Today in shoddy journalism

With the federal government doing everything in its power to prevent any global agreement on climate change and Alberta's provincial government trying to claim even that course of action doesn't do enough to favour the tar sands, it takes a remarkable amount of confusion and spin to pretend that one or both is somehow failing to be enough of a cheerleader for the oil industry. Which naturally leads us to the National Post:

Now, the findings of an Angus Reid Public Opinion survey of 810 Albertans show 50% of respondents are dissatisfied with the way the provincial government acted to deal with recent criticism of the oilsands. Only 35% of those polled were satisfied and 15% were not sure.

Albertans were similarly unimpressed with the federal government, with 49% dissatisfied with how Ottawa dealt with the same criticism. Thirty-four per cent of respondents were satisfied with Ottawa's actions, while 17% were not sure.

"It's clear that there's a fury in the land in the sense that people are using the oilsands as a whipping boy for climate change -- and people in Alberta don't like it," said Mario Canseco with pollster Angus Reid. "This definitely shows that this is something the two levels [of government] need to take into account."

Of course, anybody looking at the poll seeking anything other than an excuse to declare that an Alberta separation movement is imminent would note that there's more than one way to be dissatisfied with the response of a particular government.

Indeed, nearly all of the criticism leveled at both Harper and Stelmach on a national scale has been based on their insistence on favouring the tar sands at the expense of the economy of the rest of Canada. (After all, it's Ontario and Quebec which simply want all emissions to be treated equally, and the oil industry backed by the Alberta and federal governments who want tar-sands emissions to be treated more generously.)

Which likely explains why the poll was worded the way it was. If any option had been included to distinguish between dissatisfaction based on a government's being insufficiently loud in spouting pro-oil talking points and frustration based on a government unduly favouring the tar sands over other industries, then there would be no way to conflate the two in reporting on the poll's outcome.

But as it is, the pollster and the National Post lump both together and count them as being on the side of the oil industry. Which may produce the spin they're looking for out of the story - but signals that they don't recognize any prospect of winning even Alberta's public opinion in a fair fight.

Meanwhile, Brian Lilley's take on the Cons' attack on KAIROS manages to include a remarkable set of ever-shifting goalposts. Here's Lilley on why nobody should think the Cons' decision to publicly brag about "de-funding" the organization actually relates to Jason Kenney's public explanation:

(KAIROS), which has received funding for years from CIDA, was turned down on a request for government funding of a four-year project. They did not lose core funding that has put them on the brink of bankruptcy or closing up shop as the NDP claimed, they simply were turned down on a project proposal, this is something many groups, businesses, consultants face everyday. The difference here is that Kairos is able to mount a public relations campaign using all three opposition parties and a willing media to try and get back funding they never lost.
...
So why was Kairos turned down for funding?

Despite the attempts to turn this into another proxy war over the Middle East and Canada’s policy there, it is most likely that Kairos lost its funding because they didn’t fit the goals the government laid out. There is no entitlement to funding. Kairos made a pitch and they were turned down.

Now, this would make for a relatively reasonable and coherent defence if left on its own. But Lilley immediately shifts to contradicting his own point, making clear that as far as he's concerned, the Cons are fully entitled to shun KAIROS or any other group for failing to agree with their ideology:

Consider also that this is an old-fashioned left wing group, supportive of Marxist ideas like Liberation Theology, asking a Conservative government to fund it.

When the Harper government sought out a free-trade agreement with Columbia (sic), Kairos was there, with government money, to oppose it. Kairos sees plenty to be concerned about when it comes to human rights in Columbia (sic) and wants the Harper government to shun that country. Venezuela on the other hand is seen in a positive light. The message from Kairos, engagement is appropriate when a shady country is run by socialists, anything to the right deserves to be shunned.

Remember that just a few paragraphs earlier, Lilley went out of his way to point out that KAIROS received public funding only for specific projects, not for general operations. Which makes it downright stunning that he then chooses to assume without a shred of apparent evidence that it used "government money" in its efforts to protect human rights in Colombia.

