Wednesday 30 October 2013

QUÉBEC UNDER A PQ GOVERNMENT: WHAT'S NOT EVIDENT IN THE ENGLISH CANADA MEDIA

The information contained in this article is common knowledge for francophone Québec but is rarely available in English and as such virtually unknown to English Canada.  This leads to many misunderstandings, often referred to as the two solitudes.

La Charte des valeurs: A Cocktail Which Appeals to Many Progressives and Feminists as well as Regressives, but for Different Reasons
Contrary to what many in English Canada may think, the debate in Quebec about La Charte des valeurs (Charter of Values) represents a cocktail of factors.

One of the main components of the cocktail has to do with the Québec dark years known as "la grande noirceur",  the years during which the Québec francophone community lived under draconian Catholic Church rule, a Church which censured music and films, sent women who had sexual relations prior marriage into the streets, and abducted children born outside marriage to be put in Church orphanages.  One might say that these dark years are now looked upon by the majority of Québécois as being as reprehensible as residential schools are for members of Canada's First Nations.

Accordingly, the sentiment to separate religion from the state is a several notches stronger in Quebec than in the rest of Canada.

Add to these elements of the cocktail, that, for women, these dark years included the classification of woman in a male controlled inferior zone.  Consequently, many in the feminist movement want to make sure that religious symbols of inferiorization, worn on one's body or otherwise, are banned from the public sector.

Yet another component of the cocktail is the Duplessis years, 1936-1039 and 1944-1959, the years during which late Premier Duplessis had a pact with the Catholic Church to control the people.  Under the pact, the Church would run the Catholic schools, the hospitals and civil society in general, as long as the Catholic Church kept the people docile under the Duplessis economic development formula entailing cheap labour and union/communist busting features.  In honour of this pact, in 1936 Premier Duplessis had a crucifix placed over the Speaker's chair in the National Assembly.

Pauline Marois Calculated Targeting of Markets, Similar to the Harper Model: The December 2013 Election Plan that Failed
Pauline Marois, like Stephen Harper, wants to be in full control and consequently detests minority governments -- her government is a minority government.  But because her first year in power has been one of a seemingly endless series of incoherent improvisations, she had lost control of public opinion. -- In that sense, her government is not all that different than the Charest Liberal government that preceded the PQ.

While she had promised she would eliminate the heath tax during her election campaign, her first budget included a health tax of $200 for those earning $42,000 to $100,000.  Another election promise entailed addressing the absurdly low royalties and taxes paid by Quebec's mining industry, but once in power she backed down to the industry lobby.  She had promised to migrate Quebec to a green economy but so far she seems okay with the two pipeline proposals to transport tar sands oil into, and crossing over, Quebec, and is not ruling out exploiting potential local oil reserves.

All this added up to widespread dissatisfaction with the Marois government and poor prospects for pursuing a majority government.  This is where La Charte comes in.

In early Fall 2013, figuring her government could position the PQ for a majority government by creating a perceived crisis among québécois to the effect Quebec had an epidemic of new religious immigrants who were imposing religious accommodations on the majority population, Pauline Marois introduced the Charte.   
This Fall 2013 game plan entailed calling an election for December 2013, while La Charte was a hot topic, and cut into the Québec homogenous outlying regions' right wing nationalist vote -- a game plan to foster a migration of Coalition pour l'avenir du Québec (CAQ) vote over to the PQ.   That made "political sense" in that CAQ support is declining.

This election game plan also counted on the feminist movement.  Accordingly, as did Harper when he placed "correct thinking" people on the Board of Rights and Democracy, Marois appointed 4 new "correct thinking" members to the Conseil du statut de la femme (Council on the Status of Women).  But it backfired when the President of the Conseil, Julie Miville-Dechêne, publicly denounced this political interference.  The reality is that the woman's movement in Québec is divided on the issue.

Montreal Municipal Elections: November 3, 2013
During this same Fall 2013 period, all four of the main candidates for Mayor of Montreal  for the November 3, 2013 elections came out against the Charte. 

On November 3, Denis Coderre, former federal Liberal Cabinet minister, the very in the box unimaginative candidate for Mayor with a very sparse and vague platform - he actually thinks more parking spaces downtown is a solution for Montreal, Canada's most congested city- became the city's new Mayor with 32% of the vote.  On La Charte, Coderre had said in one of the election debates that he would contest La Charte in the courts if it included the ban on religious symbols in the public sector.

For those in BC, it may be also interesting to note that innovative visionary candidate for Mayor, Richard Bergeron of Projet Montréal, often referred to Vancouver as a model for urban densification and a green city.  He came in second with 25.6%.
  
Others Adding their Voices Against La Charte: Provincial Election Bluff Called Off
Concurrent with the municipal election campaigning, others condemning the La Charte elements pertaining to the wearing of religious symbols were Quebec's hospitals' association, universities, a teachers' union, a private daycare centres' association and many more. 

