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Mon, 2013-05-06 12:18Jim Hoggan
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Dear Minister Oliver, A Few Things to Keep in Mind About Climate

The following is an email we sent to Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver:

Dear Minister Oliver:

Thanks for taking the time to read this email. We know you are very busy, flying back and forth to the United States and now Europe, making the case for Alberta’s oil sands to its many skeptics, while at the same time arguing with those “radical” environmental groups opposed to the Northern Gateway project at home in Canada. Now it seems Al Gore has also got you fired up over comments published over the weekend that your government’s oil sands strategy “hurts Canada.”

It’s a tough job being the Natural Resources Minister these days, between the growing opposition to proposed pipeline projects you’re pushing for, plus taking all of those orders from Stephen Harper as he plots the next cabinet shuffle. All of that pressure must explain why you and your ministry appear to have lost focus lately. How else to account for the confusing statements you’ve been making about climate change, which bare little resemblance to the concerns Canadians have about the impact of global warming on our planet?

Read more: Dear Minister Oliver, A Few Things to Keep in Mind About Climate
Fri, 2013-04-26 10:26Jim Hoggan
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Where does Joe Oliver Get His Climate Science From?

Imagine if you discovered that a doctor was doing open-heart surgery based on a technique they saw on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy, or that a dentist used a Google search to guide them through a root canal.

Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s this kind of unscientific technique that the Harper government appears to be relying on to diagnose the health of our planet, and how they should react to it.

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver recently cast doubt on climate change science and one source of his information appears to be climate-change skeptic and author Lawrence Solomon, who is not a scientist.

Read more: Where does Joe Oliver Get His Climate Science From?
Tue, 2013-04-23 00:08Jim Hoggan
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Subsidized to Pollute the Public Square?: Sun News and Ezra Levant Vie for CRTC Support

Ezra Levant

It was more than a little convenient to hear right-wing commentator Ezra Levant recently deliver his latest public apology, just in time for the start today of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CTRC) hearings into his Sun News Network’s application for “mandatory carriage.”

A favorable ruling by the regulator would put Levant in every Canadian home with a basic cable package and $18 million a year in the pockets of Sun Media. That might be good news for Levant and Sun Media parent Quebecor Inc, but for Canadians looking for unpolluted public discourse, not so much. What’s more, in return for rescuing Sun media from the red ink, Canadian subscribers would get an increase in cable rates.

Levant likes to make headlines, even when most of them are unflattering. The last one in March was to Canada’s Roma community, following a racist rant he gave on his Sun News Network show The Source in September, during which he described the community as “gypsies, a culture synonymous with swindlers” that have come to Canada as “to gyp us again and rob us blind as they have done in Europe for centuries.”

Read more: Subsidized to Pollute the Public Square?: Sun News and Ezra Levant Vie for CRTC Support
Sun, 2013-04-14 12:31Jim Hoggan
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Canada's "Fertile Ground for Despotism": Interview with Allan Gregg Continued

This interview is a part of the DeSmog Dialogues. Be sure to read Part 1 of this conversation: Canada's Radical Prime Minister Harper.

“I don’t think we’re in 1984, but I certainly do see a lot of the very, very same signs that create fertile ground for despotism.”

These are the chilling words of pollster and political sage Allan Gregg, who was speaking to me recently about what he called the “nefarious” state of affairs in Canada when the government is “vilifying” environmentalists and anyone else who might oppose the direction they are heading in.

He said it’s evident in other areas too, such as cutting the long form census. No one ever lodged a privacy complaint about it, he said, “but they don’t want the long form census because it is what informs progressive, rational decision makers about the policy direction they want to go in. They don’t need data to get in the way, or more importantly, to contradict where they want to go. Vilifying critics is part of that tactic of getting the ship on the course they believe the nation needs and wants.”

Read more: Canada's "Fertile Ground for Despotism": Interview with Allan Gregg Continued
Sat, 2013-04-06 09:58Jim Hoggan
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Canada's Radical Prime Minister Harper: Interview with Allan Gregg

Pollster, political advisor and pundit provocateur Allan Gregg believes Canadians have yet to grasp just how radical Harper and his Conservatives really are. In a recent interview he told me the Prime Minister should be thought of as a “revolutionary realist.”

Radicalism might not be the first thing we associate with the Harper government, especially when the administration has been known to throw around the label ‘radical’ like a scarlet letter, using the term to blacklist environmental groups and First Nations across the country.

Yet, despite how jarring the description, Gregg says Harper Conservatives are “radical to the extent that [they] aren’t incrementalists.”

“Harper is a realist and knows he can't get to where he wants to go in one fell swoop, and so he’ll try to get there by tacking,” said Gregg.

This is Conservatism of a whole new kind, Gregg adds, and Canadians don’t really seem to know what they’re dealing with.

Read more: Canada's Radical Prime Minister Harper: Interview with Allan Gregg
Thu, 2013-03-14 14:13Jim Hoggan
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Turning Away From the Ruckus

Sounding the alarm about climate change in 2007 got you a Nobel Peace Prize, but these days, not so much.

Today a journalist or academic writing about climate change often struggles to find an attentive audience. Why is that?

Social scientists around the world might be scratching their heads at this mystifying problem - but you don’t need a PhD to see that industry public relations plays a big role in public disinterest.

After Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth won an Academy Award the oil and gas industry doubled down with its attack on climate science. They poured even more money into the front groups and fake experts trying to convince us that climate change is a hoax. But polls show they failed to persuade us with that message. Most Canadians and Americans know climate change is happening.

But the oil gas industry and their friends on the far right succeeded in something even more mischievous than attempting to convince us climate change was something under debate. They nudged us into believing we really can’t make a difference.

Read more: Turning Away From the Ruckus

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