It’s 11.30am in the pumping heart of Canada’s tar sands industry, on a day when local crude is trading at a rock-bottom $29 a barrel. For the down-and-out men and women heading down to the free lunch in the basement of a Fort McMurray church, it’s hard to see a way back up.

“It’s depressing not having work. I used to make $3,400 a week. Now look at me. I’m eating in a soup kitchen,” said Brian Earl, a construction worker.

This is life on the downturn in a country which prime minister Stephen Harper once promised to make an “energy superpower”, and on the eve of the 19 October general election, it is one issue the Conservative leader definitely does not want to talk about.

Harper linked Canada’s future prosperity to natural resources exploitation when he came to power in 2006, championing the expansion of the Alberta tar sands.

But last year’s crash in global oil prices – and Harper’s failure to build the Keystone XL pipeline – have injected uncertainty into the long-term future of Alberta’s vast carbon reserves, and turned the old ambition of becoming an “energy superpower” into an election liability for the prime minister.

In the closing stretch of the campaign, the Conservative leader has very deliberately pivoted to identity issues – niqab veiling and hotlines for “barbaric cultural practices” – to avoid talking about energy and the economy, analysts said.

After a difficult start, Harper’s Conservatives could yet squeak out a minority government in the 19 October polls. The Conservatives are running just behind the Liberals, with the leftwing New Democratic Party falling back to third place, according to Ekos, a polling research group.

But if Harper pulls through on election day it will be in spite of – not because of – his promotion of fossil fuels, said Frank Graves, president of Ekos.

“You won’t hear Mr Harper talking at all about an energy superpower during this election,” he said. “It is clear that most Canadians do not think Mr Harper’s approach to the economy and to oil sands in particular was the right one.”

Canadians overall favour a post-carbon economy by three to one margin over the prime minister’s carbon-heavy strategy, according to Graves’s polling. Even in Alberta, which is heavily dependent on the tar sands, 56% want the province to fight climate change. Nearly half, or 48%, think the tar sands are already big enough, according to Ekos polling for the Pembina Institute last month.

And more than two-thirds think the government should focus on diversifying the economy, rather than helping the oil and gas industry.

A utility barge sits in a tailing pond at the Syncrude open pit oil excavation mine in Fort McMurray. Photograph: Orjan F Ellingvag/ Dagens Naringsliv/Corbis

Earl, 30, has been surfing the ups and downs of the tar sands since his parents first came out west to Alberta from Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island to look for work when he was 13.

In earlier layoffs, the construction worker said he could count on lining up four new job offers by lunch time. This time, when Earl found a job after three months of sitting idle, the work ran out in four days.

“If I don’t get work, I’m fucked,” he said. Earl – not his real name – has a four-year-old daughter, living with relatives, and his girlfriend is pregnant.

So long as oil prices were high, Albertans could be excused for thinking they sat atop almost limitless wealth, just waiting to be dug and steamed up out of the tar sands, the world’s third-largest carbon reserves.

Harper promised a swift ramp up in production, with some industry projections soaring to an eventual 10m barrels a day – or about five times the current level of 2.1m barrels a day.

As late as June 2014, when oil was trading at $107 a barrel, Harper’s bet on the tar sands seemed to be paying off, with fossil fuels accounting for nearly 40% of Canadian exports. Fort McMurray was booming, with the population doubling over the last five years to about 125,000. Truck drivers easily earned $150,000 a year, with overtime.

But for those who remembered Alberta’s history of cyclical downturns, Harper’s strategy was short-sighted, said Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, who is running as an NDP candidate for a seat in Edmonton.

“It was a strategy that was bound to fail and it was bound to fail because it was inevitable that oil prices would eventually go down, which is something that anybody who has lived in Alberta for the past 30 or 40 years could have told you right from the beginning,” McGowan said.

As prices dropped and Keystone and other pipeline projects stalled, and the country’s international reputation took a hit for its promotion of the dirtiest of fossil fuels, Canadians turned increasingly against Harper’s energy superpower vision.

Last May, Rachel Notley, a leader of the leftwing NDP, won a stunning victory in Alberta’s provincial elections, ending 44 years of Conservative rule.

The rise of the left in Canada’s most rightwing provinces was built on growing disillusion with Harper’s policies among a younger, better-educated electorate, Graves said.

Since coming to power, Notley has drawn a sharp contrast with Harper’s vision for the tar sands, repudiating the Keystone XL pipeline which he vigorously promoted.

“We are an energy-producing province within an energy producing country,” she told the Guardian in an interview. But she went on: “It’s a balancing act ... We have to look at how to develop carefully and responsibly.”

