Economics

Alta. road dubbed Death Highway
Jim Farrell, CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, December 28, 2007

EDMONTON -- Lucille Cloutier says her brother would still be alive if the road to Fort McMurray, Alta. had been twinned in the past year.

"Last year they only put one construction crew on to work on 240 kilometres of road," said Cloutier, whose 41-year-old brother Guy was killed Nov. 8 while trying to avoid an out-of-control vehicle. "If they had put 10 road crews on the job, it would be twinned by now and my brother would still be alive."

Canadian National acquires oil sands rail line

Canadian National Railway (CN) has acquired the Athabasca Northern Railway in Alberta for $25.3 million and plans to invest as much as $136 million to upgrade the rail link to the oil sands region of Northern Alberta. Athabasca Northern, which runs from Boyle, Alberta, to near Fort McMurray, Alberta, had been owned by Cando Contracting, but Reuters reports it was threatened with abandonment because of deteriorating tracks.

December 28, 2007
Greenwashing Energy Crops
Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going

By JIM GOODMAN

After The Techno-Fix
by Peter Goodchild
Countercurrents.org (December 22 2007)

"Even when grappling with the idea of economic disintegration, Americans
attempt to cast it in terms of technological or economic progress:
eco-villages, sustainable development, energy efficiency and so on.
Under the circumstances, such compulsive techno-optimism seems
maladaptive." -- Dmitry Orlov, "Our Village"

The path beyond petroleum begins by considering five principles: that
alternative sources of energy are insufficient; that hydrocarbons,

November 22, 2007
Letting the Wildcat Out of the Bag
Alberta's Averted Energy Tradesworker General Strike and the Fall Wildcat Walk-Outs

by Stuart Neatby

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

Temporary Labour or Disposable Workers?
Foreign labourers are brought to the tar sands, but are easily sent home

by Tim Murphy

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

"So you believe in the free market?"

"Well, it's not so much that I believe in the free market, it's that I demand logical consistency out of those who demand the free market," answers Jason Foster, director of Policy Analysis for the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL).

Aboriginal title at risk in British Columbia
Ann Rogers

Freedom Socialist Newspaper, Vol. 28, No. 6 December 2007 — January, 2008

Almost all of British Columbia in Canada is unceded indigenous territory. Its land and resources have not been given up by treaty, but occupied and stolen. In recent decades, a growing sovereignty movement, especially among young people, has offered fierce resistance to the continued theft and corporate development that threatens Native peoples’ means of survival and existence as nations.

Translation, in short: Royal Dutch Shell (Albian Sands) plans to expand as much as the physics allows and beyond that which (current) labour markets have room for. This all well-timed to move along lock step with the expansion of Temporary Foreign Worker programs, and in tandem with the reduction in labour and environmental standards being "phased in" under the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement" [Tilma]. These plans are to create new vast mines, expand the upgraders, blow the Muskeg River Mine into the stratosphere and much, much more.

[from: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/12/388120.html]

It hasn’t been an easy week for the organisers of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award and the Bristol Museum, or their sponsor and proud wildlife destroyer— sugardaddy Shell Oil Company. All week, concerned individuals from around Bristol have been exposing the truth about Shell and the public institutions who are helping to greenwash them. $%@* SHELL!

Ottawa too partisan on emissions
Dec 17, 2007 04:30 AM
Ian Urquhart

Under the proposed federal emissions trading program, tar sands developers will be eligible for up to $700 million in "carbon credits" – even as they increase their greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, Ontario will get nothing for closing its coal-fired plants, thereby eliminating about half of the province's greenhouse gas emissions.