Topic
Fed funded oil sands study confirms toxic PAHs alter lakes 90 km away.
Scientist David Schindler's 2010 studies showing chronic pollution downstream of Alberta oil sands projects are bolstered by federally funded report released today.
Top water ecologist cites evidence of extreme pollution near oil sands.
Experimental Lakes Area was world famous; its findings might have saved Canada billions.
A new federally funded study on the tar sands has confirmed what a discredited industry-funded monitoring program could not: that pollution has now contaminated lakes as far as 90 km away from the massive mining project.
Due to "the absence of well executed environmental monitoring in the Athabasca oil sands" Environment Canada researchers cored the sediment of six lakes ranging from 35 km to 90 km away from the project.
In the sediment of boreal lakes researchers discovered that airborne pollutants from the tar sands production were now two to 23 times greater than levels deposited in the 1960s.
The study conclusively shows that bitumen pollution "is not natural, is increasing over time and the footprint of the industry is much bigger than anyone thought," says John Smol, one of Canada's leading freshwater ecologists, a Queen's University professor and a contributor to the study.
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
Federal researchers studied the transport of just one of many toxic tar sands contaminants: polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a diverse but deadly group of chemicals formed by the incomplete burning of fossil fuels.
"Because of the striking increase in PAHs, elevated primary production, and zooplankton changes, these oil sands lake ecosystems have entered new ecological states completely distinct from those of previous centuries," concluded the study.
PAHs (and heavy metals) are well known components of Athabasca bitumen and some such as benzo(a)pyrene, can cause cancers in humans while others are suspected of being both animal and human carcinogens. PAHS can also impede and affect fetal growth during the first trimester.
The study, published by the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also confirms the conclusions of two independently-funded papers by water ecologist David Schindler and Erin Kelly. These now highly cited studies roused the ire of industry and embarrassed the Alberta government by proving widespread water contamination near the mining project.
The first 2009 study found that oil sands air pollution from mines and upgraders blackened the snow with thousands of tonnes of bitumen particulates and PAHS during the winter within a 50 kilometre radius of the project. When the snow melted in the spring, the contaminants washed into the Athabasca River. The pollution amounted to an undisclosed annual oil spill between 5,000 to 13,000 barrels.
A follow-up 2010 study concluded that air pollution and watershed destruction by the oil sands industry annually added a rich brew of heavy metals including arsenic, thallium and mercury into the Athabasca river and at levels up to 30 times greater than permitted by pollution guidelines. Many heavy metals can increase the toxicity of PAHs too.
Both studies found that industry-funded monitoring was too haphazard to find evidence of contamination by toxic organic pollutants such as PAHs.
Earlier studies drew industry denials
The two papers also created a wave of industry denials, a political uproar in Ottawa and eventually forced several high level inquiries on the quality and character of oil sands monitoring. All supported Schindler's conclusions and found that the industry-funded system was grossly inadequate.
The damning science tarnished industry credibility too. For years the tar sands industry claimed it had set up a "world class" monitoring system for the project even though federal scientific audits described the industry-funded watering monitoring program (the Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program) as substandard and fraudulent.
A 2010 review of the program by some of Canada's top water scientists reported that the industry program failed to meet seven out of nine basic objectives.
Alberta politicians, who draw 30 per cent of their salaries from bitumen production, have long argued that water contamination in the region was all the result of natural erosion of bitumen deposits along riverbanks and that industry was just cleaning up "Mother Nature's biggest oil spill."
Detection a decade late: scientist
David Schindler told The Tyee that the findings of the Environment Canada study should "deep six once and for all the bullshit that all pollution from the tar sands is natural."
"It shows that as production rises, so does the pollution fallout from the project. It also implies that we need some means of controlling these stack emissions. It also reinforces the now well-documented fact that past monitoring has been substandard. This sort of contamination should have been easily detected a decade or more ago."
Rising levels of PAH pollution may pose significant challenges to the proposed expansion of tar sands production from 1.6 million barrels a day to 3 million barrels by 2025. Scientific studies, for example, have found high levels of PAHs in six billion barrels of oil sands mining waste (enough to stretch to the moon and back 12 times) now stored in huge dams covering an area larger than the city of Vancouver.
PAHs: enemy of fish
Since the 1970s, scientists have taken a keen interest in PAHs, a vast body of often cancer-causing petroleum byproducts, while investigating the impact of oil spills on aquatic life. In the process, scientists have identified coking and smelting facilities as large emitters of PAHs and heavy metals. Alcan, for example, had to clean up its Kitimat smelter due to fish-killing levels of PAHs.
