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Did Harper’s former Press Secretary-turned-Senator pull a Rose Mary Woods on the Duffygate expenses report?

May 23, 2013 by looncanada

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Clockwise from upper left: Sen. Carolyn Stewart-Olsen with The Rt. Hon. He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed; PM and El Presidente of Peru in mandatory changing-of-the-junta parade in Lima this week; fictional resident of PEI toasts Senate of Canada internal economy committee; side-by-side comparison of original Senate committee investigative report conclusions with “cleaned up” version; Sen. David Tckachuk with E! channel’s Ben Mulroney in happier era. Centre: famous 1973 photo of U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon’s White House secretary, Rose Mary Woods, demonstrating how she “accidentally” created an 18-minute gap in Oval Office recordings of Nixon’s private post-Watergate break-in conversations with aides John Erlichman, H.R. Haldeman et al.

Duffygate Paralyzes Harper Government
Tongues are still wagging non-stop at the lunch-counters and salad emporiums across Ottawa as the relentless public scandal, colloquially dubbed “Duffygate” continues to embroil the office of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and both Commons and Senate caucuses of the Conservative Party of Canada.

This time it comes with the latest revelation in a spate of investigative journalism disclosures in the parliamentary precinct–this one by Jennifer Ditchburn of Postmedia.com who (we don’t think it really matters who came first, just that they came)–and/or possibly in tandem with, or slightly after, or at the same time, as CTV News and CBC news bureaus–was first to cross the public disclosure finish line with a comparison of the original version of the Senate’s ostensible “internal investigation” report on Sen. Mike Duffy’s $90K in impugned housing “expense” claims to its final “sanitized” edition.

According to Ditchburn’s on-line story which ran late on Wednesday evening:

The order to sanitize an audit of Sen. Mike Duffy’s expenses came from two key Conservatives on the Senate’s internal economy committee: chair David Tkachuk and Carolyn Stewart Olsen, CTV News has learned….The original version of the audit report said Duffy broke the rules when he declared a Prince Edward Island cottage as his primary residence and noted that the senator refused to co-operate with independent auditors.

Substantial “character deficit” in report retouched by Tory Senators

Turns out, between the original version of the report, which was penned with the participation of Liberal Senator George Furey, and the one that was presented days later, there are significant alterations amounting to a glaring 470-word (or 2,446 individual keystrokes) gap in the doctored version. Actually, “nursed” may be a better description, given Senator Stewart-Olsen’s pre-political career as an RN.

And it turns out, the editing and excising was done by the two Tory Senators –Tkachuk and Stewart-Olsen–presumably, when Senator Furey was elsewhere.

The Tory pair apparently altered and then presented a final version that contained a deficit of 2,446 characters, which appear to some, at least (cynical bastards), to have been removed in order to, as the saying goes, “whitewash” Senator Duffy’s alleged malfeasance.

Today, Senator Stewart-Olsen objected to the characterization of the product of her PMO-quality co-editing as a “sanitized version” of the Duffy report. And, inasmuch as she and her internal economy committee cohorts are scheduled to give, forgive our grade school naïveté, a “sober second look” to the doctored report, who knows how many other last-minute touch-ups will find their way into the final-final report.

Happily, if you want to see with your own eyes what secretarial gap-creating or legerdemain was brought to bear by the two Tory co-editors,, major media including CTV News have–in contrast to the Tory upper chamber loyalists, at least–made publjc a side-by-side excerpt of the relevant portions available for viewing at this weblink:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.1293074!/httpFile/file.pdf

All of which spells “MORE BAD NEWS” for Prime Minister Harper, who presumably thought he would be able to skate away from the mess while contining on his whirlwind tour of Peru and Colombia this week.

One of his many quickly multiplying challenges in the face of the time warp velocity of Duffygate has been the fact that its hard to stay “on message” when all your top aides are being sucked into its tornado-like vortex.

So instead of being able to repeat his mantra talking point about the Tory Economic Action Plan , the PM is now confronted with the fact that yet another of his most stalwart and loyal servants–Senator Stewart-Olsen–has apparently thrown judgment and propriety out the windows of the Senate of Canada in order to salvage the sinking ship that is the PMS Stephen Harper.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper (l) with former press secretary and chief communications strategist Sen. Carolyn Stewart-Olsen, sporting her 2002 Olympic gold medal for creative editing.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper (l) with former press secretary and chief communications strategist Sen. Carolyn Stewart-Olsen, sporting her 2002 Olympic gold medal for creative editing.

All the Prime Minister’s Men, er, and Women…

A digest of the Senator’s resumé from Wikipedia tells the all too familiar tale of a devoted acolyte who would apparently resort to anything to protect the Prime Minister and his coterie of boosters, including her crony, er, fellow honourable senator, Mike Duffy:

“Stewart-Olsen was born and raised in Sackville, New Brunswick, and worked as a nurse for 20 years before becoming a political staffer. In 1993, Stewart-Olsen became a volunteer in the communications office of the Reform Party of Canada under Preston Manning, newly settling in as a major party in the House of Commons. “

“She later came on staff as a media officer or press aide until 2000, serving through the creation of its first successor party, the Canadian Alliance, and the leadership of Stockwell Day, who defeated Manning for the Alliance leadership.”

