Purpose of the Project

"Canada’s oil sands industry continues to reduce GHG emissions intensity."

     - from The Facts on Oil Sands - Report by the Canadian Association of Oil Producers

"You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress."    -  Malcolm X

Purpose  of the "Bearing Witness to the Oil Sands Project":

To bear witness to the impact on people, wildlife and the land of the Oil Sands development in northern Alberta through traveling through the area by canoe, experiencing what is taking place and by interviewing local residents. To bring more awareness to the Albertan and Canadian populations of what is happening through film, photography, writing and public presentations. The following are some of the issues that concern us:

1.       Oil sands development is expanding much too fast

2.       There is no credible environmental monitoring

3.       Currently project proposals are being automatically approved with insufficient regard for effects on community infrastructure, or cumulative effects on air, water, land and wildlife

4.       Oil sands development is economically devastating:  far too little royalties and taxes are being collected, no funds are being saved for the future, and the effects of the world’s biggest industrial project are distorting the Canadian economy

5.       Current land reclamation plans are in the realm of fantasy

6.       Insufficient funds are being set aside for future reclamation efforts

7.       Current management of waste water (so-called tailings ponds which are actually toxic man-made lakes) is environmentally devastating to the watershed

8.       Exporting of bitumen is an export of Canadian jobs as well as increasing the likelihood and seriousness of oil spills

9.       The duty to consult with affected Indigenous groups prior to project approval are not being respected

10.   As the world needs to rapidly move away from fossil fuel use to prevent run-away and catastrophic global warming, the scale of investment in the Oil Sands development is keeping Canada from moving in this direction; instead we are feeding the habit of the world’s biggest energy addicts (notably the U.S.A. which, with less than 5% of world population uses almost 25% of world oil production).


"II. Northern Alberta's bituminous sands, a national treasure, are the globe's last great remainingoil field. This strategic boreal resource has attracted nearly 60 per cent of of all global oil investments. Every major multinational and nationally owned oil company has staked a claim in the tar sands.

III. Neither Canada nor Alberta has a rational plan for the tar sands other than full-scale liquidation. Although the tar sands could fund Canada's transition to a low-carbon economy, government has surrendered the fate of the resource to irrational global demands. At forecast rates of production, the richest deposits of bitumen will be exhausted in forty years."

    -  "Declaration of a Political Emergency" in  Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent 
                         by Andrew Nikiforuk