An open letter from the Pembina Institute to Canadians

Dear friends,

As you may have noticed, the Harper government and the “Ethical Oil Inc” front group have been working to discredit groups like the Pembina Institute and our work on energy issues by claiming that we are a “foreign-funded,” “radical” organization advocating against the best interests of Canadians.

Allow us to set the record straight. Read more...

As the pipeline debate on this side of the border shifts to the fate of the Northern Gateway proposal, the U.S. government’s rejection of the Keystone project shows that Canada faces real barriers in getting oilsands to market — and, despite what some pundits say, those barriers are not just political. Read more...

The Obama administration’s surprise decision to deny the proposed Keystone XL pipeline created quite the media storm yesterday, and for good reason.

In defending the decision, the president highlighted the risks the project could pose to “the health and safety of the American people and [to] the environment,” and the need to adequately review those concerns. And while a wide range of responses surfaced from the Republicans, Democrats, public opinion leaders and local interest groups, one story in particular caught our eye. Read more...

Yesterday the reputation of the Pembina Institute and that of the British government was attacked in a column by Kathryn Marshall, a professional oilsands booster. It doesn’t seem too much to ask of someone who regularly writes commentary in the news media to do a little fact checking. However, this basic journalistic standard appears to have escaped Marshall, as her commentary repeats many misleading or downright false statements about the Pembina Institute and the nature of our work. Read more...

Imagine you were considering getting a mortgage and your bank offered you a fixed interest rate at five per cent. You sign up, but when you go to make your first payment, the fine print states you are actually being charged 60 per cent interest. Would you feel cheated? Would you be able to handle a 12-fold spike in rates? And if you had realized the true cost, would you have signed those mortgage papers in the first place?

That's the situation facing a joint regulatory panel Alberta and Canada established to review the environmental impacts of the next massive 100,000 barrel-per-day oilsands mine, proposed by Shell north of Fort McMurray. Read more...

With the U.S. Department of State's decision on the Keystone XL pipeline delayed until 2013, much of the attention in Canada has been shifting west towards Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline to the B.C. coast. After the Keystone XL announcement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was quick to threaten to ship oilsands crude to Asia — a point the Prime Minister will likely repeat when he meets with President Obama tomorrow. Read more...

While Canada and Alberta are lobbying against the recent EU Commission decision to assign a specific value for bitumen, sending federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver to Paris and London last week to persuade the EU to rethink the directive, we believe that Europe should stand firm, for the following reasons. Read more...

Today’s protest in Ottawa and the sit-in at the White House this past month send a strong signal to Canadian and U.S. decision makers that the environmental risks and impacts from expanding oilsands development and associated pipelines are not being adequately addressed.  Read more...

The clock is ticking for the U.S. State Department to evaluate the proposed Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline. Read more...

In late July, Environment Canada published a document called Canada's Emissions Trends, which provides an up-to-date projection of greenhouse gas pollution under a "business as usual" scenario. The picture it paints of where oilsands emissions are heading is — to put it mildly — not pretty. Read more...

In June, the Pembina Institute went to court along with the Alberta Wilderness Association, our lawyers from Ecojustice and three First Nations, to argue that the Government of Canada had illegally refused to recommend emergency habitat protections for woodland caribou in Alberta.

Woodland caribou are declining rapidly in northeastern Alberta as a result of too much industrial development (including oilsands development) within their ranges, and the federal government has a legal responsibility to protect them under the Species at Risk Act. Read more...

In a meeting last April with the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, then-environment minister Jim Prentice said: "in terms of reducing our emissions of greenhouse gas as well as other pollutants, the more natural gas we can bring on in this country, the more desirable it is."

But a new report released today by the Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation challenges that assumption. Read more...

The Pembina Institute will be in Federal Court in Edmonton on June 22 in an attempt to force the federal government to finally uphold its legal duty to protect woodland caribou in Alberta.

  Read more...

For investors wanting to put their cash on the oilsands, it's currently not possible to have the full picture on oilsands liabilities.

  Read more...

We need a new energy vision for Canada — and the Pembina Institute's history, as well as the wide range of experience within our organization, puts us in a strong position to advance this vision. Read more...

Responding to Jack Layton's surge in the polls, Stephen Harper spent some time on Thursday going after the NDP's cap-and-trade plan, saying that it would add 10 cents a litre to the price Canadians pay at the pumps. Based on the specifics of the NDP proposal, Pembina's analysis suggests a more accurate assessment of the impact on consumers would be a no higher than four cents a litre. Read more...

As consultations continue for the Lower Athabasca Integrated Regional Plan (LAIRP), it's time for the Government of Alberta to raise the bar on standards for oilsands development. With this in mind, we've just released a new report that identifies a comprehensive package of environmental policies to reduce the impacts of oilsands operations that can help Alberta improve its international reputation.  Read more...

"Is Canada doing enough to ensure a sustainable energy future?"

That was the question of the day on a recent edition of CBC Power and Politics, which featured a town hall discussion on Canada's energy policy. The Pembina Institute's Clare Demerse was part of that discussion, and in this video she explains how the transition toward a more sustainable energy future could benefit Canadians across the country. Read more...

At a news conference earlier this week, federal cabinet minister John Baird called the Liberal Party's cap-and-trade proposal "incredibly divisive" and "un-Canadian."

It's a surprising statement, and not just because Minister Baird's own government said it supported cap-and-trade as recently as 2009. Nearly 80 per cent of Canadians currently live in provinces whose premiers support cap-and-trade: British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Québec have all expressed interest in joining with U.S. states in the Western Climate Initiative cap-and-trade system. Read more...