National Post (National Edition)
FROM HANOI JANE TO FORT MAC FONDA.
FONDA’S TRIP WAY UP NORTH RILES ALBERTANS
Fort McMurrayites might have assumed the celebrity visits would stop after the city was swept first by recession, and then by wildfire.
Or when the provincial government introduced a carbon tax and started phasing out coal.
And surely, with Donald Trump in the White House, even the oiliest of Canada would shift to the activist back burner.
But no, Jane Fonda was there.
“We don’t need new pipelines,” she told a Wednesday press conference at the University of Alberta.
Fonda is in Alberta at the invitation of Greenpeace, which has brought her here in support of the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion — a group of Canadian First Nations and U.S. tribes opposed to new pipelines.
Appearing alongside Fonda, at a table with a sign reading “Respect Indigenous Decisions,” was Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, who, as leader of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, has led anti-pipeline protests and litigation in British Columbia.
“The future is going to be incredibly litigious,” he said in reference to the approved expansion of the TransMountain pipeline.
The press conference also included Grand Chief Derek Nepinak of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, which is leading a legal challenge to the federal approval of the Line 3 pipeline.
Although much of Athabasca’s oil production now comes from “steam-assisted gravity drainage” projects that requires minimal surface disturbance, on Tuesday Fonda took the requisite helicopter tour of a Fort McMurray-area open pit mine.
Later, she told news cameras that it looked like someone “took my skin and peeled it off my body.”
These celebrity drop-ins tend to bring out the worst in Alberta: Social media lynch mobs. Strangers screaming “go back to California!” at the airport. Outraged citizens trying to find some sort of contemporary Fonda product to boycott.
Just as it was with Neil Young and Leonardo DiCaprio, long after Fonda has forgotten whether she travelled to Edmonton or Calgary, her name will live on as an Enemy of Alberta.
Meanwhile, politicians took turns poking holes in Fonda’s image of a Northern Alberta gripped by a greedy, Earth-destroying oil conspiracy.
Wildrose leader Brian Jean, a Fort McMurrayite himself, tweeted out images of Fonda’s hometown of Los Angeles shrouded in smog.
Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Jason Kenney noted on Twitter that Fonda’s Beverly Hills home sits directly atop an active oilfield producing “dirtier” oil than much of Athabasca.
Alberta’s NDP government, for its part, offered to walk both Greenpeace and Fonda through its Climate Leadership Plan, but organizers appear to have declined.
Robbie Picard, who founded Alberta’s I Love Oil Sands campaign, happened to run into Fonda at a Fort McMurray Moxie’s and asked her if she knew the full extent of aboriginal employment and investment in the oilsands.
“Greenpeace does not want these pipelines to be built, so they’ve got Jane Fonda to come up here, they act like they represent all aboriginals and they don’t,” said Picard.
Because of the oilsands, he said, “there are aboriginal people here that have more money than Jane Fonda.”
Just last month, Jim Boucher, chief of Northern Alberta’s Fort McKay First Nation, caused a rift with other members of the Assembly of First Nations when he said that his nation was “prooilsands.”
“If it wasn’t for the oilsands, my people would be in poverty right now,” he said.
The only Albertan Indigenous leader sharing the stage with Fonda on Monday was Allan Adam, chief of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
Adam has consistently been one of the most vocal critics of oilsands development; both Fonda and Neil Young came to Alberta at his invitation.
On Monday, the chief said that elevated cancer rates in his community are due to oilsands pollution — a claim that Alberta Health Services probes have disputed.
“I feel very ashamed to call myself an Albertan … because of what is continuing to happen upstream that is affecting our people back home,” he told Monday’s press conference.
Meanwhile, Adam also heads up a nation that operates oilsands contracting businesses and accepts oilindustry money for community programs.
To a question whether Alberta now has social licence to keep developing oil because the government has drafted legislation to disincentivize its own carbon emissions, Fonda replied “that’s ridiculous.”
She stressed her love for the Alberta workers who “go where the money is to feed their families,” and said they could all find new work in alternative energy.
“We’re not saying it’s going to be overnight; it has to be planned, it has to be compassionate, it has to take into account the workers and their families,” she said.
Therein lies Alberta’s main beef with these types of things. As Fonda’s extremely carbon-intensive trip to Canada should have made obvious, the world is still buying 14 billion litres of oil every day.
If it isn’t Alberta fuelling that demand, goes the argument, it’s going to come from a place where Jane Fonda visits aren’t as easily arranged.
WE’RE NOT SAYING (A TRANSITION TO ALTERNATIVE ENERGY) IS GOING TO BE OVERNIGHT; IT HAS TO BE PLANNED, IT HAS TO BE COMPASSIONATE, IT HAS TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE WORKERS AND THEIR FAMILIES. — JANE FONDA ON ALBERTA’S EMPLOYMENT CRISIS FONDA’S BEVERLY HILLS HOME SITS DIRECTLY ATOP AN ACTIVE OILFIELD PRODUCING ‘DIRTIER’ OIL THAN MUCH OF ATHABASCA.