Neil Young drew harsh criticism with his scathing comments about the vast developments in western Canada to extract oil from sand. The well-known singer-songwriter was speaking at a National Farmers Union conference in Washington, D.C. Tuesday, warning about effects of oilsand projects on the land and people’s health.
“Fort McMurray (in Alberta) looks like Hiroshima. Fort McMurray is a wasteland,” said Young. “The Indians up there and the native peoples are dying. The fuels all over — the fumes everywhere — you can smell it when you get to town,” he said.
“People are sick. People are dying of cancer because of this. All the First Nations people up there are threatened by this. Their food supply is wasted, their treaties are no good. They have the right to live on the land, like they always did, but there’s no land left that they can live on. All the animals are dying.”
Local mayor calls comments “extreme”
The mayor of the area, Melissa Blake called Young’s comments “so extreme that they may very well be discounted by people who genuinely care about the state of the environment.”
“The community’s reaction is inevitably not happy, probably outraged, because it’s such a gross misrepresentation,” she added.
Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver said Tuesday that he was a fan of Young’s music, but “on this matter we disagree.”
Bad timing for Harper
The comments come at a time when Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is trying to get U.S. President Barak Obama to approve the building of the Keystone XL pipeline to bring bitumen from the Alberta oilsands to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Environmental groups on both side of the border are vehemently opposed.
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