The Alberta oilsands will allow Canada to stand up to the U.S. on everything from Arctic sovereignty to rewriting NAFTA, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said Wednesday.
Ignatieff told a town hall meeting in a Gastown pub that Canadians are just starting to understand “how powerful the oilsands make us.”
He told an overflow audience crammed into the pub’s tiny back room that he toured the project in August.
“It is awe-inspiring,” he said, adding that the controversial project boasts enough oil to last the rest of this century.
“We’ve got oil reserves there that are just staggering in size. It changes everything about our economic future. It changes everything about Canada’s importance in the world.”
Ignatieff’s comments came in response to a question from a woman in the audience, who used the term “tarsands” – a description used by opponents of the project.
“This is where a chill falls over the room because everybody expects me to say they’re terrible and shut them down,” said Ignatieff. “Absolutely not.”
Using the term “oilsands” – the description preferred by the industry – Ignatieff said the oil will allow Canada to stand up to incoming U.S. president Barack Obama.
“But the challenge is it’s dirty and we’ve got to clean it up,” he added.
Aboriginal health issues in Fort Chipewyan must be addressed, he said, adding that the lack of transportation, housing and sewage in Fort McMurray is a scandal.
Ignatieff added that Liberals must avoid upsetting Albertans.
“Energy policy in our country is a national unity issue,” he said. “The dumbest thing you can do – and no Liberal must ever do it – is run against Alberta, make Alberta the enemy, isolate Alberta.”
Ignatieff told the meeting, organized by the B.C. Young Liberals, that former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion’s Green Shift platform “killed” the party in last October’s federal election.
“Let’s be honest,” he said. “We got killed at the doorstep with the Green Shift.”
Ignatieff praised Dion for “putting environmental sustainability at the centre of what this party stands for.”
But Dion’s “experiment in putting a price on carbon” through a carbon tax angered voters, Ignatieff said.
“What happened was, everybody who ran a tractor, everybody who ran a boat, everybody who drove a truck for a living said, ‘There’s only one thing I understand about this – you’ve just added to my cost of living.’ ”
The Liberal party has to convince voters that becoming more energy efficient will make them more economically competitive, he said.
The party needs to tell workers “Your job depends on being energy efficient and as green as we can get you to be,” Ignatieff said.
Tom Barrett is a contributing editor at The Tyee.
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G West
3 years ago
oil sands???
Let’s not succumb to politically correct newspeak, please.
They are 'TAR' sands - full of bitumen.
The attempt to rework what's going on here with bleached and sanctified language is oppressive and dishonest.
rangergord
3 years ago
Changing Everything
Micheal Ignatieff is a breath of fresh air. Not sure I am going to vote liberal yet but he has my attention. I wanted to see Girard Kennedy come out on top the last time around but maybe Micheal is the best we can expect at this point. I liked Bob Rae too but he comes with baggage unfortunately.
The carbon tax was a blunder for sure. I think Micheal has what it takes to thump Stephen Harper given some time to rework the federal liberal party.
Dr Alexander
3 years ago
Funny how changing one word can paint a different picture
I'm with G West on this one. When I went to college in Calgary in the 70's it was always known as the tar sands.
I lived in California too. No mention of changing La Brea Tar Pits to La Brea Oil Pits.
In all seriousness, the use of "higher approval rating" replacement words has been in vogue for centuries and continues to this day.
For example, there is talk of Steven Harper changing his name to Steven Fuzzysweatervest
realisticman
3 years ago
Pitching the Tar
Naturally occurring or crude bitumen is a sticky, tar-like form of petroleum which is so thick and heavy that it must be heated or diluted before it will flow.
The word 'tar' refers to the black viscous material obtained from the destructive distillation of coal and is chemically distinct from bitumen
Diluted bitumen (diluted with naphtha to make it flow in pipelines) is known as dilbit in the Canadian petroleum industry, while bitumen upgraded to synthetic crude oil is known as syncrude and syncrude blended with bitumen as synbit.
