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Canada’s oil and gas industry is “losing the war” against anti-hydrocarbon activism as the balance of power tilts in favour of project opponents, says the head of Quebec’s Oil and Gas Association.

Limits-to-growth and other social movements that sprouted out of such events as Niagara Falls, N.Y.’s Love Canal disaster in the 1970s have been “hammering away” at industry and government over three decades, Michael Binnion said Monday in an interview at the association’s annual meeting in Montreal.

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“I think they are doing some good, getting us focused on what we could do better and should do better,” Mr. Binnion said. “But when we let the power to oppose become bigger than the power to propose, we have a problem in society. And [that is happening].”

When we let the power to oppose become bigger than the power to propose, we have a problem in society

From pipeline proposals in British Columbia to efforts to develop Quebec’s shale gas deposits in the St. Lawrence lowlands, there is no shortage of oil and gas-related projects that have drawn the attacks of activists in Canada. Even the least problematic are now assailed, Mr. Binnion said.