[LINK] "Native leaders visit D.C. to lobby against oil sands exploitation"

[rfmcdonald]

An Alberta trying to expand American interest in its oil sands may be finding out what Québec learned in the early 1990s when it tried to expand Hydro-Québec's electricity exports to the United States using new dams in its north, that opposition from First Nations may complicate matters enormously.

In the ongoing battle to sway American opinion about Canada’s vast oil sands, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach scored a public relations coup last week when he hosted three U.S. senators on a tour of some of the biggest projects around the northern Alberta community of Fort McMurray.

South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham returned to Washington with a glowing report, declaring Canadian oil “reliable, safe and secure” and vowing to do “everything I can” to ensure there are no obstacles to its future production and export to the U.S. market.

But First Nations leaders who oppose expansion of the oil sands say the senators got a distorted view — one that excluded their concerns about potential health and environmental damage that more development will inflict on their communities.

“I think it’s a very sad commentary that [we] have to leave our own homelands to impress upon other countries the significance of our challenges and the treatment we are receiving,” George Poitras, a former chief of the Mikisew Cree First Nation at Fort Chipewyan, Alta., said Wednesday in Washington.

Poitras was part of a First Nations delegation that concluded a three-day visit to the U.S. capital aimed at persuading the Obama administration to block a proposal by Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. to build a new pipeline that would carry oil from northern Alberta to the Gulf Coast.