[Equation] Lakes of Tar = Death

[Photo caption: View of Syncrude plant and tailing "pond" in Northern Alberta. Not long ago this land was covered in ancient forests that acted as an important lung for the planet]

It's as simple as adding things together. What do you expect to occur when you bulldoze miles upon miles of previously untouched forest, then dig out a series of gigantic holes, and fill them with toxic, sludgy, tar-filled waste-water? To top it off, these massive carcinogenic lakes (which are visible from space) happen to be located within the migratory path of many species of bird and other wildlife, and just happen to be a couple of kilometers upstream from human-inhabited areas.

If the answer isn't obvious to you yet, you may want to revisit your basic arithmetic skills. The answer is "death". You get "death" when you build man-made lakes of carcinogenic sludge. It's that simple.

Hence my lack of surprise when I woke up to today's news. A flock of some 500 ducks, en route to its summer habitat, was flying by Fort McMurray, when it located a series of lakes - which seemed perfect for a rest. These were not the first birds to think it might make a good rest stop, but they were the first (at least that we know of) to have NOT been properly warned ahead of time that these were not real lakes of fresh water, but rather that they were the carcinogenic lakes of tar-water mentioned above. In fact, most days there are birds of various species trying to make a stop in the famous "tailings ponds" of Northern Alberta - the liquid waste product of copious amounts of water used to produce crude oil - but - the companies which produce these toxic seas employ a number of sophisticated tactics to convince birds to stay away from them. They use scarecrows, for example, and large air canons (which are loud enough to scare the shit out of any animal).

For some reason, however, these ducks were not given the air canon warnings, nor did the scarecrows seem to do their job. So all 500 of them landed in one of Syncrude's tailings ponds.

Well they're dead now - at least the majority of them are. If any survived, they are now covered in sticky tar and are no longer capable of using their wings. And if they manage to get rehabilitated by rescue workers, maybe - just maybe - they will continue to thrive, only to get struck with cancer at a later date, having been exposed to extremely dangerous contaminants... just like the people of Fort Chipewyan.

What's that? Are you saying the people of Fort Chipewyan have been struck with cancer, having been exposed to dangerous contaminants from the oil sands?

YES. THE PEOPLE OF FORT CHIPEWYAN, and other communities located on the Athabasca River, downstream from Fort McMurray, ARE DYING FROM CANCER AT ABNORMALLY HIGH RATES!!!

This is why a Doctor by the name of John O'Connor, some 7 years ago, reported with grave concern that a number of people had acquired cholangiocarcinoma - a rare form of cancer that usually impacts less than 1 in 100,000 people. Yet here were up to 5 people with it, in a population of 1200!!! Medically speaking, this is extreme cause for alarm. Yet as many of you reading this will know, O'Connor raised the issue publicly, and was then fired by Health Canada for causing unnecessary public panic.

Now, I have not been to Fort Chip myself, but I was at an event regarding the Tar Sands here in Edmonton that was attended by a number of Fort Chip residents. I WILL BE FOREVER HAUNTED by the appeal by one of them - a woman in her 40s: Addressing the audience with tears pouring down her cheeks, she PLEADED with us to do whatever we could to stop the death of her community. She listed case after case, person after person, with the familiarity of their first names - her friends and family members who had either died or will soon die of cancer. Her sadness turned to anger... "this is not normal" she screamed at us, referring to attempts by our provincial and federal governments to shrug off the public health disaster as a typical health issue that is unrelated to the tar sands operations.

The extremely powerful PR assault led by the oil industry and the provincial and federal government is winning. They have managed to block the story of genocide in Fort Chip from filtering into the everyday car driver's head. They have somehow managed to convince us that slowing tar sands production will mean economic collapse - despite the clear warnings by economists that climate change will more likely wreak global economic havoc. And perhaps this is what makes the story of the ducks all the more bitter for me. Part of the story is that this "duck disaster" comes just as Stelmach's PR squad is returning from an international propaganda tour - the goal of which was to convince elites around the world that the tar sands operations are sophisticated, GREEN, oil-exploitation procedures - where EVERY CARE is taken to ensure the environmental, climatological and ecological sustainability of the land. Not only do the deaths of these birds prove the sheer absurdity of Stelmach's lies, they also demonstrate the simplicity of the equation of death involved in the tar sands gigaproject. We must hold Stelmach accountable for his crimes. Let us never forget the deaths that have been a direct result of this, either animal or human!

