Ralph Klein shops for vehicles in Washington

This is a photo that invites captions. If you've got one, send it to gsxccc@sqwalk.com. For example:

Klein: You have oil sands here in Washington too?

Klein: Schwarzenegger just drives a Hummer, eh?

2006 Smithsonian Folklife Festival
Alberta at the Smithsonian

The truck stops here

By Jacqueline Trescott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 8, 2006

When the Smithsonian Folklife Festival opens later this month, an eye-catching prop will occupy a piece of the Mall dedicated to the culture of Alberta, Canada: a monster truck.

Due to arrive shortly is an 18-foot-tall, off-road dump truck that boasts 10-foot-high tires. It is one of the symbols of industry in Alberta -- and some environmentalists are objecting to what they fear will be an unbalanced discussion of oil mining in the province.

Trucks used in mining oil sands are symbols of industry
in Alberta. The Canadian province will be featured in the
Folklife Festival on the Mall.
(By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)

In conversations with Folklife officials and in a letter to be released today, the Natural Resources Defense Council has implied that the exhibit endorses this method of oil extraction. "Our main objections about the tar sands oil development is the disastrous environmental impact it has on the natural life in the boreal forest and on the indigenous people," said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of Canada projects for the Washington-based council. "This is Canada's single largest contribution to global warming."

Alberta is one focus of the festival, which begins June 30, and its energy programs are one of 16 aspects of life in the western territory that will be featured on the Mall. This year's other featured subjects will be Native American basketry and the Latin music of Chicago.

Festival director Diana Parker said the Smithsonian worked with Albertan scholars, government officials and ordinary citizens to come up with a broad look at the territory, which is said to hold the largest petroleum deposit outside the Arabian peninsula.

"There is a good mix of traditional culture, as well as contemporary stuff," Parker said. "We have a good mix of naturalists, people who are dependent on the natural environment in different ways, as well as workers from the oil industry."

The dispute was first reported in yesterday's Globe and Mail.

Casey-Lefkowitz said she feared the 40-year-old festival would take on the air of a trade show, not the education and entertainment experience that millions come for each year. She requested that the festival provide a counterpoint from environmentalists, scientists and indigenous leaders.

"This is not an industry-sponsored exhibition," said Nancy Groce, curator of the Alberta presentations.

The festival brings people from different occupations to practice their trades and crafts in the sweltering Washington heat. It has often included a signature vehicle, such as a subway car from New York and a painted bus from Pakistan. In the past, the festival has also had presentations about the oil industry in Oklahoma, Texas and Scotland.

"It would be disingenuous to do Alberta and not talk about energy business," Groce said. Almost 150 Albertans will participate in the festival, including cooks, ice sportsmen, dancers and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Among the oil workers who will be on hand are two women who drive the huge trucks, a repairman, two environmentalists who work for the oil companies and two who are independent.

"The truck is a prop, and we don't want the truck to overshadow the message of a broad Alberta culture," Groce said. "These women drive the truck in 40 degrees below zero."

The Smithsonian is not getting a field truck from Alberta but is borrowing a similar vehicle from Caterpillar.

The tar sands lie beneath a forest of pine, spruce and aspen trees, wetlands and lakes that are home to grizzly bears, caribou and whooping cranes. The region covers 48 percent of Alberta. Underneath are sands containing bitumen, a substance that can be converted to oil.

"We are not handing out materials for any side," festival director Parker said. "The festival is not taking a position."

Murray Smith, the Alberta representative at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, did not return calls about the controversy. The festival received $1.2 million from Alberta that was matched by the Smithsonian -- an arrangement that is customary with participating regions.

What gifts will Harper bring Bush this time?

Maude Barlow
The Toronto Star
Thu 06 Jul 2006

On President George Bush's 60th birthday, he will be visited by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Having watched our government go to great lengths to please Bush, Canadians can't help but wonder what treats Harper has planned for the president this time.

If the Liberal government maintained a marginal distance from the U.S. by signing onto the Kyoto Protocol, refusing to participate in the Iraq war etc., Harper made it a point early on to show the Bush administration a much friendlier Canada. In his throne speech, Harper said he considered the U.S. to be "Canada's best friend." Then he went on to prove his friendship.

The Harper government promptly scrapped Kyoto and pledged its support to the war on terror by extending Canada's mission in Afghanistan. It has become clear today that this is not a peacekeeping mission; it is a full-fledged combat operation.

But the Conservative government has no problem with this. In fact, it has gone as far as promoting Canada's belligerent role in the "war on terror" through an $18,000 ad campaign in U.S. subway stations depicting Canadian soldiers in combat in Afghanistan - this despite the fact that 57 per cent of Canadians want the military involved in "traditional peacekeeping," according to a 2005 Ekos Research poll.

