Canadian government overhauling environmental rules to aid oil extraction
Source: Washington Post
The government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is undertaking a massive rewriting of the nation’s environmental laws in order to speed the extraction and export of oil, minerals and other materials to a global market clamoring for Canada’s natural resources.
“The government is saying, politically, we want to hitch our wagon to an economic development strategy in which natural resource extraction plays a very large part,” said Brian Crowley, managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute public-policy think tank in Ottawa.
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Canadians on both sides of the debate said the legislative changes would provide the nation’s oil and gas firms with a quicker and more certain path for shipping their products overseas, rather than relying on the American market. The issue has taken on more urgency because it is uncertain whether the Obama administration will grant a presidential permit for TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL extension, a 1,700-mile pipeline that would ship heavy crude oil in Alberta to the Gulf Coast. After the administration rejected the permit in January, saying it could not evaluate it properly in the face of a congressionally mandated deadline, it has eased the way for the lower segment to go through and is reconsidering a permit for the leg between Alberta and Nebraska.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/canadian-government-overhauling-environmental-rules-to-aid-oil-extraction/2012/06/03/gJQAyxx2BV_singlePage.html
Meanwhile, Canadian environmental activists are leading a SOPA-style online blackout in protest of this new law.
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