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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CEP takes on bitumen exports

CEP takes on bitumen exports
By CAROL CHRISTIAN
Today staff
Thursday August 09, 2007
http://www.fortmcmurraytoday.com/Local%20News/329822.html

Fearing Canadian jobs going down proposed pipelines to the U.S., the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP) will intervene in upcoming regulatory hearings.
At the heart of the matter is the union’s intent to protect Canadian jobs, fostering development of the Canadian economy instead of watching all the benefits go south of the border, officials say.

S Dakota's Public Utilities Commission Withholding Landowners List During Keystone Hearings

Landowner list in pipeline case sought
By Terry Woster
twoster@argusleader.com
http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070808/NEWS/7080...
Published: August 8, 2007

PIERRE – South Dakota’s Public Utilities Commission will hear arguments later this month on a request to make public the names of landowners with property along the route of a proposed crude-oil pipeline.

Booms Housing Crisis Leading Women into Survival Sex Trade

Housing woes lead to sex trade: advocate
June 18, 2007
http://www.sextradeworkersofcanada.com/sex%20trade/News/detail.asp?iData...
By CARTER HAYDU , SPECIAL TO SUN MEDIA

Mary Jane St. Savard checks Marvin Ross's hair at their tent behind the Bissell Centre on 96st and 105 ave. A large group of people have set up tents on the empty field after police and park rangers moved them off various other locations.

Skyrocketing rents are forcing some women into the "survival sex trade," warns one advocate for prostitutes.

Tar Sand Workers Cruising down to Edmonton?

Ft. Mac workers cruising in city?
CP - 5/31/2006
By FRANK LANDRY, CITY HALL BUREAU
http://www.sextradeworkersofcanada.com/sex%20trade/News/detail.asp?iData...

The head of a city group that targets johns says oilsands workers making big bucks "working in the bush" are regularly cruising down to Edmonton and buying sex.

Kate Quinn, executive director of the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton (PAAFE), said her group will approach oil companies about going into Fort McMurray to talk to employees about the harms of prostitution.

Ricardo Acuna on Non-Consensus in the Tar Sands Multi-Stakeholder Committee

http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature7.cfm?REF=410

Oil Sands Committee reports back

It is time for the Stelmach government to pick a side: public or industry.

Dateline: Tuesday, August 07, 2007

by Ricardo Acuna

Last week, the Alberta Government released the much anticipated final report and recommendations of the Oil Sands Multi-Stakeholder Committee — the committee charged with carrying out a broad-based consultation with Albertans and making recommendations on the future of the Alberta tar sands.

Terrace Standard Hacking up Dogwood Initiative, NDP-- Promoting oil and gas in Douglas Channel

As always, the good news is that when such hate comes at you, it is part of a larger concern that the politics being brought forth by critics are harming "business as usual". As such, people concerned about traditional lands from Edmonton to Kitamaat Village and up and down the Inside Pasage of BC should take note, and perhaps a pat on the back. Fear them only when they ignore you.

--M

This MP should stay far away
By ROGER HARRIS
http://www.terracestandard.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=33&cat=48&id=...
Aug 08 2007

New Greenpeace office to fight tar sands

New Greenpeace office to fight oilsands
edmontonjournal.com
Published: Wednesday, August 01
EDMONTON - The environmental activist organization Greenpeace Canada is setting up shop in Edmonton to fight Alberta's oilsands development.
The organization has hired two full-time staff to campaign against devlopment of northern Alberta's oilsands, which it calls Canada's glob al warming disaster.

Northern Saskatchewan Nation Blockades Tar Sands, Talking to Oilsands Quest

First Nation talking to province about oilsands
Last Updated: Thursday, August 2, 2007 | 10:40 AM CT
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2007/08/02/oilsands.html

The chief of a western Saskatchewan First Nation that blocked a road used by an oil exploration company said he's not concerned the company has moved some of its operations to Alberta.

In June, the Clearwater First Nation blocked Highway 955 north of La Loche, a route used by the Calgary-based Oilsands Quest in its search for oilsands.

Oil: BC's Hydra-headed Headache

Oil: BC's Hydra-headed Headache
A grim exception. To prevent and respond to spills, our policies are a mess.
By Arthur Caldicott // August 2, 2007
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/08/02/Hydra/

For an industry that likes to keep its business underground, pipeline companies create a hell of mess when they allow it to surface. And the shipping industry, which prefers to stay on the surface, creates a hell of a mess when it tanks.

Homelessness in Fort McMurray

Image being addressed
http://www.fortmcmurraytoday.com/Local%20News/328436.html

By MATTHEW HEINDL
Today staff
Friday August 03, 2007

The need for a homeless shelter for youth was broached at a homeless strategy session in Fort McMurray Thursday, but it wasn’t adopted as one of the areas identified as immediate priorities.