Actress, fitness guru and left-wing activist Jane Fonda arrived in Fort McMurray, Alberta Tuesday to protest the provincial oil sands site, where oil deposits are literally extracted from sand.
Greenpeace Canada, notoriously linked to anti-logging tree spiking, is sponsoring the trip and has invited Fonda to speak at a protest rally at Edmonton’s University of Alberta, where Fonda will “stand with First Nation Leaders and push the Canadian government to leave up to his commitments to Indigenous peoples,” according to Greenpeace’s website.
Fonda, who was notoriously nicknamed “Hanoi Jane” during the Vietnam War when the North Vietnamese government, used her visit to their capitol for anti-U.S. propaganda purposes, is the latest U.S. celebrity to travel to the remote site to protest imagined environmental abuses that include claims that the project is driving climate change.
Attention to the visit is viral on social media with groups like Oil Sands Action encouraging pro-energy people to attend the rally in support of the petroleum industry. One reminder states: “Sign up to attend this free event in Edmonton with Jane Fonda this Wednesday. Make sure she knows that many First Nations in Canada support our oil and gas industry. More than 25 percent of Canadian First Nations produce oil and gas now or want to in the future. Canadian energy is produced to the highest standards for human rights and equality in the world.”
The petroleum industry is taking the visit in stride, already having endured scathing criticism from musician Neil Young and climate change dilettante/actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
Chelsie Klassen, media manager with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers told The Daily Caller, “We respect the opinions of Hollywood celebrities; but they are not entitled to their own facts.”
The facts that Klassen takes issue with are accusations that the oil sands project is causing irreversible environmental damage, endangering wildlife and displacing local aboriginals. She notes that Canada has extremely stringent environmental standards that exceed even those of Fonda’s California jurisdiction and that the energy industry has “a lot of program movement in all of these areas.”
Moreover, Canadian petroleum producers have voluntarily formed the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA), and invested $1.3 billion into this “innovation hub” to specifically “focus on environmental policies.”