It's not exactly a utopia up there.

Alberta's inability to provide the necessary municipal and social infrastructure to keep pace with oil sand developments is beginning to make life in the north "intolerable."

"The population of Fort McMurray has doubled in nine years and...there is a shortfall of nearly 3,000 homes, 17 police officers and two public schools. Housing prices are outrageous, (the average house is now over $500,000), there are half as many doctors as are needed, and the lifestyle has become, in the words of one 14 year resident, 'intolerable.'

The assault rate is nearly twice the provincial average; its drug offences are triple. Population continues to grow at about 10 per cent a year. The city needs a new water treatment plant, police station, recreation centre and fire hall.

And they want to lure more people up there?