:
Thank you, Mr. Vice-Chair.
I'm delighted to be able to meet with the committee this morning. I'm in perfect position to follow your tour of the oil sands yesterday, as well as your meeting with the community in Fort Chipewyan.
I'm a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Alberta, and I'm director of the Centre for Oil Sands Innovation—and I've provided you with some written material on the latter. I'd like to briefly address two questions this morning that are at the top of my mind as a researcher working in the oil sands. The first question is whether the oil sands industry can adopt new technologies to improve its environmental performance. Second, what research is required to develop what we call transformative technologies that can be applied to the oil sands?
On the first question, for an industry that involves enormous capital investments in the range of tens of billions of dollars, the history has been that this industry has been enormously innovative and willing to embrace change. The plants that you flew over yesterday are nothing like what Suncor looked like in 1967 or what Syncrude looked like in 1978. The operations have been completely transformed through the mining and extraction operations, and those transformations are based on research and development, pilot testing, and industry innovation here in Canada. The oil sands industry has demonstrated a capacity for technical innovation that I think is unparalleled in the Canadian resource extraction industries.
Now, the major driver for this change has been cost. The industry has been striving through the last two decades to reduce its expenses to make itself more profitable. It may seem strange, but in 1990 Suncor Energy was seriously contemplating shutting down its oil sands division. This is the company that has at times been one of the darlings of the Canadian stock exchange and is currently in the process of taking over Petro-Canada. In 1990 it was looking at getting rid of its oil sands operation altogether because it was so marginal. Instead, they embraced technological change, revamped their mining and extraction operations, and turned the oil sands into a major profit centre.
The other driver for these companies, as we move into the future, is public pressure on the environmental front. I think you have to be realistic as to what the incentives are for companies to embrace innovation and technology change. Cost is always a factor, and environmental regulation and public expectation is, of course, the other.
I'm a researcher at the university. My particular focus is on research into long-term innovation. I'm not so much focused on what technology is available today as on what we need to do now to develop technologies that will be available five, ten, and fifteen years out. The oil sands of Alberta are an enormous strategic resource, and it would be a mistake to focus only on the near term; it's important to position ourselves not only for next year, but decades into the future.
I'd like to tell you a little bit about a unique centre at the University of Alberta that I direct, the Centre for Oil Sands Innovation. In 2003, five years ago, the international interest in the oil sands was really just ramping up. The industry was starting to expand, and at that time the president of Imperial Oil, Mr. Tim Hearn, came to the president of the University of Alberta with a unique proposition. He said, “We need help. We have major resources in northern Alberta but we do not believe that the current technology is sustainable for the long term, so we want to work with you on long-term research and development to try to come up with transformative technologies for the oil sands.”
What I'm talking about in transformative technologies is mining that has much less impact on the landscape, extraction technologies that do not use large amounts of fresh water from the Athabasca River and do not create tailings ponds, and upgrading processes that minimize energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Imagine a university president being confronted with a leader from industry saying, we want you to do long-term basic research. Of course the answer was an immediate yes, and we worked to establish a centre that has now grown into one that is national in scope.
Why did Hearn come to the University of Alberta? It wasn't just because Edmonton is the closest major centre to the oil sands. Through support from the Government of Canada through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, in partnership with companies such as Syncrude and Suncor, the University of Alberta had built up a group of professors who were unparallelled in their ability to conduct research and innovation related to oil sands. So it was a long-term investment by the Government of Canada that created the intellectual capacity—the people who were able to undertake this challenge. In particular, the industrial chairs program and the partnerships programs of NSERC were keys in developing that capability at the university.
From an official launch in 2005, I am proud to report that the Centre for Oil Sands Innovation has grown to encompass 20 different projects spanning basic chemistry, biology, physics, and engineering. The successful collaboration with Imperial Oil has led them to renew their commitment. They're providing us with another five years of funding, at $10 million total, because they've been so pleased with the success over the initial five years. In partnership with the Province of Alberta and the Government of Canada, we're moving forward on another five years of research on oil sands innovation.
While I'm immensely proud of the University of Alberta and our intellectual capacity, when it comes to such major research challenges we don't have quite enough intellectual capacity ourselves. So we've been building a research network on oil sands that now includes the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, Queen's University, and we'll soon be starting projects in collaboration with Natural Resources Canada, the National Research Council, and the University of Ottawa.
As director of the Centre for Oil Sands Innovation, I have a fascinating challenge. I'm in the job of teaching professors about the oil sands and some of the challenges they present and trying to enlist and engage their interest and attention.
In the oil sands of western Canada, which span Alberta and Saskatchewan, we have a world-scale resource. We have, in the oil sands industry, an amazing receptor capacity for new technologies and new ideas, and we have a strong foundation in science and engineering to conduct research and development for new technologies that can develop this resource in an environmentally sustainable way.
I'd like to thank you for your invitation to speak this morning, and I look forward to questions and discussion on the topic of innovation in the oil sands.
Thank you very much.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Francis Scarpaleggia): Thank you, Dr. Gray.
We will now move on to Dr. Guigard.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Vice-Chair.
Thank you to the committee for allowing me to present here today. I have a little brief that I was hoping to develop as a power-point presentation. I'd like to take some time and go through this handout if I may.
[Translation]
With your permission, I'm going to speak a little in French.
[English]
I'm a professor from the University of Alberta in the environmental engineering group of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. I've focused a little bit on the environmental issues related to the oil sands. These are things I believe you've seen in your previous committee meetings, but I thought I'd go back over them and set the stage in terms of the technologies we're looking at to resolve some of those environmental issues.
Some of this information you saw first-hand yesterday in your flyover, and you'll see the oil sands cover a very large surface area. We have a lot of known reserves. Most of those reserves are accessible by the in situ technologies, but about 20% of reserves are also currently accessible by surface mining. So what you might have seen yesterday was probably surface mining activities, and that's what I would like to focus on a little bit here.
What are those environmental issues that are related to oil sand surface mining? The one you're here today to discuss is the environmental issues surrounding the water use of oil sands mining and oil sands surface mining. But directly related to that is the issue of tailings ponds. And also, as Murray Gray pointed out, energy use is another one of those environmental issues. I'd like to talk a little bit about each of those.
The first one I'd like to talk about is water use. We use the Clark hot water extraction process to extract the bitumen from the oil sands. There has always been a little bit of confusion, I think, regarding how much water it actually takes to extract bitumen from the oil sands. You'll notice I've given you a figure of about 12 to 13 barrels of water per barrel of bitumen. The process uses that much water, but 80% to 90% of that water is recycled. Two to about 4.5 barrels of fresh water are needed to make up for some of the water we can't recycle. So I think that's an important figure for us to look at when we're discussing those water issues surrounding oil sands development.
What that translates into is an excessive amount of fresh water is used from the Athabasca River. The water demands on the Athabasca River will continue to grow with further oil sands development. Most of that water that's used ends up in tailings ponds. With the zero discharge policy the oil sands companies have, we don't release that water back into the environment.
Directly related to water use is the problem of tailings ponds.
[Translation]
I'm going to continue in French.
I want to talk about tailings ponds. These are structures that we've put in place to hold extraction residues. These residues are placed in the tailings ponds and, after three to five years, the residues form what is called mature fine tailings, which consist of approximately 30% solids, the remainder being mainly water. This water is very difficult to recycle because it is tied up in the tailings.
The tailings take a very long time to settle, which means that our tailings ponds will remain there for many years. It must also be admitted that there are nearly 130 km2 of tailings ponds. The figure you often hear is 50 km2, but the Alberta government has revised its estimates, and we're now talking about 130 km2 of tailings ponds. So these tailings ponds will increase considerably. We also need new tailings ponds to store the tailings from our development.
You unfortunately noticed the deaths of a number of ducks. When you flew over the tailings ponds, you noted that they contain bitumen, which remains from the process that has not been extracted. There is also a lot of salt and toxic compounds such as naphthenic acids and other compounds such as heavy metals.
The consequence of the presence of these compounds is that the water cannot be released to the environment. We have to retain that water, which is currently recycled, but it cannot be recycled indefinitely. This water should be treated using quite major resources in order to be able to continue using it in future.
[English]
I'd like to continue then briefly with the energy use. I know this is not necessarily the focus, but it is an important environmental issue that we must address.
The energy use, for oil sands extraction and mining and upgrading, ranges in the order of 0.7 to 1.3 gigajoules per barrel of bitumen. By calculation, that translates to about 20% of a barrel of bitumen that's needed to produce one barrel of bitumen in terms of energy. The consequence of this is essentially increased greenhouse gas emissions, which we have seen with increased oil sands development. When we look at those environmental issues, we really need to think about what we can do to alleviate these environmental issues. As Murray Gray pointed out, we need new and innovative technologies, sort of the standout or transformative technology.
I look at these technologies in two ways. I look at technologies within the paradigm—within the technology we're currently using—and outside the paradigm, really taking that sort of leap forward and looking at new technologies that would really transform the way things are done in the oil sands industry. What do we need to get to these new technologies, these either inside- or outside-of-the-paradigm technologies? There are challenges there. For example, there is a large infrastructure, and you all saw it as you flew over the oil sands yesterday. There's a very large infrastructure. Often, the comment that has come back about new and innovative outside-of-the-paradigm technologies is that we can accommodate some incremental changes—minor incremental changes, but changes that are definitely needed, no question about it.