“[Later]…Stewart-Olsen went to work for Deborah Grey, the first Reform MP and a Manning loyalist, and in 2001, she was identified as a press aide to the Democractic Representative Caucus, a group of dissidents including Grey who broke with the party under Day’s leadership….]”

“In the 2002 Canadian Alliance leadership election, she became press secretary to Harper in his successful challenge to Day, planting a strong reciprocal loyalty between the two that would strengthen through the 2004 leadership race of its successor the Conservative Party of Canada, and Stewart-Olsen’s frequent contact with Harper in their work; a 2005 Globe and Mail report said that Stewart-Olsen and executive assistant Ray Novak, “mid-level staffers,” were “seen as having his ear, much more so than many higher-ranking staff in the [Opposition leader's] office of about 100.” “

“As Harper’s press secretary, Stewart-Olsen survived several periods of significant turnover in Harper’s communication staff; in opposition in 2005, amid one such transition, media reports stated that Stewart-Olsen was widely tipped to succeed Geoff Norquay as communications director, but she remained in her position as press secretary. When Harper became prime minister after the 2006 federal election, Stewart-Olsen moved with him into government.”

“Accounts of Stewart-Olsen vary widely. On the 2005-06 campaign trail, a reporter for The Record who had been physically restrained from asking a question by a member of Harper’s RCMP security detail found Stewart-Olsen “diminutive and soft-spoken;” she defused the situation and arranged a short interview. Calgary Sun writer Licia Corbella calls her “competent and charming”.”

“However, a fellow Conservative strategist, speaking anonymously to the Canadian Press in 2005, said that “Carolyn Stewart Olsen is an issue for a lot of people — her relationship with the leader and her inability to work well with people.” Editorialist Adam Radwanski suggested in his blog that she may “reinforce all the leader’s worst, most paranoid instincts.” “

“In February 2006, after the departure of Harper’s communications director William Stairs, the Toronto Star described Stewart-Olsen going to the “unusual lengths of holding down reporters’ hands when they’ve tried to ask questions or shouting at journalists who don’t abide by her rules for press dealings. The fact that Harper chose to keep Stewart-Olsen and eject Stairs was seen last night as largely a cosmetic answer to the deeper issue of his public-relations problems and Harper’s distrust of anything related to the media.”"

“Reinforcing this perception of media relations, in April 2008 it was reported that Conservative Members of Parliament were required to carry at all times a wallet-sized, laminated card entitled “When a Reporter Calls”. The card provided instructions as to questions a Member of Parliament was expected to ask of a reporter, prior to seeking permission from the Prime Minister’s Office to speak to the journalist.”

Posted in Canadian eh?, Current Events, Law Law Land, Media, The Bawdy Politick | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The incredible shrinking credibility of Stephen Harper

May 22, 2013 by looncanada

“Truth, truth everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”

In these turbulent political times for Canadians, it is all too easy to lose the proverbial forest for the fast-blooming and increasingly impenetrable trees.

Today, after a veritable universal consenus within Canada’s major news media that the Prime Minister had “blown it” in failing to assuage mounting public concerns over a recalcitrant Senator Mike Duffy’s alleged bilking of the public coffers of undeserved “housing allowance” claims to the tune of $90K, we witnessed the long-distance “Where’s Waldo” media sideshow staged by the PMO in Lima, Peru.

With his tepid performance before the Tory caucus barely in the rear-view mirror, our fearless leader did an abrupt volte face, eschewing his initial strategy of eschewing questions, and choosing the awkward forum of a public photo op with El Presidente in Peru to finally face the music from Canada.

Too bad, though, about what our PM said when he broke his silence. Because what he actually said makes no sense whatsoever. At least, not if you compare it to what we were told he said earlier this week.

“It has come to my attention that you and the cleaning woman have engaged in sexual intercourse on the desk in your office.“

“Obviously I’m very sorry … I’m sorry and feel a range of emotions. I’m sorry, frustrated and extremely angry about it,” Mr. Harper offered today, as his Peruvian counterpart stood stoically a few feet across from him on the dais.

The PM went on to assert that had he known about the payment by his own chief-of-staff Nigel Wright payment to Senator Duffy a tad earlier than he did–invoking U.S. President Obama’s excuse in the IRS scandal that he’d first heard about it in the media like everyone else–he would never have approved it in a million years.

Not only that, he would never have allowed it!

If this smacks of the “I’m just as much of a victim in this thing as everyone else” pretext for avoiding responsibility, you can skip the final exam and proceed directly to pick up your diploma. The reason it doesn’t wash is that Mr. Wright already used it when he resigned earlier this week.