Fish can absorb PAHS from water and sediment via their gills, skin and stomach. Different PAHs can cause totally different diseases and deformities in different fish species, including cataracts, tumors of the skin and liver, weakened immune systems, deformities, bile duct cancers and heart troubles.
PAHs can persist and behave in unexpected ways. A 2003 high profile study in the journal Science found that weathered oil from 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, including PAHs, continued to poison and affect the lifespan of fish and sea otters at sub-lethal levels more than a decade later. Long term PAH exposure not only stunted the growth of young pink salmon embryos, for example, but decreased their lifespan by 50 per cent.
Several studies have confirmed that PAHs created by both natural and industrial oil sands activity can impact fish. Several experiments performed by Maria Colavecchia at Queen's University found that minnows and other fish exposed to oil sands mining waste sediment suffered from deformities, bleeding and skin diseases as well as reproductive difficulties. Fish deformities are now common downstream of the project.
Call for independent monitoring
Schindler told The Tyee that he was surprised to learn that the federal study found airborne PAHs travelling twice as far as his own studies or up to 100 km away. "We do not know what the toxicity of many of the alkylated PAHs and dibenzothiophenes is, even singly, let alone as a PAH soup, and in combination with toxic trace metals."
Given the high levels of PAHs contamination found in the lakes and the great distance they are now travelling Schindler would not recommend any more tar sands project approvals "until a complete, independent monitoring program is in place, and we have a couple of years data to know what the baseline is. And that information should be publicly known."
As a result of the scientific evidence on contamination of waterways by wind-borne bitumen pollution, Alberta and Ottawa slowly set up a new and comprehensive $50-million monitoring program in the oil sands in 2012. It is currently being paid for by Canadian taxpayers.
Schindler says the new monitoring program is an improvement on what the industry network produced but still fails to properly consult First Nation communities living downstream of the project.
"Aboriginal people are still out in the cold. Both the science arm and the oversight arm of any new body need to include aboriginal leaders, not have them out in some separate "to be consulted" camp," says Schindler.
"Consultation with First Nations has been totally unsatisfactory in the oil sands, and the term is near meaningless. This treatment flies in the face of Canada's claim to be multicultural. We cannot even deal with our own first culture."
Environmental protections slashed
While the Harper government set up the new oil sands monitoring program largely to stem international criticism of the project, it has also muzzled government climate change scientists, reduced other environmental monitoring, gutted key environmental laws (most fish habitat is no longer protected), and even cut the $25-milllion Research Tools and Instruments Grant Program, that helped to partly fund the EC study.
The Harper government, which makes more money from bitumen production than the Alberta government, also disbanded the National Round Table on the Environment and Economy, marine pollution research, the Polar Environment Research Lab and the world famous Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), a global leader in solving water contamination issues.
The ELA had been formerly directed by David Schindler.
International scientists as well as Dr. Ray Hesslein, another former director of the Experimental Lakes Area, say the closure of the ELA will be "a huge loss to the Canadian public in its ability to protect its fresh waters."
Harper's restrictive policies and budget cuts for scientists, water monitoring, and environmental legislation have drawn criticism from the world's most important scientific outlets including the journal Nature.
A 2012 Nature editorial pointedly concluded that, "If the Harper government has valid strategic reasons to undermine vital sectors of Canadian science, then it should say so -- its people are ready to listen. If not, it should realize, and fast, that there is a difference between environmentalism and environmental science -- and that the latter is an essential component of a national science programme, regardless of politics." ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
Read more: Energy, Politics, Environment
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Hakuin
19 weeks ago
yes, we already knew that
That is not the problem. What the real problem is is that are in the grip of a ruthless dictatorship that has usurped power in our land and we are powerless to do anything about it until the next election. And even then, who knows?
snert
19 weeks ago
This is where all efforts should be focussed
"Both studies found that industry-funded monitoring was too haphazard to find evidence of contamination by toxic organic pollutants such as PAHs."
Making sure that the standards are both sufficient and acted upon to ensure that there is minimal environmental impact. Unfortunately huge amounts of energy are wasted protesting the environmental impact of a project rather than allowing it to go ahead with adequate supervision.
aDriftwood
19 weeks ago
@home
So there I was, peacefully having breakfast. Ham and eggs it were, and I was going great guns until I took a bite which tasted like fish. Not just any fish, it tasted like fishy fish. You know, the kind you get served in a restaurant sometimes and just quietly put down your knife and fork, pay your bill and leave. It was all I could to keep from hurling as I spat it out and washed my mouth. Then for some reason I thought of our government. Coincidence? I don't think so. Anyway, the eggs are going out in the trash. God, I can still taste them!
