This week, three Alberta Ministers are in Ontario propping up the potential for Ontarians to get jobs helping out the tar sands. Today Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert encouraged workers in Ontario's manufacturing sector to stand up for the tar sands against the environmental campaigns.
But wait a minute...is tar sands development a saviour for Ontario's manufacturing sector?
Because of the tar sands, Ontario is being negatively affected by “Dutch Disease” – a term that describes a hollowing out of the manufacturing sector due to currency inflation driven by resource (oil) exports. A study out of the University of Ottawa that examined the impact of resource exports (oil) on the dollar and manufacturing jobs found that 42 per cent of manufacturing job loss in Canada due to rising currency has been a result of Dutch Disease stemming from rising oil exports.
Ontario is being hit harder by the symptoms of Dutch Disease than the rest of the Canadian economy, losing 183,000 jobs between January 2003 and December 2007.
Yet Ontario is creating new jobs in clean energy - an estimated 20,000 since the Green Energy Act was passed - showing that we can create good jobs by producing our energy here rather than continuing to send billions of dollars elsewhere every year to buy oil.
What's more, leaked cabinet documents reported by the CBC last December show that the federal government is planning on letting tar sands greenhouse gas pollution explode, which would consume an ever growing share of Canada’s carbon budget. This must come at the expense of other sectors – like manufacturers in Ontario – if Canada is to meet its overall carbon targets. This will place a burden on other regions of Canada to do more than their fair share to reduce emissions. The federal government estimates that tar sands emissions will nearly triple by 2020 to 108 million tonnes.
And, this all comes on the heels of Fort Chipewyan fishermen raising concerns about the deformed fish they're pulling out of Lake Athabasca and rising scientific evidence that tar sands pollution is poisoning the water and fish.
The Alberta's government's economic claims are just about as credible as their claims that tar sands development is 'responsible'.
Gillian McEachern
Program Manager, Climate and Energy
Posts
