You could phrase this more positively. At last the US and China are working together, and in Canada! 
Regardless of its history, which I’m not really familiar with, I believe its initial use began as a way of facilitating COVID vaccination compliance, which is not really something one could rationally argue against. Claims that the government spent millions on something that a couple of hackers could piece together in a few days sounds to me to likely be grossly oversimplified and hyperbolic. Regardless, I think we’d all readily acknowledge that wasteful spending and general incompetence is a hallmark of most large bureaucracies, whether governmental or private. But just because someone thinks a government is wasteful or doesn’t like its policies is not a justification for a seditious conspiracy to defy a democratically elected government and upend the rule of law, which is exactly what Smith is doing and @Sam_Stone is trying to justify.
That’s what stands out to me about the criticisms of Trudeau for the Emergency Act. I honestly do not think a Conservative government in Ottawa would have handled the situation any better. As I recall, the convoy protesters had been camped out in downtown Ottawa for about three weeks and they had thoroughly worn out their welcome by the time the “or else” came down. And I think this is going to bite a Conservative government in the future. They’ve set a precedent for “bring the nation’s capital grinding to a halt with your grievances, we don’t mind!” And so there may be future convoys that take them up on this because you’re dealing with people who were angry that you were trying to keep them alive. So what’s the plan, Conservatives? As a wise philosopher once said, what will you do when they come for you?
The best guidance for any future government is to try anything before cranking the dial to 11. Seemed like the biggest issue was Peter Sloly being useless. They should’ve fired him instead of paying him to quit.
For example, I work downtown Ottawa beside the train station and barely anyone was protesting in the middle of the week. Maybe that was a good time to go bust some heads.
I realize his replacement had a mission, but the protest basically ended immediately after Sloly was dismissed.
This has been the Story of Alberta for like, 40 years now. We’ve been telling them that they should use some of that oil money to diversify their economy, because oil isn’t going to last forever, but every time we try to have that conversation, they act like we just tried to burn down their house.
Now here we are, with the expected contraction of the oil economy just around the corner, and hey-nonny-nonny, Alberta is whining that they’re getting left behind.
Well, not the only criticisms. There are legal questions regarding the use of the Act. The review is mandatory. I wondered at the time if the legal requirements were met, which can be interpreted in enough ways to raise doubts. Still, at the time few complained about using the Act, including the journalists complaining about it now. The Conservatives and Bloc did not support the Act at the time.
The Conservatives supported the protesters; Bergen wrote an email stating such on the grounds they were causing grief for Trudeau. One wonders if that will come up in the inquiry.
‘Highest potential for solar energy in Canada’ == ‘shitty solar power in comparison to actual places that are suited for solar power.’
The numbers they throw around for solar power involve taking the average hours of sunlight per year and multiplying it by the capacity of solar to give you ‘solar potential’. But that misses a whole lot. First of all, our sunlight is already weaker than what you get in, say California. And second, our latitude makes the differential between winter and summer huge, which makes solar very problematic.
Another reason solar sucks in Canada is that our peak demand is inverted from say California. In Alberta, our peak demand comes in January and December, when solar is almost completely offline. In California, peak demand comes during summer days when the sun is shining.
Alberta is currently very sunny. Solar is at 68% capacity. I have never seen it go above 78%. It’s typically much lower. Wind is currently at 13% capacity. From here on, the solar numbers will get worse by the day until spring.
As for wind unreliability, that’s a big problem because obviously at night solar produces zero. So what are you supposed to do when wind goes offline? That happens all the time.
Last night, these are the wind numbers in terms of percentage of capacity:
7 PM: 21.5%
8 PM: 21.2%
9 pm: 18.4%
10 pm: 15.9%
11 pm: 10.4%
12 AM: 8.9%
1 AM: 4.3%
2 AM: 5.8%
3 AM: 6.5%
4 AM: 7.8%
5 AM: 7.4%
6 AM: 7.6%
7 AM: 11.5%
8 AM: 11.2%
So there’s a typical night: Solar is completely offline obviously, and wind is hovering at less than 10% of capacity, or about 3% of total demand. Our wind and solar resources needed to be completely backed up by fossil fuels. And yet, we’re told that the answer to this problem is just to speed up the ‘transition’ to wind and solar. Ridiculous. We could build 10X the wind capacity, and last night we still would have needed 70% fossil.
And this will get much worse in November to February, when demand is higher. I’ve mentioned before that we went an entire month last year with wind and solar combined providing less than 2% of our power, despite being over 20% of our productive capacity. There is no amount of overbuilding of wind and solar that’s going to fix that.
And as you said, we’re one of the best provinces for wind and solar. Imagine how Saskatchewan will fare.
I don’t always agree with you, Sam Stone. But I’m not sure I have seen those numbers or heard those specific facts, and they would seem to have some relevance. I have often thought Canada has some good points but we should move the entire country a few thousand kilometres to the south. It seems like an even better idea now.
