Tar sands oil refinery

Even before acid rain, Canada and the United States have long been at odds over the issue of inter-continental pollution. The debilitating fact that our individual and shared industrial waste respects no physical boundary has become an increasingly destructive and contentious issue, which is matched only by the often impenetrable political boundaries which have prevented substantive policy initiatives from curbing the fundamentally devastating environmental impact this has wrought.

Chief among these transgressors are the Alberta tar sands.

Since 1966, development of these vast areas of petroleum manufacturing has gone full steam ahead, despite persistent and troubling data from environmental protection groups that the massively intrusive and destructive footprint of this endeavour has had disastrously long term effects on native plant, animal and human life in the region and beyond.
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There are few topics that get my blood boiling more than health care – my beloved Montreal Canadiens is one of them. What once was a trademark of Canada and a symbol of Canadian goodwill has become a shadow of its former self, run down by too many people, not enough money and inefficient practices. Something I was once very proud of, I am now very ashamed of. Oddly, my feelings on healthcare seem to mirror my feelings on Les Canadiens. But my focus here is not on hockey, or on what I’m sure is the top quality health care the members of the Canadiens receive, but the health care we receive, specifically we Albertans, since that is where I am speaking from.

Growing up under the realm of King Ralph, i watched health care fall on Alberta’s priority list. Our hospitals became crowded and seeing people sleeping in hallways became common to the point where they were simply a reality, just like filling up on gas. Small town doctors became fewer and further between, MRI’s became harder to get and hospital triage areas became backlogged and neglected. Slowly but surely, and right before our eyes, our system became based on dealing with emergencies rather then preventing them. And if you had the money, privatization was introduced as an answer to all of your problems; all of this when ironically our province was doing the best it had been doing since health care was introduced. And now, under Steady Eddy, it seems the only thing that is steady is the poor decision making streaming out of the Legislative building, beginning with the LPN vs RN debacle.
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Now we’ve got Alberta’s health officials telling people to relax and take it easy if they’re not in a high-risk category; Dr. André Corriveau, Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health went on to say, “…we plan to have everyone vaccinated by Christmas.” Hang on a second… did he say Christmas? BY CHRISTMAS! Holy Mother and all the Saints! What’s going on? I better check the Public Health Agency of Canada’s site. Oh my Lord! CHRISTMAS! It wasn’t a mistake.

It looks like Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and B.C. are all suffering from Glaxo-Smith Kline’s production “hiccup.” The vaccine producer is unable to keep up with the demand for its product. It’s hard to blame the people who are making the stuff for not keeping up with a demand that wasn’t even there a couple of short weeks ago, but what about the bunch who sounded the alarm?

I would like suggest something to the communications department of Health Canada in the event that we face similar future emergencies. Please think your messaging strategy through thoroughly before you carry it out. When dealing with a highly emotional/stressful topic (like the H1N1 pandemic) consider the most likely, as well as the less probable, effects that your words will have on the target audience – and then tailor your messages to dispel anxiety rather than provoke it. Oh yeah, one more thing: Never tell your audience to get vaccinated when there’s no vaccine in the larder; that’s just asking for trouble.

It’s an oil rich area in Alberta, and apparently a cause for concern. Oil development in the region has had a huge impact for the people who live there – the Lubicon Cree.

To make a long story short: it’s disputed land, and statistically, the Lubicon Cree’s quality of life has decreased since the oil production began, now it resembles that of a third world country. Federal social service payments went from the primary income source of 10 percent of the population to 90 percent. There is a severe lack of running water and sanitation and health conditions are abnormally high as a result.

Traditionally, trapping was a source of income for a majority of the populace, but after the first year of oil development, wildlife all but disappeared.
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