Corporate lobbying tour attacks the tar sands trade talks

Corporate lobbying tour attacks the tar sands trade talks
The briefing explanes how CETA will make environmental regulations and keeping Indigenous treaty commitments more difficult by locking in the investment rights of EU oil, gas and financial firms operating in Canada. And we asked negotiators not to let a trade deal get in the way of EU efforts to reduce the carbon content of transport fuel.
Canada is starting to get a very bad name among EU decision makers for its incessant lobbying against the Fuel Quality Directive. Specifically, Canada is opposed to including a default carbon content value for tar sands, which a peer-reviewed scientific assessment figures to be 20 kg/mj higher than the carbon content of conventional oil. The Harper and Alberta governments spend enormous amounts of public money trying to convince members of the European Parliament and EU member states to drop any reference to tar sands in the fuel standards legislation. And as the UK government’s trade department confirmed to us during a meeting in London on Friday, Harper has even said the CETA negotiations will suffer if the FQD goes ahead, as most want it to, with a penalizing high carbon level for tar sands.
The campaign has worked in the UK and Holland because both governments have adopted the Harper position and are threatening to veto any recommendation from the EU Commission to treat tar sands as dirty fuel. Go figure, these countries are home to BP and Shell, both of which are expanding their investments in the Alberta tar patch, as well as in false solutions such as Carbon Capture and Storage technology.