Still, the major difficulty with all of this double-talk and mock candour is that Mr.Harper’s new-found indignation and moral rectitude over the slimy-looking entente between Mr. Wright and the Senator is squarely at odds with the statement that was issued last week through one of his other spokespersons, namely, Carl Vallee.

justinharper

Peruvian President Ollanta Humala (l) greets the Canadian PM in Lima.

“And it was signed by the secretary, Harper-Vallee PSA…”

When asked by a feverish media whether, in wake of the then fresh disclosures about the secret payment, Mr. Wright would be leaving his employ earlier than scheduled, Mr. Vallee replied without a trace of smugness that:

“He has the confidence of the prime minister.”

While LOON‘s senior editorialists and logicians have been struggling hard, they are, alas, still not able to decipher how what was presumably not grounds for losing Prime Minister Harper’s “confidence” on Sunday, could have so quickly and expediently morphed into an unequivocal and disdainful disavowal of the Duffygate cheque payoff barely a week later.

If anyone out there can float a plausible theorem to solve this conundrum, please leave it in the Comments section below.

Posted in Canadian eh?, Current Events, Law Law Land, LOON EXTRA!, The Bawdy Politick | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Meet Stephen Harper’s consigliere emeritus

May 21, 2013 by looncanada

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Lawyer, lawyer…

As the hackneyed legal adage has it, “never ask a question you don’t know the answer to”.

In the case of our embattled and thoroughly “lawyered up” Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, that should be revised to “never allow a question you don’t have an answer for.”

Case in point—the recent allegation by the CTV national news bureau that UBC law prof Benjamin Perrin and former “top advisor” to the PM on all things criminal law-related and then some, was the same dude who drafted an agreement between (now fallen) Nigel Wright, the PM’s erstwhile chief-of-staff and embattled Senator Mike Duffy (a former CTV national screensaver himself) by which they became ad idem on the transfer of $90,000 from Wright’s private bank account into Duffy’s. The possible mens rea of which was, according to current public speculation, for the purpose of (choose your own catch-phrase):

  • Protecting Canadian taxpayers and eliminating government “red tape”;
  • Heading off a Senate investigation into Duffy’s errant “housing expense” claims totalling the exact same amount;
  • Keeping a surefire media disaster under wraps until the scandal has blown over the Langevin Block yet again;
  • Covering up potentially unlawful conduct on the part of a Senator chosen by the PM himself;
  • All of the above;
  • All of the above, and we don’t even know the half of it at this point…
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UBC law faculty member Ben Perrin (r) has briefed the PMO on everything in the criminal law and public safety bailiwick…and possibly contracts, too.

“He was eating a cannoli…”

Why, those of us without legal pedigree may well ask, would a seasoned legal expert with high-level experience advising the likes of the Tory law-and-order vigilantes on subjects as sordid as human trafficking, prostitution, and organized crime allow himself to be put in the role of consigliere to a Don Harperione version of The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot?

As the latest PMO confidante to be implicated in the relentless Senate Scandal, Ben Perrin is, according to the internet website that brandishes his c.v., a “senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute for Public Policy…(who) recently returned from a leave of absence in Ottawa where he served as special advisor and legal counsel to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and was lead policy advisor on all matters related to the Department of Justice, Public Safety Canada (including the RCMP, Canada Border Services Agency, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Correctional Service of Canada, and Parole Board of Canada), and Citizenship and Immigration Canada.”

But there’s more:

“Professor Perrin is an internationally recognized researcher and advocate for victims of crime…Hillary Clinton has called him a “hero”…the Governor General of Canada and victims’ groups have…honoured him for his work to combat human trafficking and child sexual exploitation…(and) Professor Perrin is the recipient of the Wilson-Prichard Award for Community and Professional Service from the University of Toronto, and the Graduate of the Last Decade award from the University of Calgary.”

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But wait, we’re not done yet:

“…Reader’s Digest has profiled him as an “influential Canadian”, and Maclean’s magazine has listed him as one of Canada’s “best and brightest”. Professor Perrin’s book Invisible Chains: Canada’s Underground World of Human Trafficking (Penguin, 2010) became a bestseller and was named one of the top books of the year by the Globe and Mail. He is co-editor of Human Trafficking: Exploring the International Nature, Concerns, and Complexities (CRC Press, 2012), and editor of Modern Warfare: Armed Groups, Private Militaries, Humanitarian Organizations and the Law (UBC Press, 2012). He is also the author of numerous law review articles and book chapters, and regularly provides commentary in the media.”

Yikes, Professor! And before anyone can say, well, we all make mistakes, especially where those murky Senate rules and regulations are concerned, check out Ben Perrin’s legal resumé. If nothing else, if the CTV account is true, it would nix any doubts about how much the Professor knew about what he was doing:

Professor Perrin received a Bachelor of Commerce (with distinction) from the University of Calgary in 2001, a Juris Doctor from the University of Toronto in 2005, and a Master of Laws (with honours) from McGill University in 2007. He was called to the Bar in Ontario in 2007 and the Bar in British Columbia in 2010.Prior to joining UBC, Professor Perrin was a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada, judicial intern at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, assistant director of the Special Court for Sierra Leone Legal Clinic (which assisted the Trial and Appeals Chambers), senior policy advisor to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, and executive director of a non-governmental organization that combats human trafficking.

