Oil sands get nod from U.S. anti-poverty group

‘All Energy Is Good’

CALGARY — Support for Canada’s oil sands is coming from an unexpected American group–an anti-poverty coalition led by African-American civil rights and faith leaders.

The group is waging a national campaign targeting 50 “extreme” environmental organizations and 100 U. S. politicians it says are restricting energy supplies through climate-change legislation, causing oil prices to spike to levels that are “strangling” the poor.


Niger Innis, co-chairman of the “Stop The War On The Poor” campaign and national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), one of the oldest civil rights groups in the United States, said the alliance wants more oil from Canada’s vast unconventional deposits.

“We favour any and every energy source,” he said in an interview. “We do not believe in this artificial game that the radicals play of pitting the so-called bad energy versus good energy. All energy, when prices are as high as they are, which is such a critical resource and the lifeblood of a nation’s economy and the survival of people, is good energy as far as we are concerned.”

The alliance’s views are in stark contrast to policies embraced in recent months by U. S. politicians to restrict imports of Canada’s “dirty oil.”

Financial Post