The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) may rue the day they made foreign funding a public issue. Did it not dawn on CAPP that crusading against a pittance of foreign funding of environmentalists trying to block the transportation and carbon pollution of oil sands oil would blow back and reveal just how foreign funded CAPP and Big Oil in Canada are?

We must build a diversified economy while transitioning off the oilsands. New industries and jobs must be created around a green economy that builds on Alberta’s highly educated and skilled workforce.

We are seeing an international paradigm shift on climate change, which will bypass Canada if we remain locked into unlimited energy exports. Until Canada gets a “Mexican exemption” and exits NAFTA’s energy-proportionality clause, there is little chance of Canada fulfilling its modest, international Kyoto targets, let alone going far beyond them.