All of which may account, though only unsatisfactorily, for Prime Minister Harper’s apparent Rob Fordesque strategic move to make his next official comments about the Duffy boondoggle outside of the inner sanctum of the PMO to the subjegated serfs of the Tory caucus. More tellingly, it explains in part why his dwindling cadre of handlers are already forewarning that he won’t be allowing questions from the media.

One question might be: why does a guy who represents the pro-Tory MLI “think-tank” not see any moral, legal or ethical challenge wading into a matter that potentially involves breaches of the very Rule of Law that our current PM, and the Prof’s erstwhile “client,” never misses–sorry, make that “never used to” miss–an opportunity to lambast the old Liberal Government about ad nauseam during and following the last three federal election campaigns?

For his part, Professor Perrin vehemently denies CTV’s allegation, issuing the following statement the day following the report:

Last night’s CTV story in relation to me, which is based on unattributed sources, is false. I was not consulted on, and did not participate in, Nigel Wright’s decision to write a personal cheque to reimburse Senator Duffy’s expenses. I have never communicated with the Prime Minister on this matter. In all my work, I have been committed to making our country a better place and I hope my record of service speaks for itself.

Have you hugged a thug today? How about a Senator?

And then there’s the interesting coincidental fact that Mr. Harper’s incumbent “tough on crime” public safety minister Vic Toews has regularly cited the same MLI’s ostensibly objective “research studies” to justify, among other controversial big-ticket legislative items, the Harper criminal reform omnibus bill.

One of Professor Perrin’s fellow Fellows at MLI, Scott Newark , is the author of the Institute’s recent February 2013 Stats Can-debunking “study” which purports to establish that contrary to what the “hug-a-thug” federal bean counters and, er, sociologists have been repeatedly telling us for the past decade, the crime rate in Canada is actually going UP, not down! To be sure, no member of the Harper cabinet has touted that study as zealously as Vic Toews.

But while that debate rages on, and Stats Can is further muzzled and undermined by the Harper law and order acolytes, one thing most Canadians have no doubts about is that the crime rate is apparently spiking in some well-heeled quarters of our Nation’s Capital.

Posted in Canadian eh?, Celebrity Jeopardy, Current Events, Law Law Land, LOON EXTRA!, Media, The Bawdy Politick | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Only a Tory would believe that Michael Sona acted alone…

April 5, 2013 by looncanada

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The PM with his 2011 campaign chief Jenni “There’s no Y, just an I” Byrne, now esconced in the PMO inner sanctum.

Stephen Harper’s continuing electile dysfunction

Let’s be blunt. When it comes to the Robocalls voter suppression scandal, Canadians are not buying the “lone gunman” theory.

So when Elections Canada and the chief federal prosecutor laid a solitary, singular Elections Act charge against shitcanned Guelph Tory campaign droid-turned-federal-Tory parliamentary flunkey, Michael Sona, the acerbic pundits here at LOON weren’t the only voices to join the hue and cry of indignant electors screaming “Warren Commission cover-up!” and “Oswald is a patsy!”

For starters, the sporadic dribble of public information that has percolated into the laptops and mobile devices of Canadians since the Robocalls shit first hit the media fan even before the polls closed on Election Day 2011 has been consistent in highlighting the logical if not physical impossibility of one person having had the capacity, prowess, or rank needed to pull off such a large-scale fraud.

Think about it. Thousands of calls programmed to reach voters in the Guelph riding sought by Tory candidate Marty Burke in unison. Sent from a centralized agency in Calgary hired by the Tory campaign and using the same faked pre-recorded “Elections Canada” spokesperson to mislead non-Burke voters into going to a non-existent voting location miles from the genuine article.

Shenanigans orchestrated from well above Mr. Sona’s measly pay grade

And how do we all know it was non-Tory voters who got these calls? Because more than just a handful immediately called federal elections czar Mark Mayrand’s minions to complain about it.

We also know that the federal Tories maintain an expensive and technologically sophisticated computer system acronymically tagged “CIMS” which permits Tory campaign apparatchiks to drill into extensive, detailed and highly personal data caches to determine with Borg-like precision who within any given city, town, or hamlet block is going to vote, who they voted for in previous elections, and who they’ll vote for in the next election.

CIMS, we also know, is under heavy duty security and linked to the highest echelons of the Tory campaign machine in Ottawa. You can’t log in much less manipulate and activate contacts by telephone with individual CIMS-identified non-Tory voters without the clout and attendant authority to do so.

We also have all read the media reports which attended the filing in various Canadian court jurisdictions over the past fourteen months of affidavits from federal elections investigators attesting that they tracedthe CIMS trail back to the same computer “IP” address and determined that it was shared by one Andrew Prescott, a self-avowed Born Again evangelical “Christian Conservative” (he blogs vociferously about same-sex marriage and Islamic designs for world domination) and the elusive false-monikered “Pierre Poutine.

