Earlier this year, President Bush said this in his State of the Union Address: "America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." He was unfortunately right on both counts. But, he doesn’t have to be. The addiction will always be there, but where we shop to satisfy this craving can change. We need only focus our attention to the North.

Canada – a bastion of social and political stability - has substantial reserves of oil, more than enough to tame our demand. Their reserves were always known to exist, but for years remained an afterthought thanks to market factors not in their favor. The low costs of oil attainable from the Middle East coupled with moderate global demand made shopping for crude an oversees affair.

Times have changed. Global demand for petroleum products has surged to unprecedented levels thanks to the burgeoning economies of China and India entering the already strong global market. At exactly the same time this has occurred a handful of Middle Eastern nations - exemplified by Iraq - have transformed from political-philosophical powder kegs to areas of full-blown conflict and strife. This combination of increased demand and questionable supplies has caused the cost of oil to skyrocket in a very small period of time. A barrel of oil now worth something in the $60 range is sold at a rate almost three times what it was in the 1990’s.

Never again will we see those low prices and that is why Canada is suddenly so attractive to our needs. Their diamond in the rough is the Alberta oil sands, a swampy area about the size of Florida some 400 miles north of Calgary. The oil sands are estimated to hold 175 billon barrels of recoverable oil, making this relatively small geographical area second only to Saudi Arabia (259 billion barrels) in terms of reserves. Crude from the oil sands requires intensive investments in refinement and/or acquisition through the use of expensive strip mining or – for deeper reserves – steam injection necessary to make the heavy, tar-like oil easier to pump. As compared to traditional processes, this makes Albertan oil two to two and a half times more expensive from a cost standpoint to the oil companies themselves. History has showed that oil sands oils were unmarketable unless the global selling price for a barrel of oil was in excess of $30. Now that we are twice that with $30 never again to appear, Canada is suddenly the place to shop.

Canada has actually become the largest single provider of oil to the United States. These imports are destined to grow and Canada could one day easily provide a majority of our oils. Most oil companies have come to realize this and are buying up hundreds of thousands of acres in northern Alberta. Companies like Chevron, Shell, and Synenco are making sizable investments in equipment and new technologies to improve oil extraction from the sands. Overall investment in the area is being forecasted at $63 billion over the next twenty years. This will manifest itself in output that is expected to triple over the next decade, reaching a staggering 3 million barrels a day.

With the present and future of Canadian oil coming to the fore because of the oil sands and the changing global market, it’s time that we started dealing with Canada at a much more appropriate and friendlier level. Granted, we do have what is in essence a sound relationship with them. But, in recent years we have been downright disrespectful to Canada with some of our national policies (such as the softwoods issue). We now look to really harm our friendship with them via the passport policy soon to be passed by our government. These little things, which are big aggravations to someone supposed to be our friend, may come back to haunt us in the future in the form of duties that Canada may place upon their oil exports as a means of payback.

That being said, not only is friendlier behavior towards Canada the right thing to do from an etiquette standpoint, but it’s also necessary to ensure our economy’s general well-being. Canada has what we need to support our addiction. And if we play our cards right, it can be acquired from them free of the stresses, unknowns, and rising costs associated with Middle Eastern oil.