Canada has joined the ranks of exporting oil nations and now supplies more petroleum to the United States than Mexico or Saudi Arabia. The unconventional character of mined bitumen as well as the startling revenue it generates for government coffers has irrevocably changed the country. Five per cent of the nation's GDP comes from oil while bitumen makes up 25 per cent of the nation's exports.

As the wild debate about the Keystone XL pipeline illustrates, Canada's $200-billion energy project has also become a global lightning rod. No oil exporting nation, whether Christian or Muslim, is immune from the corrosive influence of oil money and its dirty politics. Yet Canada has anointed bitumen as the nation's new "economic engine" without setting clear public policy goals or assessing the economic risks. The exploitation of bitumen has also proceeded without a national vision or even an energy strategy.

The environmental risks are now well documented. In fact both the Alberta government and Ottawa have systematically failed to monitor pollution as well as cumulative impacts. In 2011, the Office of the Auditor General declared the obvious: "incomplete environmental baselines and environmental data monitoring systems needed to understand changing environmental conditions in northern Alberta have hindered the ability of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Environment Canada to consider in a thorough and systematic manner the cumulative environmental effects of oil sands projects in that region." ...

As the world's most expensive hydrocarbon ($60 to $80 a barrel) the oil sands are highly vulnerable to oil price shocks. During the 2008 recession companies cancelled or shelved $150-billion worth of investments that became uneconomic at $40 a barrel. Just one improperly installed piece of pipe at an oil sands plant can create a half-billion dollar fire. Just one Enbridge pipeline leak can raise the price of oil by ten dollars and nearly shut down half a dozen U.S. refineries. And the failure of just one large dam of toxic mining waste can pollute a watershed all the way to Beaufort Sea.

A Calgary law firm acknowledged the project's fragility this way: "When it comes to the oil sands, the reality is that small mistakes can lead to big problems."

[Also] ... the North American Free Trade Agreement ... prevents oil from being shipped east. [Now that's interesting.]