There's this infrastructure that we can't just abandon sort of overnight to allow for these new big-leap transformative technologies. So what we need to do and should do and can do, I believe, is encourage research into new innovative technologies. For that, we need to develop policies that will drive innovation, and we also need to provide some sort of framework that would allow the development of these technologies and demonstration of these technologies beyond the basic research.
So we need to have that extra step, extra framework, in place so we can take these technologies from the lab to the field and potentially apply those in the field. We also need to continue to support research and development in improving the current process. That's a very important part of it. We need to deal with the problems now, but we also need to look into the future and develop very transformative technologies.
In summary, I'd just like to say that there are environmental issues you're all aware of related to the oil sands, but we have to believe innovation is possible, and we have to believe substantial improvements are possible—not just some improvement, but substantial improvement—and we need to develop the oil sands in a more responsible way into the future.
Thank you.
:
What I'm going to do is talk about the changing water supply in the Athabasca River, focusing on the entire basin, and general implications in terms of what that might mean for water-intensive development.
I think I'll start with a basic summary of what science is. I don't know if anyone has talked to you about what science is, but according to some, science consists of formulation and testing of hypotheses based on observational evidence. In this, experiments are important or applicable, but their function is to verify observation and impose controlled conditions. According to Richard Feynman, a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist and popular writer, science alone, of all subjects, contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallability of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation.
As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way. Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. I'd qualify that by saying it's the belief of experts in the ignorance of experts.
Generally, I would say that I would describe science as the systematic observation of natural events and conditions in order to discover facts about them and from which explanations for them are formulated, subsequently asking and attempting to answer directed critical questions that are inspired by evident disagreement between observed fact and the explanations we have previously formulated. In other words, science is a process by which we learn, and it involves constant attempts to disprove what we think we know, by asking critical questions and rationally seeking their answers.
The next slide is “What is not science?” What is not science is anything that doesn't involve the collection of data and the attempt to formulate general explanations for them or the subsequent testing of such prior explanations via further observation and hypothesis-forming. Alternatively, what is not science is anything that has been shown scientifically to be incorrect and yet it's still presented as conclusive. The second aspect, I would say, is what we see a lot of in what we're talking about today in terms of environmental science.
Now on to some other topics.
This is table 1 in the submission I gave you. Basically what it shows is changes in temperature and precipitation for northern Alberta. Much of this was presented in part in a paper Dr. Schindler and I published in 2006. The general message is that in the majority of centres in northern Alberta, as well as much of the western prairie provinces, there have been fairly substantial increases in temperature since about 1970. I looked at 1970 for a number of reasons, which I explain in the submission.
Generally, the pattern is significant increases in temperature, significant declines in total precipitation, and generally either no change in rain or decreases, depending on where you are. If you're interested in water supply, certainly increased temperatures and declining precipitation are critical in that.
The next slide is changes in winter snowpack in northern Alberta. Again, these patterns are evident across the prairies. We live in the rain shadow of the Rockies here in Alberta, and ultimately a lot of our water supply comes from snowpack in the spring, and we rely upon a lot of that. As you can see here, what's in red shows changes in the number of days per year in which there's snow on the ground and changes in the absolute depth of snowpack at its maximum. The general trend, again, is that the majority of places have shown, since 1970, a significant decline in the length of time during the winter in which snow is on the ground and the total depth of the snowpack. Again, if you're relying on winter snowpack for a lot of spring melt water and all of the pulse-oriented, ecological processes that occur in a river with declining snowpack, you can expect fairly substantial ecological effects in surface waters.
What I show here is total summer flow in the Athabasca River at Fort McMurray. This is figure 1 in the submission.
In general, as you can see, there is a fair amount of variation from year to year, but ultimately the trend since about 1970 is a fairly significant decline. 1998 was a pretty wet year across the prairies. Ultimately, from year to year, you don't really know whether there's going to be quite a bit of water or very little water, but as I said, the trend is generally downwards. And this consideration of long-term trends is probably the first thing you should attempt to use in order to inform some kind of plan that is dependent on water supply.
Ms. Griffiths is going to be talking about the Cold Lake area and groundwater, and I just thought I'd toss this one on. This isn't in my submission, but this is the Beaver River near Cold Lake. It's the major river in that part of the world and it's a basin that's independent to itself in east central Alberta.
As you can see again, there's substantial variation from year to year in terms of total flow in the Beaver River, but ultimately in the last 40 to 50 years the decline has been pretty substantial. And you can see this a lot in the lakes and other surface waters in that area. A lot of lakes in that area are down substantially.
Another thing I presented in my submission was what's happening in the Athabasca basin on a sub-basin level? What I did, and I explained this in the submission, is took a bunch of monitoring points on the Athabasca River and looked at the changes in water flow between those points: What is added? How is the flow different at a downstream point from an upstream point? This is with the assumption that this change in water is the water that's added from the basin between those points.
As you can see, if you head up into the Sunwapta River, which is the tributary of the Athabasca that drains some of the glaciers in the Rockies, since the early seventies up until the mid-nineties there was actually an increase in the amount of water coming off the catchment. This is because of increases in glacial melt.
As you move downstream to Jasper, the flow hasn't really changed much. The farther downstream into the basin and away from the mountains you get, the greater the decline in the amount of water coming off the basin. For those of you who aren't really aware of the geography of the Athabasca basin, Hinton is about 80 kilometres east of Jasper, just outside the mountains in the foothills of the Athabasca basin. The basin that's downstream of Hinton comprises 94% of the total area of the basin.
What this analysis shows is that in all points between Hinton and Fort McMurray, the amount of water coming off the basin into the river has declined by about 50% since the early 1970s up until 2001 to 2005.
What I've given you now is a picture of where things have been and how things have been changing in terms of climate change and water supply. Looking to the future, out of the University of Victoria there are some climate change projects there. They have created one of the main models for the global circulation models that predict future changes in temperature for much of Canada. What I did here was summarize the output of ten regional models for the western prairie provinces. This shows you the degree of temperature change that is anticipated as a result of one of these models. As you can see, it's anticipated that in the 21st century, the temperature for the western prairie provinces is going to increase, on average, 6.5 degrees.
In the next diagram I've shown you what this means in terms of changes in climate. That's approximately the same as the difference in climate between Calgary and Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories. So what we could expect, if we realize that degree of temperature change, is that the climate in Calgary moves north to Fort Smith.
What does that mean in terms of water supply? I did some modelling. I haven't included many of the details, but I created some models that predicted river flow and water yield, based solely on climate variables, things like temperature, snowpack, evaporation. In that way I remove a lot of the other information that other modellers need that is much more detailed, simply because there's an abject lack of data when it comes to this sort of thing, in terms of hydro-geological information, sediment types, ground cover, detailed evaporation measurements. Much of the water modelling that's out there is being produced as a result of intensive research on a very small scale, catchments that are of the order of less than a hectare in size. So trying to scale those results up to an area that's tens of thousands of kilometres square is impossible at this time.
Based on my models, I looked at a series of catchments in northeastern Alberta that ranged from about 300 square kilometres to 30,000 square kilometres. In trying to replicate what's happened in the past in terms of water flow, the model predicts about 75% of the variation in historical data, so it's fairly accurate in terms of replicating what's happened in the past.
I then tweaked the model to basically put forward scenarios of increases of three degrees and six degrees centigrade and looked at how that would conceivably affect water supply. In the blue, you see changes that are predicted as a result of a three-degree centigrade increase, and in the red, changes as a result of a six-degree centigrade increase.
On average, with a three-degree centigrade increase--and this encompasses all the years and all the catchments--the model suggests an anticipated 15% decline in the amount of water coming off these basins of this area of northeastern Alberta between April and October.
For a six-degree increase, the average was 39%. The numbers below each of the bars represent the worst case, the worst year, of the data that I used for each of the basins. There are going to be wet years and there are going to be dry years, just as there have been in the past. However, it's the really dry years that likely will concern most people. The numbers below each bar represent the worst-case scenario in terms of dry years for the three- and six-degree centigrade changes.
As you can see, it ranged from percentages in the high 30s to about 70%, depending on the basin, for the three-degree increase. For the six-degree increase, in dry years it was very, very bad, ranging from 50% to 100% on the basin. For the most part, it's in the range of a 60-70% decline.
If you're not looking at changing trends in water in the past when you formulate your management plans in terms of what you're going to rely on for water and what kind of buildup you're going to do that's heavily water-reliant, and you're not going to consider the possibility in the future that climate change is going to seriously affect the amount of water in that part of the world, then you stand the risk of running into some pretty catastrophic effects economically as a result of potentially catastrophic effects of climate change ecologically.
I'm on the next slide. I talked a little bit in my presentation about the lower Athabasca River management framework. There are three stages: green, yellow, and red. The message I wanted to convey was that the framework, as it is now, isn't based on any kind of observational science. It ignores the past trends. It basically ranks all of the historical flow from highest to lowest and then looks at the changes in that trend itself. It doesn't look at how it's changing over time, and it makes some assumptions that if you get a dramatic change in the ranked flow, that represents some sort of ecological effect.
