Energy Emergency: Stopping the Haemorrhage
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Trade Agreements Have Left Canada Unable to Manage Energy Sovereignty
By Guy Paquette
Now that most of our planet has become addicted to black gold, the search for accessible oil reserves has reached a frenzied climax. Although still debated, the concept of “peak oil” has now taken centre stage as a growing concern among nations.
Simply defined, peak oil is the point at which demand for fossil fuels will exceed worldwide annual production. The only debate concerns how many decades remain before that inevitable crisis of energy shortage ripples through the world’s economies to re-arrange the world’s entire geo-political landscape. This scarcity scenario has already provoked a fierce competition among developed and developing countries to secure reliable access to oil. This rush for oil is also of vital concern to Canada, which is among the top ten oil-producing countries.
Back in the late 1970′s, the U.S.A. realized its own domestic oil production had already peaked. With its foreign supplies subjected to the vagaries of OPEC, it began to plan for a more reliable and accessible source. The obvious solution to solidly shore up its mounting energy needs lay right across its border to the north, within Canada’s abundant energy reserves. Canada was already its largest trading partner, compliantly supplying the constant American demand for its abundant natural resources. As economic partners, both countries shared in the mutual benefits of this long-standing arrangement as buyer and supplier. But all that was soon to change. Under the mounting pressure of its looming fuel shortage, the juggernaut of American capitalism skilfully manoeuvred to enact an unprecedented sea change in that relationship, with the complicity of our own elected leaders, Mulroney and Co. In 1988, under a blitz of disinformation and muddled debates, our treacherous leaders misled us to accept the mirage of continued prosperity under the new deal of the misnamed Free Trade Agreement, FTA. Few of us could have suspected then that the FTA and NAFTA (its expanded version of 1994, the North-American FTA that brought Mexico on-board) would eventually lead us into an economic wasteland.
Unbeknown to us, with a mere stroke of a pen we had actually surrendered our whole economic sovereignty. Most Canadians still ignore that NAFTA has us locked into a ruinous obligation to sell to the U.S. a fixed percentage (over 60%!) of all our fuel production, as well as all future reserves yet to be discovered, even if that leaves us with a domestic shortage! We now daily export an average of over 1.6 million barrels to the American energy glutton, surpassing even the Saudi oil behemoth as America’s main supplier. We have by now become by default the energy colony of America, enslaved into their energy black hole.
NAFTA’s machinations have also undermined our entire manufacturing and industrial sectors. Through its incremental erosion of our economic sovereignty, our most productive assets have by now been sold from right under us, swallowed by the predatory American mega-corporations that NAFTA has loosed on our “up-for-sale” economy. As one expert has cogently stated: “No other country in the world has ever done this in peacetime…this is not free trade but forced trade.”
In spite of so much lip service from our elected leaders, our present government policies are so much window-dressing to placate our fears, while skirting their real job of stopping NAFTA’s gradual haemorrhage of our precious energy reserves. The so-called guardians of our collective interests are rather more interested in serving the interests of the cabal of big oil from both sides of the border, which occupy the highest spheres of the pantheon of greed. Our politicians are totally complicit in facilitating big oil’s gargantuan greed, which sustains the geo-politics of assured conflict for earth’s dwindling supplies, thus perpetuating untold human grief and natural destruction.
We can no longer wait while our leaders dither with their impotent duplicitous plans. The only means of reclaiming our country’s precious energy resources is to create our own grass-roots movement to salvage what is left of our sovereign right to manage our own energy future. These vital issues must be brought back to the very forefront of our national awareness.
Firstly, we must exercise our legal right to withdraw from NAFTA to stop the energy haemorrhage. We must demand that our leaders do not cower in the face of the rampaging American super-power bullying the whole world. With its arrogant stance of “being with us or against us”, we can only expect a severe retaliation from the U.S., including economic reprisals to test our resolve. Possibly they may even threaten military control over our most important facilities of energy production and distribution, under their current tactic of claiming such intervention an “imperative for their national security”. We should never back down before such threats, understanding that our very future as a country depends on securing control over our own energy sources, as much as for all our future generations.
Rather, we must initiate a thorough debate to redefine our collective vision for our country’s energy future. With its abundant energy reserves, Canada still possesses a unique capacity to explore alternate energy sources.
If Canada truly wishes to better mankind’s future as well as its own, it should lead the way towards new technologies and energy-consumption patterns. The energy crisis can be turned around to become a great opportunity to empower ourselves to re-assess our entire deplorable dependence on oil and its rapacious economics.
By evolving towards a simpler more self-sufficient life-style, we can start to break our collective addiction to oil. Canada is already a leader in researching alternate energies, such as solar and wind power, biomass fuels and hybrid vehicles. These alternatives hold a great potential for supplying mankind’s growing needs. Our unique energy reserves and resourcefulness allow us a marked advantage to lead the push towards the proliferation of these new energy sources. We can thus help create viable alternatives to the oil addiction and serve as a model for the whole world community. This could become Canada’s real peace vocation, to help steer mankind away from the looming energy wars darkening our world’s horizon.
Guy Paquette is from Burnaby, B.C.
@ November 10, 2005