After hearing of those poor dead ducks, a friend of mine asked in desperation - "what will it take for the government to realize it has to stop the tar sands"? Our country is so racist towards first nations people that it seems the death of a native community will not halt tar sands expansion. I highly doubt the bird story will do anything either, other than arouse more temporary anger. But within the increased production intended by the Stelmach Conservatives lies their own demise. This provincial government, already the greatest emitter of carbon emissions in the country (thanks to oil production), has already begun to drive itself into a dark tunnel of history. Alberta oil is so dirty that even American politicians are threatening to stop buying it, given the horrendous environmental and climactic impacts of converting bitumen into crude oil (California already has a law to forbid the buying of Alberta oil). So to answer the question "what will it take"? I think it will take one of two things: Either a) it will take unprecedented amounts of environmental destruction and climactic trauma for to the point that it's no longer worth it to feed gas into their SUV so they can drive to the store to buy their things - because the things won't be there anymore (or at least they'll be totally unafordable). In this scenario it will take economic collapse - which already seems pending, or b) it will take smart citizens to foresee this industrial collapse before it happens, and start acting NOW to reduce the amount of harm we will face as a civilization from global warming and the economic meltdown it will throw upon the world. Which doomsday scenario do you choose?

[Synopsis] Imagining the Green Tar Sands

It's a Tuesday Morning, and I'm listending to Sounds Like Canada, a CBC radio show hosted by Shelagh Rogers. She's talking to a guy named Murray who's involved in some program at the University of Alberta, and a guy named Simon from the Pembina Institute in Calgary. The show is about "greening" the Tar Sands. Murray is an environmental consultant for tar sands corporations, trying to find a way to make operations more green. Simon, for the most part advocates against the tar sands, since it is such an environmental disaster for which no amount of "greening" can do the trick.

Simon takes the lead. We hear how the tar sands are visible from space and the total mining area is the size of three cities of Calgary. We learn about the tailing "ponds", which are more actually like tailing "lakes" that hold dangerous contaminants that we don't know what to do with. We learn how the Athabasca River has approximately 16% of its volume diverted at Fort Mac, simply for use in the energy industry. We learn how despite a major lack of environmental assessment, both the provincial and federal governments are pushing through with approval of new projects as quickly as possible....

But Murray counters. One of the things he says resonates: He explains how the companies he works with (the same ones that just this morning reported world record profits) are very concerned about their environmental image (note that they are not necessarily concerned about the environment). And then he says it more clearly: "They are very concerned about how the company looks with their shareholders - the people who own the company." Murray's comment confirmed a long held suspicion of mine: The companies that operate within the tar sands, and their cronies within the Alberta Government DON'T CARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT. What they do care about is making it LOOK like they care about the environment.

Image is everything in the corporate world. This is something Naomi Klein taught us. If the operators at Syncrude really cared about the 500 ducks that died in their toxic lake of death, they would have closed up shop, or at least found an alternative way of dealing with toxic waste water. Instead, they spent who knows how much to publish "apology letters" in the major papers of the country. It's all about image.

If Stelmach really cared about greening up the tar sands, he would put a moratorium on bitumen extraction today. After all, we're talking about one of the dirtiest known industrial practices known to (wo)man: It involves stealing water from fresh resources, using extraordinary amounts of heat and energy, burning up precious natural gas supplies, all for the purpose of removing sand from of a deep underground source of tar, so that you can pump out synthetic heavy crude oil, so that people can keep driving their cars. This is as DIRTY AS IT GETS folks. But Stelmach DOES care about his environmental image. That's why he is wasting $25 Million worth of Alberta's tax-payer money to brand the tar sands as being environmentally friendly. What a joke.

It's all image I tell you... Branding yourself the right way allows you to keep bringing in the big bucks. It's not what you sell (read dirty oil), it's how you sell it (read $25 green oil sands project).