Bruno96
19 weeks ago
Pickerel
Saw these bumps on pickerel from Lake Nipissing in 1991.
A call to the Department of Oceans/Fisheries was met with:
"Just cut out the malignancy; the meat around it should still be edible."
When asked if this was what he did, his reply was laughter.
Perhaps a more prudent question for the 'entitled' Government employee should have been; "When was the exact time & date you lost your passion for the job; or did you have it in the first place"?
Bruno96
19 weeks ago
Pickerel (cont.)
Apologies.
Forgot to add we performed a dissection on one of these fish.
The exterior "bump" was filled with a black ooze, with 4 fairly large (1/16"dia.) tributaries leadng into the internal organs.
With Harper's dismantling of environmental rules, get ready for Mr. Burn's (The Simpsons) 3 eyed fish to be the norm.
Fiat lux
19 weeks ago
Just wait when the cancer
Just wait when the cancer epidemics start killing the thousands of workers and people in adjacent areas.
Wonder what the denials are going to be? All for to send the bitumen to the brother communists and child slave labour countries of our capitalists.
Ed Deak.
Skywalker
19 weeks ago
Efforts should be made with...
...an abundance of caution. All the rest is sitting on our arses.
Hakuin
19 weeks ago
What will happen when the wave of cancer hits?
Why, exactly the same as in The Chairman's new country of allegiance. Party elite and their families will dine on private, organic farm fare or clean food imported from far away at great expense. The common peasant scum will eat what they are told to eat and will be bred fast enough to replace losses.
Fiat lux
19 weeks ago
The world is beginning to
The world is beginning to wake up. Harper can jump up and down, he'll be forced out sometime this year.
Capitalism is on its last leg and will be replaced by ecological economics and a monetary system controlled by democratic governments, all over the world.
It won't happen overnight, but won't take as long as the wiping out its idiot twin of communism.
As I've been writing about for over 20 years, my Principle copyrighted in 1991.
Ed Deak.
bcguy
19 weeks ago
That part of Alberta is
That part of Alberta is rapidly becoming a write off due to contamination. are we. especially Alberta going to sit on our hands and say, its a place that makes money. To hell with the future of the place
catchingupagain
19 weeks ago
Caution to the wind? Tinker toy tugs, oil tankers & toxic waters
Message:
The prudent prevent a catastrophe.
Side-story:
The New Year's Eve tow debacle started 2013 off with a tow-story drama.
In the links provided you will see it is 5 large vessels which could not prevent the loss of a small-ish tow package, an oil rig.
Back-story:
Keep in mind: An oil rig as a tow-package, compared to an oil tanker
The object towed (oil rig) at 28,000 tonnes, is
4 times smaller than the tankers proposed to access Kitimat, the mid-sized Aframax tankers' 120,000 tonnes
10 times smaller than their Suezmax's 300,000 tonnes
11 times smaller than the VLCC's 340,000 tonnes
These 3 types of oil tankers are proposed to be used at Kitimat.
For Kititmat, the proposal is very very small tow vessels with mammoth tow packages, oil tankers laden with dirty oil.
Shell's oil rig, Kulluk, ran aground New Year's Eve and is now in the final stages of starting 2013 with its death at sea.
The epic started with the 4 engine tow vessel Aiviq 'losing' its tow line, then losing all 4 engines in the lurch. Four more vessels Alert, Nanuq, Guardsman, and Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley (whose mammoth power wretched the shackle off the rig-Kulluk causing the 10 inch tow line to foul its own propeller).
Short story -- five massive multi-engine tugs and tow vessels, each over 300 feet long, in pre-storm rough, but normal, seas. The oil rig had to finally be cut loose to 'save' the tow vessels and crews from danger. With the result that the oil rig ran aground on a rocky shore. And, the approaching storm, threatening to trash it, makes retrieval too dangerous to intervene.
It is a rig, a floating drill, little oil to do damage, but the details of its demise are telling.
