Panglossian Notes

I wonder how we ensure our claim?

It seems that some Canadian bloggers maybe waking up to the oil & natural gas (O&G) potential in the high arctic.

The article in the To Star referenced at the cathiefromcanada blog doesn't really go into to many details about the rather large O&G potential in the north. Nor for that matter some of the other interesting things that have been happening while the government of Canada's view was almost solely focused south of 60º.

The Star article makes a guess that PM Harper's comments in the Common's foyer regarding the US ambassador's statement about sovereignty in the north are likely just good PR bluster.

I guess I tend to agree.

I'll bet most Canadians haven't heard of: Pat Broe from Denver. But they might in the future, eh. He's the guy that bought the old Hudson Bay port facility in Churchhill Manitoba for $7 in 1997. Wonder whether he paid for it with USD or CAD.

With natural gas prices seeming to be ever on the rise (even through there are day to day drops in price the trend is up), high arctic projects are starting to look better and better. CERI has updated its report on the Melville Island's Drake Point and Hecla natural gas fields for example.

I think PetroCan has the main interest in these fields. Discovered in the hay day of northern O&G exploration and likely heavily subsidized by Canadian taxpayers either through "super depletion" or the famous Petroleum Incentive Program (PIP) which itself was part of the Alberta hated NEP.

To give a view of what things look like from the to of the world have a peek at this map. It helps to put some things into focus, I hope. PM Harpers is talking about putting a military style harbour facility in Iqaluit - which is a 100 or so miles down the Frobisher Bay from the Davis Strait.

Iqaluit likely made some sense during WWII and part of the "cold war", the former as an airport in ferrying planes to Britain and the latter as a fuel station and radar center, put now who knows. Its the capital of Nunavut but really there is very little economic activity with the city other than government or birth right organization supported.

The US has 2 coast guard icebreakers which are stationed, I think, in Seattle.

If the arctic file heats up, want to bet that they will be stationed closer to the action.

What is that famous Northwest Passage anyways.

It of course has been a number of things but again, thanks to Athropolis, here is a map showing the concept over time.

Notice that until the permanent sea ice actually does melt the passage cuts south of Victoria Island and goes right pass Cambridge Bay - very close to Gjoa Haven also (I think Amundsen ship is still there in the harbour just sunk). Now if you are close to Cambridge bay you are close to Bathurst Inlet which is a natural deep sea harbour.

Technorati Tags: Canada, Nunavut, Politics

ANWR

So the HR have opened up drilling in ANWR if the Senate approves. This was predicted as I recall.

Least these guys sit late.

"The ANWR provision was attached to a major defense bill, forcing many opponents of oil and gas exploration in the barren northern Alaska range to vote for it. The bill, passed 308-106, also included money for hurricane relief and bird flu preventive measures."

Here's the first news report I read. Many more links.

Everyone should know for sure whether drilling will be opened up by Wednesday. Since Bush has been handed so many slights recently I suspected he'll get a pass on this from the Senate.

The authority to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil exploration — long sought by President Bush, energy companies and Republican leaders — will be attached to a separate fiscal 2006 defense-spending bill that has widespread support in both parties because of its funding for the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rushing to get out of town for the holidays, the House moved toward early-morning votes on both bills.

The Senate could act today on the budget bill and as early as Wednesday on defense spending.

Washington Post

Interesting link to the House Resource Committee re: ANWR

Technorati Tags: Canada, Nunavut, Politics

Another fine mess

What's to say. The week didn't start well.

The 3 stooges had their little meeting on Sunday and by the end all 3 had clearly worked themselves into an ecstasy of moral outrage. Moral outrage bores me and usually makes me suspicious. It's up there with patriotic furor as far as scondrelism goes.

I've waited awhile to see if any real outcomes would happen either yesterday or today but Curly, Larry and Moe in the good vaudevillian style I, at least, have come to expect of them don't seem to know quite what their stage directions are.

So, today natter, natter, natter. More moral outrage. More likely tomorrow.

Generally quite a disappointing week so far.