Basically what they've done is design a model that more accurately reflects the geometry of the bed of the river than anything else. It ignores all sorts of ecological processes that are dependent on flow, such as the periodic reflooding of suspended wetlands in the basin, sediment transport, scouring, effects on fisheries, and that sort of thing. They've arbitrarily decided that 90% of the time, there will be no ecological effect and no need to limit flow extractions; about 5% of the time, they'll have to do some moderate extraction limits; and 5% of the time, historically, there would be more serious extraction limits under the right conditions.
I'm now on the next slide.
I included these figures in my report. The upper figure is basically the trends in the September flows of the Athabasca. This is to illustrate where they've gone. It's variable, but since about 1970, there's been a downward trend, as I showed. In the bottom slide, you can see that I've ranked them all. Under the framework, there'd be an arbitrary conclusion that 5% of the time it's in the red, 5% of the time it's in the yellow, and the rest of the time it's green. Green represents fine ecological conditions.
This ignores the fact that 50% of the last ten years would have been either in yellow or in red. If we're looking to the future in changing water supply, if water supply goes down, the frequency of yellow and red conditions will dramatically increase.
A paper in press from the University of Alberta argues that if the current water management framework had been in place in 2000, the Athabasca river flows would have been in yellow or red condition for up to 40 weeks per year and in the red for at least 20 weeks per year.
If climate change causes a 10% decline in flow, it's going to result in a substantial increase in binding flow conditions for the oil industry. I would suggest that this 10% figure is fairly conservative and conceivably a best-case scenario, since we're looking at a 50% decline coming off the basin downstream in the last 30 years, and since expected growth in the oil sands extraction is projected to go up to 2.3 million barrels per day by 2020. This means one of three things: they're going to have to find some substantial off-stream storage representing approximately 15% of the total annual water supply; they're going to have to reduce the amount of water they pull out of the river by about 50% below currently permitted levels; or they're going to have to find a way to reduce water use to less than 0.2 cubic metres per barrel of oil, which is substantially less than what they're currently using.
Basically, my message is that we're on a collision course between declining water supply and rapidly ramping up water consumption demands. Dave Sauchyn and some others at the University of Regina did some modelling of climate for the prairie provinces. In the northeastern part of Alberta, they're predicting a change from moist sub-humid to dry sub-humid or even semi-arid conditions. The amount of precipitation between northern and southern Alberta is now approximately the same and has been for the last 30 or 40 years. The difference is that the south is a lot warmer and that net water balance means there's less free water and it's much more arid. In the Palliser's Triangle in southeastern Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan, if we get increased evaporation and increased temperature in the north, there's going to be less free water, and that means much less surface available for ecological and industrial use.
That's the end of my presentation.
:
I'm going to show you some photos and maps to illustrate the material that's in the briefs you have. I explain there the reason for our study.
This is a natural seep of oil sands, of which there are several along the Athabasca River. Of course, industry's position has been that all of the pollutants in the river come from such natural seeps. To me, as someone who works with watersheds and waters all the time, it's inconceivable that going from a footprint like that in 1974 to that on the same scale in 2008 would not cause a lot of chemical releases from the watershed to the river. We undertook to study that.
I pointed out in my brief the deficiencies of the regional aquatic monitoring program. What we did instead was to take 18 sites up and down the Athabasca River, from above Fort McMurray to the end of the river, and then a few, as you'll see, around Fort Chipewyan, and superimpose them on a geological map. The white area in the centre is the McMurray formation that is the focus of much of the oil sands activity. We also went to every major tributary in that stretch and sampled above the McMurray formation, in the McMurray formation but above oil sands mining, and at the river mouth below any activity. We had a few reference streams and a half dozen streams that ran through mined areas.
I'll just go through these in order to show you a general pattern. These are in the brief.
The black bars are winter flows, and the white bars are summer flows. In general, on this and subsequent slides, you'll see that there really is not much evidence of an oil sands effect during the wintertime. As you go from the Fort McMurray end at the bottom to the Fort Chipewyan end at the top, the little side panels represent the various tributaries. However, if you look at the summer panels, during the period that the river is ice-free you'll see a considerable effect, in this case, on dissolved polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. We chose to study this group of compounds because it contained several known carcinogens that we know are high in bitumen and were also high in previous studies, such as the Exxon Valdez spill and the notorious Wabamun Lake spill. I'm going to flick through these fairly quickly, but look for that consistency in pattern.
Aluminum is not necessarily such a toxic metal, but as you'll see by the red lines, there are some Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment guidelines that are exceeded in most of these samples. Again you'll see the levels pick up greatly going downstream, as you get into the oil sands area in summer, not in winter.
Arsenic has much the same pattern, with again about a doubling downstream of the mines during the summertime. For lead, again, a number of the summer values there exceed CCME guidelines. As for mercury, again you can see very little in the winter, but note the increase as you get into and beyond the oil sands during the summer.
Uranium is one about which there has been a fair amount of concern. In this case, you really see no influence of the oil sands either winter or summer. The pattern is pretty consistent, indicating that most of the source is upstream.
It's the same for cadmium. Note that cadmium, especially in summer, exceeds CCME guidelines by a considerable amount, but again, there's no clear evidence in this case of a contribution from the oil sands.
The reason for that winter to summer difference is that the river is encased in ice for about four months--and this winter for practically five months--during the winter season. So things entering tend to accumulate on the ice.
There has been a considerable amount of airborne input, which surprised us. This is a snow layer on the Muskeg River. It isn't the worst one we've seen, but you can see the black layers and the black surface on this snow as a result of airborne contamination.
At each of these sites, the same sites as shown in our earliest slide, we took a sample of the total snowpack, melted it down, and then filtered 900 millilitres of each snowpack. These filters were all white when we started. They're very fine--they have about half-micron pores. The yellow numbers are distances between the sites. In this case, Fort McMurray is at the left, going downstream to Fort Chipewyan on the right, and the little side legs are the six major tributaries. So you can see, visually even, a high contribution of suspended particulates in snow in the area for a considerable distance around the tar sands plants, but note tailing off quite a bit downstream.
In the next several panels, again, this is total PAH. In this case, we did a polycyclic aromatic analysis of both the filters, which you saw, and the filtered material, the dissolved portion. The dissolved portion is in red. The particulate portion on the filter is in black. The total concentration is represented by the end of the bar. Again, you can see this big contribution of airbornes in the vicinity of the tar sands and tailing off going downstream, with Fort Chipewyan at the top, and of course almost nothing upstream of Fort McMurray at the bottom.
Again, there is a very similar pattern for aluminum, except that more is in particulate form.
For arsenic, you see the same pattern. It is clearly an airborne contribution from the tar sands mining. Lead has much the same pattern.
All of these, again, show the CCME guidelines.
For mercury, there is a big contribution of mercury via airbornes, largely in the particulate fraction. Note that these values are very low. They're in parts per trillion. But this isn't where mercury is a problem. It biomagnifies up food chains up to a million-fold. Concentrations as high as these have been shown to result in serious contamination problems in other systems. Again, it indicates that there is some mercury coming from upstream, but a big contribution is from the mining to the airborne mercury loads to the snowpack.
Cadmium doesn't show any contribution. The one contribution it shows is just below the outfall for Fort McMurray, and it may represent some sort of urban influence. Cadmium, of course, is in various parts of automobiles, and so on. So that isn't too surprising. Again, note that most of these values are at or above CCME guidelines for cadmium in parts per billion.
There is accumulating evidence that the concentrations of polycyclic aromatics, particularly in their alkaloidal forms, which are very common in this river, are causing deformities in fish. I've given you two references. I could have given you a dozen. There is clear evidence of deformities in eggs and embryos in contact, particularly, with the particulate forms of PAH right at the sediment surface, which of course is where eggs are laid. This is a government study under the northern river ecosystem initiative, with some actual pictures of deformities.
The study also indicates that there were deformities in the Athabasca formation upstream of the mines, but that the incidences increased downstream of the mines, indicating that these particulate inputs from the mines are having an influence—up to 95% embryonic mortalities and a high incidence of deformities in the embryos that survived. The CCME has this covered with its interim sediment quality guidelines. But this same study indicates that both the regional aquatics monitoring program and the Peace-Athabasca Delta program, in measuring the same compounds, found fairly high incidences in which the CCME interim sediment quality guidelines were exceeded.
The big concern that I'm sure you heard yesterday in Fort Chipewyan is that some of the cancer rates noted in the community are attributed to some of the compounds, which are at least in part the result of mining activity.
We have found big northern pikes loaded with mercury. I don't think the water should be the sole focus of this program. If you look at all of the problems associated with the oil sands, this is clearly a black star program. You've heard a lot about in situ, and I think in situ has some big implications for water. It's already been shown to have big implications for wildlife. The northwest corner of Fort McMurray will be developed by Opti-Nexen, and this is the sort of developmental intensity that will be a part of these in situ things. High density of well pads and interconnecting roads and pipelines are very inhospitable to wildlife. Almost the whole corridor is alienated. But it's also big enough to vastly affect supplies of freshwater, both surface water and groundwater.