A tanker is much much heavier, and long, creating tow hazards, both in the momentum of wave peak and trough, and the turbulence of winds --
Kitimat's oil tankers won't have 300 foot vessels, giant 2 and 4-engine tugboats, like Shell contracted to tow the Kulluk. Kitimat's tankers will have smaller, 100 foot tugs
http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV+Shows/The+National/ID/2322954431/
(arctic exploration or a towing safety issue)
www.neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/01/shell-drill-spill.html
What's the real story?
It is too obvious: The tarsands should go north, or east, to be refined in Canada the better to add value to Canada, and then sold to energy hungry, and eager, Europeans who are otherwise hostage to dubious Russian and Arab energy providers.
Where's the money?
Canada's investor class is hoarding nearly one trillion dollars because they don't trust the 'market'. But that idle wealth, Minister of Finance Flarety's "dead money", could be regulated active, in the stroke of our regulator PM's pen. Being self-sufficient is better than pimping natural resources to foreign investment capital, and then buying it back, at a higher price, when they've improved it.
aDriftwood
19 weeks ago
@Bruno96
Good God man! When you say: "Just cut out the malignancy; the meat around it should still be edible." in reference to our feral government, you tread close to sedition. But it was the funniest post I have read in a long time.
Bob Watts
19 weeks ago
To Bad....
To Bad the average canadian has no idea what Harper is up to.
The normal blind canadian will be watching Hockey, and thinking what a great manager Harper is.
To Bad the grandkids will start having black lumps growing out their foreheads!!!
Too Bad.....
Hakuin
19 weeks ago
you forgot to mention , Catch
that drill rig was being moved for the express purpose of tax evasion. Poor, impoverished oil companies.
aDriftwood
19 weeks ago
Federal eggs which taste like fish.
Some say I should have hurled, but I knew that if I did and blamed the Harperights, parliament would quickly pass a law outlawing hurling and ram it through the Senate like shit through a goose. Results would be appalling. Protesters would rise up in droves as it were. Even conservative backbenchers would hastily excuse themselves from the uncommon party in Ottawa and hurry to the nearest outhouse. Canadians, pale and tender in the region where the wallet resides, would have to fall in line for the latest thin gruel from Ottawa vis-à-vis lack of human rights, Native rights, or indeed any rights at all. And of course austerity, which means raising your taxes to support banks and corporations which you would ignore on the street if you could.
'We just wanted to protect our environmental rights!' we will cry piteously, 'We just wanted to protect the rights of Canadians to have first crack at well paying jobs before they are farmed out to cheap labour abroad', we will moan as 'our' government gently positions us for the next round global trade talks.
Be careful what you wish for, Ottawa, or ordinary Canadians may arrive on your doorstep and express themselves by hurling chunks. In fact, I love it! It is theater, it is dissent, it is revolution! And as Marshall McLuhan said, 'The medium is the message.' We could the first country in the world which is so sick of our government that we actually throw up on them! They might find themselves constantly in the shower but never able to get clean.
Hakuin
19 weeks ago
it's norovirus season
I think we could give them both ends.
hg
19 weeks ago
season
You mean go for s..t, wipe your butt, then go and shake a politician's hand and throw up on him? You might get charged with carrying a concealed weapon.
Hakuin
19 weeks ago
not concealed really
congealed a bit mebbee
Fritz
19 weeks ago
Comprehensive $50-million Monitoring program
I like many other individuals have to pay an extra tax on all kinds of purchases TVs etc because of the environment. But when it comes to the corporations being monitored:
"...It is currently being paid for by Canadian taxpayers..."
Corporate taxes go down and they get subsidies ...meanwhile
A couple of days ago I tried in Victoria at 3 different thrift stores to purchase previously owned cans of paint. I was a lout and they said oh no we don't sell that because of the environment.
Gotta love the government priorities it makes me feel so-o-o-o safe.
Fritz
19 weeks ago
Comprehensive $50-million Monitoring program
I like many other individuals have to pay an extra tax on all kinds of purchases TVs etc because of the environment. But when it comes to the corporations being monitored:
"...It is currently being paid for by Canadian taxpayers..."
Corporate taxes go down and they get subsidies ...meanwhile
A couple of days ago I tried in Victoria at 3 different thrift stores to purchase previously
owned cans of paint. I was a lout and they said oh no we don't sell that because of the environment.
Gotta love the government priorities it makes me feel so-o-o-o safe.
aDriftwood
19 weeks ago
@hg
Yup, I might get charged, but I woulnèt get charged for being a douchebag without two thoughts to rub together. I might take it as a compliment that representaves such as you would take the trouble to muddy the waters of democracy around me. But I do not, I take it as an insult. There you are defending the indefensible, even in this extremely limited alternative site.
