There are some interesting issues here about ethics that I would like to explore. Ethics are a
standard thing really. Ethics are the rules that each one of us lives by and collectively they
are the sum total of our society.
There is no farm ethics, or oil ethics, or sports ethics. We are either honest and true to ourselves
or we are not. There is a price in the long run to be paid either way. For example people believe
the concept of "Organic" is working well, well its not working to the benefit of farmers or consumers.
It is working for the benefit of Certifies or the farms and facilities. Most people don't know that it is
based on paperwork, there is little to none being done when it comes to actually doing scientific
field testing or unannounced inspections. The ethics of organic farming are in my mind every bit as
wanting as the Tar Sands projects in their present form.
I am not saying they shouldn't be working to get the natural resource out of the ground, I just believe
they could do it in a manner that doesn't create the destruction it does at present. We see dead
wildlife from time to time, but that can happen as a result of any occupation gone wrong. The fact
is however the current oil tar sands are an environmental disaster. People point to dead birds and
squirrels but that is only a small portion of the problem. The water diversion and contamination is
a huge problem that has to be dealt with. Yes it costs more money and yes it is an ethical question.
In fact it is every bit as bad a conventional agriculture putting artificial fertilizer on the land in which
half of it seeps into water systems like rivers and streams.
The other ethical problem is this, we have a huge resource here and all be it, it is in Alberta. If the
gold and other minerals in Ontario belong to all and the BC Forests benefits belong to all Canadians
then why wouldn't some of the oil belong to all Canadians? Why is it that we allow the major oil
companies to reap the profits? Of course they need to make some but real cost royalties have to
be determined and paid, and in my view the little they pay is not what should be paid and why do these
royalties end up in the hands of governments? If the resource belongs to you and I then we should
get the royalty checks from Canadian resource industries. Crazy? Not really Alaska has done it for
years, even there they are not getting the worth of their resourses. Myself I think if we are not going to
have a direct benefit to Canadians, we should have a national resource price and a world price.
Either we are bound by our sense of ethics or we are not. You can't bend honesty and ethics because
it doesn't fit our mind set, Ethics are the boundaries that surround our sense right and wrong, and
yes they are unchangeable. We can't be sort of honest, or tending toward honesty, we are either
true to ourselves as a country or we are not