Environment

NDP candidate Byers speaks out on tar sands

by Alfred Hermida | September 25, 2008 at 05:44 pm

197 views | 20 Recommendations | 2 comments

The candidates competing to represent downtown Vancouver faced questions rom journalism students at the UBC School of Journalism.

The debate ranged from the controversial safe injection site, Insite, in the Downtown Eastside to the carbon tax.

The NDP candidate, UBC professor Michael Byers, was particularly vocal on the issue of climate change.

The NDP candidate for the Vancouver Centre riding, Michael Byers, has called for an end to the tar sands.

During a debate hosted by the UBC Graduate School of Journalism, Mr Byers said: “We need to go after the big polluters and we need to shut the tar sands down.”

The NDP leader Jack Layton has called for a moratorium on further expansion of oil sands development in Alberta due to the environmental impact of the industry. But he has not gone as far as calling for the industry to be shut down

The tar sand deposits cover 141,000 square kilometres of boreal forest and muskeg, almost all of it in Alberta. In 2007, the total value of product from the tar sands in 2007 was $24 billion.