Adding his voice to this opposition, the President of La Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse  (human rights and youth rights commission), Jacques Frémont, went public to say La Charte would not pass the test of either the Quebec Charter of Rights or the Canadian Charter of Rights in the event of a legal challenge.   Either the PQ would have to modify the proposed Charte or revert to the "Notwithstanding clause."

In effect, it has become very clear that it would be impossible to apply La Charte in the Montreal Statistics Canada census area, which attracts 87% of Québec immigrants and which represents over 45% of the population of Québec.

But all these obstacles did not deter the PQ. 

Rather, the factor that changed Pauline Marois's mind about going into a December 2013 election with the highly emotional Charte as a wedge issue, was the fact that the polls did not deliver the hoped for support. As a result, as of October 27, 2013, the December 2013 election hype has been called off.

Swinging Further to the Right
Cultivating the right nationalist vote for La Charte, is not, unfortunately an isolated incident.

Shortly after coming into power, the Marois government appointed Pierre Karl Péladeau -- controlling shareholder of Quebecor and The Sun Media and well-known for his support of right wing causes -- to sit on the Board of Hydro-Québec.  Péladeau has since attended at least two Marois Cabinet meetings.

His spouse, Julie Snyder, host of the popular Star Académie (Québec equivalent to American Idol), is one of the members of the Janette movement, a women's movement in support of La Charte.  Julie Snyder is also involved in the development of a television production on a favourable portrait of Pauline Marois to be aired on TVA, a TV network owned by the Pierre Karl Péladeau media empire.

Which brings us back to what Pauline Marois said when she became the leader of the PQ.  At the time she said she would modernize social democracy.  She never explained what she meant, but after a year in power, it is becoming clearer as to what she had in mind -- go after the right wing nationalist vote to put sovereignty over the top.  Fortunately for Canada, the game plan is not working.



Thursday 10 October 2013

China: World's Largest Clean Tech Market + Its Chaotic Migration to a Green Economy

CHINA, THE WORLD'S LARGEST ENERGY CONSUMER AND CLEAN TECHNOLOGY MARKET:
CHINA'S CHAOTIC FAST FORWARD MIGRATION TO A GREEN ECONOMY
For most, when one talks of China  and its environmental and energy challenges, one tends to paint a very bleak picture.  This perception is well-founded in that China 1) displaced the US as the world's largest energy consumer as of 2009 -- doubling its energy consumption between 2000 and 2009 --- 2) represents the world's  highest pollution levels with 16 of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world being in China and 3) now has total annual vehicle sales higher than that of the US.  Add to the picture considerations to the effect that approximately 62% of China's current electrical power generation is derived from thermal, mainly coal-fired, generating plants and much of China's industrial pollution emanates from plants with dated technologies.

The flip side to this gloomy portrait, is that China is actively engaged in a chaotic migration to a green economy.  Indeed, in 2012, China had the highest level of investments in clean energy, totalling $67.7B, up 20% from 2011 due to a solar sector surge.  The US was in a distant second place with $42.4B in clean energy investments in 2012.

With these sharp contradictions, one might be tempted to conclude that China is schizophrenic on environmental issues. However, that would be unfair because the trends are shifting in favour of clean technologies supported with massive investments by the national government.

On massive government funding for clean technologies, sustainable development related R &D, energy efficiency and emissions and pollution control, China committed $223B in 2009 to initiatives in these areas and in August 2012, China announced a new plan for $372B up to the year 2015.  http://www.ibtimes.com/china-spend-372-billion-reduce-pollution-encourage-energy-efficiency-759575

Concurrent with the aforementioned investments, under the 2009 China Renewable Energy Law, China introduced 1) a Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) for renewables (fixed price paid above market prices for all renewable energy sources) and 2) Right-to-Connect obligations that require all grid operators buy all of the renewable energy produced in their respective regions.  (Note, the FIT and Right to Connect formula was conceived in Germany and has since been copied by 40 governments around the world, including Ontario, until that province abandoned the model in response to a WTO ruling over Ontario content provisions.)

Complementing the FIT and right to connect programs, in 2012, China began to implement a quota system for provinces and cities for the amount of their energy that must come from renewable sources.

Against this backdrop, China has become the world's fastest growing wind energy market. With 13.2 GW of new wind power capacity added in 2012,  the total wind installed capacity reached 75.6 GW by the end of 2012.  (To put this in a relative perspective, Quebec's current total installed electricity production capacity, including Churchill Falls, is 44 GW.) Projections are for over 16 GW of new installations in 2013 and 17 GW and 18 GW for 2014 and 2015 respectively.  China's unofficial target is 200 GW by 2020 but that may be an underestimate. 

In terms of jobs in the wind energy sector, the projection is that from the 150,000 jobs in China's wind sector in 2009, the numbers will rise to 500,000 jobs by 2020.

Unfortunately, in its haste to advance its wind and solar energy sectors -- from the development of clean energy manufacturing capacity to the construction of wind and solar farms -- China had "forgot" to invest in corresponding increases in electricity transmission capacity.  Consequently, Chinese electrical grids are not in place to handle all of its new renewable energy production capacity -- 20% of wind production capacity was not connected in 2012.  To remedy the situation, China will build 19 new ultra high voltage lines, but the first two lines will not be ready until 2014.  One of these lines will be 2000km long.

