RCMP intervene after school lesson on Alberta's oil industry prompts online anger by parents

RCMP intervene after school lesson on Alberta’s oil industry prompts online anger by parents

JAMES KELLER

PUBLISHED DECEMBER 10, 2019

The online dustup in Blackfalds is the latest example of school exercises on the oil sands sparking backlash in Alberta.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/canada/alberta/article-rcmp-intervene-after-school-lesson-on-albertas-oil-industry-prompts/?__twitter_impression=true

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A Grade 4 lesson that included material critical of Alberta’s oil industry prompted a Facebook debate among parents that devolved into threats and prompted the school to call in the RCMP and cancel a holiday dance.

A teacher at Iron Ridge Intermediate Campus in Blackfalds, Alta., last week showed a classroom of Grade 4 students two videos about the oil sands – one from the Alberta government and the other from the environmental group Greenpeace, the local school district said. The students then received a written assignment that asked how Albertans should manage competing demands on the province’s land for uses such as oil development, wind and solar power, agriculture and recreation.

Jayson Lovell, superintendent of the Wolf Creek school district, said a student told his parents about the lesson, and they took to social media to complain.

Sensitivity levels are high in Alberta about the portrayal of its oil sector, which has been a target for environmental activists, and hit hard in recent years by falling oil prices. Mr. Lovell said the social media comments included the possibility of a confrontation at the dance, and that the tone of the language used in the discussion was alarming enough to summon police.

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