[Appeal] Harper, the Media, and the North American Leader's Summit

I wanted to share my discontent with the lack of coverage on the recent North American Leaders Summit in New Orleans. There has hardly been any coverage on the CBC website, which is a real shame in my opinion, given the potential for the CBC website to foment civic engagement in this country.

An internet search for the summit on CBC.ca brings up the following stories, considered "most relevant" by the search engine: a) a link to "Political Bytes", a blog from the CBC's parliamentary bureau with a few quirky anecdotes regarding the context of the meeting (absolutely nothing on content); b) an article about last year’s summit – which, as you may recall, was held at Chateau Montebello and was met by a determined group of more than a thousand protesters; and c) two dead link articles about this year's summit - you can't read them because they are no longer there! What's my point? We citizens are not being told what is being negotiated at these meetings. Furthermore, to find out even the most basic details of the summit, we have to go out and search for it on obscure blogs and sites that no one actually reads on a regular basis.

This is not good for democracy, though neither is it entirely the CBC's fault. This minority government has been playing a dirty game of media manipulation ever since Harper seized power with only 36% of the vote. The Conservatives are engaged in a web of political spin, carefully calculating every PR move from determining the exact timing of press releases (in order to divert attention away from unpopular issues) to outright refusing to talk to certain reporters (check out this video). You have to ask yourself what kind of dirt this government is trying to hide when it goes to great lengths to ensure only invited sympathetic journalists are allowed to show up at state-sanctioned press releases. But even worse – what kind of nation allows its “leaders” to sneak out of a hotel via fire-escape to avoid a media scrum that has been infiltrated by uninvited journalists? We need to raise a stink about the unacceptable wall of secrecy behind which the Harper government is hiding.

In addition to writing letters to the CBC News desk, I’ve taken it upon myself to try to find out what in god’s name Stephen Harper is offering to Bush on Canada's behalf at this summit. There are a few things that are obvious. For one, we know that Harper is pledging our country’s continued support in the empire’s so-called war on terror – which as we also know, is a war of terror that only serves to breed more terror in return. We play a major role in this American war through our “commitment” to Afghanistan, or should I say our commitment to warlord Karzai (the "mayor of Kabul") and his war against his Taliban enemies in Kandahar. So here we are, with 2500 Canadian soldiers armed to the teeth (facing a death rate of one soldier per month), engaged in "development projects" that help us turn the Afghan people away from terrorism. Little do we know the Afghan people think we are the terrorists, and they're going to use every tactic they can to get rid of us - the latest in a history of foreign invaders in their country. What are we doing there? Honestly? Other than watching the poppy industry grow and agreeing to do America's dirty work (which includes ratcheting support from NATO allies to join in the fight). The International Security Assistance Force has played a major role in relieving US duties in Afghanistan, thereby allowing them to continue to their mission of total human destruction in Iraq.

Second, we know that Harper is working hard to make our border with the United States more porous to items like money and commercial goods and now commodified resources, while agreeing to block the flow of drugs and people with brown skin (like arabs who are unfairly stereotyped as terrorists and Latin Americans who are characterized as job-takers). You have heard the horror stories of groups of Latino immigrants who die in the Arizona desert trying to make it to the US to meet up with their families and earn a living wage. But have you heard of the violence in Southern Mexico faced by Central American immigrants? It is an extremely dangerous journey often resulting in theft, incarceration and death. The American administration knows all too well that it's difficult to keep the border open to trade while being simultaneously closed to immigrants and drugs, so Bush has convinced Calderon (and Fox before him) to militarize the southern border with Guatemala and Belize to stop the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who attempt the Northbound trek. In 2005, 240,000 illegal immigrants attempting to get to the US from Central America were arrested in MEXICO before even getting to the US border! Thanks to an increased military presence, the number of non-Mexican migrants trying to get into the US has dropped by more than two thirds in the last two years. In the meantime, we Canadians are doing our part to fend off the Arctic from grave threats to our sovereignty, such as Denmark. The result is what some are calling "Fortress America", one big hyper-militarized North American union with a continental security perimeter that allows only money and commercial goods (and the rich white men who control them) to travel in and out.

