How To Tell Spin From Fact: Tar Sands Truths

Andrew Nikiforuk tell us how the Canadian Government twist facts to minimize our understanding of the Tar Sands:

SPIN: The Alberta government minimizes the amount of climate-changing gases coming from the tar sands by saying that tar sands represent only 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

FACT: Everything looks small on a global scale. The tar sands now represent 4% of Canada’s total emissions and will account for 16% by 2020. This means that the tar sands now produce more greenhouse gases than many individual countries: Switzerland, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Peru, Ecuador and Panama. By 2020, the tar sands will even exceed the annual emissions of oil-producing states such as Kuwait and Norway.

SPIN: The Alberta government refers to the tar sands as an example of "sustainable development."

FACT: By definition, the exploitation of a finite resource can never be sustainable. In 2008, the Advertising Standards Authority of the United Kingdom ruled that a Shell advertisement for the tar sands breached its code for "substantiation" and "truthfulness." In 2008, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded that ‘the cumulative impact of both new and existing projects on the environment is not properly assessed’.

SPIN: Executives and federal politicians often refer to the tar sands as "an anchor of prosperity: and driver of the Canadian economy.

FACT: By 2020, the Canadian government estimates that the tar sands will contribute $1-trillion to the Canadian economy and will enrich federal coffers with more than $50-billion in corporate taxes. The federal government consistently makes more money from the tar sands than does the Alberta government.

Yet by transforming the nation into a de facto petro state, the tar sands threaten to hollow out the national economy and diminish the nation’s manufacturing sector. Unlike Norway, Canada does not have a sovereign fund, nor does it separate tar sands revenues from other revenue. In 2008, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development recommended that Canada set up an oil fund.