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.
VANCOUVER 2010: 'IT'S NOT A GAME'
Poverty Olympics spotlight Downtown Eastside
February 9, 2009
VANCOUVER -- They have their own Olympic mascots - Itchy the Bedbug, Creepy the Cockroach and Chewy the Rat - their own torch, made from a toilet plunger, and a catchy marketing phrase: "End poverty. It's not a game."
But what the Poverty Olympics doesn't have is money - and that was the main point being underscored yesterday by a celebration/protest march through the Downtown Eastside.
Syncrude faces charges over death of ducks
By Scott Haggett
Feb 9, 2009.
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - The province of Alberta and the Canadian laid charges against the Syncrude Canada Ltd joint venture after 500 ducks died after landing on a tailings pond at its oil sands operation in April.
The province alleges Syncrude, the world's biggest oil sands producer, failed to have appropriate deterrents in place to keep the ducks from landing on the toxic waste-water pond.
Imperial backs oil sands
$3.88B profit helps drive Kearl project
By Claudia Cattaneo, Calgary Bureau Chief, Financial Post
January 30, 2009
In the thick of the global economic downturn, Imperial Oil Ltd., Canada's largest oil company, posted another record annual profit and said it's increasing spending by 60% this year as it moves forward with the Kearl oil sands project.
UTS Energy Rejects Total’s Offer as ‘Inadequate’
By Jim Polson
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- UTS Energy Corp.’s board said Total SA’s C$617 million ($506 million) offer for the Canadian oil- sands explorer is “inadequate” and recommended shareholders reject the bid by Europe’s third-largest petroleum company.
The board formed a special committee to “pursue various initiatives with the objective of maximizing value for all shareholders,” Calgary-based UTS said today in a statement.
Foreign workers sacked from Olympics site
* Published: 02 February 2009 09:18
The police have arrested 136 illegal workers on the Olympic Park
site in Stratford, East London, in the nine months from April to
December 2008.
Of the 136 people arrested on suspicion of working in the UK without
permission 16 have been prosecuted, of which 11 were removed from the UK.
A further 19 workers have been granted leave to remain in the UK based
on new applications to the Home Office.
The remainder either have applications awaiting decisions or are
Fort Chip cancer rates higher than expected: report
February 6, 2009
CBC News
The number of cancer cases in Fort Chipewyan, Alta., is higher than expected, says a report from Alberta Health Services released Friday.
Fifty-one cancers in 47 people were found in Fort Chipewyan between 1995 and 2006, a dozen more than the 39 cancers that were expected, and the incidences of some cancers warrant more followup, the report said.
Petrocan CEO is on the hot seat
Andrew Willis,
February 2, 2009
Welcome to the hot seat, Ron Brenneman.
Petro-Canada's CEO faces a full-scale shareholder revolt in coming weeks, as the much-watched Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan leads a campaign for better performance from the former Crown corporation.
Mr. Brenneman must defend a strategy that's seen Petrocan build a diverse collection of assets, a number of which are yielding relatively low returns, at a time when rivals for focusing their operations.
Tar sands-related cancer study to be released today
edmontonjournal.com
February 6, 2009
EDMONTON - A study of the incidence of cancer in the northern Alberta community of Fort Chipewyan is to be released Friday at noon.
Dr. Tony Fields of Alberta Health Services is to discuss the findings at Edmonton's Cross Cancer Institute.
Fort Chipewyan is downstream from oilsands development, which some in the area have blamed for higher than normal rates of rare cancer. The study was meant to determine whether that was the case.
Football Field Sized Trucks Head to Canadian Tar Sands with Superloads
Written by Jennifer Lance
February 1st, 2009
People in Montana have been noticing some big rigs on their highways, really big rigs.
Special trucks the size of a football field are carrying equipment cargo in “superloads” to the Canadian Tar Sands for oil extraction.
The Billings Gazette reports on the massive size of the trucks:
Low oil prices force Devon writedown
Us$6.8B Loss; Will continue oil sands development
Claudia Cattaneo, Calgary Bureau Chief,
Financial Post
February 05, 2009
Low oil prices at the end of December forced U. S. oil and gas producer Devon Energy Corp. to write down all its thermal oil sands assets in Alberta, contributing to a loss of US$6.82-billion in the fourth quarter, the largest in its history.
