Are we really selling dirty oil to the rest of the world? And if we are – why? Can’t we clean it up?

September 25th, 2013

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON.  Do you have the feeling I get when I hear people talk about the “dirty oil” that is sent around the world from Alberta.  Are we sending the world dirty oil?  Why are we doing that?

Isn’t Canada the country that brought about the Peace keepers – those United Nations guys with the blue helmets?

Aren’t we the people who said no to having American nuclear bombs in Canada?

Didn’t we take a pass on sending troops to Iran?

And if we’re selling “dirty oil” –why is it dirty?

If there is such a huge profit in the oil sands in Alberta why aren’t we using a part of those profits to do research on ways to make the oil cleaner?

I thought we were the good guys – not like those guys south of us.  We were the country that has state medical coverage while the American are still trying to make that happen.

We are the country where everyone doesn’t have a gun in there house and for the most part we are a gun free society.

We are the country that did away with capital punishment.  We don’t have to kill people to punish them.

My sense of being a Canadian is diminished when I read that we are shipping dirty oil.  I don’t understand why we are not spending large sums of money on finding ways to clean up that oil and spare our environment the harm dirty oil does.

I feel ashamed that we are fighting decent people in the United States who don’t want our dirty oil working its way through oil pipes in their fields.  They tell me its good business.  Really?

We Canadians have one of the best educational systems in the world.  We’ve invented some pretty good things.  Our banking system is the envy of the world – yeah some of those banking fees are a little on the outrageous side.

And the cell phone fees are out of whack – but the phone service we have is one of the best in the world.  Almost every time a space ship goes up – it has one of those Canada Arms on it – we did that!

But the dirty oil thing – can’t we do something about that.  Do we really have to sell a product that does a lot of harm to both people and the environment.