Tar sand deposits contain various mixtures of sand (or rock) with bitumen or heavy crude oil rather than tar.
No matter what some say, to use the incorrect term 'tar' is to pander to some niche cranks that somehow like the word because they imagine it to be more derogatory than the word 'oil'.
The good news is, of course, that Ignatieff has now clearly stated that he is not prepared to risk national unity and the alienation of Alberta in promoting some silly enviro-panic and he realizes too that the need to develop the oil sands is crucial for Canada.
realisticman
3 years ago
It's the Pits.
Those tar pits behind the L.A. County Museum are miss-named too.
The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles) actually contain asphalt, not tar, and are more accurately known as asphalt pits.
G West
3 years ago
You 'missed' the point realisticman
Check back in the record a few years; the references then were all to 'tar' sands. The change in nomenclature and the intention behind it would have been obvious to your countryman, Eric Blair.
We're not talking about science, we're talking about the abuse of the English language...along the lines of Stephen Harper saying he had a 'mandate' to defy the will of Parliament...remember King Charles?
It's an attempt to prettify and dissemble -like most everything that comes out of Alberta these days.
Apparently you just don't 'get it'.
Dr Alexander does.
BrianWhite
3 years ago
Iggie is either lieing, or misinformed or just plain lieing!
"“It is awe-inspiring,” he said, adding that the controversial project boasts enough oil to last the rest of this century". To last WHO the rest of the century? Canada? At present rates of consumption? It is awe inspiring that he can lie through his teeth like that.
Iggie now shows himself to be just another monster like Harper.
I have a link to a video below, and you need to look at it. Its the real life situation. The supply and consumption truth that lieing politicians refuse to deal with.
I will not even bother to argue about CO2 causing the oceans to go anoxic, (which will kill us quicker than global warming).
Part 6 of Dr. Albert A. Bartlett's presentation on "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3y7UlHdhAU
This is something that no doubt Iggie is aware of him being an "intelectual" and all. It is the very science of the systems we live in.
laurentm
3 years ago
Tar sands impacts are untolerable
Ignatieff's comments on tar sands are pathetic. We must get serious about de-carbonizing our energy production, and so within the next decades, starting right now. How? Boosting development in wind, solar, tidal, hydro, and last but not least geothermal. It is lunacy to want, again and again, go after all oil drops there are underground. This is retarded. It's not only tar that is in the sand, it's Ignatieff's head.
rac
3 years ago
A Breath of Polluted Air
He just lost my vote. The tarsands are a global disgrace. They aren't even doing Alberta that much good at the moment.
realisticman
3 years ago
Pop Terminology.
As opposed to the correct term. I can't imagine why 'tar' sounds worse than 'oil'. Whatever! I'm just saying the correct word should be used. It's a chemical fact. We don't call 'salt-flats' 'sugar-flats' just because they look like sugar and we don't call 'apple orchards' 'tree orchards', just because they look like lots of trees.
No gluten is contained in rice (even the incorrectly named, glutinous rice).
Poison Ivy, Toxicodendron radicans, has plenty of the closely-related, and similarly functioning Toxicodendron diversilobum, or Poison Oak as it is commonly known. Both plants are misnamed. They are neither Ivy nor Oak, but actually woody vines.
Children say that there's smoke coming from the kettle but in fact it's steam.
Anyway, Iggy knows best, “Let’s be honest,” he said. “We got killed at the doorstep with the Green Shift.”
zalm
3 years ago
I can't imagine
can't imagine why 'tar' sounds worse than 'oil'.
I can't imagine either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Tar_Ponds
North of Hope
3 years ago
tar sands are foul
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,
"Oil sands, tar sands, or extra heavy oil is a type of bitumen deposit. Tar sands is a colloquialism for what are technically described as bituminous sands, and commonly known as oil sands or in Venezuela, extra heavy oil. The sands are naturally occurring mixtures of sand or clay, water and an extremely dense and viscous form of petroleum called bitumen. They are found in large amounts in many countries throughout the world, but are found in extremely large quantities in Canada and Venezuela.[1]"
Copper_River_Red
3 years ago
Not all Alaskans dialed in on this
It bears repeating that not all of us in Alaska are behind our wingnut governor and her blind allegiance to the Cheney/Bush plan for the further destruction of Alberta.
