minerals and other materials to a global market clamoring for Canada’s natural resources.”

Take that to mean that a rewriting of environmental laws for the oil sector will also benefit those in other sectors who would rather pocket more of their revenue profits than invest a bit of that money in controlling emissions and other activities that may have negative impacts on the biosphere.

And given that, why should any corporation bother either locating or relocating a dirty operation in a country like Mexico or China, where environmental rules are a joke and where environmentalists are subject to imprisonment or worse if they speak out. Now you they can do their business in a nice country like Canada, even if it means doing it in our rivers and lakes and air columns.

If you are interested, you can click on the following link to read the article in The Washington Post, then leave your views on this post in the comment boxes below if you care – http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/canadian-government-overhauling-environmental-rules-to-aid-oil-extraction/2012/06/03/gJQAyxx2BV_story.html .