Globe & Mail

Thrown under the campaign bus

The unfortunate Michael Sona, albeit a Tory youth diehard given, by accounts he disputes vehemently, to throwing himself in the path of “illegal” advance polls at the University of Guelph campus during the last federal election, is a low-ranking small fry. His role in the failed Guelph campaign was insignificant, although it did give him one helluva photo op with Stephen Harper.

What was more significant about Sona was the astronomical velocity with which he was shitcanned as an assistant to neophyte Tory backbencher Eve Adams when Robocalls first hit the media fan last year.

The gossip around media watering holes was that Sona was forced to walk the Tory plank at the insistence of none other than the PM’ s campaign manager and now PMO commissar of deceptive appearances, Jenni “There is no Y, only I” Byrne.

One thing that distinguishes Michael Sona as a lone anything is the fact that he has actually appeared in public and actually spoken more than perfunctorily to the media.

Self-serving denials

To be sure, Sona’s public comments have thus far amounted for the most part to a self-serving denial of any complicity in the Guelph Robocalls caper.

But, unlike the aforementioned Andrew Prescott and the other senior 2011 Tory campaign organizers in the precinct, Sona has not “lawyered up” other than to prepare for what he or anyone with an inkling of street-smarts could reasonably expect would result in his being scapegoated and charged.

Now that Mr Sona has been formally and thus far, exclusively blamed, for the political equivalent of a golf caddy’s role in the entire sordid affair, it may simply appear that he is doing what all scapegoats down through history have done without fail. Pointing the finger of blame to the folks further up the chain of command.

stephen and friends

Has Stephen Harper actually started to believe the blanket denials of higher Tory involvement in the Robocalls scandal issued by his head spokesguy, Fred Delorean (r)?

That is, with one important distinction. Unlike the infamous Nixon black ops unit, The Plumbers, who were shrewd enough to remain mute after their arrest for the Watergate burglary, Mr. Sona is one of those rare accused perps who instructs his legal counsel to issue a press statement calling for a full-blown public inquiry into whodunit.

Instead of holding his hand over a flaming candle and avowing eternal lockjaw à la G.Gordon Liddy, Mr. Sona has at least stepped up, something that cannot be said for his erstwhile mentors in the Tory Robocalls containment unit.

Canadians are now left to pray, er, make that, hope that further revelations (sorry, another inadvertent biblical slip) about the continuing Robocalls caper will put the lie to the PMO’s smug but increasingly hollow insistence that Stephen Harper and his 2011 election campaign staff really did play by the rules.

Posted in Canadian eh?, Current Events, Media, robocalls, The Bawdy Politick, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

LOON EXTRA! U.S. National Transportation Safety Board compares Enbridge’s handling of 2010 Michigan pipeline spill to Keystone Cops

July 12, 2012 by looncanada

NTSB chief slams Enbridge for “complete breakdown of safety”

In a scathing press statement issued on July 10th, 2012, the head of the federal United States Transportation Safety Board described the response by Enbridge corporation to the 2011 oil pipeline rupture in Michigan as a “failure” and compared the safety and environmental disaster response plan to the Keystone Cops slapstick films of the early silent film era.  In January 2012, LOON posted a feature wiki article on Enbridge’s abysmal environmental safety record, noting that the corporation has nonetheless been the recipient of hundreds of corporate “safety awards” .   For a background post originally posted by LOON in January 2012,  The full text of the NTSB press release is reprinted below.

July 10, 2012

WASHINGTON – Pervasive organizational failures by a pipeline operator along with weak federal regulations led to a pipeline rupture and subsequent oil spill in 2010, the National Transportation Safety Board said today.

On Sunday, July 25, 2010, at about 5:58 p.m., a 30 inch-diameter pipeline (Line 6B) owned and operated by Enbridge Incorporated ruptured and spilled crude oil into an ecologically sensitive area near the Kalamazoo River in Marshall, Mich., for 17 hours until a local utility worker discovered the oil and contacted Enbridge to report the rupture.

The NTSB found that the material failure of the pipeline was the result of multiple small corrosion-fatigue cracks that over time grew in size and linked together, creating a gaping breach in the pipe measuring over 80 inches long.

“This investigation identified a complete breakdown of safety at Enbridge. Their employees performed like Keystone Kops and failed to recognize their pipeline had ruptured and continued to pump crude into the environment,” said NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman. “Despite multiple alarms and a loss of pressure in the pipeline, for more than 17 hours and through three shifts they failed to follow their own shutdown procedures.”

Clean up costs are estimated by Enbridge and the EPA at $800 million and counting, making the Marshall rupture the single most expensive on-shore spill in US history.

Over 840,000 gallons of crude oil – enough to fill 120 tanker trucks – spilled into hundreds of acres of Michigan wetlands, fouling a creek and a river. A Michigan Department of Community Health study concluded that over 300 individuals suffered adverse health effects related to benzene exposure, a toxic component of crude oil.

