Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 11, 2022, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A7 NEWS I TOPIC ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM A7FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 2022 THINK TANK PERSPECTIVES EDITOR: BRAD OSWALD 204-697-7269 ● BRAD.OSWALD@FREEPRESS.MB.CA ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM A7 FRIDAY MARCH 11, 2022 Ideas, Issues, Insights THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks to the media on March 10. The Kremlin has been successful to date at preventing Russia’s independent media from reporting the truth about the invasion of Ukraine. West must help Russians learn the truth W HILE Vladimir Putin’s planned blitzkrieg on Ukraine appears to have stalled in the face of firm resistance by the Ukrainian military and its people, another, much less noticed assault has brought the Kremlin swift and total victory. Within a single week, all — literally, all — of Russia’s remaining independent media voices have been silenced in a co-ordinated effort by the prosecutor general’s office and the government’s main censorship agency. One after another, media outlets that dared to report honestly on Putin’s assault on Ukraine had their signals cut off and their websites blocked. The casualties included the legendary Echo of Moscow, the capital’s most popular radio station, which symbolized quality journalism in Russia for more than three decades. The last time the authorities attempted to shut it down was during the failed coup d’état by the hard-line communist leadership in August 1991. That closure was short-lived, as hundreds of thou- sands of Muscovites took to the streets to defeat the putsch. Where the Soviet coup leaders failed, Putin has now succeeded. The officials who cut off Echo of Moscow — as well as TV Rain, a popular online television network, and dozens of other news outlets, both Russian and foreign-owned — cited the presumed offence of “spreading false information about the actions of the Russian military” in Ukraine. In other words, the journalists’ crime was telling the Russian people the bloody truth about Putin’s war — the truth that is completely absent from Russian state television, which is present- ing viewers with an Orwellian reality in which it is Ukraine and the West, not Putin, that are to blame for the hostilities, and in which there is no war and no civilian casualties — only a highly targeted “special operation” directed against the imaginary “neo-Nazis” in the Ukrainian govern- ment. Such a total lie depends on a similarly total monopoly on news coverage. After silencing critical voices on television — the largest source of information for most Russians — early in his rule, Putin tolerated smaller outlets such as Echo of Moscow as part of a pretend democratic facade for the West’s benefit. But under the conditions of war, even small pockets of independent media that could show Russians what heinous crimes their government is committing could present an existential danger to the system. For the same reason, Roskomnadzor, the cen- sorship agency, has blocked Twitter and Face- book, both popular social-media platforms with millions of Russian users. Near-total darkness has descended on Russia’s information space with frightening speed. But the Kremlin didn’t stop there. Last Fri- day, in an unprecedented legislative sprint, both houses of Russia’s rubber-stamp parliament unanimously passed a new law — immediately signed by Putin — criminalizing honest report- ing (“spreading knowingly false information,” in Kremlin-speak) about Russian military actions and organizing demonstrations against them. Criminal penalties for the said “offences” run as high as 15 years in prison. Last Saturday, just a day after the law came into effect, police in Pskov raided the offices of Lev Shlosberg, a prominent opposition leader and publisher who has been a vocal critic of Putin’s at- tacks on Ukraine since 2014. In Kostroma, police detained a Russian Orthodox priest, Father Ioann Burdin, over his church sermon against the war. They are almost certainly only the first in a long list of targets. Given this threat, it is remarkable that thou- sands of Russians continue to rally all over the country in opposition to Putin’s assault on Ukraine. As the world’s democracies rightly prioritize helping Ukraine withstand Putin’s aggression, they should not overlook the other important task: helping Russian citizens gain access to objective information about the war and the Putin regime in general. Now that the Kremlin has silenced all independent media voices, democratic nations must step up efforts to provide news coverage for Russian citizens in the Russian language, as they did during Soviet times when Radio Liberty, the BBC Russian Service and other western broad- casters reached millions of listeners inside the Soviet Union. According to Soviet dissidents and western analysts alike, foreign broadcasts played a crucial role in delegitimizing the totalitarian system in the eyes of its own citizens — and paving the way for the end of the Cold War. There are plenty of technological solutions that can help Russians overcome the government’s censorship firewall. It is only a question of will and committing the right resources. The day before he was murdered in February 2015, Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov predicted the lies built by Putin’s regime would “collapse in an instant.” “In the 1930s, the Ger- man people were enchanted by Hitler but now they hate him,” Nemtsov said. “This is exactly what will happen to Putin.” After years of appeasing the Kremlin, western leaders are learning the hard way that the insta- bility, repression and conflict Putin is causing will resolve only when he is out of power. Only Russians can (and should) achieve this. The least the world’s democracies can do is help them get access to the truth. Vladimir Kara-Murza is a Russian opposition politician, author and historian. — The Washington Post War will shape Canada’s energy policy MAJOR wars are often watershed moments in history. Their outcomes define governance structures, politics and policy directions for de- cades, even centuries, to come. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine already seems certain to have these kinds of effects at the national, regional and global scales. The invasion has quickly come to dominate political and policy agendas, displacing the focus from the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. But the war in Ukraine will have major implications for these questions, particularly around energy and climate change, for Canada and the rest of the world, far into the future. Beyond the immediate horror of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, perhaps its most obvious effects in climate and energy policy terms have been to provide Europe with a powerful impera- tive to accelerate the process of decarbonizing its economies. The risks associated with European dependence on Russian oil and gas have always been an under- lying rationale for energy transitions in Europe. A ban on Russian oil and gas imports, a significant portion of Europe’s energy supplies, may be one of the few measures left, short of direct military action, that could cause Putin to pause his attack. While Canada faces no immediate threat to its energy security, it will likely face pressure to ex- pand its role as a geopolitically stable and secure source of fossil fuels, reinforced by the economic opportunities offered by rising oil and natural gas prices. These developments could present signif- icant challenges for Canada’s current efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 per cent relative to 2005 by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Europe stands to see further increases in energy prices and potential shortages if it cuts off Russian oil and gas. But there is already strength- ened interest in renewables, energy storage and other technologies that reduce Europe’s depen- dence on fossil fuels for space heating, transpor- tation, industry and electricity generation. For Canada, the implications of these develop- ments are quite different. Prices for gasoline and other fuels have surged in response to concerns about global oil and gas supplies. Russia is the world’s second-largest crude oil producer, contribut- ing about 13 per cent of world oil production in 2020. Governments need to be vigilant around the possibilities of the old problem for war profiteer- ing. The fuel now being sold at elevated prices was made from supplies bought and paid for long before Putin’s invasion. Russian oil is an utterly marginal element of Canada’s energy supply, and should be terminated immediately, as the United States is considering. More likely, Canada will face both domestic and international pressures to expand its role as a secure source of fossil fuels for western Europe and other consumers of Russian oil and gas. But moves to increase the country’s output of oil and natural gas will pose direct challenges to Cana- da’s existing climate change commitments and policies. Canada’s current oil reserves are overwhelm- ingly concentrated in the western Canadian oilsands. Their extraction is highly energy and carbon intensive, and the federal government’s current climate policy trajectory is to move the upstream oil and gas sector towards net-zero emissions by 2050. At the same time, there is currently no direct route for a major expansion of exports of Canadi- an oil to Europe. Additional exports would have to move through the U.S. Gulf Coast, but that option is now constrained by, among other things, President Joe Biden’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. The situation may lead to calls for new export infrastructure. There are already calls for the revival of the Alberta to New Brunswick Energy East pipeline — a pathway that could lead to re- newed conflict between Québec and Alberta. Canada’s conventional natural gas production has already been in decline, but the geopolitical situation and rising world prices may renew in- terest in British Columbia’s largely stalled liquid natural gas export initiatives. Such developments would further complicate the national climate policy landscape, as accessing B.C.’s gas resourc- es would be highly carbon-intensive. Proposals may also re-emerge for LNG export facilities in Canada’s East Coast. None of this could happen quickly enough to affect the immediate global energy security situ- ation, and the economic viability of such projects would remain uncertain against the ongoing back- drop of widespread decarbonization in response to climate change. One potential positive aspect at this stage may be that the prospect of oil and gas prices remain- ing elevated for the long term will accelerate public interest in Canada’s own energy transition, particularly around electric vehicles. The new relationships between energy, geopo- litical