We also know, thanks to excellent work done by progressive interest groups such as the Council of Canadians, that the North American Leaders Summit is being used by the three states to further the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). As a post-9-11 corollary to NAFTA, the SPP has extremely serious implications for Canadian sovereignty - and yet we sit and watch it happening to us like a herd of cows lining up for the slaughter house. We already know the ways that NAFTA allows corporations to sue our government when it enacts health or environmental laws that cut into corporate profits (like when Canada was sued for $251 million by Ethyl Corp for banning a carcinogenic compound). NAFTA also locks in a proportion of the energy resources that we sell to the United States, making it extremely difficult to reduce energy exports for environmental purposes or to help deal with national shortages. The SPP takes it even further with clauses on continental regulation of agriculture and natural resources, prompting the Council of Canadians to argue that the SPP "will make independent Canadian policies on agriculture, the environment and energy impossible". Oh, and speaking of the environment, the people who brought us the SPP are also calling for an five-fold increase in energy production from the Alberta tar sands in order to help satiate America's desire for stable energy security (read "overconsumption problem"). Unfortunately, the tar sands gigaproject is perhaps the worst environmental travesty in human history. The very idea of using the equivalent of one barrel of oil and five barrels of water just to produce three barrels of tar sands crude is abominable.

If I may sum up my concerns in a final run-on question: What the fuck is our Prime Minister actually doing at these secret closed-door meetings with Bush and Calderon, and how many chips of Canadian sovereignty is he throwing on the poker table, and most importantly, why haven’t we Canadians heard anything about this from him in our publicly-funded media? Even a visit to the Conservative Party’s website yields nothing about the summit other than a few pictures of Harper, Calderon and Bush in their photo-op poses, shaking the hands of the few rare children who have actually been somewhat reintegrated into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

What did our Prime Minister have to say about regime change in Cuba and Venezuela? I want to read what our Prime Minister said about this in the news, not just an article mentioning that he will be talking about it! Don't we have a right to know how our tax money is involved in the long standing history of American imperialism in Latin America?

It is for these reasons that I am encouraging friends and family to demand more from our media, but more importantly, demand better from our elected officials. It's like we've forgotten that they're supposed to represent us and that we have the right to throw them in the garbage if they fail to do so. Well if one thing is clear from the New Orleans summit, it is that HARPER HAS FAILED, yet again, to act in the interests of the majority of Canadians. It's time we step in and stop the Conservative Party's secrecy and corporate cronyism, and bring in someone inspiring who wants to build a better world!

[Anecdote] Farmed Salmon

Here's a quick but true anecdote I felt compelled to write about:

Last weekend I was in Vancouver, helping to run a workshop for a non-profit organization I volunteer for. The workshop site was at a community centre in White Rock, right next to the beach. I was looking forward to the warmer climate of the West Coast, a chance to breath in the sea air, and see some flowers in spring. But more importantly, I wanted to get a hold of some fresh seafood from the Pacific.

With this in mind, my fellow workshop facilitator and I arrived at the site early with the intention of hitting up a local establishment for lunch and a cold beer. The setting was great - from our table we could look out at the ocean to the horizon. A woodstove radiated heat that protected us from the cool ocean winds.

The menu consisted of a few different sea food options. Of interest to me were the smoked salmon entrees and the cod or halibut fish and chips. I decided to go with the salmon pasta. As we waited for our server, our conversation turned to climate change, and this got me feeling somewhat guilty about my flight out West. I prefer not to travel anywhere by airplane, and if I must do so I prefer to make it a long trip - but here I was a culprit in the causing of global warming. So when our orders were taken, I wanted to double check that my meal choice was indeed to most local option, to see if I could at least cut back on the distance my food had traveled to get to my plate - so I asked the waitress. "Where does the salmon come from?"

She didn't know off hand, though she sheepishly admitted that she knew it was not wild salmon, but farmed salmon. She went to ask the chef, and we she returned, she ashamedly explained that the salmon was from a farm in Ontario. ONTARIO! Here I was sitting less than a 100 metres from the Pacific ocean ordering a fish that I imaged would be from the area, and it turns out that the damn thing was raised in a pool back in Ontario.