Of more concern than the average flow, in my opinion, is the winter low flows in the Athabasca. Industry is fond of saying that they use only 2% of the average flow of the Athabasca. That's an irrelevant factoid. We know there's lots of water in the Athabasca in summer. In winter, the flows are very low and decline very rapidly, and this is probably the most sensitive point in the river. At this point, industry uses 7% or 8% of the Athabasca's flow. The flows are declining and industry is increasing. You can see where all this is headed.
That's the end of my presentation.
I'll start straightaway. I appreciate the opportunity to present to the committee, and I am speaking today in a personal capacity.
I would like to start with my key messages. You know that the Athabasca is required to produce a lot of water for the oil sands, but I want to look at not only the Athabasca but also the influence of the oil sands development on groundwater quantity and quality. I think we're going to see a lot more impacts in the future with the cumulative effects of many projects. We're not really seeing yet the effects that we can expect in the future, so my real message is that we need a lot more information and a process to implement sound science to ensure that we do have sustainable management of groundwater resources.
We can see what's happening in the river. We're getting a lot of warnings. There's a lot of research on the river, but my concern is perhaps more with the groundwater, which is out of sight, and that tends to be more out of mind.
By way of background, I think sometimes it is useful to have absolute figures so you'll know what we're talking about. We know that the water allocated from the Athabasca River basin for the oil sands mining is by far the largest quantity: 550 million cubic metres were allocated by the end of 2007. The allocations already exceed current use, because a lot of projects have got their allocations but they're not yet operating, so therefore we're not yet seeing the impacts on the environment. In 2007 the volume of water actually being used was only roughly 130 million cubic metres, and of that about three-quarters came from the Athabasca River, surface runoff of over 20%, and non-saline groundwater 5%. This is for the mining operations. So you see, it's not just the Athabasca River that is providing water.
I think it's useful to have a comparison to get an idea of what 129 million cubic metres of water is like. The City of Edmonton, which supplies a population of about one million people, including the people around the city, treats every year about 130 million cubic metres, roughly what is being used in 2007 for the oil sands mining. But with the city, the water goes to the waste treatment plant, and only about 10% or less is actually consumed; the rest eventually flows back to the river. Of course that's not the case with the oil sands mining, because all the water is consumed. It actually gets put into a tailings pond; it does not flow back to the river, so it affects the river flow.
Now to the water used for in situ operations. David showed a slide just now to give the impression of how in the future it's going to have a huge impact, because you'll realize that 80% of the bitumen will be coming from in situ operations, not from the mining operations. In fact, more than 90% of the bitumen area is too deep to mine, and we'll be getting a lot of the bitumen in the future in particular from the in situ operations.
In 2007, total water use for the in situ was far less than the mining. The mining, if you remember, was 129 million cubic metres; in situ it's 31 million cubic metres, and half of that was saline groundwater. You might think we don't need to worry so much about saline groundwater, but of course it doesn't get replenished so rapidly, so I think the companies are going to be very concerned on the availability of the saline groundwater. But of course from the public perspective it's the shallow, non-saline groundwater that's of more concern. In 2007, nine million cubic metres of non-saline groundwater was already being used for in situ operations. To put that in perspective, more groundwater was being used for in situ operations than for oil sands mining even in 2007, and even though we are still only at the early stages of bitumen production. Eventually far more will come from in situ, but in 2007 only 40% was coming from in situ and 60% of the bitumen was coming from mining.
So what will be the impacts on the groundwater quantity as a result of the mining operations? The drawdown of groundwater for in situ projects lasts for the length of a project, and that can be several decades. It will affect both the shallow non-saline aquifers and the deeper saline water. Some projects have used saline water, some use non-saline groundwater, some use surface water, and some use a mixture, but the groundwater recharge is very slow. Groundwater can move very slowly, perhaps one to 35 metres a year, or up to perhaps 130 metres a year in a buried channel aquifer, which we'll see later.
The groundwater recharge can be affected by the drainage of wetlands. We've already seen a lot of that from the mining operations. It can be affected by use of surface water and surface water flows. Of course, groundwater and rivers are very closely interlinked. If you reduce groundwater, it can affect the volume of water in the river.
I think the main problem would be the cumulative impact of so many overlapping projects. When a company does an environmental impact assessment, it looks at its immediate neighbours and sees what impacts their own development will have on the companies immediately around. But there's no regional modelling to see what the overall cumulative impacts will be of a lot of development, and the use of water in one area can affect the recharge for another area. Then of course climate change will also affect the groundwater precipitation and groundwater recharge.
So we need a lot more information about the aquifers in the in situ areas, to provide basic background data. We don't have a lot of good density of data for a long period of time. We need a lot more monitoring and we need surface and groundwater monitoring models, the interrelationship between surface water and groundwater. We also need to remember that in this region we don't just have what I call horizontal aquifers. The aquifers are interspersed with buried channels and the geology is much more complicated than one would be led to believe by the surface topography because of these glacial meltwater channels, which are filled with sand or till and are not evident on the surface.
The next slide just shows briefly the area north of Fort McMurray. Fort McMurray is where the blue comes to the bottom at the centre there. This is an area of about 130 kilometres by about 145 kilometres. It does not show the area of Cold Lake, which is farther south. But even within this area we've got roughly 20 buried channels, and certainly in the area farther south the Alberta Geological Survey thinks we will still find more buried channels.
In the interests of brevity I will not go on further about that now, but I'd be happy to answer more questions about that.
I would like just to mention that there are not only considerable concerns about the impacts on groundwater quantity, but also on groundwater quality. We already know about the release of some oil sands mining operations, and there's the potential and actual leakage of contaminated water from tailings ponds. But within the in situ operations, we have the heating of aquifers that has led in several cases to well blowouts, casings failures, and steam releases. In the Cold Lake area, where they use not SAGD but cyclical steam stimulation, the temperatures are much higher. It releases arsenic, which is naturally occurring in the formation, and then one tends to get an arsenic plume moving down away from the heated area. So there are impacts on groundwater quality.
Of course it's great that we're doing a lot of water recycling to reduce the use freshwater. If one is using saline water and it's going to be used to make steam, it has to be treated before it can be used, and when one recycles water, again, the water has to be treated before it can be used and the waste products of the treatment have either to be sent to landfill or to deep well disposal. So the handling of those wastes also creates further problems.
Finally, in the interest of brevity, I will just sum up to say that we expect the scale of operations to increase. In the latest predictions in the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers they're still looking for perhaps three million barrels of bitumen a day by 2020. That's more than two and a half times what was produced last year. We're going to see a lot more cumulative impacts in the mining areas and even greater in the long term in the in situ, and the expansion could also extend right down to the Edmonton area if as many upgraders go ahead as originally planned. We could also see a lot of water being used from the North Saskatchewan River, which is the river that supplies Edmonton.
So we need to minimize water use for all oil sands operations. We need to improve the monitoring of all water quantity and water quality, and we need much more research to increase our understanding of the cumulative impact, including the surface and groundwater interactions. I do believe there is a role for the federal government in this work.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning. Welcome to Edmonton.
I would like to make a brief presentation. Recognizing that we have only five minutes, I have provided a document to the committee with respect to our presentation, which will elaborate on the points I'm going to make today.
Fort McKay is a small first nation community. Our first nation is surrounded by oil sands development. We are in the geographic centre of a massive industrial development. We are surrounded by tailings ponds and we have experienced the oil sands development for the past forty years.
My members have lost approximately 60% of their traplines to oil sands development, and 57% of our lands within 20 kilometres of our communities have been mined or approved for mining. Oil sands leases cover almost our traditional territory and have effectively extinguished the exercise of our treaty rights to hunt, fish, trap, and gather.
Our Industry Relations Corporation has been extensively involved in consultation with industry, intervention with regulatory agencies, and negotiations with government. The IRC has prepared backup documentation for this presentation and would be pleased to provide to the committee any further technical reports on the subject matter of my presentation.
In a global economy with global environmental concerns, the interests and perceptions of the consumers of the oil sands products are important. There is a growing perception that oil sands development is proceeding without a coherent, sustainable development or regulatory plan and that it is irreparably damaging the environment and the first nations communities. The result is a product widely perceived as dirty oil.
Unfortunately, much of the perception is accurate. There is at present no cohesive federal or provincial economic, environmental, or regulatory framework or blueprint to address not only the sustainability of oil sands production, but also its cumulative and long-term environmental impacts on water, land, air, and aboriginal rights.
To date, oil sands development has proceeded on an ad hoc, project-by-project basis within a fiscal and environmental regulatory framework that is seriously out of date. Lacking a coherent and overall plan and strategy, there is only an ineffective, reactive, piecemeal approach to environmental issues, such as water management, cumulative effects, and reclamation planning. The lack of political will and federal-provincial cooperation, competing corporate interests, and the inherent economic instability of resource-based industries have each in their own way undermined the development of a coherent, sustainable blueprint for the second-largest hydrocarbon resource in the world, and the world is noticing.