security and climate change policy flowing from the invasion of Ukraine are only beginning to emerge. Their ultimate directions — along with the outcome of the war — remain uncertain, but the implications for Canada, particularly in terms of reconciling the goals of security, energy and climate change policy, may be enormous. Mark Winfield is a professor of environmental and urban change at York University. This article was first published at The Conversation Canada: thecon- versation.com/ca. Phosphorus compliance long overdue THE City of Winnipeg’s water and waste de- partment has once again publicly stated that it is not able to achieve phosphorus compliance at the North End Water Pollution Control Cen- tre (NEWPCC) to protect Lake Winnipeg. On March 3, two brief letters were innocu- ously published on the Manitoba government’s online registry of environmental assessments. Together, these letters represent the culmina- tion of nine months of work by city engineers and provincial regulators to arrive at a plan to address ongoing non-compliance with phos- phorus limits at the North End plant. Guess what? No plan. Quick recap: the city’s largest wastewater treatment plant is not compliant with the provincial phosphorus limit of 1.0 mg/L, set 17 years ago, in 2005. An interim phospho- rus-reduction solution proposed by the Lake Winnipeg Foundation (LWF) was approved last year. However, the city says this will only reduce phosphorus to 2.5 mg/L because of limited biosolids capacity in the plant’s aging infrastructure. Now, that aging infrastructure needs to be replaced. With the detailed design of new high-capacity biosolids facilities scheduled to start this year, the city has the opportunity to meet the 1.0 mg/L phosphorus limit using the approved interim solution. With three levels of government poised to fund this critical infrastructure project, phosphorus compliance can be fully and proactively integrated into the detailed design and construction of the new facilities from the ground up. Except none of the people in charge of our public services seems at all interested in mak- ing that happen. On Dec. 29, 2021, City of Winnipeg engi- neers responded to a provincial request from May 2021 to “submit an assessment of options to enhance interim phosphorus reduction to meet a phosphorus limit in effluent of 1.0 mg/L following construction and commission- ing of the upgraded biosolids facilities.” The city’s Dec. 29 letter provides no defensi- ble analysis, and zero commitment to use the opportunity of new biosolids facilities to ad- dress the plant’s decades-long phosphorus pol- lution. Instead, city engineers fall back on the same old excuse: not enough sludge capacity. To be clear: Winnipeg’s water and waste department, with this letter, is projecting the functional inadequacy and regulatory non-compliance of municipal wastewater infrastructure that hasn’t even been designed yet — let alone built. (Also worth flagging: this brand-new, $550-million facility has a “design life” to 2037. It won’t even be completed till 2029 — that’s a working life of eight years, at a cost of half a billion dollars.) Coming hot on the heels of the Free Press’s compelling and concerning reports of incom- petence and/or corruption in the City’s traffic branch (Feb. 19-26), this latest NEWPCC response from the city calls to mind Canadian Taxpayers Federation prairie director Todd McKay’s comments. “Very rarely is (this) a problem in only one place,” says McKay. “And we’ve seen enough problems at city hall in Winnipeg over time that we know it’s very, very unlikely this infection is only in one appendage.” We will all undoubtedly have to wrestle with this larger issue in the 2022 civic election campaign. For now, though, it’s way past time to get serious about NEWPCC phosphorus compliance. It’s time for provincial regulators to stop accepting excuses and stop granting extensions. Manitoba’s environmental approvals branch took a full two months to respond to the city’s letter, finally concluding the letter did not meet NEWPCC licence conditions. But rather than upholding its 2005 phosphorus limit, the province equivocates. The provincial response asks the city to again assess “phosphorus reduction to as low as the 1.0 mg/L effluent phosphorus limit.” Why is phosphorus compliance being left to the discretion of the city? At what point will the province actually address 20 years of non-compliance from the single largest source of phosphorus to Lake Winnipeg? Provincial water legislation and environ- mental licensing are now overseen by Envi- ronment Minister Jeff Wharton, a longtime resident of Winnipeg Beach on the shores of Lake Winnipeg. Under his leadership, it’s time to change the NEWPCC licence — to set down in writing the clear expectation that the 1.0 mg/L limit will be achieved through biosolids facilities upgrades. The detailed design process for NEWPCC’s new biosolids facilities will soon be underway. Based on the bureaucratic exchange that took place earlier this month, this design will cement in place an incredibly expensive and farcically ineffective piece of infrastructure – leaving Winnipeggers stuck with the price tag and Manitobans around the lake stuck with the dangerous consequences of failed environ- mental protection. Alexis Kanu is executive director of the Lake Winnipeg Foundation. VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA MARK WINFIELD ALEXIS KANU A_07_Mar-11-22_FP_01.indd 7 2022-03-10 4:37 PM ;