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.
CERI warns on Alberta oil sands investment
Claudia Cattaneo, Financial Post
February 05, 2009
CALGARY -- The global credit crunch and collapse of oil prices have cancelled the Alberta oil sands boom, resulting in a loss in investment of $97-billion to $241-billion in the next decade that will be felt throughout the Canadian economy, the Canadian Energy Research Institute said in a report Thursday.
Suncor ordered to test Athabasca
Oilsands giant discharged too much grease and oil into river Tuesday
By CAROL CHRISTIAN
McMurray Today staff
Suncor Energy is testing the quality of the Athabasca River after it discharged more grease and oil than allowed into the river Tuesday.
TransCanada told to continue expansion
Oil companies want pipeline built on schedule
Carrie Tait, Financial Post
February 04, 2009
TransCanada Corp., after suggesting in October that it would be willing to delay construction on a pipeline expansion project if its shippers so desired because of the tanking credit and energy markets, immediately took a little heat from its customers.
Pipeline would bring tankers into B.C. inlets
By Andrew Findlay
Georgia Straight
February 5, 2009
Where the waters of Caamano Sound squeeze into Whale Channel, four humpback whales circle in slow, languorous patterns. The whales dive, and the water above returns to calm save for a few wind ripples. Suddenly a single whale reemerges in a burst of bubbling water, mouth agape, its great baleen plates exposed and scooping up a massive mouthful of krill and small fish.
U.S. military to assist in Vancouver
VANCOUVER -- The United States military will be cooperating with its
Canadian counterparts to provide security for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Canadian Forces officials said Monday that the combined operations fall
under the provisions of joint command NORAD, said Canadian Rear Admiral
Tyrone Pile, commander of Joint Task Force Games.
"They have to be involved," Pile said. "We share a common border with them."
Pile said the U.S. will contribute Coast Guard and Navy vessels but there
will be no American troops involved on Canadian soil.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Peak Oil, And a World On The Brink
By Reggie Abaca, January 29th, 2009
Market Rap
The election of Democrat Barack Obama has managed to calm the wary nerves of those who feared the idea of an expanded worldwide war. There is a sense of calm on that front and an entirely new focus on the devastating economic crisis of today. Even investors in the crude oil (OIL) market are, for now, sitting back and taking a breath, perhaps caught up in the wonder of America's first African American president as they also stand shell-shocked by job losses and miserable economic data.
"And Then Let's Go For That Justice" Part II
Indigenous women demand respect in Ottawa
by Maya Rolbin-Ghanie
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
The February 14 memorial march in Vancouver's Downtown East Side is held annually to remember and honour missing women and support their families and friends. Photo: Dawn Paley
In honour of missing and murdered indigenous women, the Walk4Justice began in Vancouver on June 21, Aboriginal Day, and ended with a rally of about 250 on Parliament Hill on September 15.
"And Then Let's Go for that Justice" Part I
The Walk4Justice
by Maya Rolbin-Ghanie
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
Some of the many Indigenous women and men who walked across Canada to draw attention to systemic abuses against First Nations women. Photo: Maya Rolbin-Ghanie
This article is part one of two on the Walk4Justice.
Alta. delta gets special international designation
by Margaret Munro, Canwest News Service
February 3, 2009
The Peace-Athabasca Delta in northern Alberta was declared one of the Western Hemisphere's most extraordinary and endangered places Tuesday by a leading environmental group that named the delta a "BioGem" it will campaign to save.
New rules govern cleanup of tailings ponds
KATHERINE O'NEILL
February 4, 2009
EDMONTON -- A controversial byproduct of oil-sands operations at the centre of an environmental scandal last spring involving 500 dead ducks will be subjected to tougher rules by Alberta's energy regulator.
Tailings ponds - the toxic, watery waste left over from bitumen processing - must be cleaned up and better managed under new targets and timelines for oil-sands producers.