There have been many ‘pushes’ for nuclear power in Alberta. They failed, because the anti-nuke left won. Forty years of constant anti-nuclear propaganda has terrrified the public and made nuclear power a very hard sell. I’ve been pushing for nuclear power since I was in college, and the political landscape for it anywhere in North America has been just brutal. That may be changing now, but it’s pretty late in the game.
We asctually had started plans to built twin ACR-1000 nuclear reactors in Peace River in 2005. After numerous delays it was canceled in 2010. Bruce Power planned to build four more reactors in a second location. That project was ultimately shelved as well. I think that time low energy prices killed it.
I’ll note that Ontario built its nuclear plants back when fossil fuels were considered the future, and Ontario was at a disadvantage. Nuclear power was their answer, and it was a good one. But since then, nuclear has come under increasing pressure, and Ontario at least until recently had planned to shut down their remaining plants. As it is, the percentage of power they get from nuclear has been dropping for some time, and building new nuclear there, like almost anywhere else, is met with huge opposition. The last nuclear reactor to be built in Ontario was completed in 1993, almost 30 years ago.
Alberta had a serious plan to build a nuclear reactor up north to provide energy for the steam reformation in the oil sands, which would have reduced the carbon footpront of Alberta oil to that of light crude. That faced severe opposition from left-wing environmental groups like the Pembina Institute, Greenpeace, the Tides Foundation, and a lot of foreign dark money.
We have had plans for other nuclear plants over the years, and they always wind up shot down by the same groups plus Native bands. We currently have a joint proposal with Saskatchewan to build SMRs (Small Modular Reactors) but that’s also already under fire from environmentalists.
You might as well ask why anyone else in North America hasn’t built a new nuclear plant for a long time - because it’s nearly freaking impossible after 40 years of disinformation from anti-nuke activists.
There is a good twitter bot called “Reliable AB Energy” which scrapes reports hourly directly from AESO, the Alberta Energy Service Organization, and puts them in a handy table.
https://twitter.com/ReliableAB
Here’s the last report:
https://twitter.com/ReliableAB/status/1580729207344467968?s=20&t=-cd03Q4Aeqtyl_mmleKAGQ
Very useful data. The raw data, including a bunch of other interesting data, is here:
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
Alberta actually has quite a lot of wind and solar. It’s just not doing us much good.
That same site puts out monthly summaries. Here’s what solar for September looked like:
https://twitter.com/ReliableAB/status/1576626912675651584?s=20&t=Z_jW5g20wyK6_q0TzdOVOQ
And now another important factor: pool price. When you get to a certain amount o solar power, it becomes worthless because everyone with solar is also pumping power into the grid. So the pool price plummets. Here’s solar generation against the pool price:
https://twitter.com/ReliableAB/status/1576626810313244672?s=20&t=Z_jW5g20wyK6_q0TzdOVOQ
The green line is the price we pay for power. Notice that solar is usually not lined up with the pool price. So we generate power when it’s at its lowest value, then when the sun goes down we have to buy it on the grid at much higher prices.
In some places (not Alberta so far), solar power comes online when the pool price is zero, or even negative. Building more solar at that point does nothing for you at all, even though it may only be 30% of your power or so.
The battery storage you hear about is not being built as backup power when there’s a shortage. There’s no way we can build enough battery power for that. Rather, the battery plants being built are all about offsetting power by minutes to maybe an hour. If you are making solar power when energy has no value, you try to store it in a battery. Then when there’s a peak in power prices you go to battery instead of buying it on the grid. Alberta has 70MW of battery storage for this purpose. But that’s only enough for a few minutes’ power. It’s not backup.
To my point about how bad winter is, here’s the solar summary for last December:
https://twitter.com/ReliableAB/status/1477344167407747072?s=20&t=Z_jW5g20wyK6_q0TzdOVOQ
For the entire month of December, our solar power contributed to 0.15% of our demand, and averaged 4% of capacity. That’s pretty much useless. We could have ten times the amount of solar and still provide only 1.5% of our demand. The step function in the capacity solid fill is because we added an additional 400MW of capacity that came online on Dec 20. As you can see, it didn’t make much difference in output.
December was actually a pretty good month for wind:
https://twitter.com/ReliableAB/status/1477343460508127235?s=20&t=Z_jW5g20wyK6_q0TzdOVOQ
We still only hit 34% capacity.
But wind certainly does better than solar in the winter, which is why the reports I’ve seen recommend a renewables mix of 70% wind and 30% solar in Alberta, with the combination not making up more than 30-40% of our total energy needs. The reason we can’t go higher is because without 70% fossil or other sources, running into long periods of insufficient energy is unavoidable.
Actually, this is becoming a hijack. I will start a new thread about this.
In case people are not familiar with C2C Journal, it is just another junk right-wing magazine. Ultra pro business, anti-climate, anti-science. Some other “high” quality articles from C2C Journal.
