And if it wasn't for the rest of Canada, Alberta wouldn't be the place it is now, would it?
What the hell is your point: Alberta shouldn't have to be part of Canada, because it has oil?
Tar sands = filthy dirty bitumen "oil"
- Thread starter dumpthemonarchy
- Start date
And if it wasn't for the rest of Canada, Alberta wouldn't be the place it is now, would it?
What the hell is your point: Alberta shouldn't have to be part of Canada, because it has oil?
That's right, Alberta would have been debt free years earlier and would have a massive fund going.
Don't be such an ass Ten Penny, I was answering DTM's questions regarding the abuse he heaped on Klein.
Bottom line, Klein dragged the province out of the recession and cleaned up the operations during a time when the rest of the nation was still mortgaging the future of many unborn generations through debt financing.
All DTM saw was that Klein paid Albertans rather than pass the cash East to Que and the East coast provinces.
Why is it that people like you take such offense when the reality is shoved in your face about the inequities of this nation... You want to live in blissful ignorance, good for you, but don't get your panties all in a bunch because I don't subscribe to your tainted version of reality.
His point to me seems fairly obvious. :lol::lol::lol:
There were lots who didn't like Klein and I could never really understand why- he was loyal to Alberta (which was his job) and he didn't take any crap from anybody...............I guess sometimes his mouth went into overtime when he'd had a couple of sauce. :lol::lol::lol:
You're dead right JLM. Klein is/was by no means without fault, but in the end, he did do a good job in the province and he was/is loyal to the constituents.
I have a lot of respect for Klein for 2 very basic reasons: First, he assumed power during the tough times and he made critical decisions at that time that were highly unpopular but necessary. Secondly, Klein is one of the few politicians that doesn't play politics.
I'll go out on a limb here JLM and suggest that he provincial leadership in your province is (or has) taking a page from Klein... I find it remarkable that a province that was having a lot of difficulties just a few short years ago are now one of a couple of "have" provinces in the nation. The provincial economy is doing well and the future is looking very good.
Makes you wonder why more jurisdictions don't make those hard decisions, force the public to swallow those pills that should have been swallowed long ago and move forward into the future.
Fine; then don't divert the spirit of my comments with the application of an over sensationalized component.
The geopolitics of energy are not the same as they were ten years ago, the volume has been amped up considerably, to the dubious benefit of Canada. What is happening is the age of laissez-faire economics is over, China and the BRICs are writing new nationalistic rules. Our slavish devotion to the free market today is as wise as king Ralph's silly rebates.
So we are now caught between the USA and China/BRICs. Seems like there is panic is rubeland-sorry Alberta. Just give it all away as cheaply as possible ASAP!! This reflects the colonial mentality of Albertans, just bend over for Big Oil.
What's the feeble excuse Canada has so it sends 80% of its exports to one country? That's the real weakness in manufacturing. Yet biz always blabs they are global. They just want to send more trucks across the Windsor bridge and party. Blame Alberta!
Germany has a high Euro to work with and they are doing not too bad these days. Maybe you just have to make good stuff and Canadian manufacturing doesn't, so there are no new markets. So sad.
Canadians always have excuses at the ready why we fail and others, with very limited resources, succeed. South Korea has no oil, but have LG, Samsung, and Hyundai/Kia.
So we are now caught between the USA and China/BRICs. Seems like there is panic is rubeland-sorry Alberta. Just give it all away as cheaply as possible ASAP!! This reflects the colonial mentality of Albertans, just bend over for Big Oil.
What's the feeble excuse Canada has so it sends 80% of its exports to one country? That's the real weakness in manufacturing. Yet biz always blabs they are global. They just want to send more trucks across the Windsor bridge and party. Blame Alberta!
Germany has a high Euro to work with and they are doing not too bad these days. Maybe you just have to make good stuff and Canadian manufacturing doesn't, so there are no new markets. So sad.
Canadians always have excuses at the ready why we fail and others, with very limited resources, succeed. South Korea has no oil, but have LG, Samsung, and Hyundai/Kia.
Nothing is the the way it was 10 years ago.
I get a kick out of the comment that the volume of energy trading has been "amped-up", I was always lead to believe that we've been running out of oil for the last 30 or 40 years.
