Double talk on tar sands
Mar 01, 2009 04:30 AM
Toronto Star
Alberta's tar sands have always been a political hot potato. Now they are being tarred by no less an authority than National Geographic as a blight on the boreal forests and a pox on the planet.
There is something about being featured in foreign publications that captures the attention of Canadians unlike anything else. Now, federal politicians are weighing in with alacrity, if not quite clarity, about the place of the tar sands in Canada's future.
Environment Minister Jim Prentice defended his home province against the 20-page magazine spread while stressing that Ottawa was on the same page as President Barack Obama when he visited Ottawa last month.
True, the two governments agreed to study new technologies to capture and sequester carbon underground. But that agreement aims to "co-ordinate research and demonstrations of carbon capture and sequestration technology at coal-fired (power) plants." Not tar sands.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, too, tried to wrap himself in the maple leaf while embracing the tar sands. Ignatieff is trying to have it both ways. He is trying to defend the economic importance of the tar sands while condemning the environmental price we are paying. As to how he would square that circle, he doesn't say.
"My concern is that, at the moment, it's barely environmentally sustainable, and it's barely socially sustainable," Ignatieff proclaimed outside the House of Commons. "The Conservative government has done nothing about this. We need to move forward. But am I proud of this industry? You bet. It's a world leader. We just need to make it better. But I don't take lessons from the National Geographic."
Was it a coincidence that Ignatieff's Alberta-friendly rhetoric came on the eve of a trip to the province at week's end, where he gamely described the tar sands as a matter of national unity?
The tar sands, like politicians, cannot be all things to all provinces. Ignatieff, who casts himself as a strong defender of the environment, needs to explain how he will reduce carbon emissions while expanding production.
In last week's political pas de deux, there was more heat – and carbon – than light.