Ralph Goodale, the Finance Minister, delivered the economic update and more importantly the very long awaited plan on Canada's future - A Plan for Growth and Prosperity.

The Finance Minister said today on T.V., no sorry it was on the local CBC this morning, he had been working on this document for 7 or 8 months. Well nothing to write home about Ralph.

At this point all I can do is pick holes in it. Just as an example in the executive summary under the heading increasing government productivity the initiatives that are listed are really nothing more than measures to tighten up accountability likely because of the sponsorship mess. Also, how is productivity actually measured in the civil service. As I remember, it was a struggle to develop any real productivity measures in service sector industries [clearly I need to check this as the world may have moved way past what I remember.]. More, the document indicates that the feds maybe back at trying to harmonize consumptions taxes across the country. I note they didn't mention their consumption tax is the GST nor the really old promise now to get rid of it which was in the Red Book.

With friends like these characters down South thumbing their noses at free trade you really have to start considering other options and this is not addressed in the xx pages of platitudes and feel good bromides included in this document.

Also a Red Book wish to have a better dispute resolution mechanism. Oops, should I be mentioning that. It might have been better to focus on the dispute mechanism rather than scrapping the GST.

The latter got us the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) large bribes, in effect, for Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick along with another Quebec irritant - Quebec had sensibly and for good policy and political reasons (their administer both the GST and the QST within the province) harmonized their provincial sales tax with the GST prior to the Red Book promise so they got nothing.

The issue won't go away so I wonder why "Growth and Prosperity" is raising the mess again.

Ah history.

But just for some light amusement, Arctic politicians of Inuit organizations really take the cake for retreated ideas.

Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated is reopening discussion on the issue of a single time zone for the territory of Nunavut. The land claim organization debated the matter yesterday at its board meeting in Cambridge Bay. Six years ago Nunavut experimented with one time zone, but many people were opposed to it.

Six months after Nunavut was born, its government created a single time zone. But instead of unifying people, it created disharmony. Parents complained their children were leaving school in darkness. Hunters did not like hunting at odd hours. The territorial government went back to three major time zones. But Nunavut Tunngavik President Paul Kaludjak wants to revisit the idea. He says it would be easier to coordinate activities in the three regions.

“We can do it the right way. It was done the wrong way before. Because it was done by some government staff that didn’t understand Nunavut at all. And now we’ve learned from that, we can try it again. I think it is doable.”

CBC
News North
November 15, 2005

But who knows maybe this one's time has come even though first time around it had a bit of trouble.

Wonder what government staff didn't understand about Nunavut. That maybe it includes 4 time zones Atlantic, Eastern, Central and Mountain but only uses the last 3.

Oh, I know they didn't know how to turn back or move forward the hands of a clock. Worse, they couldn't remember or lost the instruction booklets for their electronic clocks and watches.

Technorati Tags: Canada, Economics, Finance, Nunavut, Politics, Stupidity

Let the drilling commence?

The US Senate approved today budget legislation (S 1932) that includes a provision opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil & gas exploration.

A group of Democratic Senators had proposed an amendment to strike the section of S 1932 that included the provision to drill in the ANWR. It wasn't successful.

Stéphane Dion has indicated that we will keep lobbying the US House of Representatives which now has to consider whether it agrees to the amendments made by the Senate. (Both the Senate and the House have to agree on a Bill and any amendments either chamber makes before it's sent to the President to consider.) But most think it unlikely that the House won't agree with the provision.

An interesting aside is the new blog coming out of the US Embassy in Ottawa called "no stone unturned".

I suspect the point is to encourage some debate. The paragraph below was quoted by the CBC talking head to Henry Champ in Washington. Henry's response was critical and a bit defensive but it was simply read to him over the wire. I think it was taken out of context and unfortunately the CBC news item may have conveyed the wrong impression. Talking heads, eh.

Based on the impression left by the CBC story I hope the poor guy writing the blog doesn't get numbers of nasty e-mails.