On trade, Harper has allowed the U.S. to disregard the NAFTA ruling on softwood lumber in Canada's favour to work out a deal that better suits the U.S. While Paul Martin paid lip service to defending Canadian interests in the lumber dispute, Harper had no qualms about settling with the U.S. outside the NAFTA dispute-settlement mechanism.

The softwood ordeal made it clear to Canadians - proponents and opponents of NAFTA alike - that the trade agreement was not working for Canada. Yet Harper has forged ahead with the Security and Prosperity Partnership, giving business and security interests priority over social and environmental concerns.

For the Bush administration, working to spread its neo-con agenda throughout the continent, the Security and Prosperity Partnership is the icing on the cake. It was the Liberal government which first signed onto the deal to harmonize Canadian policies with those of the U.S. in order to facilitate trade. But Harper has eagerly taken the neo-conservative plan one step further. Along with his American and Mexican counterparts, he launched the North American Competitiveness Council to formalize the powers of the business elite.

This latest development clearly puts business leaders in the driver's seat and gives them the green light to press forward for a North American model for business security and prosperity. While Mexico and Canada have 10 representatives at the NACC each, the U.S. has 15.

In Harper, Bush has a best friend willing to promote a Republican-style agenda in Canada and eager to blindly support U.S. foreign policy objectives abroad. What more could the Bush administration ask for?

There actually is more. The U.S. would like even greater access to our energy despite evidence that resources are depleting. American corporations would like access to our vast water resources and U.S. health management organizations are licking their chops in the hope that a health-care privatization scheme will finally give them access to the Canadian market. The Bush gift registry goes on.

With very little information about the agenda of Harper's meeting with Bush, we can only hope that our Prime Minister will be feeling slightly less generous this time.

Maude Barlow is chairperson of the Council of Canadians and author of Too Close for Comfort Canada's Future within Fortress North America.

Arctic Indigenous Alliance * Oil Change International * Sierra Club of Canada * Global Exchange * Rainforest Action Network * The Ruckus Society * Council of Canadians

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:
Elaine Alexie, Arctic Indigenous Alliance, 1-510-495-7064
Jeca Glor-Bell, Sierra Club of Canada, 1-416-822-1216
Steve Kretzmann, Oil Change International, 1-202-497-1033

AS CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER HARPER MEETS BUSH
ACTIVISTS TARGET SMITHSONIAN'S CANADIAN OIL INDUSTRY PROPAGANDA

Banner deployed in front of giant oil sands truck on US Capitol Mall
Indigenous Rally Planned for Friday, 1pm

WASHINGTON (July 6, 2006) - Highlighting the Smithsonian's controversial focus on Alberta, Canada's oil production, activists today unfurled a banner in front of the gargantuan tar sands truck currently parked on the National Mall. The banner read: Harper and Bush: Tar Sands + Oil Addiction = More Global Warming. The truck is the centerpiece of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival's exhibit on the culture of Alberta, Canada.

Elaine Alexie of the Arctic Indigenous Alliance stated that "the Folklife Festival ignores the impact of the oil industry on the Arctic communities of Canada, and on the environment of the Mackenzie Valley. For only fifty jobs, the Mackenzie Gas Project will transform Canada's Northwest from wilderness to petro-industrial landscape - largely to feed this destructive tar sands project, which in turn feeds US oil addiction."

"George Bush is an oil junkie and Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants to be his new pusher." said Jeca Glor-Bell of the Sierra Club of Canada. "The pair are North America's leading climate criminals and they should both be put in Kyoto rehab."

"The Smithsonian is a Congressionally funded institution, which should not be using our tax dollars to provide the Canadian oil industry with advertising space on the National Mall," said Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change International. "In addition, tar sands interests contributed more than $250,000 to make this exhibit happen. We need to stop subsidizing oil industry PR - we need a separation of oil and state."

####

NOTE TO ASSIGNMENT DESKS - SECOND EVENT SCHEDULED TOMORROW
WHAT: RALLY WITH ARCTIC INDIGENOUS ALLIANCE AGAINST TAR SANDS
WHEN: 1PM, FRIDAY THE 7TH - TOMORROW
WHERE: NATIONAL MALL AT 7TH ST.
BACKGROUND:
The mining and drilling of tar sands already is Canada's fastest growing contribution to global warming - and will soon be North America's largest source of carbon pollution. The Alberta tar sands are found under a region of forest and wetlands larger than the state of Florida. Tar sands is a mixture of 85 percent sand, clay and silt; 5 percent water; and 10 percent bitumen -- a tar-like substance that can be converted to oil. Producing oil from the tar sands generates 2.5 times as much heat-trapping gases as conventional oil production. Mining and drilling of the heavy oil also threatens to contaminate ground water and turn the boreal forest and wetlands into wastelands.