Great article that hit a lot of points that have bugged me as a saskie living in alberta these last 9 years.

The Tyee – Alberta’s Strange Sinking Sensation.

Bitterman, Ty, maybe you should let Mr. Brad Wall know about it. The original article was by Andrew Nikiforuk from thetyee.ca.

The Best Part of this is the Bonus Guide…

“BONUS GUIDE: 16 SYMPTOMS OF PETROMANIA”

How do you know when you live in petro state? Here are some key signs:

• When your government pays 30 per cent of its road, education, and hospital bills with finite and volatile hydrocarbon revenue.
• When your province posts five budget deficits in a row during a so-called “bitumen boom.”
• When the billionaire owner of a hockey club (the Oilers) donates $430,000 to extend the 40-year rule of a one party state that ran out of ideas 30 years ago.
• When Alberta Health says it can’t comment on the public health impacts of hydraulic fracturing because Alberta Energy is responsible for “sustainable energy development.”
• When the government approves 100 bitumen projects over a ten-year period without a cumulative impact assessment.
• When government officials ban the use of the word “tar sands” the same way the U.S. military forbade the use of the word “insurgency” in Iraq.
• When your government fires the Chief Elections Officer, Lorne Gibson, in 2009 for doing his job and reporting on widespread electoral fraud.
• When your former premier, Ed Stelmach, advises the Ukrainian government on how to sell shale gas development to a skeptical public concerned about groundwater contamination.
• When most university research chairs acquire boutique petroleum brands such as the Enbridge Research Chair in Psychosocial Oncology; the Cenovus Chair in Canadian Plains Mitigation and Reclamation, the TransCanada Chair in Regulatory Law and the Talisman Chair for Sustainability and the Environment.
• When prominent scientists such as David Schindler are vilified and slandered for reporting on documented water contamination from tar sands development in top science journals.
• When your government estimates that cleaning up toxic waste in the tar sands will cost more than $20 billion but asks industry to set aside only $1 billion.
• When politicians describe bitumen, a badly degraded tar enmeshed in sand, as “the jewel of hydrocarbons.”
• When the province’s oil and gas regulator argues in Queen’s Court that it owes “no duty of care” to Albertan landowners or the province’s groundwater.
• When a bunch of Calgary lawyers decide that the best market for their self-branded “ethical oil” are Chinese national oil firms directed by the world’s leading moral philosophers, the Communist Party of China.