Time to rethink Ottawa’s self-defeating energy pitch

Stephen Harper and his ministers are alienating friends and critics with their self-righteous oilsands rhetoric 

(This is an excerpt from a Toronto Star Editorial, dated May 12, 2013)

Watching Canada’s descent from “energy superpower” to a stubborn peddler of environmentally damaging fossil fuel has been like witnessing a slow-motion train wreck. Yet the government refuses to recognize the damage it has done, much less change its strategy.

It has become clear to everyone — except the prime minister, apparently — that lecturing potential buyers while spewing increasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere is not going to work.

What Canada needs to do is provide wary buyers proof that it has a credible plan to clean up the oilsands, that it is working with scientists and environmentalists to extract the oil without using vast amounts of water and gas and that it respects its trading partners’ desire for sustainable forms of energy.

The makings of such a policy already exist. Oilsands producers have made modest progress in reducing the intensity of their emissions. Alberta has just levied a serious tax on carbon production. And an increasing number of eastern Canadians who once regarded the oilsands as a blight on the ecosystem are open to developing them if it can be done responsibly.

But the Harper government’s refusal to ratchet down its rhetoric has overshadowed these promising developments.

Read this Toronto Star editorial in its entirety by clicking here.