cruel hoax they're pulling over on the public

           More evidence that the Harper government holds environmental regulatory measures in utter contempt. 

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/08/19/enbridge/ 

 " While Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the fate of Enbridge’s proposed pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to tankers on the British Columbia coast will be based on science and not politics, documents show some of that science isn’t forthcoming.
And critics say there is no time for the science to be completed before a federal deadline for the environmental assessment currently underway."

             And why is the science not forthcoming? Because the government hasn't had the time to assess the impact of the Enbridge project on some 1,000 (!sic!) streams and their associated ecosystems the pipeline will cross. And why hasn't the government had the time to do the assessments? Well it might have something to do with budget cuts to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the body mandated to carry out the assessments..

              Get the pic? First you cut budgets to regulatory bodies. Then, because, of understaffing / underfunding they can't do the job they were mandated to do: regulate. It's called deregulation on the sly (as if we didn't have enough already..)
 
              But doing things on the sly, dealing cards from a hidden deck under the table, is NOT transparency, which democracy requires in order to function properly (or simply to function - period). Don't forget Mr Harper "transparency" was one of the planks of your electoral platform going into your first mandate. That's why we - the people - elected you, in fact. (The people were fed up with the lack of transparency and back room shenanigans of the senescent Chrétien government so they voted you in, Mr Harper, hoping for CHANGE.)

"[Harper] says the science will make the decision. Well he’s basically disembowelled the science,” said Langer. “It’s a cruel hoax that they’re pulling over on the public."

                  One gets the impression that Fisheries and Oceans Canada has become a mere pathetic puppet with Harper's hand up its backside. This is not a picture of a functioning democracy.

 One definition of fascism: the control or seizure of the State by the Corporate Elite.