Canada will fail
(échouer à quoi?) if there's no tar sands plan, say experts
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff shouldn't play politics with oil sands, says Andrew
Nikiforuk.
By Bea
Vongdouangchanh (z'ont des noms marrant en tout cas)
Canada will fail as a nation if it does not take steps now to develop a 30-year plan on the future of Alberta's
sustainable (lol
)oil sands development, say experts who also say the billion-dollar industry based in northern Alberta is a national unity issue.
"The tar sands is definitely a nation-changing
(ouais, ça change en particulier la foret boréale) project that has affected every corner of the country," Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, told The Hill Times last week.
He pointed out that a lot of the labour on oil sands projects in Fort McMurray, Alta., comes from Atlantic Canada, the mining expertise comes from British Columbia and the manufacturing expertise comes from Quebec and Ontario. In addition, a lot of investment dollars come from the U.S.
"I don't see the tar sands as primarily an Alberta project. This is a Canadian project," he said. "Every part of the country in one way or another is participating in this project or is being dramatically affected by this project. There's both the good side, and the dark side to this whole thing. It's important that Canadians have a conversation about this project and how it's affecting the country."
Mr. Nikiforuk, a Calgary-based economics and environment journalist who has won eight national magazine awards, said the future of oil sands development is a "political emergency of the highest order" for the country. "We need a 30-year plan for this project, we need a national debate about the scale and pace of development and then we need a program that says for every kilogram of carbon we produce there, we have to take two out of the economy somewhere else," he said. "It's probably the issue that is the most defining issue in Canada at the moment. Everything is tied to it."
Former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed has said the tar sands mega-project will become an "inevitable" constitutional clash between "the federal right to protect the environment and the provincial right to exploit natural resources."
In a speech to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce recently, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff (Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ont.) said that the oil sands "can be a force of unity" for Canada. "The oil sands are an integral part of the future of Canada," he said. "Canadians need to work together to reduce barriers within Canada to economic growth and environmental success. We can never develop a west-east energy corridor, or ensure total labour mobility, or guarantee clean air and water, let alone equal opportunities, for all our children, unless we seek a consensus across Canada."
Although there is a "danger" of speaking about the oil sands as a national unity issue because of differing opinions on its future, Alberta Progressive Conservative Senator Elaine McCoy agreed that it is a significant issue which needs a national dialogue because everyone has a stake in its success. "The oil sands have been a major economic boon for Canadians from coast to coast. When all is said and done the commodities are going to be a major factor in bringing us out of this recession. A big piece of the commodity is the oil sands," she said, adding however that they need to grow in a sustainable way.
"There's a unity possibility here if we open up a dialogue and address sustainability. That's the opportunity. There are ways of doing that which we need to look at. One of the ways, for example is to call a moratorium on open pits, no more open pit oil sands development until they've got the tailing ponds figured out. We could do that. We have time to do that. Let's not open up anymore of them until we have it figured out, but let's not impoverish Canadians, the steelworkers in Hamilton or the Newfoundlanders who need the jobs," she said.
David Mitchell, president of the Public Policy Forum, said it was smart of Mr. Ignatieff to position the oil sands as a national issue because it affects several national public policy areas such as energy and the environment.
"I think the country is less divided than perhaps less informed on the oil sands issue," he said. "By Mr. Ignatieff making this rather bold statement, it may be useful in encouraging Canadians to pay attention and understand what the oil sands really means in terms of its importance for the Canadian economy and for Canada's overall policies with respect to climate change."
According to the province of Alberta, there are currently 173 billion barrels of oil in the oil sands covering 140,000 square kilometers in Northeastern Alberta. There are 91 active oil sands projects in the province which exported 1.34 million barrels per day of crude oil to the U.S. in 2007. Every dollar invested in the oil sands creates nine times more economic activity in the country, and one in 13 jobs in Alberta is directly tied to the energy sector. Canada is the second largest oil exporter in the world after Saudi Arabia.
