Canadians don't trust Greenpeace

Speaking of the oilsands, here's my latest Sun column about a new opinion poll on the subject:

Leger Marketing has done a new poll asking Canadians about the oilsands.

Canadians believe technology will solve the challenges of the oilsands - but they're not confident technology can solve the problems of offshore oil in places like the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea.

Confidence in oilsands technology is probably wellplaced.

To pick just one example, since 1990, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted to produce an average barrel of oilsands oil has fallen by 38%.

And it's not just CO2. Underground "in situ" oilsands production doesn't use any fresh water, and it doesn't create a large blemish on the surface of the land. Canadians know our OPEC competitors don't care about a clean environment, but the oilsands do. The poll is encouraging for that reason alone.

Canadians also told Leger they care about the economy - not surprising given the recent recession. And 44% of Canadians say our national economy depends on the oilsands, as opposed to 28% who say it doesn't. Those 28% probably don't realize their pension funds are invested in oilsands companies, which are as large as the financial sector on the TSX.

And 44% of Canadians say oilsands development benefits all Canadians, as opposed to 29% who say it only benefits Albertans. That 29% probably doesn’t know there are more people working for the oilsands in Ontario - from Bay Street finance jobs to heavy equipment manufacturing - than work for the Big Three automakers.

And, as Liberal Sen. Bill Rompkey said in the Senate earlier this month, there are plenty of communities in Newfoundland where half of the income in town comes from the oilsands.

Leger also asked Canadians who they look to for environmental information. Greenpeace was suggested as one answer, and Canadians were allowed to choose as many answers as they liked.

Only 13.8% of Canadians said Greenpeace, and just 10.1% said they listened to Greenpeace about the oilsands in particular. The media loves Greenpeace, and dutifully acts as their stenographers.

But Canadians know Greenpeace is about as credible as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the radical vegetarian group more about stunts and showboating than actual informed debate.

Only one in 10 Canadians look to Greenpeace for information about the oilsands — probably the same number that look to a palm-reader or Ouija board.

Leger says the number one phrase Canadians choose to describe the energy sector is "job-creating." But the number two phrase is "environmental disaster."

There are real environmental disasters in the world: Nigeria, with nearly 2,000 unremediated toxic oil spills that will never be cleaned up; Nigeria and Iraq flare off so much natural gas, you can see it at night from space.

The idea of reforesting a mine, as over 60 sq.-km of oilsands have already done, is unthinkable in OPEC countries.

They're dictatorships that don't value human life - why would they value plants?

And that's another thing: Leger asked about the environment. But they didn’t ask Canadians to compare the ethics of the oilsands to OPEC when it comes to human rights, fair wages or war and terrorism.

Canada's oilsands have a lot more persuading to do. But the Leger survey says ordinary Canadians haven't bought the anti-oilsands propaganda served up to them by the CBC, or foreign lobby groups like Greenpeace.