Items from the Ontario Division
A quarterly educational Newsletter.
December 2011
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Book Review
Tar Sands : Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
By Andrew Nikiforuk Greystone Books, 2008
It isn't a pretty picture. Each chapter describes a horror show in detail. The extensive list of sources indicates the amount of research that went into the writing of this book and there are maps showing the extent of the tar sands and the network of present and future pipelines. Unfortunately, the index is inadequate.
The author is a journalist who writes for several magazines and newspapers and has been awarded eight National Magazine Awards and an Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy. He has written several books and won the Governor-General's Award for Nonfiction in 2002. He has lived in Calgary for many years.
We hear much about the tar sands: the excessive use of water, the contribution to pollution, the destruction of trees and farmland, the depletion of natural gas reserves, the fact that the major part of production goes to the U.S. and the rest of Canada imports foreign oil. All this is covered with facts and figures. What we might not be as aware of is the human factor. Fort McMurray and the surrounding area is over-populated and there is not the infrastructure to support the crowding. There is a shortage of accommodation, hence, house prices have sky-rocketed. People sleep in tents or several to a room with limited bathroom facilities and there is still homelessness. There is a high percentage of divorce, drug abuse, gambling and traffic collisions. Medical services are over-taxed, recreation facilities are lacking, the school dropout rate is high.
Money and greed rule.
The effects of the tars sands reach beyond Fort McMurray - in Calgary there are more troubled persons on the streets, cases of a rare cancer have surfaced in Fort Chipewyan, and upgraders and refineries are being built at the expense of prime farmland near Fort Saskatchewan.
Any regulation of the growth and control of the area is either ineffective or non-existent. It is corporate anarchy. "The resource curse has invaded the North, once strong and free" claims the author. "In the absence of proper safeguards and transparency, hydro-carbons and democracy mix no better here than they do in Nigeria, Russia or Texas." At the end of the book, the author offers "twelve steps to energy sanity". Step. 5 presents three reforms to "subvert ... the erosion of democratic life fostered by rapid tar sands development."
It is easy to let stories about the tar sands float by one in the course of everyday living but reading this book puts them front and centre and makes it difficult to avoid. It's an important book for Canadians to read. The DVD Tar sands : Canada for sale is a good accompaniment to it. Both are available in the Toronto Public Library.
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