Line 6B had been scheduled for a routine shutdown at the time of the rupture to accommodate changing delivery schedules. Following the shutdown, operators in the Enbridge control room in Edmonton, Alberta, received multiple alarms indicating a problem with low pressure in the pipeline, which were dismissed as being caused by factors other than a rupture. “Inadequate training of control center personnel” was cited as contributing to the accident.

The investigation found that Enbridge failed to accurately assess the structural integrity of the pipeline, including correctly analyzing cracks that required repair. The NTSB characterized Enbridge’s control room operations, leak detection, and environmental response as deficient, and described the event as an “organizational accident.”

Following the first alarm, Enbridge controllers restarted Line 6B twice, pumping an additional 683,000 gallons of crude oil, or 81 percent of the total amount spilled, through the ruptured pipeline. The NTSB determined that if Enbridge’s own procedures had been followed during the initial phases of the accident, the magnitude of the spill would have been significantly reduced. Further, the NTSB attributed systemic flaws in operational decision-making to a “culture of deviance,” which concluded that personnel had a developed an operating culture in which not adhering to approved procedures and protocols was normalized.

The NTSB also cited the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s weak regulations regarding pipeline assessment and repair criteria as well as a cursory review of Enbridge’s oil spill response plan as contributing to the magnitude of the accident.

The investigation revealed that the cracks in Line 6B that ultimately ruptured were detected by Enbridge in 2005 but were not repaired. A further examination of records revealed that Enbridge’s crack assessment process was inadequate, increasing the risk of a rupture.

“This accident is a wake-up call to the industry, the regulator, and the public. Enbridge knew for years that this section of the pipeline was vulnerable yet they didn’t act on that information,” said Chairman Hersman. “Likewise, for the regulator to delegate too much authority to the regulated to assess their own system risks and correct them is tantamount to the fox guarding the hen house. Regulators need regulations and practices with teeth, and the resources to enable them to take corrective action before a spill. Not just after.”

As a result of the investigation, the NTSB reiterated one recommendation to PHMSA and issued 17 new safety recommendations to the Department of the Transportation, PHMSA, Enbridge Incorporated, the American Petroleum Institute, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, and the National Emergency Number Association.

A synopsis of the NTSB report, including the probable cause, findings, and a complete list of the safety recommendations, is available at http://go.usa.gov/wsO. The full report will be available on the website in several weeks.

NTSB Media Contact, Office of Public Affairs

_____________________________________

Excerpt from LOON‘s January 2012 post, When it comes to pipeline spills, Enbridge is outstanding in the field:

“And the award for ‘Most Ironic Award Recipient for Environmental Sensitivity’ goes to…”

Ironically, as noted on its own website, Enbridge has suffered no shortage of industry and other awards and accolades in a variety of categories including “green-friendly” ones, including: ”many CSR-related awards and recognition in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Criteria such as financial health; environmental performance; workplace health, safety and fairness; community relations; and public disclosure were considered in the following awards:

  • 100 Most Trustworthy Companies (Enbridge Energy Partners), 2010.
  • Alberta’s Top Employers, 2008, 2009, 2010.
  • Alberta’s Most Respected Corporations (Alberta Venture) — Financial Performance, 2010.
  • Best Utility-Scale Project in North America, (Sarnia Solar Project), 2010.
  • Canada’s 10 Most Admired Corporate Cultures (Waterstone Human Capital), 2009.
  • Canada’s Greenest Employers, 2010.
  • Canada’s Top 100 Employers, 2008, 2009, 2010.
  • City of Toronto Environmental Award of Excellence (Green Toronto Awards),
  • Conference Board of Canada Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index, 2008.
  • Corporate Knights Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada, 2008, 2009, 2010.
  • Corporate Knights Global 100 list - Most Sustainable Large Corporations in World, 2010.
  • Dow Jones Sustainability Index (North America), 2008, 2009, 2010.
  • EnerQuality Corporation Award of Excellence, Industry Partner of the Year, 2008,
  • Financial Post’s Ten Best Companies to Work For, 2010.
  • Forbes.com Most Trustworthy Companies, 2009, for accounting and governance practices.
  • Fortune magazine’s Most Admired Companies, 2008 and 2009.
  • FTSE4Good Index. The Financial Times (and London) Stock Exchange (FTSE) .
  • Gold Champion Level Reporter (Canadian Standards Association, 2008, 2009).
  • Governance Metrics International, 2008.
  • Houston Chronicle 100, 2008.
  • Human Resources Institute of Alberta, Alberta’s Top Employers, 2008 and 2009.
  • Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Aboriginal Relations — Best Practice Award of Distinction, 2008
  • Intranet Design Annual 2010: The Year’s 10 Best Intranets, 2010.
  • Jantzi-Sustainalytics 50 Most Responsible Corporations in Canada, 2008, 2010. Natural Gas STAR for Continuing Excellence,(U.S. E.P.A.), 2009.
  • Natural Gas STAR International Partner of the Year Award,  2009.
  • Outstanding Corporate and Employee Campaign Award 2010.
  • Pollution Probe’s Annual Clean Air Commute, 2008.
  • Toronto Star, “Greenest Companies in Canada,” 2009,
  • Canadian Energy Pipeline Association Safety Awards, 2008, 2009.
  • National Safety Council MillionWork Hours Award (Liquids Pipelines).
  • National Safety Council Occupational Excellence Achievement Award 2008.
  • National Safety Council Perfect Record Award (Liquids Pipelines) 2009.
  • Wisconsin Safety Council (WSC) Awards for safety performance in 2009
  • Work Safe Alberta 2008 Best Safety Performer Award, 2008.

