Mulcair brings his oilsands message to Alberta
Posted May 31, 2012 3:44 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Thomas Mulcair is sticking to his guns even after touring the oilsands in Northern Alberta.
The leader of the Federal NDP spent a few hours Thursday morning at Suncor’s operation, touring the facilities and taking a helicopter ride over the region.
However, his visit hasn’t changed his mind about how the oilsands are impacting the national economy.
Mulcair continues to tote his message that the oilsands push-up the value of the Canadian dollar, which hurts all exporting industries in Canada including manufacturing.
“Right now Canada is suffering some of the predictable affects where we have an afflux of currency from other countries, in particular U.S. dollars, because we haven’t internalized the environmental costs. We haven’t included those costs in the product,” says Mulcair.
He believes oilsands operators should have to pay more for using land and water resources and then pass the added costs to foreign consumers.
Mulcair also took the chance to rip the Harper Conservatives for a lack of action on environmental policies.
He points to the addition of more monitoring stations announced this week as an example, which he says were first promised over a year ago.
