The Oil Industry and Pipelines - What the NDP has been saying all along

Calgary Herald: NDP Leader Mulcair says oilsands access should be opened up, but not with new pipeline

Yes. A better/cleaner/safer plan all around would be to process this stuff in Canada (preferably closer to the source IMHO) and then ship out the refined material.

Also, collect more royalties from the companies that are extracting the oil (the royalty levels are insanely low right now) and use those to help the manufacturing industry across Canada. And make the extractors pay for the clean-up of the waste products and the pollution they create. Makes sense. 

This is more or less what the NDP has been saying all along (although the corporate media and the Conservatives across Canada have been doing a great job of making you think that the NDP is not for this but is instead against the oil industry and "The West". - These  are bare-faced lies about the NDP policy and anyone with more than 2 brain cells can see that these are lies. Observe the polls showing the NDP support continually increasing/staying high, while the Con support keeps dropping. Most Canadians are not dummies).

But the corporate Harper government (a.k.a. looters in suits) doesn't want this - they just want to keep things going as is and damn the consequences (as the corporations will make more money if they don't have to be responsible for the consequences).

And, can we get rid of the subsidies the Canadian government pays to the companies extracting oil from the Tarsands who are making $ billions in profit?!!! These made sense in the beginning to entice companies to begin extracting - but they don't make any sense now that the processes are established already and these companies no longer need the subsidies.