What do you think will fill the void left when you punt a laissez-faire system?... Good intentions perhaps?
The free market, to date, has delivered all of the conveniences, social programs and benefits that society has today. I notice that all of those that do not support the free market model do so only after all of the niceties have been delivered and they can sit contentedly and wax philosophically about how to achieve utopia.
Case in point: You rail at Klein for giving out that money, but I'm guessing that you (grudgingly) cashed your cheque, didn't you?
Fact is, Klein demonstrated his poison pill to Martin and the feds... Try to sleaze Alberta's money from the province and the bank account will be divvied-up among those people that earned it... No doubt that is a novel concept for you, but as the old saying goes: Socialism is the best system going until you run out of other people's money to spend.
Panic because all these nations want AB oil?... Are you on glue?
Your commentary reeks of jealousy and a need to invoke all kinds of illusory commentary to fabricate an ideal that doesn't exist... Colonial mentality - how in the hell you got there is beyond me. I'm guessing that you just wanted to use that word regardless if you were capable of using it accurately.
AB is in the driver's seat on this one. The Americans have been rattling their sabres about dirty oil and insinuating that they don't want it... Almost immediatly, the Chinese jump in and inject billions into building a pipeline to buy the product.... Almost over night, there are all kinds of junkets from the US fed gvt that all of the sudden have changed their tune on AB oil sands oil.
Funny how that works, eh?
Good point, but on that note, how is it that you blame the resource/energy sector for the lagging Canadian mfg sector when nations like S.Korea are even more impacted by energy costs and the effects that it has on their currency?
Alberta would,we welcome all people from all over Canada to our province,and in case you werent aware,Alberta has been a "gas" province for a long time,gas has allways been our major export,not oil.
I was glad to participate in the first tailings pond ceremony,it's not much but it's baby steps,there is grass growing where there wasnt 3 months ago,today I saw some deer munching on it and it's looking awesome so far,next year it will look even better.
Were ramping up our TRO production now to about 30,000 tonnes a day out of the ponds,bought 4 new snow cats and were trying some more new angles on getting rid of those pesky mature fine tailings.
Unfortunately this will piss a lot of people off because the last thing they want to see is the oilsands reclaiming land,then they wouldnt have anything to whine about.
I chaulk it up to jelousy or something.
You folks should have watched CBC the other night,you would have seen me out there.
Everyone sure bitches every spring when the city is slow in patching the potholes in the roadway bitumen.
Then maybe they should all stop driving to work and start taking the free company offered bussing.
I swear most busses are allmost empty in the warm months and that contributes to the absolute gridlock on any road going into or coming out of fort mac.
The deerfoot in Calgary has nothing on highway 63 here in rush hour which starts at 5:30 am and ends at 10:00pm.
Here is an article that states Suncor is the first, and only tar sands company to reclaim land. So far, 1% has been reclaimed. That's a lot. Some break from the past. A turtle derby is under way here. Hold on to your seats.
Suncor scores environmental first - The Globe and Mail
Suncor scores environmental first
Nathan VanderKlippe
Wapisiw Lookout, Alta.— From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Sep. 23, 2010 7:06PM EDT
Last updated Friday, Sep. 24, 2010 11:30AM EDT
Christine Daly walks down a gentle slope toward a small body of water in northeastern Alberta. Several dozen ducks and geese fly away as she approaches. Around her, the surrounding hills are flush with green. Planted there are the seedlings of more than three dozen species: black spruce, cranberries, trembling aspen.
Not quite hidden behind the green, a set of massive flare stacks pushes orange flame high into the sky – unmistakable evidence that this small oasis lies inside the heart of Canada’s most controversial industrial undertakings.
This is Suncor (SU-T32.19-0.05-0.16%) oil sands mine, a place typically associated with massive oil workings and gaping mines. The plant life is a newcomer here, part of a years-long project that has culminated in a green space that represents the first time the industry has managed to transform its deposits of toxic effluent into firm land – an event that Suncor called “historic” for an industry searching to buff a tarnished image.
“If you were here five years ago, you would be swimming” in a tailings pond, said Ms. Daly, a wetland biologist who has helped bring nature back to this spot, once a 220-hectare tailings pond the size of 500 NFL football fields. Now, it’s been planted with 600,000 trees and shrubs. A small family of deer has moved in, as have several foxes.