Got a coupla questions for ya: Who are you and who do you represent. Do you get paid to post on alternate internet sites.
Because, though I hate to sully my mind with the results, there are hundreds of thousands of money bitches just like you who are paid to distort public opinion. It is known as Political Pornography, and do not for a moment think that anyone likes you. We know you and we hate you.
aDriftwood
19 weeks ago
@hg
No, I take it back. Not paying attentions. apologies by the third power. Sorry.
Feverish
19 weeks ago
The only surprise here is
The only surprise here is that the results went public. What a crying shame for those that live nearby.
Pity that hockey is back... people were starting to pay attention to the oppressors.
Luimneach
19 weeks ago
Bitumen mining environmental impact
Well, who'd have guessed! Tarsands mining has adverse impacts downstream! So it's not a case of Big Oil cleaning up Mother Natures biggest oilspill! Amazing!!
We are 3 weeks shy of the 4th anniversary of the Alberta Cancer Board (ACB) recommendation of a comprehensive health study of Ft Chip, where, after a year long study, it found 30% higher than expected cases of cancer, including rare cancers. Mutiple studies both before and after the ACB findings pointed to increasing evidence of environmental adverse impacts of mining.
To date, NOTHING has been done to even commence a health study!
Yet, only a few months ago, based on anecdotal concerns and complaints,
the Federal Health Minister announced a plan to formally investigate potential health impacts of......wind farms!!
To date, not a single Public Health official or physician has voiced any concern regarding the possible risks to health of residents living downstream of the Tarsands.
What has become of Canada?
Hakuin
19 weeks ago
What has become of Canada?
It died.
Daryl King
19 weeks ago
Are you serious?
Did your reporter research this story? This man's heavily disputed claims have been publicly refuted for years.
And surely you do not expect anyone to believe an accusation that the Right Honourable Stephen Harper is responsible (somehow) for a deformed fish caught in 1991?
Most people want credibility when they undertake to report "News".
igbymac
19 weeks ago
Hakuin
I know.
More of the same at best, with a steady escalation in abuse and exploitation. And that is precisely what the well entrenched, free-market capitalist institutional framework demands.
If it isn't Harper, it is some other brainwashed creep without the balls to take a principled stand for the people. But what does that matter when the only stand any of them know is on their knees fellating the money men?!
What we have for political discourse in this country is only palatable to those who don't know we already have a world government.
Remember, "it's the economy, stupid" (as uttered by war criminal and gargantuan human rights abuser, Clinton)
These sociopaths running the levers of state are friggin' interchangeable: shouldn't everyone see that now that Mark Carney, yet another Goldman Sachs human pirhana, heads off from the Bank of Canada to rescue the Bank of England??
I suspect these pathological feces pretending to be human feel they are getting pretty close to their end goal. A typical term at the Bank of England is 8 years, but before working a day, Carney figures he will be out of there in five. I think it's called a world currency.
Fiat lux
19 weeks ago
What is Harper supposed to be
What is Harper supposed to be "right honoured" about? For lying to the public on the F 35s, or the 450 page Omnibus Bill, just to name a couple of frauds ?
In any case, money is not the "economy", only a small part of it, a tool that can be used usefully, or to do utmost damage and kill people. The same as most any tool in any workshop. My chisels do not represent woodworking, only a small part of it, but could be used for crimes and murder.
Typical example of the criminal use of imaginary money is the distortion of the laws of efficiency.
The physical definition of efficiency is the doing the most work with the least energy and resource inputs, which means the sustainable supply of the necessary products for human and environmental survival..
In the next classroom of the same university, students are brainwashed with the fraud of neoclassical economics, where "economic efficiency" is defined as the unlimited use of energy and resources, licencing any form of destruction and waste, as long as the dimensions of physical realities can be distorted with imaginary, monetary figures for the benefit of a few.
The results of this fraud can be seen all over the world, promoted by crooked and pimp governments of "right honourable" politicians, controlled by an international criminal mafia of big business.
Ed Deak.
Frank
19 weeks ago
DarylKing
"This man's heavily disputed claims have been publicly refuted for years."
Which man? Provide a name.
Also, provide a link to where this Federal study was "debunked years ago". I'm sure it'll be news to the Globe and the Toronto Star and the National Post and every other paper that ran the story yesterday.