All Canadians have an interest in changing the world's perceptions of the oil sands, but perceptions will not be changed until Canada, Alberta, and industry put in place sustainable economic and environmental blueprints, as well as effective regulatory regimes for the development and reclamation of the oil sands.
Industry requires withdrawals of enough water from the Athabasca River to sustain a city of two million people every year. Despite some recycling, the majority of this water never returns to the river and is pumped into some of the world's largest man-made dikes, containing toxic waste.
The current licensed level of 550 million cubic metres per year of water withdrawal and the growing demand is not sustainable, particularly in light of the diminished flows of the Athabasca River. DFO has failed to set a minimum flow level for the Athabasca River. Current oil sands operators continue to draw water, regardless of how low the river flow is. The risk of irreparably damaging the fishery or treaty rights threatens our oil sands development production.
We support the following conclusions of the report entitled Running out of Steam? Oil Sands Development and Water Use in the Athabasca River Watershed: Science and Market-Based Solutions, prepared by the University of Alberta and the Munk Centre in 2007.
At present, water is a public resource that is given freely to the energy industry. A lack of regulatory limits has enabled companies to rely on extraction and reclamation technologies dependent on the endless free supply of an increasingly scarce and valuable public resource. Consequently, it is used excessively and undervalued, and the real environmental economic opportunity costs are not fully accounted for.
As part of a water conservation strategy, we recommend that governments must initiate a long-term plan, with firm regulatory standards that over time both cap and diminish the licensed volumes of water available to each of the oil sands producers. Knowing that their supplies of water will be reduced will require industry to invest in available technology and research to create extraction technologies that are more efficient and less wasteful of fresh water.
I believe that a cap on water withdrawals to each project and to the industry as a whole needs to be established. Limited but transferable water rights, i.e., a “cap and trade” system, would provide an economic rationale for technological improvements and generate cost-effective solutions, clearly protecting the Athabasca in-stream flow needs.
Ninety percent of the water intake ends up in the tailing ponds. Tailing ponds, which are 70% water, are the world's largest waste water storage facilities, and by 2025 there will be one billion cubic metres of degraded processed water in tailing ponds.
In 1995, our first nation appeared before the Energy Resource Conservation Board to oppose granting a reclamation certificate for the Syncrude tailings pond. A number of recommendation for research and action came out of this hearing, but it appears that since that time there has been little if any progress made on developing reclamation plans wherein strategies are both achievable and acceptable either to industry, governments, or to the neighbouring communities. After 40 years of operations, there are no proven and viable reclamation plans for old tailing ponds.
Recently, in February 2009, the Energy Resource Conservation Board issued its first directive to industry on tailing ponds reclamation performance, which is supported by the community of Fort McKay. However, the main problem, among others, with this directive and its goals is the lack of proven technology to treat water adequately to remove chemicals in fine tails to enable recycling whereby they can return the water to the river.
Federal and provincial governments need to become actively involved in creating appropriate regulatory standards and fiscal incentives for transparent and proven reclamation technologies. They must also ensure that the outcomes of this publicly supported research and technology for water treatment and cost-effective production of dry tailings serves the public interest and is not limited in its availability or use by the proprietary rights of the developer.
The federal government has important areas of jurisdiction that, if asserted, could directly impact oil sands development. The Fisheries Act, the Indian Act, the Migratory Birds Act, and the Species at Risk Act are some areas of jurisdiction that the federal government has to date failed to meaningfully assert in the oil sands. In particular, DFO has stood by for decades and watched the deterioration of the water quality and quantity of the Athabasca River, its tributaries, and downstream lakes.
Our community had relied for generations on the exercise of our treaty rights to fish and to provide a good food staple. This treaty right has been effectively extinguished in our region without any consultation, accommodation, or compensation by Canada. Fort McKay will shortly be taking measures to ensure that the failure of the federal government to protect our treaty rights and the important natural resource of water quality and quantity, including the fisheries upon which our treaty rights depend, does not continue.
The federal government acquires billions of dollars annually from the oil sands through taxes and other means. By 2020--
The Mikisew Cree have submitted on many occasions to the governments of Alberta and Canada concerns regarding the pace and extent of oil sands development. Unfettered exploitation of oil sands with little to no regard to the Mikisew Cree's concerns and claims have left the first nation to conclude that both levels of government have de facto extinguished the treaty rights of the Mikisew Cree.
The populations most affected by development are the aboriginal peoples, who have been raising concerns of regional impacts since the early 1960s. The Mikisew Cree have questioned and will continue to question the extent of these impacts on treaty and aboriginal rights. Whether referring to the lack of reconciliation of indigenous rights and past and current infringements on those rights, the unconstitutionality of the Government of Alberta's first nations consultation policy and guidelines, the instream flow needs and the water management framework—which we have constantly suggested is wholly inadequate and totally unprotective of the Athabasca River—the provincial regulatory process, the Alberta Energy and Resource Conservation Board and its federal counterpart, the CEAA, or the proposed land use framework, there is a need for greater recognition and incorporation of aboriginal feedback, knowledge, and concerns into the resource management slated for this region of Alberta.
Since 2003, the Mikisew Cree have participated in five oil sands hearings, including three in 2006 in which treaty and aboriginal rights were not considered. The Mikisew Cree have not been adequately consulted by any government with respect to oil sands development, with the exception of certain water licence approvals in 2004. The first nation considers that treaty and aboriginal rights are constitutionally protected and that these rights to hunt, fish, and trap reflect the core essence of the long-standing traditional lifestyle and heritage of the Mikisew Cree. Governments may not simply expropriate those rights to allow for oil sands development. The Mikisew Cree people believe it is their sacred obligation to act as a steward of the environment in cooperation with the government. At stake are precious living ecosystems, the survival of the Mikisew Cree culture, and the economic and physical well-being of the first nation people.
Oil sands leases cover more than half the Mikisew Cree's traditional lands. The scale of the ecological devastation proposed is on a scale that has never been seen or experienced in North America. The oil sands development, in combination with the effects of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam and other demands on the Arthabasca River, will significantly reduce the ability of the Mikisew Cree people to live as we have in the past, and that is off the land. We are simply not prepared to watch more and more of our territory be infringed, nor are we prepared to accept a just-trust-us approach of government and industry while our health is impaired and cancer rates continue to rise in Fort Chipewyan.
The federal government has both the legal tools and the legal obligation to protect our rights and our health. We have already set out our views about the potential for further development to adversely affect and infringe on our section 35 rights, as well as the ongoing concerns of our first nation in respect to negative health-related impacts flowing from oil sands development.
In light of these concerns, we respectfully request there be a moratorium on further development within our traditional territory until such time as there are proper studies completed, including health-related studies, to sufficiently and credibly assess such impacts and until there is proper land use and other planning in place. In particular, we ask the federal government to refrain from issuing any more permits, licences, or approvals in respect to federal areas of jurisdiction within our traditional territory until such steps are taken. We are not against all development. However, we are against the continued infringement of our rights and negative impacts to our health that flow from such oil sands development. We are of the view that calling for a moratorium until proper studies are done is a reasonable response to what has been virtually unchecked development.
As a final point, there is some precedent for the kind of moratorium we are seeking: a full public inquiry. In response to the concerns of the first nations north of 60 degrees, the Berger inquiry was established. The inquiry sought to study the potential impacts of development on those first nations, their social, health, economic, and cultural sectors in respect of the MacKenzie gas project.
Finally, if the potential adverse impacts of a single project were enough to stop oil development, pending proper study, surely a similar request in the face of years of negative impacts is not unreasonable.
Thank you.
:
Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
One of the things we want to talk about, from our point of view, is the health issues in relation to the amount of development in the area, in respect of no regulatory systems being in place at this point.
The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation has numerous reserves located along the Athabasca River and on the shores of Lake Athabasca. With the amount of activity in the region and with the amount of activity that's yet to come, in regard to the issues of the water, we know for a fact that the health issues in the community of Fort Chipewyan have drastically increased over the years. Since the early 1970s and into the 1980s, 1990s, and into the 2000s, numerous cancer rates, lupus, asthma, and skin diseases have escalated in the community of Fort Chipewyan. Not only are the elderly getting sick, but the young ones are as well.
We do not know what is causing the effects of what is going on in the region, but when the community questions the amount of development in the region, they all have one concern: the water issue.
The community of Fort Chipewyan still heavily exercises our treaty right, our inherent right to the land and to the water resources we are surrounded by. As spoken to you yesterday in Fort Chipewyan, I said that 78% of the community still utilizes the traditional ways of life by harvesting off the land. We harvest the food off the land and from the waters. Those very animals, on a daily basis, drink from the Athabasca River and other water bodies around the area. Our people still consume the food, the wildlife that is out there, on a daily basis, to provide for their families.
We live in a remote community. We don't have all the luxuries of the people from down south, where they can just go to a store and buy a jug of milk for three dollars and something. We have to spend upwards of thirteen dollars for a four-litre jug of milk. On fixed incomes, our elders, our single parents, many of whom don't have any jobs to go to, have no choice but to reside on and live off the land.
