Alberta Government On KAIROS

Background on the KARIOS cuts and the Harper government's justification for them can be found here. And below, bumped up from the comments to that earlier post, is David Sands , with the Gov. of Alta's Public Affairs bureau (who I have mentioned on this site before). He's talking about when KAIROS representatives went out to Calgary to investigate the state of the Alberta oil sands (which I am calling "oil" rather than "tar" sands so as to be polite to Mr. Sands):

For what it's worth, when KAIROS came to Alberta on its oil sands inquiry, we asked some of our best (and busiest) people to brief them and take questions on impacts on air, land and water, and on health and social issues. These were people involved directly in monitoring and investigating the impacts, not flacks like myself.

I have been told that most of the delegates were open-minded and interested, had done some prior research and had probing, relevant questions. There were one or two who, we inferred, had already reached their conclusions and were suspicious, even hostile. But overall, not a group of NGO delegates with an entirely closed agenda.

We have no stake in or opinion on whether the group should receive federal funding or not. As with any group that takes the time to travel here to see the impacts of oil sands development first hand, we gave KAIROS the best access to the best people we could offer. And, we'd do it again.

- David Sands, for the Government of Alberta

As a rabidly Toronto-Centric, The West Hating BigCityLiberal, it terrifies me that reps from the Gov. Of Alberta should be making more sense on this issue than the Feds.

Obama On The Oil Sands

"If it turns out that these [carbon sequestration] technologies don’t advance, and the only way to produce these resources would be at a significant penalty to climate change, then we don’t believe that those resources are going to be part of the long-term . . . future,” Jason Grumet, Obama’s senior energy adviser, told reporters in June.

Plans for Alberta carbon sequestration projects are going forward.

Just an FYI. Looks like another quiet news day.

Albertans Speak Out

From CBC:

A provincial government committee touring Alberta to hear what people have to say about the pace of development in the oilsands were told on their Edmonton stop to halt development.

[...]

Roberta Palynchuk says she hiked through Northern Alberta's forest in the 1970s, but those trees have been replaced by massive lakes of toxic waste water created by the oilsands companies, she said.

"I don't believe that as an Albertan I can be proud of that. These things have happened in our province unchecked."

[...]

The tone of comments from the public were similar at this hearing to the last time this panel, chaired by Vance MacNichol, was in Edmonton.

Who are these people, and why do their views go totally unrepresented in the Alberta commentariat?