Posted in Current Events, Four Legs Dumb Two Legs Dumber, Law Law Land, LOON EXTRA!, Our Dying Planet | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Henry Rollins is a “work slut”

June 14, 2012 by looncanada

Henry Rollins at the Dominion-Chalmers church in Ottawa, Canada (photo: WB)

Lost in the supermarket

By now, Henry Rollins is already hundreds of miles out of Ottawa and on his way to his next Canadian tour appearance. But last night he spoke to an audience of a few hundred at the Dominion-Chalmers United Church for no less than two and three-quarter hours.

An avowed “work slut”—he doesn’t care for ‘down time’—the 51-year-old “spoken word” performer (uh, he talks with his mouth) from Washington, D.C. covers a lot of “real estate” in a short time both in touring and his on-stage material.

Since the Canadian leg of that global roadshow started earlier this month, Rollins has already criss-crossed a substantial part of our country in his “Bon Jovi- mobile,” a pastime he swears is essential to avoiding the certain depression of staying at home for too long and being impelled to lose his way in a grocery store.

“Henry will speak for about two and a half to three hours…”

The more sedentary (and older) members of last night’s audience who recall Rollins from his Black Flag punk days—an era he variously dated as “1857” or “the Bronze Age” throughout his performance—may be wont to describe his gigs as more of a marathon affair than concert.

As the no-frills promoter from Spectra Sonic announced at the top of the evening, “Henry will speak for between two and a half and three hours.” “Oh, yeah,” he added before leaving the stage, “look for us on Facebook and Twitter and all that crap…” Yup, it was definitely shaping up to be a rare triumph of substance over style.

So the lineups in the tiny church washrooms formed right away and there was a run on the bottled water at the “box office”. And we knew we were in for a very long haul of 1970s Bruce Springsteen time-space proportions.

Rollins was, as they say, hip to that from the very start. When he first came out on stage, he told us that during his usual pre-concert check he hadn’t bothered to test the comfort properties of the seating, so sure was he just by looking of the torture our sorry asses were going to endure.

It’s not like you need to train for a Henry Rollins show but you really can’t watch this man perform without exercising your mind and body over the long haul. Rollins is not your typical “standup” performer.

Fear of a Blank Planet

He speaks sincerely and with intent and with compressed energy that he tells his audiences is borne from a deep fear of his audience’s reaction–an enduring pre-show dread that outsizes any sense of reassurance and satisfaction by a factor of five-to-one.

So how can you not pay close attention?

You have to because Henry Rollins implores you to with his riveting commitment to doing exactly what you are watching before your own eyes—him standing there in front of you, talking to you, reflecting, recounting, extrapolating, riffing, orating, and being funny and serious not always in equal measures.

During his three-hour performance, Rollins is a complete study in concentration—no mugging or hackneyed stagecraft. No timed pauses for sips from a water bottle or draft glass.

Once positioned at centre stage with the microphone in his left hand, gripping it to the hilt, holding it unwaveringly at chin level, his right arm slightly bent at the elbow, right hand raised with palm open, he doesn’t move far off the mark.  Knees bent, feet slightly apart—reverting from time to to time to this, his own version of the Namaste position. He is yours. He will not let you go and so you stay there and listen.

Transformed and informed by punk

Rollins’ Ottawa performance was an intense, geo-politically meandering and seamless narrative rap about American society, continuing education, the punk rock principles that inform his world view, teenage angst, Haiti, vaginas, Joey Shithead and DOA, Tibetan repression, technology that home-delivers pizza on hovering plates, 1970s punk bands that should have resisted the urge to stage reunion tours four decades on, North Korean cult-of-the-personality mausoleum etiquette, and his recent adventures as on-camera host of a National Geographic documentary series.

He was funny, intense (you said that twice), in-your-face, poignant, compassionate, eloquent, blunt, and unsparing with his honesty. His prowess as a raconteur is undeniable.

Although he seems at times as if his thread has been lost or tangled or mired in an infinite regression of Odyssean proportions as he describes past events from his admittedly chequered life and travels, what he is actually doing is layering an intricate psychic template of an event with enough spiritual and sensory details as are necessary to get you as close to the real deal as possible.

