It is falsely assumed that big projects equal lots of jobs and, by extension, labour peace if not outright satisfaction. The size and scope of the tarsands means for incredibly dangerous work conditions-- some fatalities at the plants have already occurred. The products seldom get their "value added" in union-run locations, instead the heavy bitumen can be shipped to many different locations across North America for refining, denying benefits to the union. However, the Union does not represent the "guest worker", now being imported in increasing numbers as legislation is changed to make access easier, the term of exploitation last longer, without any new efforts or pathways to deciding to stay after helping tear up the earth.
Oil industry studies Harper's surprise bitumen pledge
Dave Cooper, edmontonjournal.com
Published: Friday, September 26, 2008
EDMONTON - The Alberta government and the oil industry are studying Prime Minister Stephen Harper's surprise election pledge this morning to place restrictions on the export of raw bitumen.
Premier Ed Stelmach is expected to respond this afternoon.
Anti-Olympic efforts come to Edmonton
SCOTT HARRIS / scott@vueweekly.com
September 24, 2008
While it is still 18 months before athletes competing in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games start arriving on Canada’s West Coast, last week’s closing ceremonies to wrap up the Beijing Paralympic Games signalled that the eyes of the Olympic-watching world would now fully shift focus to Canada.
Portrait of a boomtown
Oil-sands projects bring big money, big headaches to remote Alberta city
By ED KEMMICK Of The Gazette Staff [Montana]
FORT McMURRAY, Alberta - On the outskirts of this town in northern Alberta, a billboard is plastered with the logos of a dozen or more trade unions. Underneath it reads: "This is what a union town looks like. Welcome to Fort McMurray."
This is also what a boom town looks like: heavy traffic everywhere, buildings going up all over town, help-wanted signs on every other marquee. Some people have taken to calling it Fort McMoney.
Now Is the Time to Resist Wall Street's Shock Doctrine
Published on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 by the Huffington Post
by Naomi Klein
I wrote The Shock Doctrine in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place...).
A sea change in immigration, met by silence on the hustings
Nicholas Keung
Lesley Ciarula Taylor
Immigration Reporters // Toronto Star
When politicians talk about temporary foreign workers, which isn't often,
the Conservatives see them as the SWAT team of the global economy, the
Liberals as not conducive to nation-building, and the New Democrats as
migrants whose wages are exploitative and families fractured.
But no less than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development has decided temporary labour migration is the global issue of
Sulphur costs rise at Syncrude
Herald News Services
September 20, 2008
Oilsands - Syncrude Canada Ltd.'s cost for installing equipment to cut emissions of deadly sulphur dioxide has more than doubled to $1.6 billion, the joint-venture's biggest shareholder said Friday.
Canadian Oil Sands Trust, which owns 36.7 per cent of Syncrude, said the cost of the project to retrofit two upgraders with equipment to cut output of sulphur and other particles by 60 per cent had risen from its previous $772-million estimate because of delays and rising labour and material costs.
Evaporating credit to hurt smaller oilsands players
Consolidation expected amid lack of capital
Shaun Polczer, Calgary Herald
Published: Friday, September 19, 2008
Ongoing credit woes roiling global financial markets will make a big impact on smaller operators and speed up consolidation in the cash-heavy oilsands sector, observers said Thursday.
US Refinery Investments Align With Oil Sands Supplies to 2015
Posted on: Thursday, 18 September 2008
By Sword, Lindsay
THE CONTAGION SPREADS
ALBERTA: As crude prices fall and banks tighten the purse strings, producers forced to weigh their options
NORVAL SCOTT AND DAVID EBNER
September 17, 2008
CALGARY and VANCOUVER -- As the U.S. banking crisis boosts borrowing costs and crude prices plummet on global demand fears, the economics of building oil sands projects are coming under pressure.
2006 Boston ASPO: The Canadian tar sands
Whiskey & Gunpowder / Energy Bulletin
November 13, 2006
By Byron W. King
Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear, And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear; With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold, A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold.