Tyler and Winslow Talk about the Climate | C2C Journal I love this one as they describe it as a “plausible” conversation between two Canadians. It is literally a strawman article where the author sets up his own premise and then knocks it down.
Surviving Childhood Eco-Brainwashing | C2C Journal And here we get into some of the right-wing talking points. Educating kids? No, no, no, liberal brainwashing!
The Dangers and Delusions of Critical Race Theory | C2C Journal And more of the same.
Paid Sick Days: How Not to Spur an Economic Recovery | C2C Journal The horror of paid sick days!! LOL
It isn’t a source that should be taken seriously.
It has been interesting to watch the hearings on the Emergencies Act. I am not qualified to say if the high hurdles for its use were met.
But I seem to recall tow truck companies refusing to get involved due to threats and risk of liability, the police not seeming to make much progress (with Toronto being an exception), lots of noise about the economic effects of border blockades, expression of desires not only to talk to government but overthrow them, thousands of complaints, extended closure of hundreds of businesses, journalists complaining of threats and harassment and being fearful, allegations of foreign funding and antisocial groups and widespread frustration with resolving issues.
I greatly respect truckers and the timing of requirements was strange. Still, health policy should be influenced by experts. By international standards, the actions of governments were extraordinarily modest and delayed, with few significant injuries and injustices (to my knowledge), though this need not affect whether the Act was needed. The same journalists complaining of abuse now sometimes paint pictures of bouncy castles and hot tubs, and a spirit of love which might have eluded some businesses or affected residents.
Clearly the Act needs to involve economic factors and be modernized. The economic numbers reported by the government have been questioned - were they reasonable at the time? How would Canada be better off accepting towing help from the US?
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Is this analysis wrong? What do you think?
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How should the Act be updated, if at all.
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Am I misremembering events? Has there been any attempt to “rewrite history”, or is this unfair?
There is something very Canadian about the protest, and the response, and the controversy/scandal. Some combination of earnest, misguided, reasonable, silly, measured, sardonically humorous, overanalyzed, overblown and navel gazing.
My takeaways have been:
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The police at all levels were incompetent and/or complicit. Often both.
1a. This is double true for the OPS. They completely failed Ottawa spectacularly.
1b. I guarantee you that if a climate change protest, or G20 protest occupied and sieged Ottawa, the police would have their batons out within 24 hours. -
The convoy was never about mandates or truckers. It was a far-right rally.
2a. It was dominated by a mix of far-right, white nationalist, and rubes being duped by them.
2b. The convoyites are a mix of incredibly stupid and delusional. -
The police could have acted without the EA.
3a. The police were always “just about” to enact their cunning plan.
3b. The police were never actually going to do anything (see #1 above). -
There was a growing risk of violence between the convoy and Ottawans.
4a. There were certainly some weapons present, although apparently not that many (what do you think this is the USA?)
4b. Ottawans have be greatly underrepresented at the inquiry. Convoyites have been overrepresented. -
While the protest was not broadly violent, there was plenty of violence, threats, and crime committed by the convoyites even ignoring the occupation of the city itself.
Overall, I think the conclusion is nobody with any power to do anything was ever going to do anything, and this left Trudeau with no option but to act with a fig leaf to cover the use of the EA as an authority to act. Was it by-the-letter proper? It seems like no, but the siege needed to be broken.
I’m more or less in agreement with @BeepKillBeep though I’d characterize it more along the lines of the various levels of government suddenly being confronted with a situation that required action and having no clue how to act. The Ottawa police service leadership looked like pole axed steers while members aided or turned a blind eye to activity in the core. You do not fucking well set up a semi fortified “nest” without the police noticing.
In fact, people in Ottawa felt so abandoned that they actually shut down an artery into the city to turn away people coming to join the protest. They literally stopped cars and effectively forced them to turn around. That was, I thought, a dangerous change. It was peaceful, but it didn’t have to be, and could easily have spiraled out of control. It could have spread. There was a pervading sense of people not being held to laws that others were and that if the police wouldn’t do it citizens would. That kind of resentment could have easily turned nasty if it hadn’t been nipped in the bud.
The Ford government made it abundantly clear that cities are creatures of the province. Interference in Toronto’s election made that very clear and yet…and yet the Ontario government effectively abandoned Ottawa declaring it was a municipal matter though the city’s ability to deal with the crisis at that point was likely insufficient.
So, we have a city that can’t, a province that wont, and multiple police forces sitting on their hands. Incompetency really shouldn’t trigger the Emergencies Act but I’m at a bit of a loss as to what would have happened if it hadn’t.
Agree with the previous two posts.
The Trucker occupation was a complete shit-show, and the response was completely mis-managed. That the idjits who wanted to overthrow the government in the name of “Freedum” are now painting themselves as poor liddle victims, helped along by the right wing press like the National Post (Home of “I hate Trudeau and so should you”)
It amazes me that meddling in Canadian elections by foreign governments does not seem to be illegal. Is this true?