Tar Sands are Not Sustainable Growth, But Quick Buck Exploitation

Conservatives Care about Incremental Transitioning

 The TransCanada Oil Oligopoly of global foreign investors have banded together to rip up as much damage to the province of Alberta as they can before the Conservative plutocracy is stopped by a reality check this coming election.

Andrew Nikiforuk's Tar Sands Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent  is a scathing report on the damaging project that has completely transformed the Canadian economy and social contract.

Why should Canada embark on this irresponsible greed?  To keep oil business wealthy and to make our economy a slave to big business while in the meantime allowing for a communist agenda to subvert all environmental criticism.  Misrepresentation and untruths abound.

Alberta's bitumen apologists swear that "work is progressing to return the disturbed land to a natural state after development, and it will be done right."  The province's former ambassdor to the United States, Murray Smith, even assured our number ne oil market that the industry will achieve "100 per cent long-term restoration of the lands it makes use of."  Why, major tar sand companies have even planted 7.5 million tree seedlings.  The Mining Association of Canada says reclaiming open pit mines can be done with a "vision worthy of a Group of Seven artist." (Tar Sands, 94)

The tar sands are too big, too destructive, too caustic to soil to rehabilitate.  Nothing will grow there again.  But the plans just keep growing bigger to lay waste more.

Even at that, the mines make up only a small part of the wreckage created by the megaproject.  The Alberta government has leased an additional 23,000 square miles of land (and another 30,000 square miles await global investors) for in situ projects, including steam-assisted gravity drainage.  The Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, which encompass 9,000 square miles and include Jasper, Banff, Yoho and Kootenay, could fit int this planned industrial zone about six times.  As noted, SAGD development will slice and dice the land with thousands of industrial well sites, seismic lines, pipelines, and roads.  This fragmentation will transform the forest into a bitumen park, exterminating the population of woodland caribou and decimating songbirds home from their winter in the tropics.  Seismic lines, which make a forest look like and engineered spiderweb, typically need more than one hundred years to fill in with trees again.  Yet the government has no tight guidelines for reclaiming forest ruined by SAGD. (Tar Sands, p95.)

Coverup of a tailings pond with sand and grass.  What about the toxins below ground?

These are the facts with real concrete specifics, unlike the vague unrealistic and false statements coming from the Minister of the Environment.

And don't believe that oil is good for the people of Alberta which the Conservative oligopoly likes to pit against all the "have not" provinces against.  They are not doing so well as the lies tell us.
Albertans are losing funding for schools, hospitals, jobs etc. as the money is going to the oil industry. Services such as plumbing and construction are now very expensive and hard to find as most of the workers in this trade are working in the tar sands. The irony of this is that their gas prices are increasing too because most of the oil is shipped to America or elsewhere. The energy security propaganda we hear about from the industry is absolutely false. There have also been many complaints from workers about unsafe, unhealthy and abusive situations. As a result of all this there have been increased rates of gambling, suicide and crime in nearby communities. Long term sustainable economies such as forestry, commercial and recreational fishing, ecotourism, hunting, farming and housing are also taking a hit.   Blog source

Across Canada, we've seen the destruction of B.C. loss of forest industry and tourism slowly becoming a gas and fracking hellhole.  Large sections of coastline which are needed for fish spawning grounds are becoming overbuilt with industry.  Farming in the prairies is taking a hit for growing industry servicing and mining acquisitions.  Quebec has lost so much in manufacturing, the Atlantic provinces to fishery manufacturing loss.  The oil industry is keeping the dollar high which kills off export for any other endeavor across the provinces.

Make sure to keep up the criticism and take action for a change.