Details of a large non-profit’s plans to combat the Keystone XL pipeline have surfaced, and offer some insight into the strategies and tactics of groups looking to combat the use of fossil fuels. Canadian news channel Sun News uncovered of a PowerPoint presentation from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund detailing its work with other groups to derail the Keystone XL pipeline and other similar projects it deemed parts of “a globally significant threat.” The presentation, written in 2008, describes the allocation of $7 million to environmental non-profits for tactics that include …
Heritage and the Wall Street Journal released the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom on Thursday, ranking 179 countries on 10 benchmarks that gauge their economic success. This year Heritage introduced a new interactive feature that gives you the opportunity to create a comparative graph. This week’s chart shows how the United States stacks up against Canada and the United Kingdom. As recently as 2009, the United States led both countries in economic freedom. But after four years of decline, the United States is heading in the wrong direction. This year …
In an exclusive interview with The Heritage Foundation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sharply criticized President Obama for engaging in class warfare and accused him of shifting the focus away from his own failed policies in advance of next year’s election. “My view is he’ll have a hard time convincing Americans he deserves four more years of this,” McConnell said. “There’s nothing he’s done that the American people approve of, so of course, he’s trying to change the subject.” McConnell addressed a range of issues during the interview, from …
Canada exports almost all of its energy to the United States, but because of resistance from the Obama Administration to approving the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, that could soon change. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told President Obama that as the U.S. delays, Canada will begin diversifying by shipping its oil to Asian markets. Harper said of the delay: This highlights why Canada must increase its efforts to ensure it can supply its energy outside the U.S. and into Asia in particular. Canada will step up its efforts …
It seems that Canada, America’s friendly neighbor to the north (and beloved by the left for its universal health care system) has a new enemy to the south—environmental activists. Its crime? Wanting to use its natural resources. In the Natural Resource Defense Council’s (NRDC) “onearth” blog, Andrew Nikiforuk lambastes Canada for a Calgary-based company’s attempt to build the Keystone XL pipeline to carry tar sands oil (“bitumen,” a type of petroleum) from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico—bringing upwards of a million barrels of oil per day to refineries in …
While the world was watching the news coming out of Pakistan about Osama bin Laden, closer to home voters in Canada went to the polls on May 2 and gave Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper a solid majority in Parliament. Conservatives have won or are ahead in 167 of the country’s 308 electoral districts. Harper will head the first conservative majority government in Canada since 1988. The Christian Science Monitor is calling it a “political earthquake” for Canada, noting that the traditional center-left Liberal Party finished a distant third with …
In 1966, God was pronounced dead. More recently, it was determined that God is back. But now a team of researchers has put him on the endangered species list. “Religion may become extinct in nine nations,” says a BBC headline today reporting on a presentation made at the American Physical Society meeting. Based on census data showing increased religious non-affiliation, the study “indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.” “The idea is pretty simple,” says one of the researchers. “It posits that social groups that …
Although Canada’s taxpayers were forced to spend one billion dollars for security at the G-20 Summit in Toronto last weekend, more than 600 people were arrested after a roving bands of protesters shattered shop windows for blocks. At that point, as Mark Steyn points out, the “insecure dweebs of the Toronto police” started threatening law-abiding passers-by. Meanwhile, on substance the G-20 ended up being the flop many predicted. That didn’t stop President Obama, who talked on and on from the beginning of the confab through his wrap-up press conference trying …
Canada is one of America’s greatest allies and its largest trading partner. Yet within a split second, it could freeze US financial systems, disable key military technologies, or halt any number of government agencies. How? A few rogue actors launching a cyber attack from Canada. Such is the nature of asymmetric threats where the words “border” and “allies” are no longer relevant. This possibility was outlined by the Deputy Defense Secretary, William J. Lynn, while in Canada following his speech to the Conference on Defense Associations.
A page on the Canadian Government’s G-20 Toronto Summit website promises payments to citizens “to mitigate adverse financial consequences” as a result of the meeting of world leaders June 26-27. Unfortunately, the adverse consequences being referred to are only those incurred as a result of the security precautions that shut down cities when the world’s power brokers come to town. Those economic costs can run into the millions, as the citizens of Pittsburgh found out when they hosted G-20 leaders last year. The real economic damage to fear, of course, …
