The proposed purchase of Calgary-based Nexen Inc, Canada’s 12th-largest energy company, by the China National Offshore Oil Company, CNOOCLtd., for $15.1- billion (US) should be setting off alarms bells, stated Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, Saanich-Gulf Islands MP.

‘This has been described as the largest takeover by a Chinese company in the world, so very serious questions must be raised about the wisdom of such an unprecedented move,’ May stated. ‘We simply cannot allow strategic energy resources to disappear from Canadian control at such a rate and level with no real oversight.’

State-owned CNOOC was the first Chinese company to make a major acquisition in the Canadian oil industry when it purchased a 17% interest in MEG Energy for $150 million in 2005. Then, in 2011, it expanded by acquiring OPTI Canada for $2.1 billion, giving it 35% of key assets like the Long Lake oil sands facility. Nexen controls and operates the remaining 65% of that site.

Elizabeth May says the Greens have always urged co-operation between parties on the centre and the left, and Etobicoke Centre would be a good place to start if a Supreme Court ruling makes a new vote in that Toronto riding necessary.

The Green party Leader said in a telephone interview this week that she would urge her party not to run a candidate in the contest and she thinks the New Democrats should also skip any repeat of the race which was won in 2011 by Ted Opitz, a Conservative, who beat Liberal candidate Borys Wrzesnewskyj by 26 votes. The Greens and the New Democrats were far behind.

Although Ms. May she said would not normally urge her party to stay off a ballot, the situation in Etobicoke Centre is highly unusual. If anyone was unfairly denied a seat in that riding it was Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, she said, and if there is a by-election it should be “a clean vote between Borys and Ted.”

In the main report EKOS released with its latest poll numbers earlier this month, they made a point of highlighting what they found to be a "surge" in Green party support. According to the polling, the Green party has "more than doubled their support since the last election and now stands at 10 points."

EKOS gives the following reasons why they are confident in their numbers:

"First, when these other polls ask respondents who they intend to vote for, they often do not prompt respondents with the Green Party as an option, opting instead to lump them in with the other' option. Second, these other polls often exclude cell phone only households, a group which is consistently more likely to support the Green Party."

A recent letter dismissed scientific concern over increasing ocean acidity as a consequence of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. I am writing to correct the scientific errors in this letter.

When dissolved in water, carbon dioxide produces carbonic acid. The ocean is the single biggest natural sink for the excess carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere. The observed oceanic pH (a measure of acidity) reduction since preindustrial times is well understood to be overwhelmingly due to carbon dioxide  (not mercury and sulphates as claimed by the writer).

Increasing ocean acidity and its potential effect on resident ecosystems is an extremely serious, indirect consequence of our increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions. To dismiss so flippantly Elizabeth May, who takes the science seriously, does a disservice to the public discourse on what, if anything, society should do to mitigate against global warming and ultimately the collapse of existing ecosystems.

Andrew Weaver
Victoria

British Columbia’s ridings will be “changed dramatically” for the fall 2015 federal election and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s majority-governing Conservatives will have the most to gain from the six new seats and realigned electoral boundaries, says a pollster. 

For example, in Conservative MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay's riding of Delta-Richmond East, Delta will become a new riding on its own, as will Richmond East. For others, boundaries have changed but names will stay the same, for example NDP MP Nathan Cullen's riding of Skeena-Bulkley Valley and Green Party leader Elizabeth May's Saanich-Gulf Islands.

Before the new riding boundaries were proposed, Ms. May said she was worried that there could be gerrymandering involved in her specific riding. Ms. May was referring to a newsletter by the Saanich-Gulf Islands Conservative riding association which spoke about how the seat redistribution could help them take back the seat.