Conservative MPs accused of killing damaging committee report on oil sands
Posted: July 26, 2010Section:
Kristen Shane, Hill Times, July 26, 2010 - The House of Commons Environment Committee killed a report it was drafting on the oil sands last month because Conservative members wanted to hide testimony showing the government has failed to live up to its environmental protection responsibilities and the opposition parties were too poisoned by partisanship to reach consensus, say some witnesses who testified during the study.
But Conservative MPs say their government is acting on its obligations and the testimony is public knowledge.
"I think it's a total coverup," said University of Alberta ecology professor and water expert David Schindler last week of the Environment and Sustainable Development Standing Committee's decision to scrap tabling a formal report to the House on its more than two years of study of how Alberta oil sands projects affect the quantity and quality of surrounding water bodies.
Prof. Schindler was one of about 60 witnesses to testify before the committee during meetings in Ottawa, Ont., Edmonton, Alta., and Calgary, Alta., held as far back as June 2008, before the last election. He told the committee that work he has done indicates the oil sands industry activities are adding largely to airborne and waterborne contaminants in the Athabasca River, which cuts through the heart of the oil sands region northeast of Edmonton.
Downstream from oil sands sites, he said he found high contamination of cancer-causing substances in melted snow.
His research team also found high concentrations of contaminants known to be in tailings ponds, which hold liquid mining waste. That indicates tailings ponds have leaked, he said.
"Oil sands companies should be charged under the [federal] Fisheries Act. Clearly, they're discharging deleterious substances into fish-bearing waters. One wonders where the enforcement of this act is," he told the committee in March.
Other industry and federal government witnesses offered contradictory testimony, saying, for instance, that tailings ponds don't leak or that the small amount of seepage could be retrieved and funnelled back into the ponds without causing environmental harm.
A joint presentation by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Oil Sands Developers Group to the committee in May 2009 indicated that many environmental impact assessments and independent studies of oil sands projects have said the projects don't effect water or sediment quality in the Athabasca River area. Tailings ponds are designed to block the flow of contaminated water into surrounding soil and water. Contaminants come from natural sources, the Alberta government has maintained.
Whether oil sands developers were using too much water was also an area of disagreement.
In any case, "I listened to some other people the same day I spoke and I know [the committee] got a lot of negative material. I'm sure that's why there's no write-up," said Prof. Schindler last week from his Edmonton office. "To me that's a violation of the principles of democracy, and I'm very angry about it."
He said: "I think that the Conservatives don't want any negative side cast on the tar sands because they're afraid now that the U.S. will shut them down now because of their policies on dirty oil."
Another witness, Andrew Nikiforuk author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, also blamed the Conservatives.
"I think the Tory government was afraid of what U.S. Congress, what U.S. customers, oil customers in general, investors and Canadian taxpayers might have to say about our record of regulatory neglect in the tar sands," he said.
Several laws, including the Fisheries Act, Environmental Protection Act and Environmental Assessment Act empower the federal government to act to protect wildlife and the environment, he said.
In poring over 300 pages of committee evidence to summarize what he believes are its key findings for an online magazine column on TheTyee.ca, Mr. Nikiforuk said he found that "The general assessment was Ottawa is not doing what it should be doing."
But the government is acting, said the committee's Conservative chair James Bezan (Selkirk-Interlake, Man.).
"We want to make sure the current facilities and any future expansion of the industry is done in a way that is more sustainable and better for our environment and protects the health of our citizens in the area," he said.
Environment Canada is investing in new equipment that may help scientists analyse the chemical fingerprint of water samples taken near the oil sands to determine whether contaminants found within them are of natural or industrial origin, a key point of contention among industry, government and environmentalists. Environment Canada is also stepping up groundwater monitoring fourfold to more than 100 sites, mostly along the Athabasca River, said Mr. Bezan, and specifically near tailings ponds where the Alberta government has traditionally led monitoring. The federal government is a partner in a national air monitoring network that measures pollutants in western Canada, he said, responding to Prof. Schindler's concerns that some contaminants are getting into waterways by air.
"On the enforcement side of it, [Environment Canada is] looking at issues of groundwater monitoring [to see if they] are in compliance with not only the Fisheries Act but other water quality acts that we have to handle," he said.
In the wake of the committee's lack of consensus on the drafting of a communal report, Mr. Bezan said the Conservative committee members would write their own, to be released in the next few weeks.
Fellow Conservative member Mark Warawa (Langley, B.C.) said they "may" write their own report.
Mr. Warawa emphasized that while the governing Conservatives and combined opposition parties each have six committee members, the chair usually doesn't vote, meaning the Conservatives represent a minority.
Who voted for and against the final report's release is unknown. Since testimony wrapped up in March, the committee has been working behind closed doors, as Parliamentary procedure allows, to draft a final report. Committee proceedings, including vote results, are to stay private. As are the draft report's contents, until it is tabled in the House. Since minutes show the committee agreed on June 17 to stop its oil sands and water study and destroy all copies of its draft report except one in the clerk's office, the report's contents are not likely to ever be made public.
But Bloc Québécois MP Christian Ouellet (Brome-Missisquoi, Que.) said this is not so.
"It's not finished," he told The Hill Times last week. "We haven't been through revising it."
The committee may have stopped its oil sands work for the summer, but it could still decide to send a report to the House in the fall, Mr. Ouellet said. He wouldn't commit to re-opening the issue though.
The lone NDP committee member, Linda Duncan (Edmonton-Strathcona, Alta.), said she is doubtful the report will see the light of day again. She and other members noted that, procedurally, a committee-generated study like the oil sands issue takes a backseat to statutory reviews referred to the committee by the House. Several of those are piling up before the committee, with Parliamentary-imposed deadlines attached, Ms. Duncan said.
"The likelihood of [reopening the oil sands report], with everything else on our plate, at this juncture—I don't see any value in it," said Ms. Duncan.
Ms. Duncan recognized that witnesses such as Mr. Nikiforuk and Prof. Schindler are disappointed in the study's result.
Ms. Duncan said she approached other opposition members about writing a report together but was turned down.
Liberal member Francis Scarpaleggia's (Lac-Saint-Louis, Que.) assistant Gweneth Thirlwell told The Hill Times that he said his party would write its own, to be finished likely before fall. Mr. Scarpaleggia was the MP who originally called for the study in January 2008, and last month accused the Conservative committee members of blocking the final report so as not to release a document that could include information on the negative effects of the oil sands that could hurt the government.
"I think Francis Scarpaleggia and probably Linda Duncan actually have very similar views on what's wrong. I think partisan politics has separated them," said Mr. Nikiforuk.
Mr. Scarpaleggia did not respond to questions verbally, but in a statement to The Hill Times said "Other parties are free to [write their own reports]. Nothing is lost from that perspective."
For his part, Mr. Bezan said environmental groups such as the Pembina Institute have released their own reports based on the publicly-available testimony included in the oil sands and water hearings.
"It's not like the testimony and the work of the committee is all for naught."
But Mr. Nikiforuk estimated few other Canadians would take the time to read through the 300 pages of raw testimony he read for his opinion piece, headlined, 'What those who killed the tar sands report don't want you to know.'
"What the citizens pay their MPs for, and elected them for, is to produce concise reports on matters of tremendous public interest." Mr. Nikiforuk said this time that didn't happen.
The Hill Times