With all the defects, with the health concerns that are coming up in the region, we asked for a community-based monitoring program to be developed. They keep on asking us to give a solution to fix this problem, but when we ask for funding for a community-based monitoring program they shut us down because they say “We don't want you to duplicate what we're already doing”.
We cannot provide solutions if you do not provide the funding we need for us to go out there to conduct our findings. Only then would we be able to provide a solution, because if we do not know the cause of the problem, we cannot offer a solution.
I've echoed these words many times and sometimes get labelled as the bad guy for speaking out. When you talk about radical behaviour, I am being a profoundly radical person in speaking up to protect the land, the environment, the air, the water resources, and human health. When you have this amount of destruction going on, with industry ripping up the land, polluting the water and air, and displacing animals, that's radical behaviour, in our view.
We do not oppose development. As I stated yesterday, Canada will probably be one of the leading countries in the world that's industry-driven. But Canada will not have the leading industries in the world if it does not deal with all the issues of first nations people, because the areas that are up for development lie within the traditional territories of first nations people.
When Dr. O'Connor raised undue alarm for indicating the health issues in Fort Chipewyan were a cause for concern, he was slapped with four charges. As of today, three have been dropped, but one remains. The people of Fort Chipewyan back up Dr. O'Connor 100% for raising the alarm. He was sent by Health Canada to represent the community of Fort Chipewyan and to take care of our health. He was doing his job. We are asking Canada and Health Canada to drop the remaining charges against Dr. O'Connor and to look into the findings of what is going on in the region.
In closing, I don't have much to say because of the limited time available, but I assure you, and I'll put Canada on notice for this, that under section 35 of the Constitution Act, we have protected rights that Canada is not meeting its obligations for right now. We left this land in trust, not in devastation. We feel that if nothing is being done to address the issues coming out of the community of Fort Chipewyan—and I can only speak for Fort Chipewyan at this point in time, and more so for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, because I am the chief—we will have no other choice but to look to other means, and to find ways through the court system, to address these issues.
I said this yesterday and I say it again today: we will not bear arms against Canada or its people in protecting our traditional territories. There is a legal system that's been put in place for all Canadians. We as first nations people are part of the Canadian society. The only thing that makes us different is the treaty that we signed in 1899, and that treaty has to be honoured by Canada to protect our rights.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for the opportunity to present to you.
I have copies here of a resolution that our chiefs passed earlier this year, which I'd like handed out to the committee members. Also, I'm here on short notice and I will make a copy of my presentation for the clerk. I think I can present this within the timeframe allotted.
For the record, my name is Bill Erasmus. I'm the regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations for the Northwest Territories, and I'm also the Dene national chief. We have 30 communities downstream from the development in northern Alberta, and it is of huge concern to us. I am also a member of Treaty 8, the same treaty as the other members from first nations here at the table. We're the farthest community north under Treaty 8, so we cover essentially the same territory.
As you know, the tar sands development is located in and around the Fort McMurray and Fort McKay area, as mentioned by the chief earlier, and it is upstream of the Athabasca River basin.
Current tar sands development has completely altered the landscape of the Athabasca delta and watershed. The tar sands development and exploitation has resulted in many negative impacts, including deforestation of the boreal forests, open-pit mining, de-watering of water systems and watersheds, toxic contamination, disruption of habitat and biodiversity, and disruption of Dene, Cree, and Métis hunting and trapping rights.
Many first nations people do not know the levels of contamination of the traditional wild foods that we consume. We would like regular government testing of our traditional foods to ensure that contaminants and toxins do not exceed recommended levels.
The multiple effects of tar sand operations on water are of great concern to first nations communities. For example, vast quantities of water are used for tar sands development, amounting to approximately 349 million cubic metres per year. As people have mentioned, that's twice the amount of water used by the city of Calgary, and 90% of the water used cannot be returned to the water system afterwards.
Greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands production are three times those of conventional oil and gas production. We've been advised that current tar sands production emits 27 megatonnes per annum, and it is expected to rise to 108 to 126 megatonnes by 2015. Thus the tar sands are poised to become Canada's largest single emitter of greenhouse gases, compounding this country's contribution to global warming.
First nations communities who live near tar sands projects in northern Alberta have been noticing decreasing water levels in lakes and rivers as oil production has increased.
There's also a noticeable peak in negative health impacts in first nation populations due to their close dependence on the land and river. Rare and strange cancers are increasing, and abnormalities in wildlife are becoming commonplace. Unfortunately, the public and the governments of Canada and Alberta still do not understand that first nations communities are the populations most negatively impacted and affected by tar sands development.
The traditional lands of first nations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories are being destroyed for tar sands exploration and extraction. And first nations are not being included or properly compensated for those lost and destroyed lands, water supplies, breaches of treaty rights, and loss of traditional foods. The Dene and the Cree first nations and the Métis live close to or in the midst of these tar sands deposits, mostly along the Athabasca River basin area.
From February 16 to 19, 2009, the Dene Nation convened a leadership meeting in Yellowknife for the purpose of addressing issues concerning the Dene. During this meeting, a number of resolutions were put forward regarding the impact of the Alberta tar sands—and especially concerning the impact on water. We are providing you with a copy of the resolution we adopted.
We are disappointed that the governments of Alberta and Canada failed to live up to the financial, fiduciary, and moral responsibilities to manage the Alberta tar sands in an environmentally responsible way. We are disappointed that the Government of Alberta has encouraged the rapid expansion of the Alberta tar sands without implementing adequate regulatory or environmental protections to reduce negative impacts of individual projects or the cumulative impacts of all projects considered together. We are also disappointed that the Government of Alberta has failed to take adequate steps to protect water, fish, and migratory species.
This mismanagement is no longer an issue just for Albertans. It is now an urgent threat to all downstream communities in the Mackenzie basin, most critically, at this point in time, in terms of risk to water quality posed by leaks from the huge tailings ponds into the Athabasca River. A large-scale breach of tailings ponds with a resulting massive uncontrolled inflow of highly toxic poisonous water into the Athabasca River and the rest of the Mackenzie basin would be an unmanageable catastrophe.
Therefore, it was resolved that all members of the NWT Association of Communities call on the Government of Alberta to immediately halt tar sands expansion until the following provisions are in place: one, public contingency plans for catastrophic breaches of tar sands tailings ponds; two, a plan to fix existing leaks in current tailings ponds; three, a ten-year plan to reclaim all existing tailings ponds that do not involve any release of toxic effluents into the river system; four, a commitment to use dry tailings technology for all future tar sands development; and five, a commitment to hold extensive environmental hearings--with standing for NWT communities--on the cumulative impacts of the tar sands projects, including any plans to allow water from the tailings ponds into the Athabasca River.
It is further resolved that until these conditions are in place, all governments in the Northwest Territories and across North America be called upon to implement a low-carbon fuel standard that would decrease reliance on or entirely eliminate the use of dirty tar sands oil.
Now to recommendations. Turning to our purpose for being here today, Mr. Chairman, we are pleased to offer this committee our perspectives on the negative impacts of tar sands exploitation on first nation communities and lands.
Apart from calls for consultation and accommodation, the free and prior informed consent of first nations interests must be carried out before any further activity in the oil sands.
A federal and provincial governance must incorporate first nations' unique knowledge into decision-making. This is because first nations' knowledge comes from their historic current and ongoing relationship with the land and water.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, it is essential that the federal government recognize first nation jurisdictions and authorities. Government cannot continue to work in isolation, as first nations have much to offer. We insist that the governments of Canada and Alberta meet their responsibility to ensure that the cumulative and environmental impacts of the exploitation of the tar sands oil do not irreparably damage the planet for future generations.
Again, Mr. Chairman, we ask this committee to include in their report our recommendations and resolutions with regard to the halting of further expansion of tar sands operations until the above-mentioned tailings ponds provisions are met.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you again for your presentations and for the time you gave to us yesterday. It's very much appreciated.
I wonder whether the chiefs could provide to us at a later date maps showing where your traditional lands and your reserves are, because the question was raised yesterday and it's raised here today on the record. Regrettably, we don't have available to us the maps showing these. I think it would be helpful, if we could actually see....
Oh, we have the Treaty 8, but it would be important to see both the traditional harvesting areas and also where the actual reserve lands are. I think that would be really helpful to us.
I have a couple of questions.
I think it was you, Chief Adam—or was it the Mikisew Cree?—who raised the issue about the lack of community-based monitoring.
Was it you, Chief Adam?
Chief Allan Adam: Yes.
Ms. Linda Duncan: It's a very important point, and I'm happy that you raised it.
I used to be on the board that provides a program for training for first nations in how to do community-based monitoring, but it has been pointed out to me that it's a rather senseless practice, if the funds aren't then made available to have you deliver the monitoring program. I wonder whether you could elaborate a bit more on that.
To be efficient, I'll just put out my second question, because you might want to connect the two. It's my understanding that you want to initiate community-based monitoring. I'm presuming it's for the fishery, the wildlife, the water quality, and possibly air quality, but perhaps also health studies. I'll let you elaborate on that.
