Big Oil is fighting back against Canadian rock icon Neil Young, saying all they're trying to do is create mutual trust with First Nations.

The problem, you see, is that Young is getting in the way of building all this goodwill!

"His rhetoric is ill-informed, it’s divisive, and I think it does a disservice to Canadians — including those First Nations he is ostensibly trying to help through his tour," claims Dave Collyer, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) and head of Shell Canada.

The problem with Big Oil's spin?

Shell Canada is in the middle of a dispute with the Athabasca Chipewayan First Nation in Northern Alberta — the one that Neil Young is fundraising for via the Honor the Treaties benefit concerts.

Money raised from the tour, which wraps up this weekend, is going to the First Nation's legal defence fund to fight the expansion of the tar sands on their traditional lands.

Shell's Jackpine project got the go-ahead from Stephen Harper's cabinet last month, despite a finding from a joint review panel that it's "likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects" and that all Aboriginal groups that participated on the consultation raised concerns about the "impact of these effects on their Aboriginal and treaty rights."

Have a look at excerpts of the decision, compiled by the University of Alberta's Andrew Leach. 

• The Project will provide major and long-term economic opportunities to individuals in Alberta and throughout Canada, and will generate a large number of construction and operational jobs
• The Panel concludes that the Project would have significant adverse environmental project effects on wetlands, traditional plant potential areas, wetland-reliant species at risk, migratory birds that are wetland-reliant or species at risk, and biodiversity
• The Panel understands that a large loss (over 10,000 hectares) of wetland would result from the Project, noting in particular that 85 per cent of those wetlands are peatlands that cannot be reclaimed
• The Panel finds that diversion of the Muskeg River is in the public interest, considering that approximately 23 to 65 million cubic metres of resource would be sterilized if the river is not diverted
• The Panel recognizes that the relevant provincial agencies were not at the hearing to address questions about why the Project (which seeks to divert the Muskeg River: author’s addition) is not included in the Muskeg River Interim Management Framework for Water Quantity and Quality
• The Panel concludes that it could not rely on Shell’s assessment of the significance of project and cumulative effects on terrestrial resources
• The Panel notes that a substantial amount of habitat for migratory birds that are wetland or old-growth forest dependent will be lost entirely or lost for an extended period
• The Panel is concerned about the lack of mitigation measures proposed for loss of wildlife habitat… that have been shown to be effective
• Although the Panel has concluded that the Project is in the public interest, project and cumulative effects for key environmental parameters and socioeconomic impacts in the region have weighed heavily in the Panel’s assessment
• All of the Aboriginal groups that participated in the hearing raised concerns about the adequacy of consultation by Canada and Alberta, particularly with respect to the management of cumulative effects in the oil sands region and the impact of these effects on their Aboriginal and treaty rights.

Leach explains what this all means:

It’s these last two that have got us to where we are today — to a First Nation challenging the government in court for a decision that it made which valued bitumen over the environment and their traditional territory and for not fulfilling its constitutional duty to consult on that decision.

After making national news for wishing "infidel atheists" a happy holiday, the Manitoba Conservative leader is back.

Brian Pallister's party is taking issue with the decision of the Manitoba Status of Women Council to hold an event on Jan. 28 to commemorate the day women got the right to vote in the province and celebrate Manitoba suffragist Nellie McClung.

The 98th anniversary of women's suffrage in Manitoba happens to fall on the same day as two provincial byelections. Pallister's Progressive Conservative Party says the event may violate a ban on government advertising during election campaigns.

Steve Lambert of the Canadian Press started the conversation on Twitter:

Photo: adamgerhard. Used under a Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0 licence.

Meet the Old Boys' Club of Canadian political punditry.

A new survey by the Canadian Journalism Project has found that 73% of Canadian newspaper columnists are men and their median age is 58.

Here’s another way of putting it: only 27% of news columnists are women.

And another: half of news columnists are 58 or older.

And one more: we’re getting the majority of our opinions from a demographic group that comes from a different cohort than over 90% of Canada’s population.

The National Post's ratio of 83% male/17% female is bad, but at least the daily paper is below the median age (at 53!). The Toronto Star does the best on the gender side with 60% male/40% female), but the paper brings up the average age (with a median age of 61).

What does this all mean?

For one thing, this is discouraging if you’re an aspiring young female journalist.

But it also begs the question: do Canadian newsrooms have an entrenched old boys' club culture that spills over and frames the news we read? Could this help explain why some studies have found young people and women to be less interested in news and politics?

What we do know is Canada is not alone. Gawker looked at the pool of opinion columnists at newspapers in the United States and found the same trend.

"Why are newspaper opinion columnists so consistently baffled by the politics, technologies, and social mores of the 21st century? We've crunched some data, and we think we've figured out the answer: They're old as hell," it wrote.

To illustrate how this plays out in Canada, check out this highlight reel of some of our fave old white guys.

Toronto Sun's Michael Coren on motherhood:

We’re not supposed to say it anymore but motherhood is pretty important. There are, of course, many women who are forced by economic circumstances to work outside of the home. But there are others who seem to believe that raising a child is less significant than alleged self-fulfillment or even political ambition. [MPP Lisa] MacLeod, do you seriously believe you can be both an exemplary mother and a full-time politician?

 Lawrence Martin in the Globe and Mail on the laziness of young people:

The young reject the political status quo, as they should, but they are too lazy to do anything about it. Most of the under-25s don’t even bother to vote. Instead of fighting for change, they wallow in their vanities and entitlements. Not much turns them on except the Idol shows, movies with smut humour and the latest hand-held instruments. Their disillusionment with the political class is understood. Their complacency isn’t.

Rex Murphy on "self-indulgent" student protesters in the National Post:

It began on so picayune a point—a tuition hike of $325 a year. That’s about the cost of one bottle of needless water a day, or half the price of the cheapest cup of coffee. Is this the kind of cause North American students take to the street for? ‘Oh, our university fees, already the lowest probably in the Western world, are going to go up a loonie a day. A loonie a day!: To the Barricades Everyone. And bring me a latté. […] What’s going on in Quebec is not a protest. It’s a parody of one: the future elite of Quebec having a self-indulgent fit.

The National Post's Terence Corcoran on the feminine expressions of sexuality in teen pop music:

…50 years later in the midst of the 2013-14 pop music girl singer battle royale, it’s pretty clear girls don’t cry at parties anymore. They do other things. The opening chorus of the first single from the Miley Cyrus blockbuster Bangerz album lays down the gestalt of the modern female pop star: 'It’s our party and we’ll screw who we want.'

What do you think? Could it be time we started hearing from a more diverse range of voices for a change?

Photo: YouTube

"What have the unions ever done for us?" Well, they reduce poverty, for one.

As part of its Rights at Work campaign, Unifor pulled together the data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on some of the world's most developed countries to compare the impact of unionization on a country's poverty rate.

Look: the lower the unionization rate, the higher the poverty rate.