Currently, the United States is headed in directions I couldn't have foretold in my worst nightmares. Perhaps I lacked imagination. Perhaps I should have read George Orwell's 1984 more closely. I have been working to organize within the political system in the U.S. and Canada for decades and, now, all I can do is resist. As I am drawn into new networks of organizers who are building locally and globally to oppose the attacks on everything we believe in, I am inspired by the tools I am finding.

After the federal approval of Kinder Morgan's controversial Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion (TMX), Alberta Premier Rachel Notley came to B.C. to sell the pipeline's economic benefits. She claims B.C. will get a $1 billion per year boost in GDP as a result of the pipeline, as well as thousands of jobs in both construction and operations once the pipeline is built.

There is good reason to believe, however, that the incremental income and employment gains for ordinary working British Columbians are likely to be substantially less. The project would lead to a small increase in total GDP in the province, but the main benefits are in the construction phase, and even there the benefits have been grossly inflated. In the long run, we can only bank on about 50 new permanent jobs.