As the federal election campaign got underway, Harper came under attack from his opponents both for taking a gamble on oil prices and for failing to build the Keystone XL and other pipelines that would deliver Alberta’s crude to market.

Thomas Mulcair, the NDP’s national leader, said Harper misjudged the global appetite for tar sands oil, and picked an unnecessary fight with Barack Obama over the Keystone XL pipeline.

He accused Harper of jeopardising Canada’s international reputation by pulling out of the Kyoto climate agreement, and souring relations with the US by dismissing Obama’s concerns about global warming.

The conservative leader during a visit to the US called approval of the pipeline “a complete no brainer”.

That aggressive pro-pipeline posture alienated Obama, the NDP leader said during last month’s foreign policy debate. “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar and you have been dumping vinegar by the gallon on the Americans – and it’s no surprise they were saying no to you,” Mulcair chided Harper.

Kyle Harrietha, the Liberal party challenger for the conservative-held Fort McMurray-Athabasca seat in parliament, said Harper’s aggressive support for the oil industry, and dismantling of environmental regulations, had backfired.

A giant excavator loads dumpers with a fresh load of tar sands at the Syncrude open pit oil excavation mine in Fort McMurray. Photograph: Orjan F Ellingvag/ Dagens Naringsliv/Corbis

“His whole pitch with making Canada an energy superpower – his words – was pipeline approval,” Harrietha said. “He created a situation where a bullseye has been painted on the oil sands by activists whose interest it is to see that the oil sand no longer be developed. I blame that on his approach towards environmental oversight,” Harrietha said.

The drop in oil prices caused about 100,000 job losses across the country, according to Jim Stanford, an economist with the Unifor labour union. He called the Harper era the worst decade for Canada’s economy in postwar history.

In Alberta’s oil country, layoffs reverberated from project construction sites in Fort McMurray to services jobs in Edmonton and Calgary, and high-paid lobbying positions in the capital, Ottawa.

In Fort McMurray, the town the tar sands built, the downturn created a society of haves and have-nots, said local social service organisations.

The five big mines on the outskirts of Fort McMurray continued to operate through the downturn, as have processing plants. But big multinational firms such as a Total and Shell have pulled back, and only one new project remains under construction.

McGowan said the Harper government could have protected the tar sands from such downturns by diversifying within the industry. Instead, he said, Harper was too focused on extraction, and not on expanding Alberta’s refining and upgrading industry.

“There hasn’t been a single major value-added project approved. They are all extraction only,” he said. “It’s rip it and ship it. That’s become the standard approach to developing resources.”

Those involved in ongoing production, refining, or petrochemicals have been relatively insulated from the downturn – as have long-term residents of Fort McMurray. On a recent flight to Calgary, the wife of a Suncor worker who had been in the town since 1977 boasted of dropping $50,000 on a family holiday in New York City.

But those whose jobs depend on exploration and oil services were hit hard. “There is no real middle income. There are those who have, and those who have not,” said Steve Bryant, director of the Circle of Hope, a drop-in centre.

After the frenetic pace of the boom years, Fort McMurray emptied out. The oil company charters for fly-in, fly-out workers wound down. For Sale and For Rent signs have sprouted in every neighbourhood. One new development on the edge of town had an entire block of townhouses for sale, and there are stories of home owners just giving up and handing in their keys.

Some long-term residents say that’s a blessing. Supermarket shelves remain fully stocked, and traffic has eased. But there is an undercurrent of desperation.

The Salvation Army had 60 applications for kettle coordinator this Christmas – the low-paid job ringing a bell for donations. About 100 people put in résumés for a casual – and low-paid – job at the Salvation Army homeless shelter.



“Every other year it’s like pulling hen’s teeth,” said Kate Penney, who is in charge of the Salvation Army shelter. “This year people are doing what they can to hang on.”

Crystal Riavitz used to be one of those fly-in, fly-out workers, taking a seat on one of the company charters for her three shifts.

At the top of the oil boom, she said, she was pulling down $150,000 a year, including overtime, as a heavy equipment operator.

“I had a vehicle. I had a home with flatscreen surround sound in every room. I had four animals. I had a husband. I had everything,” said Crystal, who asked not to be identified by her real name.

She was forced to sell off many of those luxuries, she said, and she was giving up her dogs for adoption. “I have the training for every haul truck there is,” she said. “I can’t get work.”

The only future she saw for herself at the heart of the energy superpower was to somehow find a way to hang on until the prices rebounded, and the jobs came back.

“When the next boom comes, I’ll be OK. All I’ve got to do is wait and pray,” Riavitz said. “I’ve got a girlfriend who works as a shovel operator she says she can get me on ... so I am really praying on that one.”