Conservatives and Liberals in Canada’s Parliament have agreed to suppress a report on water pollution caused by mining the Alberta Tar Sands. And the government has exempted a major Tar Sands toxin from regulation.
UPDATED, July 10, July 19
The Ottawa Citizen reports today that government and opposition MPs, in a closed door meeting held June 17, agreed to end their 18-month investigation into the poisoning of water by Tar Sands mining operations in Alberta. All copies of the committee’s draft report were supposedly destroyed.
The MPs have refused to explain, but no one will be surprised if oil industry pressure played a role.
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Update: The Indigenous Environmental Network and the Council of Canadians are calling on the Federal government to immediately release the findings
Update: See Tar Sands: What Canadian Politicians are Hiding
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The decision came as the Harper government moves ahead with plans to omit naphthenic acid — a toxin produced by tar sands mining — from the list of pollutants that oil companies are required to track and report. Both the federal and Alberta governments previously identified it as a primary pollutant in the waste that oil companies dump into tailings ponds.
The Citizen says that Matt Price of Environmental Defense has protested the omission: “Naphthenic acids are one of the main pollutants responsible for the toxicity of tarsands tailings to aquatic organisms, and have been shown to harm liver, heart and brain function in mammals. Naphthenic acids are also very long-lived, taking decades to break down.”
Canada has now officially joined my list of corrupt, evil nations! Talk about blatant moral (and no doubt financial) corruption.