The moment of astonishment lingered long enough for me to note yet another symptom of our diseased society: that we are so incompetent at managing one of the most important components of human survival and development: our food. There are so many problems with the way we've structured our world of food, ranging from accessibility to nutritional value to overconsumption to locality and our relationship with it.

This is a big issue, which hopefully I will confront in various components through certain blog entries. For now, let me use this short anecdote to reference a new term that I will use to characterize the demise of our society through backwards thinking and lack of thought. From here on, I shall call the "the disease".

It goes without saying that I took back my salmon order. Finally realizing that nothing on the menu was local, I opted for the halibut - which came from Alaska.

[Time Wasting] Flags and Masts

I can not think of a better way to waste time and public funds than spending question period arguing over whether or not the Canadian flag above the Peace Tower should be lowered to half-mast on one day of the year only - Remembrance Day - or on any day of the year that a Canadian soldier dies.

Yet this is what our uninspiring, idiotic political representatives have been talking about ad nosium today. Read the CBC story here. Honestly, is there nothing better to talk about in our national parliament? Is there not a problem of growing inequality to address? Is there no concern over the loss of sovereignty from the SPP deal our government is signing behind closed doors? Shouldn't there be a debate about how the government of Canada is going to reach its international commitments to climate change?

Apparently, the Liberals put forward this motion (and they are supported by the other opposition parties) to honour the fallen soldiers in Afghanistan - on each day that they die. But the Conservatives (supported by the Canadian Legion and the National Veterans Association) say that doing this dishonors all of the previous Canadian soldiers who died that only received one day of flag honoring - Remembrance Day. They say the flag should only be lowered on the one official day of soldier honoring of the year.

I can not believe the state of political degeneration that we are witnessing. Is it just me or would it perhaps be more helpful to have a political debate over whether Canada should continue its illegal military incursion in Afghanistan? Ironically, therein lies the simplest solution to this moronic debate: Bring our fucking troops home! Then we would only have to lower the flag ONCE any way - during Remembrance Day, because our soldiers wouldn't be getting blown to pieces by roadside bombs at an average rate of once a month (72 Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan between beginning of 2002 and end of 2007 = 72 months = 1 per month)!

Indeed, that might be the most logical solution... but I prefer this one in addition*: We should put up THREE flags on top of the peace tower to appease both nationalist factions above and anti-nationalists like me. The first would remain at full mast every day of the year except Remembrance Day, when it would be lowered to honor the soldiers who died previously. The second flag would be lowered to half mast every time a Canadian died while trying to ensure Canada's "freedom and economic prosperity" - this would include workers who die on the job. The third flag pole would be without a flag - a disintegrating rag of discolored red and white cloth which will one day tear itself from the remaining vestige of fabric, only to flutter downward like a Sea King helicopter, spiraling downward and downward, into the eternal flame. This flag would honor all of the people who have died as a result of the actions by the Canadian government, that we never hear about. It would represent the thousands of Afghan civilians that have died thanks to our mission there (oh and by the way, there is no official count of the dead Afghan civilians - NOBODY HAS BOTHERED TO COUNT - I challenge you to find a single organization that has kept track of the death count and prove me wrong). This missing flag would also represent the deaths of homeless and poverty-stricken Canadians - who die from hunger and cold in a world of plenty. It would represent the deaths of all the disappeared women across the country who we have not heard about because they were the kind of women who we don't want to hear about, and it would represent the genocide of an entire continent full of First Nations peoples - the genocide that this country is founded upon. Maybe that way we'd be able to get past silly debates about when to bring a flag to half mast, and we'd be reminded to start worrying about more important affairs.

* I know this might offend some... but honestly, what the fuck am I supposed to think when I read that such ridiculous bantering is passing for democracy - all the while an illegal war continues to get renewed - a war based on false pretenses and lies. What are the Afghans getting out of this (besides dead family members, continuing poverty, the Taliban resurgence and increasing danger from the burgeoning opium trade) - new bridges in Kabul? Give me a fucking break.