by Eartha Muirhead
Characters:
1. CEO of CGL 2. CEO of LNG Canada 3. CEO of RBC
4. CEO of TransCanada Energy 5. CEO of Kholberg Kravis Roberts and Co. 6. CEO of JP Morgan Chase
Scene One: January 2019: CGL Board Room, Vancouver CNTower, 3 pm
- Well my friends, welcome and help yourselves to a martini. We have had a heck of a hectic 2 weeks, eh? I can hear the protesters on the street heckling us and are shutting down our great country’s highways and railroads. But, Coastal Gas Link is not worried, of course. Can we hear from all our stakeholders today?
- Trudeau promised me and the rest of LNG Canada that the RCMP will clear the railroad tracks soon. Terribly inconvenient to live in a so-called democracy, eh?
- The Royal Bank of Canada and it’s members are confident that despite the slowdowns and economic downturns, the fall-out from the Indian protests will soon be forgotten by the media. Our CGL pipeline portfolio remains somewhat insecure but we will recover.
- TransCanada Energy and its shareholders want to once again thank LNG Canada, for choosing us to design, build and operate the pipeline from some godforsaken hick town in northeastern BC to our soon to be completed LNG terminal in Kitimat. Over the past seven years, we have
proven a solid reputation for blundering ahead into an economic political quagmire. COUGHING: I mean, we have reputable risk management teams working overtime.
- On behalf of Kholberg, Kravis, Roberts and Co. I have invested US dollars into pro-pipeline media propaganda, I mean, campaigns. We have run full page ads in all your major newspapers and will be pouring bribes, I mean, money into all relevant labour unions. We will also be bribing judges, I mean encouraging them, to ensure that injunctions will prosecute journalists as if they are criminals, whoops, I mean similarly as protesters, without free speech rights.
- Awesome, everyone. Coastal Gas Link has always put our faith in a team approach. Can anyone speak to our direct action work with the Indian Chiefs?
- LNG Canada has gotten consent from all the Band Council Chiefs and they have accepted all our bribes, I mean, they have succumbed to our revenue sharing agreements. You know what I mean…..
- All Aboriginals will prosper from this project, even though some are a bit on edge about oil spilling into the local rivers.
- Although the Morice River eventually feeds into the Fraser River, most people worried about broken pipelines live in Vancouver, where the Fraser is already a gross toxic waste dump.
- Wait a minute; KK and R owns 35% of this project now. Our US dollar is propping this project up big-time. I need to know that we are not going to lose a penny on this hare-
brained scheme. Our public profile could be tarnished if there was a spill. What are you doing to force, I mean, get fool-proof consent, sorry, I mean get buy-in, from Indian Chiefs along the pipeline’s path? SILENCE, YAWNING, NOSE-PICKING PREVAILS.
1. Phone rings and he picks it up. “Everyone please be quiet, it is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase…..Howdy Dude, I mean JP. I will put you on speaker phone.”
6. “What the hell are are you lunatics doing up there; anyways? Looks like anarchy is breaking loose all across the land; the country is being held hostage by a bunch of paid protesters and Redskins. Your polly-anna politicians have lost control of the Indian protests.
2. Calm down JP. We are figuring it out.
6. I lent you idiots 5 billion dollars and you have already spent 2 billion of it. My investors are worried. Chevron just sold it’s 1.6 billion share in the Kitimat LNG terminal. They say low global LNG prices and the civil unrest is spooking them.
3. Guys; BC just announced a 6 billion subsidy to LNG Canada. We are laughing all the way to the bank. Whoo hoo!!!
6. Maybe, but never trust politicians when it comes to money. How did you spend my 2 billion dollars?
5. Shit! I think I am going to bail as well. The Wild West just ain’t what it used to be.
1. No no no wait. I will give you a rough outline of where the money was well spent.
3. I have the spreadsheet right here. Bribes to Chiefs: 10
million, RCMP bribes 10 million, Sons of Odin: 1 million, Bribes to judges: 5 million, Campaign support for Jason Kenny and Justin Trudeau and John Horgan: 10 million, fake news and LNG propaganda: 10 million, Facebook trolls and infiltrators: 1 million……IS INTERRUPTED BY JP
6. Well, all I can say is our stocks fell by $200.00 today. Nervous stockholders make me nervous. Get those Indians off the railroad tracks or else. Put that in your Canuckian pipes and smoke it. HANGS UP.
4. I am texting our bioengineering department now to see if we can genetically modify a new virus and start a pandemic. That way, the Natives and the protesters will have to go home. I know, I know, another wild west pipe- dream.
1. Let’s take a 5 minute break. I will order another round of martinis.
Scene 2: Same day, On the balcony, 5 pm
5. Wow, the mountains on Vancouver Island are so beautiful. People in New York would die for this view.
- Look at the Orcas plowing through the Salish Sea. Yikes, the wind out here is unusually strong all of a sudden.
- How do you guys sleep at night when you know this pipeline could destroy rivers, this ocean and it’s animals?
2. I often have to take tranquilizers and sometimes when the stress gets really bad I snort cocaine. How about you?
5. I never sleep. I work 24/7…….. I feel like a predator
sometimes; making money off of resource extraction. But somebody’s gonna do it if I don’t.
4. My wife says I am a sociopath and is filing for divorce.
2. To 5: You should stay awhile longer. I could fly you up to see the starving polar bears, maybe see some Indians too.
1. (ENTERS WITH MARTINIS) Well team, I am proud of all our work today. This pipe-dream, I mean this pipeline, is going to make us GLOBS and GLOBS of money.
Just then a tornado from the Georgia Strait blows up to the 44th floor of the tower. With it comes a MURDER of Crows. They dive-bomb the CEO’s, steal their phones and the wind throws them off the edge of the baloney to the streets below, where hundreds of protesters are drumming around a campfire.
THE END.
All facts and figures are real except for the ones on the spreadsheet.
