In this interesting and exceptionally well researched book, Ian Urquhart explores the nature of the two-decade-long Alberta tar sands (his term) boom. He examines the economic benefits of this boom that began in 1995 but also the massive costs. He identifies damage to the First Nations’ way of life, labour, Canada's energy security, the economy itself, to various societal elements and, most significantly, in generating a “landscape of sacrifice” in northeast Alberta. But Costly Fix does much more than survey costs and benefits; as a political scientist, Urquhart is fixed firmly on explaining the state's role in the tar sands.
Scholars have sought to explain the state's role in the tar sands as a natural outworking of liberal ideology, either of the left or right. Some use neo-Marxist theories of a capital-directed state, while others adapt Terri Lynn Karl's petrostate theory (The Paradox of Plenty, 1997) to explain government action. Urquhart is unique in delivering a series of penetrating new insights by deploying Karl Polanyi's “double movement” thesis, drawn from The Great Transformation (1944). Urquhart structures Costly Fix around this theory, supplementing it with Lindblom's neopluralist and several neo-Marxist theories.
Grasping Polanyi's double movement thesis is critical for understanding Costly Fix. The primary movement of the modern economic era, Polanyi argues, is the liberal push to free markets from all social, political and moral constraints. The relentless push to expand the self-regulating market effectively remakes and inverts the old order. The market is disembedded and freed from social, political and moral controls, while society and nature are in turn subjected to the self-regulating market. This fully self-regulating market is utopian, by which Polanyi means impossible. It forces labour (people), land (nature) and money (purchasing power) to be subjected to market trading when in fact they are essential foundations and pre-requisites for market exchange. Forcing people, land, and money to be subject to markets, as “fictitious commodities” inevitably generates massive social, economic and ecological damage. This damage spawns countermovements that seek to protect society and nature from the ravages of the market, the second of Polanyi's double movements. Countermovements push government to reregulate the market, that is, to legally re-embed the market in society and/or the environment in ways that (at least) protect their interests.
This theory leads Urquhart to analyze post-1995 tar sands history with a number of fascinating questions. Why did market fundamentalism—a “reincarnated version of economic liberalism”—arise with a vengeance to shape the mid-1990s tar sands policy framework? Why did the state “reregulate” the tar sands in the ways industry interests sought? How and why did countermovements arise to attempt to protect their societal interests from the damage of the self-regulating tar sands market? Why have countermovements been largely ineffective to date?
Urquhart sets up the book, in chapter 2, by showing state intervention in the tar sands was not uncommon in pre-1980s tar sands industrialization, for example, Alberta and federal ownership in Syncrude. This began to change with a worldwide resurgence of market fundamentalism in the late 1980s. Chapter 3 explains the stunning story of how industry and government used the “National Task Force on Oil Sands Strategies” to sketch out and sell a blueprint for creating a fully self-regulating tar sands sector. At the same time, industry protected its own interests from the very market forces it sought to unleash, by securing protective measures, such as very low royalty rates, tax breaks and regulations favouring capital in harvesting of bitumen.
The response was a tsunami of investment and the post-1995 boom tar sands. But, the costs of the self-regulating tar sands market also mounted rapidly. Northeast Alberta became an “environmental sacrifice zone”; government lost royalties and tax revenues, and Indigenous communities suffered health and social impacts. These harms should have pushed labour and state-manager interests to form countermovements, Urquhart argues. But both failed due to their weak and compromised status in Alberta (24).
Urquhart further explores how tar sands problems stimulated countermovements from environmental and First Nations interests. Chapters 4 and 5 are perceptive discussions of how both groups, in spite of courageous resistance and good intentions, ended up offering only muted criticism. He concludes these groups were too compromised by industry and government money and demands to force significant policy change.
The rise of international groups opposing toxic tailings ponds and GHG emissions is also explained by Urquhart as countermovements. Chapter 7 explores how international groups sought reform of tailings pond regulations and practices. Shockingly, Alberta has yet to successfully enforce criteria and deadlines for cleaning up the 50-year legacy of toxic tailings.
Chapter 8 examines how rapidly growing tar sands GHG emissions activated international climate change countermovements. Other than convincing Obama to halt the Keystone XL pipeline (temporarily), however, regulation of GHG emissions continues to be dictated by market fundamentalism.
Finally, chapters 6 and 9 focus on government restructuring of market, society and environment relationships, as suggested by the double movement thesis. Two absorbing case studies suggest government attempts to respond to countermovements failed. Chapter 6 shows how Conservative Premier Stelmach tried, but failed, to significantly increase tar sands royalties. Urquhart uses Lindblom's theory to explain Alberta's failure to break out of the “prison” industry created.
Chapter 9 offers a careful and balanced assessment of the New Democratic Party's surprise 2015 election. After 20 years of opposing market fundamentalist policy in the tar sands, the NDP as government failed to reregulate in favour of the countermovements. In spite of a bold climate leadership plan, it did not significantly reregulate royalties or tailings ponds nor did it effectively limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Costly Fix is a powerful and provocative contribution to tar sands literature, suitable for scholars and careful readers. Urquhart makes a convincing case that the solution for enormous tar sands problems is for the government to re-embed the market in social and ecological systems. Urquhart believes we are on “the cusp of change” (315). But, I wonder, is the double movement thesis sufficient for illuminating a hopeful path forward? After the failures of all countermovements to force government to protect society and nature, we need to ask what more is needed. Does hope for change really depend primarily on the alignment of deterministic forces and factors that give countermovements the brute power to force government to protect their interests? Has the assumption of a mechanistic and deterministic universe, undergirding our theories, unintentionally eliminated solutions that are rooted in responsible human agency? Perhaps deep effective change in the tar sands requires us to address, not only structures, but also the deeper motivations, desires and beliefs of human agents.