Venomous snakes

So you are with him in a raucous Manhattan punk venue in the 1980s when a behemoth mutant bigfoot stage-diving fan hurls himself from a vaunted stage next to Rollins and his Black Flag mates onto a “human bullseye”—a petite female fan who “didn’t get the memo”, as Rollins puts it, soon enough to evack from the abandoned (but for her) club dancefloor that is about to become a ground zero of “atomized” fan matter.

Then you’re part of his NatGeo crew at a venomous snake-infested Pentecostal church service in Kentucky where the preacher segues from spoken word into grabbing a Les Paul gold-top and commences to laying down electric blues licks that summon up a kickass rhythm section soon followed by the eruption of venomous snake-wielding congregation members babbling in tongues and praising God.

And you’re even alone with him in his Bon Jovi-mobile portable crib, fighting back fatigue and jet lag, bothering to answer e-mails from solitary people asking him for answers to daunting questions.  Rollins  feels a responsibility to send back responses and does. Because he tells us that that is what his punk experience has taught him.

And it’s very humbling to hear about his humility and humanity and he puts it out there whether it makes you feel comfortable or, like one of his e-mail correspondents, inclined to pull back and retreat from his unrelenting candour.

Getting what you see

Henry Rollins is nothing if not someone who cares deeply about the world he lives in, the world he is crucially mindful that he shares with you.

So he periodically warns against the “traps” that divide those in authority from the rest of us—sexism, racism, homophobia–and so when Rollins speaks in the first person plural, he doesn’t come up sounding fake or presumptuous. You are getting what you see and seeing what you get.

In an age of instant-everything, where more and more artists either don’t really care or bother to get their audiences to give their brains a workout, Henry Rollins makes a difference.

Posted in Current Events, Media | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

The Long March of Henry Rollins

June 10, 2012 by looncanada

henryrollins.com

Long March Tour rolls across the globe

Henry Rollins has been a communicator in just about every medium there is going for well longer than most people’s diminishing recent memory. In a fleeting half-century, Rollins has worked as band roadie, a spoken word artist who created his own record label and inspired tons of others, a writer and journalist, film and television dramatic actor, musician, standup performer, “social activist,” and radio host and interviewer sans pareil.

Last week the Henry Rollins Long March Tour blazed a trial across most of Western Canada (including a gig in the Yukon) that will ricochet back through venues in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes before heading across the ocean to Europe. This Wednesday night in Ottawa, Rollins will be appearing at the Dominion-Chalmers church auditorium at 355 Cooper Street at 8:00 p.m. You can buy tickets online at TicketWeb and even print ‘em up yourself.

Most of what you may need to know about what Henry Rollins is up to right now is also accessible through his official website: henryrollins.com so we won’t waste your time mining his Wikipedia entry and paraphrasing it (any more than we have already done). Suffice it to say that Henry Rollins likes to communicate with people and his permanent record attests to his talents in that department.

Henry answers the call of the LOON

That said, as part of LOON’s tireless commitment to bring a fresh and independent breath of fresh air to what the conventional mainstream media and “blogsphere” has to say on the important events and engaging personalities of our epoch, we took full advantage of one of Rollins’ ‘preferred’ means of communication–the e-mail interview–to ask him the following question:

LOON: In his “keynote” speech to the SXSW music gathering in Austin this year, Bruce Springsteen referred to rock critic (and later musician) Lester Bangs’ comment in 1977 that:

“Elvis was probably the last thing we were all going to agree on, Public Enemy not counting. From here on in, you would have your heroes and I would have mine. The center of your world may be Iggy Pop, or Joni Mitchell or maybe Dylan. Mine might be KISS, or Pearl Jam, but we would never see eye-to-eye again and be brought together by one music again. And his final quote in the article was, “So, instead of saying goodbye to Elvis, I’m gonna say goodbye to you.” …And while that’s been proven a thousand times over, still here we are in a town with thousands of bands, each with a style, and a philosophy and a song of their own. And I think the best of them believe that they have the power to turn Lester’s prophecy inside out and to beat his odds.”

So LOON‘s question to you is:

Do you think that the world today is too fragmented and people too caught up in their own separate worlds–be they music or art or sports or politics or social networks–to be brought together to overcome and solve the really serious problems facing all of us?

I do. I think it is human nature to divide and dominate, separate and discriminate. The primary lines of division are financial. Others are determined by race, religion, etc. Music can provide a unique crossover, where people who do no agree on many thing but they might both like a certain band. I think however that bond wears thin very quickly and that music is not, nor has it ever been as powerful or unifying as it has been said to be. Songs can’t stop wars and Bruce Springsteen’s awesome abilities pale when compared to those of DynCorp.

Henry

Far be it for LOON to hog the microphone for the “follow-up” questions or comments that Henry’s answer to that particularly framed question may elicit. The point is that if you want to give your brain and body a workout, check out the Henry Rollins Long March Tour when it visits a locale near you.

Posted in Current Events, LOON EXTRA!, Media | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

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