“The coolest we’ve seen is a bald eagle,” Ms. Daly said.
For Suncor and the oil industry, the image of an iconic bird sweeping through what was once an operation many have labelled “dirty” is central to a new bid to convince the world that what oil and gas companies have messed up, they are also working to clean.
“Actions speak a lot louder than words. We get that loud and clear,” Suncor chief executive officer Rick George said Thursday, as he stood in front of the spot once called Pond One. The company has renamed it Wapisiw Lookout, and brought hundreds of dignitaries, including Fort McMurray Mayor Melissa Blake, local first nations chiefs and Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach to the site to celebrate Thursday.
“I am damn proud to be an Albertan,” Mr. Stelmach said as he stood in front of the former pond. It was a small pond – little more than 1 per cent of the area used by industry for tailings. But it carries considerable importance as an oil sands symbol. Built in 1967, when Suncor began pioneering oil sands mining, it was the industry’s first effluent pond. (1% !!!!!)
Cleaning it up, then, is in some measure a way for Suncor to demonstrate that it is breaking from the past. On Thursday, Mr. George pledged to accelerate the company’s cleanup of effluent, and reiterated his ambition to spend $1.2-billion in the next two years on new technology that will help it accomplish that goal.
But proving to the public that the oil sands are capable of this kind of transformation has not been easy. Companies have so far spread their mining operations across 530 square kilometres. In total, industry expects to mine 4,800 square kilometres, an area nearly as large as Prince Edward Island.
So far, only 65 square kilometres have been cleaned up; of that, just over one square kilometre has been provincially certified as a self-sustaining natural environment.
As such, much depends on Suncor proving it can do this.
“This is one of those events that Suncor has to get right on behalf of everyone in the oil sands,” said Debi Andrus, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Calgary.
Yet even some of the oil sands’ harshest critics applauded Suncor’s efforts.
“It’s definitely a step in the right direction. There needs to be some credit given to Suncor,” said Mike Hudema, oil sands campaigner for Greenpeace, which has engaged in numerous acts of civil disobedience to draw public attention to what it calls “dirty oil.”
But Mr. Hudema argued that it would be wrong to extend credit to the rest of the industry, especially since Suncor was the only oil sands operator to pledge adherence to the strict timelines in new rules meant to speed the reclamation of effluent.
Environmental groups also worry about what remains in the ground, even once the water has been removed. Oil sands tailings contain numerous pollutants, although in low concentrations.
Suncor staff say testing has found no heavy metals in the former pond, and argue that they’ve only returned to this area sand and clay that was dug from it – minus, of course, most of the bitumen.
Those assurances have done little, however, to convince skeptics.
“This is one of the unanswered questions. Only time will tell what vegetation will actually truly survive in that new soil structure,” said Marlo Raynolds, executive director of the Pembina Institute.
Yet he acknowledges the effort industry has made.
“I suspect that, given the attention that’s going to be focused on this thing, this is going to be one of the most expensive gardens in the world,” he said. “There’s a lot riding on showing that this can be done.”
=============
But you wonder why they wrote 500 NFL football fields when there is an entity called the CFL in Canada. And they play football. American business lackeys I guess.
Suncor scores environmental first - The Globe and Mail
Suncor scores environmental first
Nathan VanderKlippe
Wapisiw Lookout, Alta.— From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Sep. 23, 2010 7:06PM EDT
Last updated Friday, Sep. 24, 2010 11:30AM EDT
Christine Daly walks down a gentle slope toward a small body of water in northeastern Alberta. Several dozen ducks and geese fly away as she approaches. Around her, the surrounding hills are flush with green. Planted there are the seedlings of more than three dozen species: black spruce, cranberries, trembling aspen.
Not quite hidden behind the green, a set of massive flare stacks pushes orange flame high into the sky – unmistakable evidence that this small oasis lies inside the heart of Canada’s most controversial industrial undertakings.
This is Suncor (SU-T32.19-0.05-0.16%) oil sands mine, a place typically associated with massive oil workings and gaping mines. The plant life is a newcomer here, part of a years-long project that has culminated in a green space that represents the first time the industry has managed to transform its deposits of toxic effluent into firm land – an event that Suncor called “historic” for an industry searching to buff a tarnished image.
