Can you imagine receiving a 22 million dollar gift from the taxpayers to advertise your business. Well this week the Harper government announced the gift of $22,000,000 for advertising the benefits of our dirty tar sands oil for use in the south east Asia and European regions.The oil extracted from the tar sands costs Canadians in many ways.
To extract the oil in a process requiring tremendous use of energy and the multinationals use clean natural gas in the process. This natural gas in itself is a valuable resource. The transporting of this dirty oil is dangerous and the residue from the process causes the largest environmental black eye for Canada that we have. All this is bad but to use our money to market the product while these companies become wealthy using our natural resources is ludicrous as the profits from this industry are not even Canadian. We do have a Canadian content but by in large the money invested and profits earned are multinational in scope.
Remember it was this government that two short years ago was supporting with our taxpayers money a dirty industry in Quebec which produced asbestos and sold it to Africa and India. This asbestos was responsible for numerous deaths in these countries. Canada and two other countries were the only people in the whole world who would not sign an agreement to declare asbestos as a dangerous substance. Thankfully world pressure forced the government to back off and abandon its support for this industry.The loss of three Conservative seats in the area may have played a part.
Just who in this government is making these decisions and for what purpose? It would seem that the focus on Alberta oil interests trumps all other needs. Last quarter Ontario lost 32,000 jobs in the manufacturing area. Is this not a concern of this government?
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