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Wildrose finds it horrible that longtime anti-oilsands activist Tzeporah Berman is now a co-chair of the NDP’s new Oilsands Advisory Group.

That was my reaction at first, especially after hearing her compare the oilsands to Mordor, J.R.R. Tolkien’s land of utter evil.

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“When you’re there it feels a bit like Mordor — as far as the eye can see it’s mines, basically, and huge toxic ponds, lakes really,” she told a climate advocacy reporter in London.

Nobody says the oilsands are pretty, but neither are they the fictional empire Tolkien used as a metaphor for the slaughter and corruption of the First World War.

After Wildrose trumped her statement, Berman, a York University professor, expressed regret in a Facebook statement.

“I really do, I regret that comment I made in the interview,” she told me afterward.

“I was very jet-lagged, and being attacked by that reporter because of my willingness to have conversations with the oil industry.