The paragraph in question:

What has got the Canadian Government so upset about possible drilling in ANWR? Is it really about the caribou? Or is this simply another issue that resonates with Canadians in election season? Objectively, proposals to do exploratory drilling on one small section of a 19 million acre wildlife refuge wouldn't seem to merit this level of attention.

Blog from the
Embassy of the USA
Ottawa

The saber rattling has already started in the North.

Technorati Tags: Canada, Nunavut, Politics, Resource Revenue

An Arctic hot potato

Yesterday Bob Weber indicated that an interim report by the RCMP says there was no systematic slaughter of Inuit dogs starting in the 1950's and extending into the 1970's. The enquiry stemmed from a request by the House of Commons Aboriginal Affairs Committee.

The Northern birth right organizations (NTI, QIA, Kit. IA, and Kiv. IA) will not be too happy about the conclusions. This is likely a no win situation for the RCMP, and always was going to be unless some fault or government policy had been identified.

QIA and Makivik Corporation from Nunavik are completing their private enquiry into the killing of the dogs.

The testimony provided to the House Committee last March (March 8 and March 10) by a few Inuit elders could provide a good indication of what the QIA/Makivik enquiry will report.

The testimony is quite compelling and worth scanning.

I'm not a government conspiracy theory fan.

But there is one unfortunate recent example that has always left me with an unsettled feeling that it could happen. I'm referring to the Krever Commission on how tainted blood got into our blood supply system when AIDS and Hep C were running wild.

I recall it uncovered that all minutes to the federal/provincial/territorial Deputy Ministers of Health management meetings overseeing the system had been destroyed. Just looked to convenient.

Technorati Tags: Accountability, Canada, Nunavut

CANOE -- CNEWS - Canada: Iqaluit proposes to build deep-water arctic seaport

CANOE -- CNEWS - Canada: Iqaluit proposes to build deep-water arctic seaport:

I'm a little confused. Why is it that Iqaluit could form a key harbor in Canada's emerging sovereignty battles.

When I see this type of article and then see experts providing comments which are not held to question, likely because the reporter has only a misty idea of the subject and maybe even the whereabouts of the town, Oops city in question, I wonder.

I guess opinions can be formed on next to no information.

Question: ask a group of Canadians whether they can trace out the Northwest Passage on a map of the Arctic. Hey ask the reporter who wrote this story to do it.

Rob Huebert of U of Calgary is quoted in the article and says Iqaluit could be a "choke point" wonder what that could be?

The Canadian Coast Guard hasn't ever had much of an operational problem with the Eastern Arctic, the article implies the CCG may have had problems.

Residents in Iqaluit and other more Northern communities are use to seeing the red hulled ships sitting out there on the horizon as summer ends and again if the ice is slow to go in the spring or June and July. And I think, again to be corrected, if anyone gets into trouble in the Eastern Arctic it's these red haul characters that they may see saving them. So!

The navy, someone may have to really set me straight but my understanding is we don't have a navy anymore. We have a MARCOM - Maritime Command Canadian Forces, which maybe could use a port in the Eastern Arctic but even in Iqaluit there are still the joys of sea ice in the winter.

Unfortunately, even thought most of Canada's really quite large shore line is in the Arctic, both the Western and Eastern parts, the hull's of the current crop of MARCOM vessels cannot withstand being hit with an ice cube thrown by a distraught officer type from a wardroom porthole.

Just to be very clear, a small ice pan would likely sink our most sophisticated and expensive MARCOM ships.

Having a port or harbor hidden 100 or so miles from Davis Strait down the bay in Iqaluit wouldn't do MARCOM much good without the equipment to operate in the Arctic. Even in an Arctic that seems to be warming up, the sea ice is still pretty hard from December 'til June.

Please, also can we be spared from the uninformed about tourism?

Someone needs to ask Matty of North Winds whether adventurers are being brought back into Iqaluit.

If the most hardy of individual adventurers from down South would want to avoid Iqaluit because of it's mess why would a latte drinking vegetarian eco-tourist want to be subject to it.

Technorati Tags: Canada, News and Politic, Nunavut