Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

Social Impacts

Social Impacts. Overnight injections of migrant workers will not build healthy communities and can have severely adverse impacts on existing communities, especially those of indigenous nations on their traditional lands. Such development brings vices and long term displacement too often. Drugs, alcohol and associated violence spreads. Hunting becomes difficult when the land is threatened, leading to a further loss of culture and tradition. In towns like Fort McMurray there is no planning for the future, but merely consumption in the present. However transient the individuals may be, the populations will not leave, as “development” takes on a logic all its own. All levels of run away development are subordinate to that development, not social need.

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In Alberta, Cocaine Easier to Buy than Pizza

Cocaine easier to buy than pizza
Drugs, alcohol plague transient workers living on fringes of oilpatch boom towns
Amanda Ferguson, The Edmonton Journal
Published: 2:05 am
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=cd92c68f-21d9-4...

Even when living in the remote work camps of northern Alberta, Ken was never far from his next fix.

If cocaine wasn't being used inside his camp of 3,000 oil workers in the outskirts of Fort McMurray, it lingered just outside in the pockets of the drug dealers who prowled outside the gates like predators.

Lubicon backed by UN Committee

Alberta's Lubicons get a boost from U.N. Human Rights Committee
Aug, 13 2007 - 4:50 PM
http://www.630ched.com/news/news_local.cfm?cat=7428109912&rem=72244&red=...

EDMONTON/630 CHED - A U.N. Committee on Human Rights is urging Canada to negotiate a long standing land claim treaty with the Lubicon Cree Nation of north central Alberta.

The U.N. Human Rights Committee wrapped up two-and-a-half weeks of hearings in Geneva, late last month, and on the agenda was the issue of Alberta's Lubicons.

PWW: Mining black gold, and profits, from northern sands

Mining black gold, and profits, from northern sands
http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/11600/1/387
Imagine for a moment that you’re an American oil executive. You’re pondering the prospects for the next big oil strike overseas — and dreaming of a place where the government is stable and compliant, the royalties are low and the environmental standards minimal.

Greenpeace guns for the tar sands

Greenpeace guns for the tar sands
http://www.journalofcommerce.com/article/id24064
Canada’s most “environmentally destructive” project expands
Aug. 20, 2007
EDMONTON

Greenpeace is setting up shop in Edmonton and it has set its sights on shutting down Alberta’s tar sands.

“The tar sands are one of the most environmentally destructive projects in Canada, if not the world,” said Greenpeace campaign organizer Geeta Sehgal adding they create 40 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year.

Suncor Executive to take Charge of Social Problems in Fort Muck?

Oilpatch fox to watch tar sands henhouse

Oil executives shouldn't run a key government agency, even temporarily.
Dateline: Monday, August 20, 2007
http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature7.cfm?REF=427
by Sheila Pratt for The Edmonton Journal

Ed Stelmach took some good advice last winter and set up an oilsands secretariat to help manage the serious growth problems in Fort McMurray caused by the rapid expansion of the oilsands. Good idea, long overdue.

S Dakota: "Some Canadians protest oil pipeline"

Some Canadians protest oil pipeline
They don't want to give up refinery jobs
By Peter Harriman
http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070811/NEWS/7081...
August 11, 2007

In South Dakota, Trans-Canada's Keystone pipeline project is drawing attention for its potential effect on landowners.

But in Alberta, Canada, where the pipeline will draw its proposed 500,000 barrels per day from northern oil sands, people see South Dakota and other states benefitting from their country's labor drain.

N Dakota letter to the editor: Keystone Pipeline, Tar sands not such a good deal

Bob White, Emerado, N.D., letter: Pipeline, oil-sands oil not very good deal
http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=174778&section=Opinion&for...
Published Sunday, August 12, 2007

More Mexican Workers Headed for Albertan Tar Pits, Elsewhere

Canada looks to Mexico for more workers
JENNIFER DITCHBURN
Canadian Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070816.wCanadamexio...
August 16, 2007 at 4:56 PM EDT

OTTAWA — While the United States Congress turns up its nose at immigration reform, Canada is poised to start negotiations that would bring even more Mexican workers into this country.

An agreement to strike a commission into increased labour mobility is expected to be among the key accomplishments connected with next week's summit of North American leaders in Montebello, Que.

Review slams Mackenzie project's socio-economic agreement

Review slams Mackenzie project's socio-economic agreement
Last Updated: Thursday, August 16, 2007 | 12:19 PM CT
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2007/08/16/gas-agreement.html

The socio-economic agreement between the Northwest Territories and the Mackenzie Valley gas project consortium is unenforceable, says a review released by a social justice group Wednesday.

Energy hungry U.S. is looking to hog-tie Alberta with agreement

Copyright 2007 Prince Rupert Daily News
All Rights Reserved
Prince Rupert Daily News (British Columbia)
August 15, 2007 Wednesday
NEWS; Green Justice; Pg. 13

Energy hungry U.S. is looking to hog-tie Alberta with agreement

Charles Justice, The Daily News

Remember the United States was going to bring freedom and democracy
to Iraq? It wasn't about Iraq's oil, they said. That must be why they
changed the name of the invasion from "Operation Iraqi Liberation" to
"Operation Iraqi Freedom." The reason I mention the U.S. invasion of