A Saturday evening #onpoli shocker: the chair of Doug Ford’s Greenbelt Council, former PC MP David Crombie, has resigned over changes to conservation authorities. Calls them “disastrous, and “high-level bombing” that “needs to be resisted.”
Crombie, who is also a former mayor of Toronto, says the changes will stifle or shut down public debate and “cuts out the heart” of watershed planning.
As Greenbelt Council chair, Crombie advised the province to change course on a bunch of environmental moves, advice it mostly didn’t heed. When I interviewed him in August, he wouldn’t say a bad word about the government — just that he gives advice, it’s up to them to follow it.
All this to say, my eyebrows are raised
If you’re curious about the changes to conservation authorities, you can read about them here — I first reported on this a few weeks ago nationalobserver.com/2020/11/11/new…
The government also made some very notable amendments to the changes this week, while I was out sick. @DavidHains did a wonderful job of explaining them here:
So I guess this means I need to get back to work soon, eh?
Oh, I almost forgot: Crombie is the second member of the Greenbelt Council to resign recently. Environmental biologist and land use planner Linda Pim resigned almost exactly month ago: nationalobserver.com/2020/11/04/new…
Response from @SteveClarkPC, who says Crombie’s term was about to expire and the government was already looking for a new chair. #onpoli
I'm not back at work yet -- still resting as I recover from covid -- but if you want to read a story about this, the excellent @njaved has you covered: thestar.com/news/gta/2020/…
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BREAKING: Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage says the province's inquiry into an alleged foreign campaign aimed at discrediting AB's energy sector needs more time. They're also reallocating $1 million from the Canadian Energy Centre (war room) budget. #ableg
The inquiry's interim report was submitted earlier this year but the key environmental groups that were accused of being part of this alleged campaign were not interviewed cbc.ca/news/canada/ed…
The hereditary chiefs say the gov didn't properly consider this record, and that they didn't consider the links between resource extraction and violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2S people. This relates to a call to action from the MMIWG inquiry nationalobserver.com/2017/09/21/new…
In response, the BC EAO makes a remarkable argument: that it did consider those things but isn't obliged to give the Wet'suwet'en, whose unceded traditional territory this runs through, a full explanation of its reasoning.
The BC EAO also argues that the MMIWG inquiry call to action isn't legally binding so it doesn't *have* to do anything about it, though the EAO also argues that it did.
THREAD: So, a little while ago, @RVAwonk and I saw a tweet that baffled us. That's right folks, I'm talking about that time Theo Fleury said @gmbutts is sitting on $23 million. Which is extremely false! So where did it come from? nationalobserver.com/2019/07/16/new…#cdnpoli
One thing was clear right away: this false info didn't start with Theo. He was just the most prominent person to tweet about it. As far as we could tell, it originated on a fake news/clickbait site in 2016, as part of a listicle about the "richest politicians" in Canada.
There were a LOT of problems with this listicle. The grammar & spelling are atrocious. It seems to pull biographical details from Wikipedia and pair them with random, absurdly high net worths. It doesn't cite sources. It has no byline. The site is called TopRichests. Like, c'mon
Hello #abvote pals! This afternoon, ex-@Alberta_UCP leadership candidate Jeff Callaway (& others) will ask a judge to halt the election commissioner’s investigation into his campaign. I’ll tweet from court, follow along here. Background: thestar.com/calgary/2019/0…#ableg#abpoli
Of note: this hearing is about the election commissioner’s investigation. We know the RCMP are also looking into aspects of Callaway’s campaign, but as far as I know, we’re not here to talk about that. Just election commissioner.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court of Canada has reached a decision in the #Redwater case. When energy companies go bankrupt, the cleanup of their old oil and gas wells must take priority over paying off creditors, the court found. Sides with Alberta Energy Regulator. Story soon.
Supreme Court ruled 5-2 in favour of @AER_news and the Orphan Well Association. Read the full judgement here:
Here's my early file (many, many more updates to come. In short: this decision empowers provincial governments to stop insolvent oil & gas companies from off-loading their environmental messes onto other companies or the public. thestar.com/calgary/2019/0…