Canada's Oil Industry Begs to Be Taxed
Now the government just has to say yes to the idea
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Fort McMurray, in Western Canada, is surrounded by thick boreal forest, but you can still make out the oil-rich town from dozens of miles away. Plumes of carbon-rich smoke hover above it, a byproduct of the oil industry’s efforts to mine a peanut-butter-thick form of crude from vast stretches of tar sands.
Canadian oil companies know there’s no hiding it’s a dirty business and the country’s fastest-growing source of greenhouse-gas emissions. They worry their oil will be barred from foreign markets because it’s a bigger polluter than other fossil fuels. To stave off costs that could come with more regulation, the industry is doing something unusual: It’s asking the Canadian government to slap a national pollution tax on its filthy crude.