Edmonton-based tar-sands activist Mike Hudema says British Columbians can’t afford to view tar-sands development solely as an Albertan issue.

“I think what all Canadians need to know about the tar sands is they are an environmental horror show,” Hudema, Greenpeace Canada’s climate and energy campaigner, told the Straight by phone. According to Hudema, by 2020 the behemoth operations will contribute greenhouse gases equal to those emitted by the Czech Republic, twice as many as Peru, and 10 times as many as Costa Rica.

A panel discussion following the Vancouver International Film Festival screening of H2Oil at the Vancity Theatre (on Monday [October 12] at 1:15 p.m.) will address the problems involved. H2Oil is an 81-minute examination of the enterprise in northern Alberta, focusing on the lives of those affected.

Harjap Grewal, regional organizer with the Council of Canadians—cosponsors of the panel—noted that there are B.C.–specific points of contention. “The largest of them”¦is this issue of the Enbridge pipeline, which is being proposed between Edmonton and Kitimat.”¦Many of the indigenous communities that still claim title and rights to the land that the pipeline is going through are very much in opposition.”

Grewal said that transporting heavy oil through these territories is inviting unmitigated disaster. “We had the Queen of the North sinking near the [head of the] Douglas Channel, where there is going to be tanker traffic carrying some of this crude through some of the most treacherous waterways in the world,” he added. “What’s going to happen is, again, you’re putting the entire ecosystem and the coastline and the lands that the indigenous communities that are still there use, you are putting them at risk.”

H2Oil director Shannon Walsh, speakers from the Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations, and Mel Bazil and Warner Naziel from the Wet’suwet’en territories of northern B.C. will all be at the discussion.