Moreover, even if previous funding had been used for means which the Cons didn't like, any future funding agreement could easily be directed toward the parts of KAIROS' mandate which even the Cons couldn't find objectionable. And one would fully expect that to have happened if the federal government was interested in ensuring that a well-established aid organization was able to continue doing good work - rather than looking for an enemy to attack for political purposes.

So what is it that links the two above stories? In effect, they seem to me to signal that far too much of the Canadian media is going down the same path as the Harper government: focused solely on talking points which serve conservative causes even at the expense of accuracy or internal logic. And the less that type of mindset gets challenged either in the media or in politics, the easier it'll be for the likes of Harper to keep pushing it on a country which deserves better.

Reasons for disbelief

When a premier who's taken every step possible to avoid meaningful greenhouse gas emission reductions in order to prevent his province's oil industry from facing any consequences for its impact on the environment claims that we should avoid disrupting the equally-irresposible federal government's direction on climate change going into an international conference, it's probably worth taking that as evidence of just the opposite.

And when a supporter of a party whose leader declares tar sand development to be a national unity issue and says we can't reduce greenhouse gas emissions any more than the oil industry will let us criticizes another party as uncommitted to dealing with climate change, it's probably worth taking that too as evidence favouring the opposite conclusion.

Nuclear instability

Randy Burton points out a couple more major problems with any plan to build a nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan, as the current state of power regulation in Alberta would make such a project just as risky economically as environmentally:

(I)t's not as simple as Wall calling Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and some northern U.S. governors and making a deal. There are also some very complicated market factors to deal with in Alberta, which operates in a deregulated open market for power.

Where there used to be three power producers in Alberta, there are now about 20 different companies competing to offer electricity to the province's larger customers, including commercial and industrial users which together account for about two-thirds of the Alberta market. Local utilities also buy power on the open market to sell to residential users...

Power producers assume the risk of finding markets for what they produce and government is not controlling the pace of new construction. This makes nuclear a particularly risky option in Alberta, because the time frames for constructing a generating plant are so long.

It's relatively easy to build gas-fired plants, so what appears to be a huge demand for power 10 years from now could shrink dramatically, depending on the actions of conventional power producers...

What to do about the risks inherent in the Alberta market is another question.

This is where interprovincial co-operation comes in. So far, the Alberta government has shown no inclination to intervene in the Alberta electricity market to ease the way for nuclear. But it also has a big greenhouse-gas problem that is only going to get worse.

A nuclear plant in Saskatchewan could potentially supply emissions-free power to Alberta and relieve Stelmach of the problem of selling the concept to a population that appears to be less comfortable with the idea than the Saskatchewan population.

Of course, there's little to no evidence to support the assertion that "the Saskatchewan population" is remotely comfortable with the idea of tying itself to nuclear power. But let's leave that aside to point out the implications of Alberta's current power scene.

Both Burton and the pro-nuclear talking heads gloss over the danger of Alberta doing anything other than setting aside a substantial chunk of its anticipated demand for the anticipated supply. But it should be clear that even if a Saskatchewan market would mitigate part of the downside risk, a nuclear plant which is counting on selling half its output to Alberta would face serious difficulties if other plants offer enough capacity in the meantime to render it redundant.

That possibility of other sources coming onstream sooner would be no less real for a project based in Saskatchewan than Alberta. And indeed, there would be far less incentive for Alberta to stick to a current agreement about future power purchasing if any resulting losses would be felt in another province.

Which means that any scheme to construct a nuclear reactor which depends on supplying power to Alberta would leave Saskatchewan entirely at the mercy of Alberta's government. And that could have any number of dangerous side effects - whether it be Ed Stelmach demanding that Brad Wall give in to his plan to drag Saskatchewan into the TILMA, or a future Alberta government having second thoughts about making use of the power supply (or simply seeing an advantage in threatening to use other suppliers in order to win lower rates).

Not that Wall and his ilk would likely mind seeing Saskatchewan's hands permanently tied in order to offer some profit potential for would-be nuclear operators. But the province as a whole can only be all the more suspicious of any plan which can only be sold by overlooking such obvious dangers.

For the sake of fairness...

I'm sure in light of this, we'll be seeing plenty of stories about how Elizabeth May is in bed with Ed Stelmach to prevent any stronger environmental action based on real caps rather than "intensity" measures. Right?