I'm with TrueKaiser on this one.

How many posters here have been to Fort McMurray? or Hay River? or more to the point Dawson City, which is a disaster after 100 years of gold mining.  I have been to all and the disturbed ground is not pretty.

Northern Canada is a fragile land that does not recover quickly.  Left alone it provides some wood but a lot more fish and wild grazing animals like Moose, Deer and Caribou that people eat.  Mess it up and it won't do that anymore for people who might want to live there.

I think we have to keep an eye on all these guys (mines) and make sure the remdiation they promise is done, without any corner-cutting.

But when we just compare them to old unremediated projects, that doesn't advance the conversation.

We are keeping an eye on these guys. We have handed that responsibility over to our governments. They in turn have sold it to the corporations. So the corporations are keeping an eye on it. Who is watching the watchers? I will not buy shares of these companies.

Suncor
Exxon, Imperial
Chevron
Shell
ConocoPhilips
Encana
Petro-Canada
Western Oil Sands
Nexen
OPTI
Husky
Synenco
Murphy Oil
Mocal Energy

Not until you guys start being completely transparent about your impact on the environment and the true EROEI of what you are doing.

The two watchers watching the watchers that spring to mind are the Sierra Club and the Natural Resource Defense Council ... but it is of course a constant battle.

Wikipedia has a more exhaustive list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_organization