Social Impacts. Overnight injections of migrant workers will not build healthy communities and can have severely adverse impacts on existing communities, especially those of indigenous nations on their traditional lands. Such development brings vices and long term displacement too often. Drugs, alcohol and associated violence spreads. Hunting becomes difficult when the land is threatened, leading to a further loss of culture and tradition. In towns like Fort McMurray there is no planning for the future, but merely consumption in the present. However transient the individuals may be, the populations will not leave, as “development” takes on a logic all its own. All levels of run away development are subordinate to that development, not social need.
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.
[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.
Samantha Power / samantha@vueweekly.com
http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=7708
Calculating the amount of sulfur dioxide in the air is not something
many Edmontonians think to do. But Maureen and Dennis Chichak make
sure they check it at their home on a daily basis.
The Chichak home is located just outside of Fort Saskatchewan, in the
330 square kilometres known as the Industrial Heartland, and with
their neighbours having grown over three decades to include Shell,
Agrium and Dow, they’re regularly exposed to sulfur dioxide, benzene
Fargo mayor says he had hoped for pipeline support from other cities
Andrea Domaskin, The Forum
Published Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Mayor Dennis Walaker says Fargo didn’t get much help from other cities when it protested an oil pipeline that would run near Lake Ashtabula and the Sheyenne River.
“I don’t want this thing to blow out of proportion by any stretch of the imagination,” Walaker said today. “I was hoping we would get more support, but we didn’t.”
Fargo city commissioners approved a settlement Monday with TransCanada Keystone Pipeline.
Mackenzie partners see Ottawa aid
But No Financial Pledge
Jon Harding, Financial Post Published: Wednesday, December 19, 2007
CALGARY - Partners in the Mackenzie Gas Project have asked Ottawa to treat their stalled megaproject like Newfoundland's Hibernia project or the Syncrude Canada Ltd. oilsands mine in Alberta, both of which got federal support.
Fidel’s message to the Roundtable
Havana, December 17, 2007
Dear Randy:
I listened to the entire “Roundtable” program on Thursday the 13th without missing a single second of it. The news about the Bali Conference highlighted by Rogelio Polanco, editor-in-chief of Juventud Rebelde, confirms the importance of the international agreements and why they must be taken very seriously.
Prentice pledges speedy review of new gas project plan
Last Updated: Monday, December 17, 2007 | 2:18 PM CT
CBC News
Federal Industry Minister Jim Prentice has promised proponents of the beleaguered Mackenzie gas project he will review their latest financial plan as quickly as possible.
Prentice met with representatives of Imperial Oil, its parent ExxonMobil, Shell Canada, ConocoPhillips and the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, composed of the Inuvialuit, the Gwich'in and the Sahtu First Nations in Calgary on Friday.
Prentice reviewing Mackenzie Valley pipeline financial plan
Jon Harding, Financial Post Published: Sunday, December 16, 2007
The proposed pipeline would run through the Mackenzie Valley.HO/AFP/Getty ImagesThe proposed pipeline would run through the Mackenzie Valley.
CALGARY -- Canada's Industry Minister Jim Prentice is reviewing a financial plan submitted to him Friday by the backers of the $16.2-billion Mackenzie Gas Project.
