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Articles by Merran Smith

Merran Smith is the director of Clean Energy Canada at Tides Canada. Follow Clean Energy Canada on Twitter at @cleanenergycan.

Featured Article

Fact: All pencils in Canada look like this.

ShutterstockFact: All pencils in Canada look like this.

Dear America,

How are you? We are fine. It’s been a bit warmer than usual up our way. But not too bad, considering.

I wanted to check in with you about the Keystone XL pipeline proposal that many of you seem to be rather upset about, and actually ping you for a bit of neighborly advice. While some of us on this side of the border really want Secretary Kerry to give Keystone the thumbs-up, many of us are pretty cool on the idea.

The truth is, just beneath our mild-mannered veneer, we Canadians are a tormented people. Here’s why.

Unlike you — with your Netflix, and Apple, and Facebook, and Boeing, and General Electric and so on — we have a resource economy. Since our early days as the global leader in the beaver-pelt industry, we’ve cut down trees, and dug up rocks, and pumped stuff out of the ground, and sold it to you — and others — so you could turn it into more useful things like furniture, appliances, houses, suburbia, and so on.

Today, thanks to our oil sands, our fossil fuel sector is going ga... Read more