The answer is they dirty each other in a vicious circle that has no end.

Conservative MPs are accused of killing a report the House of Commons Environment Committee was drafting on the tar sands last month because they wanted to hide testimony showing the government has failed to live up to its environmental protection responsibilities.

Canadian politic dirty tar sands

From day one, the Harper government saw tar sands exploitation as a way to transfer the political power to the west part of Canada. Before Harper was elected, two reports from the liberal era showed that there was no money to make in tar sands if externalities were accounted for. But there was enough money to make to tip the political balance of power if some environment and social fallout were not took care of. Tar sands can be cleaner but Canadian politic keeps it dirty to make more money.

Tar sands dirty Canadian politic

Killing a report the House of Commons’ Environment Committee to hide-shameful actions from the government is a new democratic low in Canada. In fact, it is against the basic values of democracy. The government cover-up to hide that tar sands industry activities are adding largely to airborne and waterborne contaminants in the Athabasca River and put high contamination of cancer-causing substances in melted snow, is not worthy of any democracy. The killed report showed that some companies should be charged under the federal Fisheries Act, but they are not. Tar sands show how dirty is Canadian politic.

A vicious circle

Tar sands exploitation does perfectly well the job it is supposed to do. Not only the government subsidise companies to extract oil with minimum environmental protection but the wealth created raise the value of the Canadian dollar and damage industrial exploitation in the eastern part of the country. The Harper government will not stop exploiting tar sands as long as it can keep power doing it or if it is not stopped by international actions.