The man was sitting down. He did not rise when his Prime Minister entered the room. He would not look him in the face. He refused to shake his hand.

Never mind that his country was burning … that a billion animals had perished in the flames … that 30 people lost their lives and 2000 homes burned. The PM will forge full steam ahead to dig the largest coal mine in the country, displacing Aboriginal title as he goes.

Australians have some interesting terms for useless men: tits on a bull, a third armpit, ashtray on a motorbike, a dry thunderstorm (especially ironic given the number of rainless storms spawned by the bushfires). Now they have another one: Scott Morrison.

On the other side of the world Dwight Popowich looks out over his fields at an idle pumpjack. It’s one of over 6,000 orphaned wells in Alberta. Dwight gets no rent from the company – they’re bankrupt. He can’t sever that section and sell it. It’s one of many “places where nothing grows.”

Further south, in Taber, the town has had to lay off workers and scrap plans for new equipment, road improvements and a recreation centre. It’s because the oil corporations who operate there are either refusing to pay their land taxes or they’re bankrupt.

But never mind all that. And never mind that the cost to the public to clean up orphaned wells is in the neighbourhood of $260 billion. Or that Big and Little Oil owe millions in property taxes; or that they have polluted the lands and waters of First Nations downstream; or that oil sands oil is still deeply discounted on the world market; or that Alberta has single-handedly pushed Canada into the top 10 biggest per capita polluters in the world.

Never mind all that, because the Premier wants to dig the biggest oil mine yet – the Teck Frontier mine – on the boundary of Wood Buffalo National Park. And the PM has bought him a pipeline to the west coast.

Add Jason Kenney and Justin Trudeau to the names for useless men. Screen doors on a submarine, all of them.

David McLaren
Neyaashiinigmiing