Costly Fix examines the post-1995 Alberta tar sands boom, detailing how the state inflated the profitability of the tar sands and turned a blind eye to environmental issues. It considers the position of First Nations, the character and strength of environmental critiques, and the difficulties that environmental groups and First Nations have had in establishing a countermovement to market fundamentalism. The final chapter discusses how Alberta's new NDP government, in its first couple of years, has addressed the legacies they have inherited from the previous Progressive Conservative government on climate change, royalties, and the blight of tailings ponds in the boreal forest. Throughout the book, Urquhart demonstrates that too many actors have done too little to prevent Alberta's boreal forest from becoming a landscape sacrificed for unsustainable economic growth.

Ian Urquhart is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta.

Ian Urquhart's profile page

• Short-listed, The Donald Smiley Prize awarded by the Canadian Political Science Association

"The sweep and density of Ian Urquhart’s analysis will ensure that, for years to come, Costly Fix will be a standard text in the Canadian political economy canon, placing it in the company of such classics as Larry Pratt and John Richards’ Prairie Capitalism (1979)."

The Tyee.ca, January 28, 2019