A run-in with angry “do-gooders” during an oilsands discussion panel at a writer’s festival fueled Ezra Levant’s interest in ethical oil.
He decided then and there his next book would make the case for Alberta’s oilsands using the criteria all liberals hold dear: environmental responsibility, peace, treatment of workers, and human rights.
Levant, a Conservative writer and lawyer, discussed the result, Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oilsands, at the Red Deer College Arts Centre Wednesday night as part of the college’s Perspectives: Canada in the World series.
Speaking to a less-than-half-capacity crowd, Levant admitted he didn’t know much about the oilsands when he was approached at the Ottawa International Writers Festival to sit on the oilsands discussions panel. He was at the festival to speak about his first book, Shakedown.
He was greeted with derision from the crowd, as “oilsands pornography” played on a screen in the background.
“These pictures looked like something out of the land of Mordor in the Lord of the Rings,” Levant said.
“Then I realized why they had invited me down there; they needed someone to direct all their anger at.”
Levant said his staunchly-conservative approach, which questioned the reality of global warming, had no effect on the crowd of “do-gooders.”
“The problem was I was talking to them in a way that offended their values,” Levant said.
Levant decided to frame his argument in Ethical Oil around the oilsands versus the other nine of the world’s top oil-producing nations and how they performed in the four liberal categories. He would go on to say he wrote the book for Zoe, a made-up muse he described as a stereo-typical McGill student taking “vegetarian studies, who’d probably gotten all their information about the oilsands from Saint-Suzuki or Al Gore.”
Levant spent the majority of his lecture covering the four criteria, calling the word “tarsands” a politically-engineered phrase that acts like a tell in poker: “When you hear it, you know someone with an agenda is about to speak,” he said.
Levant attempted to strengthen his case by saying underground coal mine fires in China produce 10 times as much greenhouse gas emissions as Canada’s oilsands, and that greenhouse gases have declined 38 per cent in the oilsands since 1990.
The crux of Levant’s argument revolved around the brutality used by other oil-rich countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Iran, and Sudan, compared with the political and labour practices in Canada.
For example, Canada invented peace keeping, while Saudi Arabia invented Sept. 11th, since 15 of the hijackers were of Saudi descent, he said.
During the question period after his lecture Levant’s was asked — by a woman who said her dog is ironically named Zoe — how oilsands products can be considered ethical when the owners of some of the companies operating in Northern Alberta are Chinese.
“When these companies are operating in Canada, they must abide by Canadian rules and regulations, and my argument is in defense of oil in Canada,” Levant said.