Mary O’Grady writes in today’s WSJ:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be in Ottawa to attend a meeting of the G-8 Speakers. But the buzz around town and across Canada has nothing to do with the official summit agenda. Ms. Pelosi, along with Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey (co-author of the House’s climate and energy bill), will be having dinner tonight with Ed Stelmach, premier of Canada’s energy-rich Alberta province.
Mr. Stelmach won’t be the only Canadian at the table. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and Quebec Premier Jean Charest will be dining too. But while the discussion is officially slated to focus on the broad topic of “energy security,” the Canadian press is humming with gossip that what the powerful House Speaker really wants to talk about is Alberta’s “oil sands.”
A boom is underway in Northern Alberta to extract the gooey, thick tar and convert it to oil for refining into gasoline. But environmentalists hate the oil sands, calling them the worst climate-offending energy source of all, and almost no one expects Mrs. Pelosi is on an intellectually honest mission. As columnist Don Martin wrote in Canada’s National Post, “A suspicious observer would think Wednesday’s visit to Ottawa will be more about gathering input for a future trash-talking of the Alberta and Saskatchewan oilsands than an unbiased hearing of the facts.”

The rest here.