Canada – Prime Minister Stephen Harper continues to pursue a way to ensure the transport of Canada's tar sands oil to China, saying it is “increasingly clear that it is in Canada's national interest to diversify our energy markets.”
Harper's goal goes against the wishes of environmental and aboriginal groups throughout the country, which see it as bad for the environment and native cultures. If the pipeline was to bust, the damage would be catastrophic. Harper however unjustly called the groups “foreign-funded radicals.”
“We have abundant supplies of virtually every form of energy. And you know, we want to sell our energy to people who want to buy our energy -- it's that simple,” he said.
His rhetoric increased after President Obama vetoed the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which goes through the middle of the United States, at least until after the presidential elections.
Despite the unlikelihood of any of the oil from the tar sands arriving within the next decade, China's expressed its strong interest in buying the oil from Canada.
Harper praised the country's business model which made it become an economic powerhouse in the span of a few decades, saying it “shown the world how to make a poor people rich” despite the human costsit has on its citizens. He also predicted China would soon become the world's largest economy.
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