My second area of questioning, and I'll leave this to each of the chiefs to speak to, is on the health study. Something I remain puzzled about is that it's my understanding that Health Canada is responsible for helping to finance and support health services for first nations peoples, and yet when issues have been raised, it's the Alberta Cancer Board that has done the study.
Perhaps you can explain to me how that filtered down to a provincial agency. But I want to know whether you have ever been consulted on the methodology, the terms, and so forth for these studies.
Secondly, as the cancer board has said, there need to be follow-up studies on some of the cancer rates. Are you being consulted in those follow-up studies, on methodologies, timing, and so on?
:
Thank you for the opportunity.
My name is Albert Mercredi. I'm a chief at the Fond du Lac First Nation. I'm one of the community members downstream from the tar sands development.
To make references in my presentation, I have had the organizers put up the mapping system of where we come from in the Athabasca region. Also, the Athabasca land use vision planning process will be displayed for reference.
With that, good afternoon to the elected representatives, the elders, members, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. I am honoured to be here representing my community, the Denesuline people, and to have this opportunity to speak to you this day and address these important issues.
I will speak from the perspective of my people, the Denesuline of the Athabasca, both north and south of the 60th region. In Dene, we call the land Dene Nene. It's “the land”, as it's called in the English version.
We note from the agenda that the topic of sustaining the environment and the economic wealth of the western economies is of significant importance. The importance to our people is that the land and the waters of the Athabasca Dene have sustained our people for thousands of years, and our Dene people have sustained the lands and the waters.
Our elders teach us, and we believe, that if we take care of the lands and the waters, they will take care of us. For these reasons, as Dene people we believe we are already wealthy if we possess clean air, clean water, and clean land within which we hunt and trap and gather for a livelihood. Our wealth is of secondary importance.
Today, our lands and waters and resources are being demanded for use by international and national resource companies. They are taking over the land faster than we have ever experienced before. This has alarmed our people, along with the reports of the degradation of both our environment and the Dene people.
The energy industry has encroached greatly upon the lands and the waters, in most cases without consultation or regard for our people; however, our greatest threat is the encroachment on our territory of the oil and gas industry and activities in the Fort McMurray area on the Alberta side. The Oilsands Quest area on the Saskatchewan side recently has publicized its thousands of kilometres of new cut lines and roads in our territory, with the intention of production within one to two years.
Our Athabasca Dene people are very alarmed by the recent reports from Alberta disclosing the toxic nature of the Athabasca tar sands being developed in the Fort McMurray area, which are a concern on an international scale. Our Dene people are alarmed at the published suffering of our friends and relatives of the Fort Chip Denesuline First Nation—the highest incidence of deaths in the Denesuline community—from cancer and disease that is suspected to be linked from the poisons flowing into our water from the Fort McMurray tar sands production.
Our Dene people are alarmed that the waters flowing north in the Athabasca River are bringing these poisons into our Lake Athabasca and to our doorstep on the Saskatchewan side. In addition, the reports from Alberta and Saskatchewan disclose increasing levels of acid rain linked to the Fort McMurray tar sands. Our Dene people are experiencing the harmful effects of these poisonous projects on the fish and the wildlife, which we rely upon for sustenance and which contribute to our Denesuline economy.
Both the Fort McMurray tar sands and the Saskatchewan Oilsands Quest projects have proceeded without any consultation or involvement of the Athabasca Denesuline people. A letter from one company to me discloses that they believe they have no obligation to consult with our people and that the duty and obligation rests exclusively with the provinces.
Our Denesuline elders have spoken for years and warned us of the destruction of the environment if we do not take care of the lands, the waters, and wildlife, and if we give up our responsibility as stewards of the homeland. At a time when the world and the nation of Canada are in a crisis and crave clean sources of energy, the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan and all western provinces must show leadership to keep our lands and waters pristine. The Province of Alberta needs to focus on cleaning up their environmental mess, and our Province of Saskatchewan should be concerned about the harm and destruction of promoting and allowing similar projects to proceed.
We are aware that the Athabasca region is one of the most active energy resource exploration and resource extraction regions in the world because of the demand for the energy formed from the hydrocarbons and from uranium. The activities involved in the oil and gas and nuclear energy industries are threatening the traditional livelihood, the culture, and the values of my people. Many times our people are surprised while out on the land to come upon exploration camps that have permission from the provinces to go onto our Denesuline lands and waters without notice or consultation, and without the consent of our first nation government.
Our people for many years have not been provided with the opportunities they should have to develop themselves, their education, their training, and their own businesses, and to take advantage of the opportunities that the energy industry presents. These outside companies, with their Canadian workers, have benefited to a far greater extent than our people over the years. We do recognize that the energy industry has benefited our people to some extent through employment, but the energy companies and the provincial economies have benefited themselves far more in comparison.
As a result, our first nations have decided to take a proactive and a two-part approach to preserving the Athabasca Denesuline interests now and for the future generations.
First, we have created our own regional development corporation to attempt to control development in ways that benefit the Athabasca Dene people and that, above all, allow our leadership to have some involvement from an industrial perspective in how the lands could be developed. This has allowed us to benefit from some opportunities, including education and training, employment, and business development.
Second, we are taking a proactive approach to enforcing our rights and demanding that both the provinces and the energy companies follow a process that includes both providing Denesuline leadership with information on company exploration, which involves meeting as often as necessary to consult with our first nations government before any permits are granted.
Third, we have developed an Athabasca land use plan, which has been approved by all Athabasca Denesuline chiefs and their neighbouring Dene communities. It is displayed in the room here. The Athabasca land use plan has also been ignored by the provinces, resulting in the advantages of the territory going to outsiders for far too long.
Fourth, we have developed a protocol to establish a framework for the crown's duty to consult and accommodate, which includes a resource development project review and approval process. The protocol is in direct response to the lack of formal process developed to date, which appears to reflect the lack of political will on the part of Canada and the provinces to take the leadership role. In the experience of the Athabascan Denesuline, the crown seems to be content to delegate the responsibility and duty to consult to the energy industry. This is unacceptable, and the Athabascan Denesuline are experiencing the impacts of the crown policy.
Our Athabascan Denesuline leadership must take an active role to ensure that the potential for harmful and destructive projects cannot take place in a provincial environment that ignores and does not involve our Athabascan Denesuline people through a formal process of consultation and accommodation.
For these reasons, our Athabascan Denesuline people must plan the enforcement of our rights, interests, and title against Canada, the provinces, and those corporate developments that fail to consult with us. We are prepared to act as necessary to be involved in negotiating the conditions and addressing the potential impacts under which we would allow access to our lands and waters. The duty to consult must extend and be discharged to our Athabasca communities, and their interests must be accommodated.
The Athabasca can no longer wait. We must take this opportunity to make our stand, as we have everything to lose. To our Denesuline people, this is not an option for us.
We come from an Athabasca perspective. The region I represent, with over 67 years of mining in the area, includes three abandoned mine sites and 39 satellite exploration sites that to this day have never been cleaned up. We come from a region that is wealthy in uranium and is still growing strong in the near future, and now Oilsands Quest is taking part.
Thank you for this opportunity, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much.
I want to address this committee.
When we say in our language, “Tu degiha”, it means “Water is sacred”; “Tubeta tsina”, “Water is life”; “Tu nere dela tulahta”, “Water is like our bloodline that flows in Mother Earth”.
I want to say that water, which we're talking about today, versus oil is the subject of what this hearing is about. As the chiefs mentioned before, we have a treaty right to water. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was passed at the UN, refers to water and the rights to water.
Spring, as we know, brings forth life. It brings forth life, but this poisonous, toxic material that's put into the earth--and you saw it, you flew over it.... When life comes forth like a mother bringing forth life in the spring, you give a needle of that toxic material to a pregnant woman and you will kill her and the child. That is how Dene people see what is taking place.
I was part of the Berger inquiry in the 1970s. I want to talk about two views of the world that we see. One is colonization. The colonizers' perspective is that indigenous people need to be assimilated so that they can become part of a wage economy. That's a very colonial mentality, and it still goes on today. It means that the wage economy must flourish over our Dene chanie, our culture. Literally translated, it means “the path we walk”. It means that our way of life, the way we view the world, is backwards--we lead a simple life, so therefore we need to be colonized.
Our people have now been struggling to decolonize, simply decolonize. The Berger inquiry was a very significant part of that history, and we're doing it again here, but in a very much smaller way. To decolonize simply means to decode and to be in charge of our way of life, so that our culture, our Dene chanie, survives in the future, like every other culture in the history of peoples in the world who have preserved their way of life, protected it, and practised it. I just want to say that our investors ask us not to, and will not allow us to, destroy her future. It's as simple as that.
I live by the Northwest Territories border. I have provided maps of the Slave River. We are known as the Phabettie Dene, meaning “the head of the rapids”. The history of this set of rapids is very rich. All of our existence and survival depend on this part of the world. We are adjacent to Wood Buffalo National Park. The Alberta government recognizes this corridor as a heritage site.
