Originally Published on 25/02/2009 in the Winnipeg Free Press by Francis Russell

Frances Russell is a Winnipeg-based freelance journalist and author.

When a nation cannot safeguard its citizens against freezing in the dark, nor control how much energy it exports, nor set the price at which citizens can buy back their own energy from foreign transnational corporations, it is not an energy superpower, it is an energy satellite.

"A colony or satellite is a people who lose control of their resources to a foreign power," according to Gordon Laxer, political economist and director of the University of Alberta's Parkland Institute. "Canada is prohibited from using its oil to supply half its citizens during international shortages. No other country is forbidden from using domestic resources to provide for its own citizens."

 As citizens of a democracy, Canadians naturally expect their own government to put them first in any and all emergencies. "What are governments for if they're not going to do that?" Laxer wonders. "I think the Canadian government wants to focus on American energy security, not Canadian, because they see their interests not as protecting Canadians, (but) as being consonant with the corporate interest..."

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