In the interim, with the help of generous state financing from the Chinese Development Bank and other sources, China dumped its manufacturing surplus production of clean energy technologies on global markets.

The US has since responded to China's dumping by imposing steep tariffs on China's clean technologies - up to 250% on some Chinese solar products and up to 26% on Chinese wind turbine towers.

With respect to tariffs and Europe, following sabre rattling to the tune of an 11.8% introductory offer solar products tariff on Chinese imports effective June 6, 2013, on August 6, 2013 the EU decided not to impose provisional tariffs averaging 47% that were supposed to come into effect that same day, on Aug 6, 2013. That is, a preliminary truce was worked out on 1) prices and 2) a maximum export volume. Notwithstanding this preliminary agreement, Europe is keeping its options open for new tariff decisions at a later time.

Regrettably, up until the aforementioned trade wars, China's PV solar manufacturing sector was almost entirely dedicated to global markets -- with hardly any domestic market to speak of -- going from 1% of the global market in 2004 to 50% by 2012, that is, up to when US and European tariffs eliminated China's price advantage. The US and EU tariffs having brought China back to earth, China is now more focused on internal solutions to its temporary surplus in solar manufacturing capacity.
 
One these internal solutions comes in the form of PV solar energy targets to install 10 GW/year in the 2013-15 period --quite a sharp increase from the total installed PV solar capacity at the end of 2012 at 5 GW. To encourage the private sector to get into the act -- 40% of PV projects are represented by private developers -- the Chinese government is offering 50% tax breaks for utility scale projects for that period.  As a result, when the figures are in for the year 2013, China will likely be the world's largest solar market. 

What this will mean in terms of growth jobs in China's solar sector may not be known for a while, but it is worth noting that prior to new policies and targets mentioned above, there were 300,000 jobs in the PV solar sector in 2011.  As well, there were another 800,000 employed in China's solar heating and cooling sector in that same year.

But since domestic market growth by itself would still not be sufficient to address the solar manufacturing overcapacity and declining overseas demand, China has since introduced tax breaks and other measures to encourage Chinese solar manufacturing sector restructuring.  Further on restructuring, with the cap on exports to Europe, Europe being the world's largest solar market, China has blocked access of its small solar firms to European markets.

Where does all this lead? Well the projections of BNEF are such that 50% of China's electricity would come from wind and solar energy by 2030, roughly equal to that of coal.  Further on coal, in the recent Common Sense Canadian article on the end of coal, it suggested that coal production in China will peak in 2015.  http://commonsensecanadian.ca/end-coal/ This may suggest that the BNEF projections are too conservative.­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

An indicator that the clean energy projections may be too conservative or, at least, not tell the whole story, is China's recognition that overarching policies are essential to bring all sectors of the economy on side.  More precisely, in May 2013, China's National Development and Reform Commission began a process to explore cap and trade options with the objective of having a scheme come into effect in 2016.  The review of this option began in June 2013 with the first of seven pilot carbon trading schemes in Shenzhen.  In line with these objectives, the plan call for strict  emissions, pollution and energy efficiency standards for the industrial sectors by 2016, backed by stiff penalties for non-compliance.  To assist industry to achieve compliance, loans would be made available to firms to invest in clean technologies.  According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), if the power sector is faced with a price of carbon, GHG's in China would peak around 2023.

As to why Shenzhen was chosen for China's first cap and trade pilot, it may well be because that city's green leadership, particularly in the area of clean transportation alternatives.  To this effect, the city of Shenzhen has established a target to have 1) more than 3000 electric taxis and 2) 5000 hybrid and 1000 electric urban transit buses around by 2015.  In addition, by 2015, the city will ban all vehicles that fail to meet in advanced emission standards.  Not bad for the city that ranks second to Beijing as having the most vehicles in mainland China. 

Moreover the audacity of city of Shenzhen complements that of the Warren Buffet-backed BYD of Shenzhen which 1) has become a world leader in all electric buses; 2) will introduce its e-buses to Canada through pilot projects with the Société de transport de l'Outaouais (STO in the Gatineau area) and Société de transport de Montréal (STM); 2) has introduced its e-buses in a pilot in Frankfurt Germany; 3) built an e-bus and electric car manufacturing plant Sofia, Bulgaria which began operations in February 2013; and 4) is building an e-bus and an Iron-Phosphate energy module (large-scale battery) manufacturing facility in California that will be operational in late 2013. http://www.byd.com/na/

Meanwhile, back in Canada, Stephen Harper continues to present economic development and sustainable development as two opposing policy paths. This is true only as long as all of Canada's economic eggs are in the old economy and one turns a blind eye as to what's happening by way of economic paradigm shifts in China, Europe and the US.  Only in Canada, pity!


Will Dubitsky, Oct 10, 2013