The Secrecy Surrounding Canada's Tar Sands

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

24 May 14

he folks at Think Progress have a profoundly terrifying report from the blasted environmental moonscape of northern Alberta, whence the world's dirtiest fossil fuel may one day flow down our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death funnel that will run from said moonscape, through the heart of some of the world's most precious farmland, and eventually to the refineries of Texas, and thence to the world. (Two uses of "whence" in one sentence? I'll have the resume off to the BBC by Monday.) It seems that the tar-sands operation now pretty much involves a serious portion of the Canadian government, and it would rather the world not know what's going on in the boodocks.

According to Tom Henheffer, executive director of the non-profit Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), the Canadian federal government has been actively working for the last decade to prevent journalists' access to information, particularly in science-related fields. The trend only got worse, he said, when current Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a fierce supporter of tar sands development, took office in 2006. "It's specifically very bad in science-related fields, but it extends into every other field," Henheffer said. "This government has a culture of secrecy that is extremely harmful to Canadian society."

The umbrella of this secrecy apparently is being used, not to protect Canadian citizens, but to shield corporate profits. And secrecy is not the only weapon of the government that has been brought to bear.

What's more, documents obtained in February by the Guardian revealed that both Canada's national police force and intelligence agency view environmental activist protest activities as "forms of attack," and depict those involved as national security threats. Greenpeace, for example, is officially regarded as an "extremist" threat.

(And if you're wondering if it can happen here, remember that the all-too-human, but curiously error-prone, heroes of our intelligence community already are doing some subcontracting work for American corporations. Yell "terrorist" and half the government goes on point. I don't like the civil-liberties chances of anyone opposing this pipeline in the United States if it gets approved and once the construction begins.)

This whole project has been ethically hinky from jump. The case for the pipeline was built on lies and exaggeration. (Don't forget to count the strippers! Jobs!) TransCanada, the Canadian corporation that wants to build it, has been dealing double with farmers all along the proposed route, most notably in Nebraska and in Texas. The company already has bent too many local and state governments to its will. This is a profoundly corrupt enterprise, which is why it is cloaked with the kind of secrecy in Canada that inevitably will come to be the norm here. That's reason enough to reject it.