Tar Sands: Canada for Sale captures the intersecting storyline of a remarkable cast of characters eager to cash in on the oil boom in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Washington lobbyists, pipefitters from Newfoundland, Chinese investors and Norwegian industrialists descend on tar-soaked Fort McMurray, a modern-day Eldorado, where rents are skyrocketing and cocaine abuse is four times the provincial average. Up for grabs - a stake in the $100 billion energy bonanza and Canada's economic sovereignty. this documentary tracks the growth of the world's largest reserve of 'unconventional' oil.
This Florida-sized 'environmental sacrifice zone' has become Canada's contribution to the U.S. energy security in the post-9/11 world. Yet, for many, the tar sands are a global warming disaster. As Fort McMurray bursts at the seams, children from Thunder Bay to Cape Breton are made tar-sands orphans by their migrant-worker parents. Canada's petrodollar breaks the back of the manufacturing economy in the East. Cancer rates skyrocket downstream of Fort McMurray while Rocky Mountain glaciers melt and disappear. And all the while, Alberta crude goes south to U.S. markets while Eastern Canada pays ever more for insecure Middle East oil. In an isolated region of the north, Canada's future is being carved out of the forest at the breakneck pace. "Tar Sands: Canada for Sale" questions how much Canada is willing to sacrifice for a stake in this century's greatest energy bonanza.