The Council of Canadians sides with foreign interests against Canada

The Council of Canadians must not take the “Canadian” part of their name very seriously. They’ve decided to side with foreign interests against a key Canadian industry.

That’s right, they’ve teamed up with foreign environmental NGOs to lobby European diplomats to attempt to convince them that the decision by the European Commission to slap punitive duties on Canadian ethically produced oil imports is the right move.

The Council of Canadians doesn’t appear to see a problem with a discriminatory, anti-Canadian tariff plan that damages a critical industry which employs hundreds of thousands of Canadians across the country and pumps billions of dollars into our economy.

Some of the groups they’ve partnered with against Canada include Amsterdam based and foreign funded Greenpeace, and the US based enviro-extremist group Forest Ethics.  Now there’s an environmental group that has lots of experience attacking Canadian jobs and smearing Canadian industry. Forest Ethics has been caught red handed running an anti-Alberta campaign that was exposed as being full of fabrications. They’re also the group that lobbied Chiquita Brands, among other companies, to boycott fuel from Canada’s oilsands.  An unwise move that backfired badly for Chiquita and Forest Ethics, resulting in thousands of Canadians, businesses and MP’s taking a stand.

Why a group that calls itself the Council of Canadians would side with foreign interests against a key Canadian industry is mind boggling and disturbing.

At their news conference in Ottawa following the lobby tour, Sun Media journalist Kris Sims reveals their real intention:

“The groups want the oilsands shut down in the near future, with transitional support for workers who would lose their jobs, dubbing the resource “the world’s most destructive project” and comparing it to Mordor, the fictional, evil land depicted in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series.”

So the Council of Canadians and their ragtag group of foreign funded environmental NGOs have shown their true colours. They want to throw the hundreds of thousands men and women who work to produce Canada’s ethical oil out of work so we have to buy more conflict oil from tyrants and dictators, until the panacea to all the world’s problems comes along.

The European Commissions’ decision is equally puzzling. The science doesn’t back it up. Europe doesn’t presently import oil from Canada’s oil sands, but much of the crude it does import from Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela has the same level of carbon emissions as the bitumen that is produced in Alberta. So, the Europeans are happy to unfairly discriminate against the oil sands as environmentally problematic, yet they’ll give their blessing to the oil they do use, even if its carbon profile is virtually the same to worse.

And that’s just the environmental question. All that OPEC oil Europe seems prepared to commit itself to, instead of Canadian oil, also comes with a massive conflict footprint.

Looks like the Council of Canadians will have to change their name. Council of foreign interests would be a more apt title, or perhaps Council of OPEC interests.

 

 

 

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Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oil Sands

In Ethical Oil, Levant turns his attention to another hot-button topic: the ethical cost of our addiction to oil. While many North Americans may be aware of the financial and environmental price we pay for a gallon of gas or a barrel of oil, Levant argues that it is time we consider ethical factors as well.