“If you were here five years ago, you would be swimming” in a tailings pond, said Ms. Daly, a wetland biologist who has helped bring nature back to this spot, once a 220-hectare tailings pond the size of 500 NFL football fields. Now, it’s been planted with 600,000 trees and shrubs. A small family of deer has moved in, as have several foxes.
“The coolest we’ve seen is a bald eagle,” Ms. Daly said.
For Suncor and the oil industry, the image of an iconic bird sweeping through what was once an operation many have labelled “dirty” is central to a new bid to convince the world that what oil and gas companies have messed up, they are also working to clean.
“Actions speak a lot louder than words. We get that loud and clear,” Suncor chief executive officer Rick George said Thursday, as he stood in front of the spot once called Pond One. The company has renamed it Wapisiw Lookout, and brought hundreds of dignitaries, including Fort McMurray Mayor Melissa Blake, local first nations chiefs and Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach to the site to celebrate Thursday.
“I am damn proud to be an Albertan,” Mr. Stelmach said as he stood in front of the former pond. It was a small pond – little more than 1 per cent of the area used by industry for tailings. But it carries considerable importance as an oil sands symbol. Built in 1967, when Suncor began pioneering oil sands mining, it was the industry’s first effluent pond. (1% !!!!!)
Cleaning it up, then, is in some measure a way for Suncor to demonstrate that it is breaking from the past. On Thursday, Mr. George pledged to accelerate the company’s cleanup of effluent, and reiterated his ambition to spend $1.2-billion in the next two years on new technology that will help it accomplish that goal.
But proving to the public that the oil sands are capable of this kind of transformation has not been easy. Companies have so far spread their mining operations across 530 square kilometres. In total, industry expects to mine 4,800 square kilometres, an area nearly as large as Prince Edward Island.
So far, only 65 square kilometres have been cleaned up; of that, just over one square kilometre has been provincially certified as a self-sustaining natural environment.
As such, much depends on Suncor proving it can do this.
“This is one of those events that Suncor has to get right on behalf of everyone in the oil sands,” said Debi Andrus, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Calgary.
Yet even some of the oil sands’ harshest critics applauded Suncor’s efforts.
“It’s definitely a step in the right direction. There needs to be some credit given to Suncor,” said Mike Hudema, oil sands campaigner for Greenpeace, which has engaged in numerous acts of civil disobedience to draw public attention to what it calls “dirty oil.”
But Mr. Hudema argued that it would be wrong to extend credit to the rest of the industry, especially since Suncor was the only oil sands operator to pledge adherence to the strict timelines in new rules meant to speed the reclamation of effluent.
Environmental groups also worry about what remains in the ground, even once the water has been removed. Oil sands tailings contain numerous pollutants, although in low concentrations.
Suncor staff say testing has found no heavy metals in the former pond, and argue that they’ve only returned to this area sand and clay that was dug from it – minus, of course, most of the bitumen.
Those assurances have done little, however, to convince skeptics.
“This is one of the unanswered questions. Only time will tell what vegetation will actually truly survive in that new soil structure,” said Marlo Raynolds, executive director of the Pembina Institute.
Yet he acknowledges the effort industry has made.
“I suspect that, given the attention that’s going to be focused on this thing, this is going to be one of the most expensive gardens in the world,” he said. “There’s a lot riding on showing that this can be done.”
=============
But you wonder why they wrote 500 NFL football fields when there is an entity called the CFL in Canada. And they play football. American business lackeys I guess.
So, your first bitch was that there was no reclamation going through... Now that it is on the go, it ain't fast enough for ya.
Has the eco-fringe already planned what the next flaw will be once the reclamation % hits 20, 40 and 75%?
BTW, I've been wondering lately why you and your ilk haven't made a big deal about those West Coast communities that pump millions of litres of raw sewage daily into the oceans? Are the marine eco-systems less important?
This response is far too predictable.
I'm a little curious gerry, how many of the furnaces that you install are checked and certified each year for being energy efficient, let alone safe?
every single one........ The article finally proves how much of a joke you 2 are with your defense of the oil company's and their supposed GREAT clean up job.