Environment

Tories promise greener Alberta oilsands

by Amy Judd | February 13, 2009 at 01:07 pm

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The province of Alberta yesterday unveiled their 20 year plan to expand production in the oilsands, while still being mindful of the environment and trying to stay as green as possible. This is a departure from previous measures that would have seen energy needs take a much more important role than an environmental one.

This move is what Premier Ed Stelmach called 'the brains' behind a long term plan to keep the oilsands going but not to destroy the surroundings. It will however, not slow development.

"None of what we're doing with respect to the strategies we have in place--the energy strategy, this oilsands strategy, the land-use framework--none of those things will slow development pace," Knight stressed. "They're not intended to do that."

Yet, slower and more orderly development is exactly what's needed, opposition leaders and environmental groups contend.

An oilsands company Syncrude Canada could have to pay a fine for failing to prevent 500 duck deaths on a northern Albera pond last spring and its executives could be jailed for up to six months. The Canadian government has pledged to bring harsher fines to environmental crimes and they are not going to be as lax in the future.
Canada does have environmental laws, and more needs to be done to enforce them.
Both Environment Minister Jim Prentice and Prime Minister Stephen Harper consider that the incident is unacceptable.

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Mattlong.

at 09:47 on February 14th, 2009

Is Syncrude being charged because they failed to prevent the duck deaths? Or is it more that they failed to implement their planned bird deterrent method?

After all, industrial practice generally approaches environmental preservation from a perspective that "reasonable" and "appropriate" methods be used to mitigate environmental impacts. That said, it is understood that it is quite literally impossible to reduce all environmental impacts to zero, but it is also accepted that certain impacts are of such gravity that they warrant mitigation efforts.

If Syncrude had their "bird avert" systems in place and operated them properly, but still failed to prevent all or any of those ducks from landing on their pond, I am not certain that there would be such a reaction from the Province and the Federal Government. I think that the course of action taken would be more along the lines of a co-operative investigation to determine a more effective, yet suitable method of preventing bird landings.

What do you think?