All yap, no facts

Watching the spectacle of Jane Fonda denouncing the oil sands was sickening.  With neither facts nor figures, this rich Hollywood nobody had the unmitigated gall to hold a press conference to blather on about.....whatever. 

And who was sitting beside her?  Allan Adam, chief of the Athabaska Chipewyan band -- a band that rakes in $250 million a year working with Suncor, Syncrude, Husky, Esso and Cenovus -- to name but a few.  All you have to do is google this band and the facts pop right up in seconds.  Does Fonda not have internet?  She looks ill-informed and stupid, while Mr. Adam makes a patsy of her.  The real question is how this band can rationalize its vocal and aggressive opposition to the oil sands, while in bed with them??

Seriously.

And while they are one of a handful of bands not taking money directly from the federal government because they're getting it from oil companies, they nonetheless receive millions from the feds for education and health care.  So much for being an "independent nation", as they erroneously claim. 

Please.

In 2014, the federal court ruled against the Athabaska Chipewyan's motion to stop the Jackpine Mine Expansion project in Alberta, stating the Chipewyan had been thoroughly and duly consulted and that the band in fact did not have jurisdiction.  Further, the court ruled that the band's long list of conditions for expansion had been extensively met.  But as I have said for years, nothing will stop natives and their getting-richer lawyers from opposing everything and anything. 

So, before Greenpeace or another native group invites a dullard friend of Neil Young to tour the oil sands and yap, I suggest he/she hit the internet and then stay home.