Following his meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau , Montreal mayor Denis Coderre appeared to back away somewhat from his radical opposition towards the Energy East pipeline. But Mayor Coderre’s alarmism, and apparent disregard for the regulatory process of the National Energy Board, is profoundly significant. It represents what might be dubbed “the rise of the mayors,” which, – such as the Rise from the Machines in the Terminator movie franchise – ought to be an item of profound concern.
Obviously, mayors must reflect the worries of their constituents, and radical environmental non-governmental organizations, ENGOs, did a fabulous job of spreading fear through misinformation. But Coderre’s stance represents more than a casual alliance between Not within my Backyard, NIMBY, and Not in the world, NOPE. It represents part of a much larger UN-based Green Agenda to delegitimize national governments previously mentioned and below. In that sense, last month’s Paris climate conference and the Montreal municipalities’ anti-pipeline stance is very much linked. Meanwhile it’s hardly a coincidence the mayors of Vancouver and Burnaby are resolutely opposed to the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which would also transport “dirty” Alberta oil.
Related
- Kevin Libin: Don’t dismiss Coderre’s Alberta bashing; all anti-pipeline politics are localJoe Oliver: Canada’s foolish pipeline flubsNational Energy Board doing ‘inadequate’ job of tracking whether pipelines meet approval conditions
-
-
-
Trudeau talked about moving resources responsibly to market, and confirmed that he involved to introduce a brand new system of regulatory oversight. The problem is that finances a really credible system, and any reformed system will remain under siege from environmental groups which have not the slightest interest in the NEB’s mandate of judging the “public interest.” Meanwhile anyone who believes that bringing greenhouse gases in to the review process – to which Trudeau is committed – represents movement towards obtaining “social licence” for pipelines is dreaming in Technicolor.
The Trudeau reforms received suspiciously timely bureaucratic support when federal Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand joined the attack on the NEB in her own annual report, claiming the board was failing to monitor compliance. Actually, the main guardian from the public interest rates are the self-interest of companies, for whom spills or any other accidents are horrendously costly, both in environmental and reputational terms.
Meanwhile, an upswing of the mayors isn’t some chance occurrence. It is a part of a strategy embodied within the perception of “subsidiarity,” the seemingly sensible notion that problems ought to be addressed at the smallest appropriate level. Environmental subsidiarity’s real meaning – and dangers – are more easily understood if you translate the closely related nostrum “Think globally, act locally” as “Plot globally, agitate locally.”
The essence of Agenda 21, the late Maurice Strong’s wish list for any sustainable world, concocted at the 1992 UN conference in Rio, is control of society at each level. Its agents are environmental NGOs – of the sort which have brought the pipeline review process to a halt – and municipalities.
Clearly local authorities should oversee (although arguably in a roundabout way provide) services such as roads, transit and sewage (an extremely sensitive issue in Montreal). But using a municipal climate plan makes about just as much sense as using a local nuclear non-proliferation plan (which, not coincidentally, was another great favourite from the left within the not-so-distant past).
The mayoral ascendency continues to be aided and abetted by UN-promoted organizations like the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI: Rhymes with “sickly”) that have sprung up to spark and co-ordinate local initiatives, which thus have an extraordinary similarity. Another straw within the wind is that the former mayor of Toronto, David Miller, gone to live in head the WWF Canada, mother of ENGOs. Again, the “Smart City” movement is confused with the ideological trend towards more political control within the name of the cleaner environment.
It is, furthermore, no coincidence that radical anti-capitalist U.S. intellectual and TED-talker Benjamin Barber has suggested that mayors should “rule the world.” He understands what sort of rule that might be. The democratic nation state, he claims, is “utterly unsuited to interdependence.” Which would be to say utterly unsuited to central control by Agenda 21-istas. What we need, says Barber, is really a global parliament of mayors. Except, of course, if they think like Rob Ford. Or, come to think of it, even like Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi, a staunch liberal who has been confronted by the fact that bills have to become paid.
It should also be noted that – like the majority of leftist ideology – the movement towards localism and direct democracy has limits, which are reached when local opinion looks to be going in an inconvenient direction.
Take as an example the government of Ontario’s decision to steamroll local opposition to windfarms, or even the rancid Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, CBFA, where radical environmental organizations forced Canada’s largest forestry companies right into a job-destroying agreement that ignored the communities that would be hardest hit.
Climate subsidiarity has also reared its more or less deliberately muddling head in the provincial level with the proliferation of growth-taxing ecofiscal programs aimed at “addressing” – yet without conceivable impact upon – the worldwide climate.
The ultimate problem-cum-strategy of rule by mayor and lefty council – that is essentially Naomi Klein-world – is when everybody gets to possess a say on everything, nothing ever gets done. Thus the Act Local crowd really only wants everybody to possess a say on things they want to stop. With regards to things they wish to promote, they have to be rather less democratic and a a bit more forceful. Let’s hope electorates at all levels eventually wake up to this threat, and terminate it.
