The comical reporting of magical Keystone XL jobs

As jostling continues over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, boosters of the project talk about how it will create “tens of thousands of jobs” in Canada and the United States.

Forget TransCanada’s own application to the U.S. State Department, which said that, at its peak, the company would require about “3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel” to build the pipeline.

And forget the study from the Cornell University Global Labor Institute. Researchers crunched TransCanada’s own data supplied to the State Department, and concluded the pipeline would create no more than 2,500 to 4,650 temporary direct construction jobs for two years.

And remember the State Department estimated that the Keystone XL pipeline would create “5,000 to 6,000 direct construction jobs,” and concluded the pipeline “would not have a significant impact on long-term employment.”

Now watch this amazing reporting about one million (1M!) Keystone jobs. (Clip courtesy of Movement Generation of Oakland, California.) It’s great material for Stephen Harper’s meeting next week with Barack Obama.

Photo: susanmelkisethian. Used under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND-2.0 licence.