Last fall as the value of the loonie exploded lewdly into our faces, I wrote a thing about this stifling growth in Alberta—including a few sentences on tailings ponds, how they need cannons on them firing regularly to keep the birds off. Because if they don’t, I said, birds land there, then die. A thing easy to know!

This led to a couple subsequent discussions with yeasayers all about how these kind of dour predictions are paranoid. Proofless. Well, sadly, there’s plenty of proof now. Too bad, too. Because being right in this case actually means losing. No one wants nature poisoned. The argument has since quickly and typically evolved into “Money is more important; who cares about a few ducks, anyway?” 

Little families on the water.

As an omnivore, I guess you could mention that there are certainly more than 500 dead creatures sitting in the meat section of any average Save-On. Though it seems to me that most grocery stores don’t neglectfully drown their soon-to-be-marinated birds in what amounts to diluted gasoline aimed down their gurgling necks. Right?

Butchering is a regulated affair, unlike what happened up in the tarsands last week. Well, it’s regulated. But in a way that will have absolutely no effect on future policy—at the provincial level, at least. We’ll likely see some advertising dollars spent on general misdirection soon enough. Photos of green fields and stuff. And also Syncrude attempting to take credit for heroism, for being eventually compliant with its own cleanup.

Actually, I laughed out loud when I read that Syncrude may face penalties of $1 million. A mil’s not even a slap on the wrist. Metaphorically, it’s more like the sum of all punishment represented by a drawing of a sulky sad face on a piece of paper held up for two seconds in the dark. Like this:  :(   

No doubt the accused up in Fort Mac are trembling in their strip-mall metropolis over the fiery editorials aimed north and especially west towards them.

But, really, that’s where terrible harm is being done. Reputation. No offence to the ducks’ troubles, but it’s embarrassing that we have, once again, as Alberta folks, inhabited this terribly laughable stereotype. This teaches us with a clarity impossible to top that certain businesses in our province can do whatever they like to. That’s not even editorializing. 

Seriously, make a point of keeping track of what ends up changing via the Leg’s actions. Not so much because of the dead ducks, even. More because of the fact there’s now an open lake not all that far from here that kills living things on contact. And that we made it and it gets bigger all the fucking time. Talk about it.

And about how it would have been nice to hear about the poison slaughter without spies and insider leaks. And how the premier subsequently attacked windpower’s toll, trying to sum two wrongs into a given right. Fuck, then remember this: all of it’s being watched across the country, many of those noisy voyeurs outside Alberta being particular total pricks.

I’m just sad we even have to listen to this happening, mad it’s going to be used most effectively by the wrong people—critics of us as a people. At that overpriced dinner with his dangling critics, Stelmach said, “We cannot sit back and let others damage our reputation and give the world a false picture of Alberta.”

See, he knows we’re being stared at through the trees. It’s a real picture, not false. And, incidentally, migratory birds are held dear as a federal jurisdiction.