Copeland: It’s Time to Stand Up for our Province

No more Hollywood visits

photo credit: CBC News 

Mayor of Cold Lake, Craig Copeland says the Alberta Premier and Canadian Prime Minister need to do a better job standing up for the oilsands, Fort McMurray and the Canadian oil industry, in general. The comments come as Hollywood star and activist, Jane Fonda, tours and condemns Fort McMurray and the oilsands operations. Mayor Copeland says it’s “enough. We need to stand up for our oil.”

“The Prime Minister and the Premier need to step in and say ‘enough’s enough’. If organizations are going to bring in movie stars, then they have to have industry and elected officials having the opportunity to talk to these people.” Mayor Copeland says the stars are only given a one-sided narrative and make rash statements from that narrative. “It’s killing us in the United States and places like Ontario, where people are seeing a movie star talk about how ‘disgusting’ the sands are in Fort McMurray. And people in Ontario have no idea what our oilsands operations are all about. People don’t realize they will take the words of a movie star, really, really to heart and it’s hard to compete with a Jane Fonda.”

Mayor Copeland says the Canadian and Albertan governments should be more responsible in ensuring the full story is being told, “that’s where Trudeau and Premier Notley need to step in and shake it up. We’ve got to stop letting these people into our Province and we’ve got to move on.” Premier Notley has held a press conference in which she called Fonda “tone-deaf” and “ill-informed”. Mayor Copeland says that’s a start, but the government needs to be doing more to ensure that right off the start of a celebrity tour the full picture is being presented. Rather than playing defense and trying to clean up after the star already gains harming international publicity, that Albertans cannot match.

Copeland says the Government can be doing a better job highlighting Alberta’s clean oil, “I encourage the Prime Minister and the Premier to start talking about the oilfields in California and the open pit mining in Africa. We have to start to play a little tougher and a little more Trump; otherwise this is going to keep going.”

“If we don’t watch it, we’re going to have more of these characters coming into Canada,” Mayor Copeland believes that with the new presidency there will be a change in the entire political landscape of America; including how Canadian oil and treaties are handled. “Donald Trump is not going to listen to Jane Fonda.” By contrast, the Mayor explains, “because Canadians are so nice, we allow these people to come in and cost us a lot of credibility.”

Mayor Copeland says we should be fighting back, “I know some people say, ‘this is just Jane Fonda‘; but until we start seeing pipelines across Alberta and Canada, I don’t think we should be taking these kinds of visits lightly.” Mayor Copeland openly invites Jane Fonda to Cold Lake for a candid full-view discussion about the oil industry.