Recently a National Geographic story by Robert Kunzig revealed to the world what’s happening with the Canadian oil sands project in Alberta, Canada. It’s an ugly story and it paints an ugly picture of politics-as-usual in Alberta and in Canada.
I’ve read a series of these stories over the past decades and I’ve previously seen worse pictures in many Canadian publications. The Province of Alberta is the equivalent of Texas, except it used to be beautiful. The politicians are the oil and gas people – and vice versa. It’s almost as if they’re trying to destroy every square meter of the Province and yes, they just laugh at other Canadian citizens, just like they laughed at the National Geographic article and pictures.
Oil industry corporations have also killed people and animals with ’sour gas’ in Alberta. Apparently it’s legal in that Province, so long as you’re an oil corporation. Lots of Canadians have been complaining to deliberately deaf ears for many, many years. It doesn’t matter because oil=money and with politicians, you can do whatever you want to the environment, just so long as the politicians get paid. The Conservatives have been in power there since 1971.
It’s exactly like organized crime. The politician crooks get to ‘wet their beaks’ and the oil corporation criminals get to do whatever they choose to do. Alberta is the only Province in Canada without a sales tax, so the citizens have also been willfully ignorant and overjoyed with the tar sands, so far (bribed to keep their eyes closed and to shut the fuck up).
By the way, essentially none of the companies doing this spectacular damage are Canadian. It’s the stinking, useless, crooked politicians, bought and paid for by greedy corporations, operating as the very closest of asshole buddies.
It’s been obvious for years the oil sands projects have a carbon footprint the size of Jupiter but no-one has ever cared, just so long as the oil flowed south.
By the way, Canadians don’t get any cheap oil – Canadians pay more for gas and oil than Americans. It comes from Canada and it comes at a horrendous price but nobody seems to give a flying fuck.
Money is money, neh? Canada is the new Middle East! All Canadians all gonna be rich! Except, of course, the majority of Canadians aren’t getting rich and the majority of Canadians won’t ever see a penny from the most destructive project of earth. They will, of course, get to pay the bill for the clean-up, after the corporations have taken everything they want and they walk away.
Canadians even paid $1.5 billion in tax subsidies to help out the corporations with their expenses and Canadians don’t even insist on much return in the way of taxes.
All that’s important is the Conservative Party gets paid off in Alberta and whatever party that’s in power gets paid off in Ottawa (currently Conservative).
Doesn’t it all make you proud to be a Canadian?
