Federal Tories can't plug every pipeline threat - and what is threatened?

 There are so many things left out of this story - and it is instructive to observe how it is framed. For one thing, Joe Oliver is quoted as saying that thousands of jobs are at stake due to regulatory delays. In actuality, the Enbridge pipeline only promises roughly two hundred permanent jobs and the resulting tanker traffic threatens tens of thousands of jobs that already exist in the fishing and tourism industries. The story also ignores the tens of thousands of jobs that would be created by upgrading the bitumen in Canada and piping it to Eastern Canada to displace the million barrels of imported oil that are being consumed there every day. While the story does mention the impact of the strong petro-dollar on Eastern Canada, it does not approach the magnitude of the 700,000 jobs that have already been lost in the manufacturing sector or even mention the impact the high dollar has on every other aspect of Canada's economy that relies on Export. This includes farming, technology and software development, movie industry, etc.

And the story seems to hint that the First Nations only "think" that they should have a say over their ancestral lands. How would Joe Oliver and Stephen Harper feel if a pipeline appeared in their back yards?

The facts are that Canada would benefit from a policy that reduced our dependent on exporting unrefined bitumen at under-valued prices. More jobs would be created, our future would be more sustainable and Canada would be a better place for everyone if we adopted a more holistic energy policy rather than a short-sighted plan which sells our children's heritage for pennies on the dollar.

Federal Tories can't plug every pipeline threat