Marsden did a damn good job with Stupid to the Last Drop and I only wish those so far non-corrupt legislators in Alaska had read it before buying into Palin's TransCanada deal with Kvisle and Stelmbach.
If this looming depression does not put us on a wartime footing to make the transition to a non-polluting economy then I guess we deserve our fat fate. Overpopulated with the 3rd world clamoring for the same standards we were temporarily granted (1950's to 2007)
and the lights are dimming on the petroleum party.
We must get beyond this madness and I will continue to fight Alaska's gas going to the Tar Sands.
Our birds on the Copper River Delta are Your birds too.
G West
3 years ago
Thanks zalm
Some things just have to be spelled out I guess.
I can think of several other reasons why the Alberta boys would not want their little world class mess to be labeled as a 'tar' baby....Perhaps the r’man, coming as he does from “Great” Britain, isn’t familiar with the term or its connections.
Nice to hear from someone in Alaska - welcome.
Lloyd MacIlquham
3 years ago
Ignatieff's apparent position on Oil Sands
If I recall correctly, Harper when he first became PM went around saying that Canada was an ‘oil superpower’. Critics pointed out that in fact the oil sands are privately owned by foreign entities, that the Federal Government has little more than their powers with respect to exporting (which are severely limited by agreements with the US, the major, if not the only, foreign recipient of our oil) and there are serious constitutional issues regarding this. The conclusion, it seems to me, was that Harper was out of touch on the realities of this issue and likely being motivated by the right wing extremist - “in your face” - approach.
Also, the Alberta Premier and Harper are apparently using oil exports to the US to exert pressure on Obama to modify his position on Global Warming issues as well as the NAFTA.
I am not sure exactly what Mr. Ignatieff has in mind but it would be worth hearing especially if it addresses the above issues and is any different than Harper and the Conservative movement.
Obviously, oil is important and the Federal Government has an obligation to act in the best interests of Canadians, Albertans included. However, with all due respect, I can’t see the ‘in your face’, ‘we got you over a barrel’ approach to foreign policy is the answer.
Lloyd MacIlquham
Rod Smelser
3 years ago
GREEN SHIFT DEAD? WHERE'S MARK JACCARD?
If the Liberal Green Shift is dead, where are all the carbon tax Liberals we heard so much from last Fall during the federal election? What do Mark Jaccard, and Andrew Weaver, and Briony Penn, and Ujjal Dosanjh, and Gordon MacBean have to say to Ignatieff on the tar sands issue?
Copper_River_Red
3 years ago
Thanks for the welcome
A follow up on Palin:
She got elected based on a coalition of disaffected independent voters who wanted to see our gas used for LNG and local petrochemical use. In the process she used two iconic Alaskan statesmen, former Governors Walter Hickel and Jay Hammond in full page ads propounding for an all Alaska line.
That door slammed as soon as she took office, she was already wired into Cheney before the gubernatorial election, something like Jesus meeting Satan in the desert and being offered "Someday all of this will be yours".
I don't think her meteoric rise in U.S. politics was anything but a quid pro quo from the NeoCons for bamboozling the Alaska Legislature to bite the TransCanada hook.
The North Slope majors with the proposed "competing" pipeline called Denali, which parallels the TransCanada project, are heavily invested in Alberta and as near as I can tell have planned to morph the two projects together from the get-go.
Upon hearing the legislature had passed the $500 million (to TransCanada) AGIA (Alaska Gas line Inducement Act) Hal Kvisle unwisely quipped: "I guess now we see what Exxon wants."
He immediately threw water on that fire and disavowed its obvious meaning and intent. Right.
For those interested in Alaska politics unfiltered, Google up The Alaska Report for some interesting takes on your neighbors.
We share more in common than Ottawa and D.C. do with their north and western constituents.