Term 'oilsands' can't hide that bitumen is tar
By Steven Hill, The Daily News March 29, 2012
Here's an illustration of the "la-la world" of the Stephen Harper government, where lies, if spoken often enough and loudly enough, eventually acquire an aura of truth.
It is now politically incorrect to refer to the "Alberta Tar Sands." They have somehow, perhaps magically, become the "Alberta Oil Sands."
However, both the Keystone XL and the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines are designed to transport bitumen, which is colloquially referred to as tar.
So the product that comes from these sands of Alberta and is to be shipped to some consumer far away is tar, and yet we can't refer to these as tar sands? Give me a break.
Oh, by the way, the product that may be shipped from Alberta through these pipelines will eventually become valuable diesel oil, gasoline and a myriad of other products.
But the refinery infrastructure and the thousands of skilled jobs required to build and operate it, as well as the profits from these refined products, will occur in some other part of the world, not in Canada.
The export of bitumen - tar - is to the oil industry as rawlog exports are to the forest industry. If we Canadians want to become more than hewers of wood and drawers of water, we can make a start by refusing to accept the lie of the "Alberta Oil Sands."
Then join the fight against the pipelines.
Steven Hill Nanaimo
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