Oilsands jeopardize Canada's reputation

Yup, lets listen to the Liberal point of view, shut down the oil sands and watch the Canadian economy tank worse than the U.S. economy.

Geeez. Remember NAFTA, we are now only a resourced based country.. we gave up our manufaturing base to the USA and China when we signed NAFTA, now the Liberals want to shut down a major resounce based industry.

Alberta, the US and the world need that oil. It is the major industry in Alberta. Canada has indicated it will do what is required to do, but if somebody thinks that shutting down this oil production is plauable the need to stop smoking whatever it is is that they are smoking.

If I understand the story correctly they're just talking about making the corporations more accountable for clean up and process. I don't think there's a politician on either side of the border that's stupid enough to say 'no' to the oil sands.

I see your point, but I would never underestimate the stupidity of politicians.

Yep. I felt my spidey senses tingling when I wrote that.

I was pretty surprised when I clicked on the article and it was Environment Minister Prentice who said that. I don't think he's said anything quite like that before.

Prentice has been pretty consistent on working to make industries clean up after themselves. He shut down an asphalt plant on the Tsuu Tina reserve right next door to Calgary because they were using dirty oil in their process and were competely obliterating any legal noise limitations during operation. As opposed to leftwing politicians Prentice just doesn't see shutting down the industry as the only logical or desireable option.

Other than the far left tree huggers, I don’t think anyone seriously suggested shutting down the tarsands. Cleaning up has always been the realistic goal. The fact Prentice said it is a bit of a shock considering the Harper team has done their best to downplay that the problems even exist. Now of course there’s the question that anything will actually be done.

One thing people don't think about. The price of oil today was a hair under $77 a barrel. Break even point for the tar sands is $33.

I'm thinking with that type of profit margin, the oil companies can afford to clean up their mess.

Absolutely they should be cleaning up. They should also be looking at cutting pollution from emissions too.

This is an industry not short of cash or long term prospects.

Ya, if you go to Europe and ask someone about Canada, will he say "Eww, that place with the evil oilsands"?


No, in fact, the world doesn't give a shit about Canada, but it surely pleases left-winged lobby groups to think so.

I wish someone would articulate for me exactly what they mean by 'reputation'.

What exacty was our reputation before? A failed manufacturing history along side non-stop resource extraction? We're nice? I think Belgians are nice but on the other hand maybe that's because I never read about them in the news, just like us. What exactly is 'nice' putting in my pocket? Does it stop Russians from poking about? Does it stop France from fishing our waters? Does it stop us from being taken advantage of because we're so gosh darn agreeable? I mean I know we all wanna be liked and that's great but nice guys finish last and besides that you can't please everyone all the time. Not advocating somehow purposely behaving like the 'bad guy', no need for that, just sayin'.

I'm not so sure Canadians know what they're looking at when they look in a mirror and I don't think our reputation is what we think it is, and I for one believe our reputation is best when it's quantified by someone who doesn't really know us. The Dudly Doright might have been a real Canada once, but it's not now.

Do something to make the oil sands clearner - absolutely. But can we just do it for ourselves? Is that so wrong? I don't care what Belgium thinks of us, for now, until they all ahve someone else to wag the finger at. Belgium was loved for their slave trade - that was a great reputation.

Let's play the "reputation game" and let's drown baby seals in oil !! White, black and red !

WTF? I haven't read the article yet, but my first impression is the entire f#cking workforce- employees and management - should go on a 6 week vacation to Mexico and then we'll see how much they are missed.