DAWSON TO KITIMAT PIPELINE PROGRESS

   TransCanada has completed benefit agreements with all 20 elected First Nation bands along its Coastal GasLink pipeline route from Dawson Creek to Kitimat.
   The pipeline would feed the Shell-led LNG Canada gas plant should it go ahead, with TransCanada saying it’s ready to build.

   The project does face opposition in north-central B.C. from the Unist’ot’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en people, which have been protesting the construction of all pipelines through its claimed traditional territory for nearly a decade. As part of the Unist’ot’en protest, a camp, including several buildings, has been built in the path of the pipeline.

NO WORRIES, APPARENTLY FREELAND IS FORMIDABLE

Toronto Sun:  It obviously doesn’t take much to earn the prime minister’s praise if accomplishing nothing merits adulation.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, who has been spinning her wheels while getting nowhere with NAFTA, showed up at the Liberals’ love-in-cum-retreat in Saskatoon last week to be lavished by Justin Trudeau for being “formidable” and “tireless” in her determination to get a deal that is good for Canada — all while asserting that no deal is better than a bad deal.

CANADIAN COMPANIES STRUGGLE WITH TARIFFS

  Ottawa has paid out just over $11,000 in duty relief despite collecting more than $286 million in the two months after it slapped retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports in response to U.S. levies on Canadian steel and aluminum, according to figures obtained by Global News.
  Canada Border Services Agency said it distributed just $11,184.35 since July 1, under the duties relief program, one of three programs meant to help industries negatively impacted by the trade dispute over steel and aluminum. Zero dollars were distributed yet under the duty drawback program.
  The final relief program is called the remission of surtaxes, and was announced alongside the counter-tariffs. Unlocking those funds requires the extraordinary step of case-by-case cabinet approval, a process that Ottawa hopes to get moving within weeks, Global News has learned.

WHEN CANNABIS CONNECTIONS HIT THE BORDER

Canadian workers and investors associated with the cannabis industry would be well-advised to “sanitize” their employment on social media or face a lifetime ban from traveling to the United States, an immigration lawyer says.

NEW REFINERY PROPOSED IN ALBERTA

   Calgary Herald:   Two major Chinese companies and a group of Albertan Indigenous communities are proposing to build a new oilsands refinery and petrochemical complex in the province, according to a press release issued by consultants Stantec Inc.
  Beijing-based and state-owned China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., better known as Sinopec, along with China Construction Industrial & Energy Co. Ltd. and a consortium of Alberta Indigenous groups signed an agreement with the Edmonton-based engineering and design firm Stantec Inc. on Thursday to pursue permits for a new bitumen refinery.

PHONY MR. TWO ROLEXES, JAGMEET SINGH

NP:  Weir’s supporters in Saskatchewan, including a veritable army of retired MLAs and MPs who have signed an open letter, are treating the mess as a boss-versus-worker situation. Did Weir receive due process? Were the written policies of the party followed? Can the leader eject a member from the federal caucus at all?

On Tuesday Singh gave his answer: “I am not going to change my decision (to expel Weir) because people in a position of privilege want to intimidate me.” This is a singular thing for a party leader to say in the course of exercising an apparent power of unilateral fiat, whether or not he is serving the interests of justice or intersectionality. And it is … doubly singular? Can that be right? … for Mr. Two Rolexes to say it. He is a rich criminal lawyer lecturing a bunch of aged farmers, teachers and nurses living on a rectangle of dirt about their “privilege” — because they sent him a letter? How’s that going to play in Gravelbourg or Kamsack?

MORONIC & PHONY MUSINGS FROM TORONTO COUNCIL

   If  Premier Ford ever needed proof of why rightsizing Toronto City council — from 47 members to 25 — all he had to was tune into their sophomoric, puerile, petulant and at times, downright moronic and phony musings about fighting for taxpayers Thursday.
   Not that Ford needs proof of the dysfunction (having lived it himself), but I dare say while watching them I speculated that if only they were as passionate, fiery and determined to tackle the city’s many issues as they are about fighting to save their political hides, the city wouldn’t be on the verge of turning into something many of us will not be proud to call home.