A new documentary "Tar Sands, The Selling of Alberta" commissioned by the CBC, will be on channel 5 Toronto, tonight at 9 pm. In an interview on The Hour last night, the filmaker, Peter Raymont, pointed out that Fort McMurray, in Alberta, is the third largest Newfoundland city in Canada (that's an indication of the extent of within-Canada migration!).

For those of you who haven't paid much attention to exactly what the fuss about the Tar Sands is, imagine that you take a can of motor oil, walk over to your child's sand box (or the local park's kiddie sand box!), pour the oil into the sand, and mix it around. Then, someone tells you that you need to get that oil off of that sand and back into the can! That is the challenge with the Tar Sands - it's a huge fossil fuel reserve, but the oil is very difficult and energetically expensive to extract. When it comes to carbon emissions, the cost of extracting the oil is huge. The documentary explores the social impacts and geopolitics of this issue, moreso than the environmental aspects. But, all of these aspects are directly linked when it comes to sustainability. Highly recommended viewing.

Dawn Bazely