Otherwise, if there's no evidence then it didn't happen.
snert
19 weeks ago
Bob Watts
It's not nice of you to bad mouth the bulk of Tyee commenters by calling them "average" Canadians.
igbymac
19 weeks ago
a great comment, Fiat Lux
I want to thank you for your reference to Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher. A must read or, in my case, listen. :)
Dannyboy
19 weeks ago
Just a little ironic though
I mean here we have the author bashing the federal government over cost slashing and muzzling enviromental issues over the tarsands....by providing a federal government funded study done in conjunction with Enviroment Canada to prove his point.
Priceless!
Bruno96
19 weeks ago
Are you serious?
@Daryl King- Your immediate defense of the Harpercrite, when nothing was mentioned about him, seems quite indicative of an overly defensive posture(earned), usually exhibited by hired lackeys that are continually compelled to spew their offal.
Research that.
Hakuin
19 weeks ago
:)
http://www.blogto.com/city/2011/03/craigslist_ad_seeks_sarcastic_and_combative_astroturfers/
igbymac
19 weeks ago
The funny part, Hakuin
... is that far too many Canadians still think the astro-turfers offer some legitimate debatable points. But I think the late Molly Ivins said it best,
Hakuin
19 weeks ago
Nazis, Tories, Republicans, Conzis
All play to the same lowest common denominator gallery. The sad thing is the intensity of the distilled hatred that spawns such also amplifies their social policy effectiveness since decent, normal people can't wrap their heads around just how capable of vileness the average Conzi supporter really is - and so they get blindsided.
igbymac
19 weeks ago
Just playing the odds ...
if a person was to start their understanding of politics on the basis that either 1) the government could be believed or 2) the government could not be believed, wouldn't this world be a far better place if one opted for option 2 and conducted oneself accordingly?
I am quite certain much would change in a hurry, and for the better.
aDriftwood
19 weeks ago
Burn them!
I'll tell ya what really annoys me about the internet. 12 year old girls! They get up on there on the Youtube and synopsize the truth about private banking in Canada!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX7Vq9YFtVc
Then they get up there and explain how nuclear Thorium reactors work. How one ton of thorium produces as much energy as 200 tons of uraium or as much as three and one half million tons of coal. Can`t find her on youtube at the moment but try this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOLo73k3OG0 or this:
http://energyfromthorium.com/thorium/
Haven`t been able to find her (and her dog) on youtube lately, but she puts it out in plain English - with charts. Better in many respects than the politio-scientists who are easier to find. Funny huh.
Thorium produces less than one percent of the waste of current nuclear reactors. Scientists the world over are promoting it. LIFTRs are not here yet, but they are the future.
I`m not saying these girls are the smartest people in the world, so maybe we should outlaw them for being nice kids and thinking for themselves. Cant be too careful, you know. They used to burn women at the stake for promoting herbal remedies. Heck, the Inquistion was the cats ass for centuries!
aDriftwood
19 weeks ago
igbymac
See thetyee scraped my last comment. Okay, I basically said that there are people from Southern BC coming here to my small down and willing to do pretty much anything to get a job. Not pretty, ugly in fact. Yet we have foreign workers coming in because there are no BC workers willing to do the work. Nuff said.
aDriftwood
19 weeks ago
We do not need foreign workers!
Ah, the heck with it. We need Canadian jobs. First, second, and third. If there is a Canadian who does not want to work for the 30 bucks an hour the mines are paying, THEN we should farm out those jobs. But ask all the Canadians first. Go down to Halifax and ask Canadians how they would feel about coming to BC and working for extraordinary wages with free housing.
gadrogeek
19 weeks ago
Thank you, Rex Murphy!
We have, of course, known about these cancers for years. Just ask the people of Fort Chipewyan or, better, go there for a visit.
http://digitaljournal.com/article/274962
Rex must have lots of friends and relatives working in the Tar Sands' projects.
http://www.mining.com/rex-murphy-goes-to-the-oilsands/
Mr. Murphy has a history of "OIL" (sic) sands promotion.
http://politicsrespun.org/2010/10/rex-murphy-tar-sands-booster-dead-to-me/
And the abuse of women in this community continues and is appalling!
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/prairies/hunger-strikers-seek-money-for-womens-shelter-in-fort-mcmurray/article1673761/?service=mobile
What a "grey" wash job, Mr. Murphy!
Shame! Shame! Shame!
Greg Shea (Lake Cowichan)
Skywalker
19 weeks ago
Greg
Rex Murphy once ran as a conservative candidate. Maybe that has something to do with it.