In his book, Tar Sands, Mr. Nikiforuk says more than $200-billion has been invested in the oil sands including for pipelines and up-graders, and "has attracted 60 per cent of all global oil investments." He also writes that each barrel produced from oil sands generates three times as much greenhouse gas emissions as a barrel of conventional oil and contributes to a third of Canada's GHG pollution. (The government of Alberta states that the oil sands makes up five per cent of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions.)
Mr. Nikiforuk criticized Mr. Ignatieff for "playing politics" with the oil sands because "he wants to win votes in Alberta," but that's not what the country needs.
"We don't need anymore proponents. We need people who can actually speak rationally about this project, its importance to the country, the need for effective regulation and effective climate change policy," he said, adding that Canada has no long-term energy and climate change plan. "Canada is already the number one oil supplier to the United States. We've done so without a plan, without a vision, without a program and with no fiscal accountability."
He explained that Norway had a national debate on the future of its oil wells and decided that 90 per cent of the revenue generated would go into a "sovereign fund" which would then be invested into the country's pension fund. The fund is worth more than $400-billion now, and it's something that Canada needs to start thinking about in terms of reinvesting oil sands revenue into renewable energy, Mr. Nikiforuk said.
"Canada has no sovereign fund. Ottawa makes between $5 and $6-billion a year from the tar sands in corporate taxes. There is no accountability about that money," he said. "Until we take the money off the table, Ottawa will remain this paralyzed oil sands developer that can't come up with an effective climate change program, energy program or fiscal accountability for wealth from the tar sands... If we don't deal with those issues, we will have critical problems with national unity."
Sen. McCoy said she doesn't believe the issue will divide the country or pit regions against each other and preferred to think about how the oil sands could pull people together. "What opportunities there are for people to come and work on the oil sands? Not all of them are in Fort McMurray," she said. "We've built a world class engineering capacity around the oil and gas industry which has spin off values in other industries. We train young engineers and send them back to other industries. All of that kind of activity is a boon for Canada because it's high paying jobs and it's world class engineering and it trickles down to some basic manufacturing jobs here in the Canadian heartland. All of that it seems to me brings people together."
NDP MP Linda Duncan (Edmonton-Strathcona, Alta.), her party's environment critic, said a national dialogue is not necessary for the oil sands when there is no national debate on issues such as whether Ontario will keep nuclear energy or how Newfoundland will deal with its offshore oil. Natural resources are a provincial purview and have the right to develop them, she said, but where the federal government needs to step in is ensuring that they are being developed according to federal environmental laws.
"Sure, [the oil sands] are a national unity issue because it's about time they dealt with the fact that we shouldn't be sacrificing northern Alberta in order to fill the federal coffers so that we can further subsidize fossil fuels," Ms. Duncan said. "[Mr. Ignatieff] has got a different perspective on it as a national unity issue than I have. It's time we united together to make sure our federal laws are applied properly to protect First Nations, First Nations land, First Nations use of fisheries for sustenance. It's time we united nationally to decry the sacrifice of about a quarter of our province to provide oil to the United States."
Conservative MP Mark Warawa (Langley, B.C.), Parliamentary secretary to the environment minister, said the government has moved to help the oil sands develop in an environmentally friendly way with investments in carbon capture and storage technology, which has also gotten a boost from the U.S. investment in the same technology. Mr. Warawa said also that the House environment committee is currently studying the oil sands' effects on the environment, water and air, which will contribute to a national policy discussion. "We know in the past it has not been done carefully and we're seeing some of the scars on the boreal forest, so we need to improve how we develop and use that valuable resource," he said. "That's why our government with our billions of dollars of commitment to carbon capture and storage will clean up and use that resource in an environmentally friendly way. The study at the committee will also help to inform the government."
Mr. Nikiforuk said, however, that it's time to act. "We've got to get off the chair here and start walking, and not just talking," he said. "I can't think of any other place in the world where you would have a singular nation changing event take place and where you have yet to engage the electorate about this."
