Maurice Strong protege Paul Martin recycled in Copenhagen

“Everything old is new again” could be the music theme for the Copenhagen Summit where former politicians are recycled back onto the international scene. Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, defeated as the media-dubbed “Mr. Dithers” following the multi million dollar Sponsorship ad scandal by Conservative leader Stephen Harper in 2006, is being recycled at the Copenhagen summit.

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A protege of one of the Kyoto Protocol architects and UN Poster Boy Maurice Strong from his youth up to and including his time in the PMO, Martin is using Copenhagen to criticize the USA, which he says should shoulder some of the “burden” for Canadian greenhouse gas emissions as the chief recipient of energy from Alberta’s oilsands. While Greenpeace and other assorted activists had to content themselves by shouting their slogans outside the conference, Martin was interviewed from a Copenhagen hotel room by the Toronto Star. “Martin, whose Liberals were shut out of Alberta in the losing 2006 election after which he resigned as party leader, expressed sympathy for the province and its oilsands producers. “But that sympathy ended when the conversation turned to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government.” (thestar.com, Dec. 12, 2009). “Martin said company presidents have complained to him that more than a decade of uncertainty around half a dozen Canadian plans on cutting the growth of carbon dioxide emissions has in part led to a panic-driven boom in the oilsands. Latest projections indicate oilsands production will triple or more in coming years to meet America’s energy demand. “But now that the world, and more importantly the U.S., is on the verge of enacting laws to cap carbon and launch an emissions trading market, there is no excuse for the Conservative government’s reluctance to release the third, and likely ultimate, emissions reduction plan since taking power four years ago,” Martin said. PetroChina’s $1.9-billion venture into Alberta’s oilsands--giving the state-owned company a majority stake in key bitumen operations--sparking questions in Canada and the U.S. energy security and what say Ottawa should have in approving the deal was not mentioned by Martin. Athabasca Oil Sands Corp. announced in September that state-owned PetroChina International Investment Co. Ltd. will buy a 60 per cent share in its MacKay River and Dover projects for nearly $2 billion, marking the largest foray to date by China in the oilsands. Martin’s mentor Strong who went to live in China in the aftermath of the UN oil-for-food scandal, has long cheered China’s advancement as the superpower poised to replace the USA. Martin has cropped up in the most unlikely of places boosting his mentor. Canada Free Press (CFP) takes you back to January 3, 2005 to then never-seen-before film footage when Martin and his entourage made an official visit to tsunami-ravaged Sri Lanka.


Included in the Jan. 3 entourage were Martin’s wife, Sheila; PMO staff; Jack Layton, leader of Canada’s fourth party, the New Democrat Party; RCMP and a handful of Canadian journalists, including some from the lib-left paid from the taxpayers’ purse Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC). The film footage was shot and edited down for Internet use by award-winning Canadian documentary journalist Garth Pritchard, who was on the scene prior to Martin’s visit at the invitation of Canada’s mercy mission DART team. The video starts with the moment the Prime Minister’s helicopter touches down in Kalumai, and coincides with the very moment that bereaved Sri Lankans are waiting for Padre Captain J.B. Hardwick to say a few words over their lost loved ones, laid out in some 13,000 freshly-dug graves. See for yourself how the film footage shows the padre being pushed aside and how overzealous members of the Martin entourage physically knock a Sir Lankan mourner to the ground--without apology. Ostensibly, the Prime Minister’s official visit to tsunami-ravaged Sri Lanka was all about showing the world Canadian compassion. See and hear for yourself how Martin unabashedly shills the purified water of Zenon Environmental Inc.--an Oakville-based company of which his lifetime mentor Maurice Strong was a board member. See and hear some of the film highlights, including Padre Hardwick trying to do the job he was asked to do: namely, honouring the dead. Padre Hardwick calls for a Moment of Silence. Fifteen seconds into the Moment of Silence, Prime Minister Martin ends it, saying, “Let’s go.” Swigging from a bottle of Zenon purified water, Martin says repeatedly, “C’est excellent!” Martin passes the bottle to wife, Sheila, who swigs from it, pronouncing distinctly, “Better than at home!” These were the pictures of Canadian compassion carried on the front pages of newspapers worldwide. If former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin is being recycled at the Copenhagen summit, his mentor Maurice Strong can’t be far behind.