RNNR Committee Report

Bloc Québécois Complementary Opinion

Natural Resources Committee: Oil Sands Study

The oil sands development is a complex issue that raises many questions, primarily environmental questions, but economic and social questions as well.

The Bloc Québécois wishes first of all to acknowledge the Committee’s efforts to integrate the principle of sustainable development into the oil sands sector, specifically that:

• The Committee believes that any future expansion of oil sands development should be done in a way that does not jeopardize Canada’s international Kyoto obligations on GHG emissions and climate change. We call upon the federal government to introduce hard emissions caps for the oil sands for 2012, 2020 and 2050 based on absolute levels and not based on “intensity.”

• The Committee recommends that the federal government introduce a regulatory framework in order to establish constraints that would lead the industry to introduce technology to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mechanisms, such as trading emission credits, as incentives to fund it.

• The Committee strongly endorses the goal of the Pembina Institute that the oil sands should become carbon neutral by 2020 through the adoption of new technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration, and/or through the purchase of offsetting carbon credits. Furthermore, this committee believes that being able to sell a “carbon neutral” barrel of oil will help the industry to maintain access to markets where there is concern about GHG emissions.

• The Committee recommends that the federal government, and specifically the Department of Natural Resources, base all its actions in connection with oil sands development on the principles of sustainable development and polluter pays.

• The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada eliminate the accelerated capital cost allowance that the oil sands industry currently enjoys in order to put that industry on an equal footing with the oil and gas industry.

• The Committee recommends that no decision be made about using nuclear energy to extract oil from the oils sands until the implications are clearly demonstrated and understood.

The Bloc Québécois wishes to specify that it is not opposed to economic development or to the judicious use of natural resources. The Bloc Québécois also wants to point out that the report was not prepared specifically with a view to limiting oil sands development, but that great attention was paid to the environmental consequences. That is why the Bloc Québécois wanted the concepts of sustainable development and “polluter pays” to be among those incorporated into the report.

Above all, the Bloc Québécois feels that certain elements that were not raised should have been studied in order to give the Committee a more accurate view of the situation. The Bloc Québécois thus deplores the refusal of the departments of the Environment and Natural Resources and of the former Liberal ministers of the Environment and Natural Resources to come testify before the Committee in order to describe the circumstances that led to the discussions of the Oil Sands Experts Group and the government’s follow-up on the recommendations published after the January 2006 meeting.

This report was developed based on the premise that the production of oil from the oil sands would increase by a factor of, at the most, three. Successive federal governments, and the Oil Sands Experts Group, are advancing as a scenario an increase of four to five times from the current level. The Bloc Québécois therefore feels that recommendations 14 and 16 are essential so that, whatever the increase in production, oil sands development does not adversely affect our ability to attain the objectives of the Kyoto Protocol and of Quebec, which, already possessing its own GHG reduction plans, is and will be affected by the effects of global warming if Canada does not respect its reduction objectives.

We respected the economic aspect of the concept of sustainable development as defined and unanimously adopted by the members of the Natural Resources Committee on October 31, 2006, but we are demanding the incorporation of two other elements of sustainable development, environmental protection and social equity.

The Bloc Québécois also feels that certain recommendations regarding the federal government must have a very limited application. More specifically, we feel that the social dimension (working conditions, living conditions, health, labour force, etc) is constitutionally a provincial jurisdiction and that the federal government should not get involved except through the regular programs already in place.

However, the Bloc Québécois recognizes not only the federal government’s role regarding the First Nations, but also the urgency of its intervening here in order, firstly, to limit as much as possible oil sands development’s negative effects on their culture and way of life and, secondly, to involve them in the economic development of the lands from which they draw sustenance.

Environmental protection was the most difficult aspect of sustainable development to integrate into the Committee’s report during the adoption of the recommendations, and that is essentially why the Bloc Québécois felt the need to annex this complementary opinion in order to clarify its positions.

The Bloc Québécois thus wishes to reiterate the importance of the federal government’s integrating the principle of sustainable development into all its actions regarding oil sands development, as well as the importance of respecting the Kyoto Protocol.

Thus, the Bloc Québécois proposed:

1)     That the government recognize the principle of “polluter pays;”

2)     That GHG reduction objectives be established for territories, and not sectors (territorial approach);

3)     That the reduction objectives comply with the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol;

4)     That the reduction targets be absolute targets and not intensity targets, thus allowing the establishment of a carbon exchange in Montréal, as an incentive to reduce GHG in the production of oil sands oil;

5)     That the federal government, within its jurisdictions, monitor the maintenance and protection of pipelines by the oil industries;

6)     That the federal government eliminate the accelerated capital cost allowance that the oil sands industry currently enjoys more quickly than it has proposed in its budget.

Finally, given that oil sands development is a topical issue that changes from day to day, it is important to remember that this report is intended to be a point of departure for consideration of this matter rather than a conclusion.