We are polluting the river. Now, ATCO and TransCanada PipeLines are proposing to build a run from the reservoir to obstruct the river so they can produce 1,000 to 1,500 megawatts of power. This is insane. The water is polluted. It is like plugging up your sewer system in this city. You will find very soon that your whole system is polluted. But this is what ATCO and TransCanada are proposing. So the river is now going to be dead—our fish, wildlife, and so on. This beautiful territory that I come from has now been affected by the tar sands. It is real.
I'm by the river, about 180 miles, if not 200 miles, from the tar sands. Two years ago I was up the river, but I forgot to bring fresh drinking water and I was sick for three days because that water is polluted. How is the water? How are the fish? The fish are a species at risk in this river, in this water. We have witnessed green sludge in the water. When people put nets in the water to catch fish, they're catching green algae. We've never seen or witnessed this before. There's foam on the water that is building up, and it has never been seen before. The only monitoring system on the river is where I live, in Fort Fitzgerald. All this monitoring system does is measure the flow and depth of the water. That's all it does.
The finding of the Pembina Institute is that the river has dropped 35% since 1971. I live on the river. I go up and down the river all the way to Fort Chipewyan. This past fall I would say that the water has been down by 40%—that's 40%.
This winter I took part in an NWT water strategy plan. Our job was to consult with the leadership and the chiefs in the Mackenzie Valley. I must say that the chiefs and the elders have a great concern about their river system in the north. They're concerned about the fish, the wildlife. They say that the fish is not normal, that the fish is fleshy when you eat it, when you open it up.
Health is a great concern to the elders because there's a lot of cancer down the river. There's just as much as what's taking place in Fort Chipewyan. In Fort Chipewyan, there is probably more than in other areas of the Mackenzie Valley. The biggest concern they have is that there's absolutely no data on the waters, rivers, or lakes about what's happening. Where I live there is no monitoring. There is no data, except for water flow and depth.
Have I ever seen the provincial government in my community? Never. Have I ever seen a federal official in my community to look at the water? Never.
Wood Buffalo National Park, which is close to me, also doesn't have a system for looking at water. Right now, the way we see it, until things are finalized, there should be no more new projects. There should be a moratorium on projects.
I know that the time is up. I'm used to making...not long presentations, but I'll make it short--
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, members.
Ideology can be western, European, oriental, black, or native American. Regardless of status, we all need each other. We all value the principles and beliefs that guide our everyday lives.
It is because of Mother Earth's good grace that we are here today, yet we keep creating innovative ways of ignoring the obvious, creating an illusion of misconceptions, playing Russian roulette, screwing around, and tinkering with her generosity. We need to honour her sacred elements of water, air, earth, and fire. Without any of these elements, mankind as we know it will not exist.
Indigenous people of the Americas have much to offer: a vast knowledge of what was good, what has gone wrong, and what could be recuperated in terms of our relationship with the broader environment.
Before contact, the Dehcho Dene lived with and from the land to sustain societies and to grow and develop. Relationships were organized to ensure both Dene and all living things continued to thrive and flourish. This required the development of systems of traditional knowledge that were precise and disciplined, and in what we would call today a material or scientific sense of having to deal with resource protection, renewal, and regeneration.
In this century, our environment is being destroyed to a point of no return. The very ground we walk on, the water we drink, and the air we breathe threaten to make us ill rather than being a source of our health and well-being. To this, Dehcho has much to offer.
Traditional knowledge is central to managing our environment. The land use plan passed in 2006 is a prime example of that. This essential document that creates harmony between governments, industry, and first nations is no longer relevant because of tinkering with what we consider survival mechanisms. Industries and governments seem to miss the point of this document.
Mr. Chairman, the Dehcho land use plan is a blueprint for industry to use when planning potential development. It is a good working document that industry can use to guide its direction. This responsible, perfect document is now being changed, based on a phase called conformity. These conformity requirements do not make sense to those who have used the land and the waters since time immemorial. Conservation zones have been replaced with special development zones by people who have never set foot on our lands.
In a contemporary developed country such as Canada, politicians often debate ideas in the abstract. Alienation of people by ideas can lead to war to defend one theory or another about the best way to govern, each proclaiming that their way is the best and only way. Politicians tend to become stagnant and defensive, seeming to care more about being right than doing right. The Dene way of governing is to see government as a constantly evolving and dynamic set of relationships between people. It must be open to adapt to changing conditions and circumstance. The Dehcho modes of government, like all forms of government, are not necessarily perfect, but we have a very important contribution to make to the contemporary debate on how we should care, govern, and live in harmony with one another.
The Dehcho can pass on traditional knowledge about trade and commerce and about peace, order, and good government by exploring first nations modes of government and the relationships between diverse people or ethnic groups of people. We are also living in a rapidly and dynamically changing world. We are in a recession. All systems of government are vulnerable, and they all have strengths and weaknesses. Indigenous values and principles have largely been cast aside and replaced by an administrative government driven by economic interests.
Canada relegated their values and principles to the past and deemed the Dehcho system of government inappropriate to present circumstances. To disregard ways of life and knowledge that organized the Dehcho Dene for thousands of years was a dreadful error and a grave loss that our people are suffering from, as are the land, skies, and water.
To recuperate these losses and to open the eyes, ears, and minds of the world's people to this historic tragedy will require much more than remorse and regret. It will require first acknowledgement and then respect. It will also require government to make brave decisions and to have the courage to act on them.
We have a vested interest. As stewards, we have a duty to protect what we have. However, for the time being we rely on governments that have only economic interests in mind. Recession gives us a time to reflect, evaluate, and refocus on why we are on this planet. Timing is everything. The opportunity exists now.
Mr. Chairman, being keepers of the water happens now. There's nothing new in that word. Since time immemorial we have been sharing our knowledge, stories, and legends regarding our lands and water. We have learned from nature the gift of survival. We have also learned in this generation about industrial development and the devastation and destructive measures it can bring in the name of progress.
First nations of this continent have become a collective force, through our moccasin telegraph, regarding our most precious resource, water. A humanitarian issue that started in the north is now spreading across the country, across this continent, and across this world. The collective network, the Keepers of the Water, and the water keepers, the indigenous water network, water strategy, and environmental forums are collectively furthering this struggle toward a common goal of protecting Mother Earth and her sacred elements. As stewards, our focus should remain consistent with human evolution, not material wealth. Our focus should be protecting water resources and the cultural use and traditional values of water, and our conservation practice should that ensure future generations are not denied those elements that sustain us today.
We are not missing any points here. While I agree a little money in the pocket is good, we must raise the bar to a higher level if mankind as we know it is to survive. We must have the courage to challenge the status quo. We must be vigilant and open our eyes. We haven't survived on this continent by denying others a means of survival. We all have a vested interest. How we survive will not be dependent on governments. Stupid decisions that compromise our survival will not go unchallenged.
Since global warming has become an issue, we have made half-hearted attempts to address it by seeming to care. We act concerned, while pondering, with our fingers crossed behind our backs, that it won't change by itself.
:
I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to appear before the committee. For the record, my name is Michael Miltenberger and I'm the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. I'm also the Deputy Premier, as well as the Minister of Finance.
I want to talk to you about the Mackenzie River Basin, the Northwest Territories, the issue of water, and the issue of cumulative impact. I want to touch on some of the context for us, some of the threats that we are facing on the issue of water. I want to lay out some of the challenges and steps we're taking through our water strategy, and I want to make some recommendations for this committee to consider, particularly in regard to the federal government.
We're 1.2 million square kilometres, about 12% of Canada. We have 33 communities, and every one of them is on a body of water in the Mackenzie River Basin. We have 42,000 people, and half of them are of aboriginal descent. A common unifying issue in the Northwest Territories is the importance of water and protecting the quantity and quality of water. The Northwest Territories lies almost entirely within the Mackenzie River Basin. We're the largest downstream jurisdiction in the basin. In the Northwest Territories, there are two major deltas—the Slave Delta and the Mackenzie River Basin Delta.
We are very concerned about what's happening in the Mackenzie River Basin. I want to refer to the transboundary agreement that was signed in 1997. The federal government played an initiating role, and it tied the signatories together in a common agreement. Those signatories are Saskatchewan, Alberta, B.C., the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. We have aboriginal representation. However, it is an underutilized agreement.
We are very interested in working out the issue of transboundary agreements. If I can mangle John Donne just a bit, when it comes to water, no jurisdiction is an island unto itself. We all have common interests. We are concerned because the Northwest Territories government in the fifteenth assembly, the last assembly, passed a unanimous motion declaring water as a fundamental human right. I think we're the only jurisdiction in the country that's done that. While the federal government has the legal mandate over water management in the Northwest Territories on behalf of northerners, the government of the Northwest Territories, along with the aboriginal governments, has been exercising what we see as our political and moral authority and responsibility to deal with issues that affect us deeply and personally—issues that we can't rely solely on the federal government to resolve.
We also recognize the relationship with the aboriginal governments. As you've heard from some of the preceding panellists, the issue of aboriginal treaty rights is sooner or later going to get tested in the courts, when the fundamental rights enshrined in these agreements are challenged. We recognize them and we work with them. I'm going to speak briefly about the issue of traditional knowledge and what we all talk about as natural capital.
One of the threats we see to our water system, in addition to the issues we have within the Northwest Territories, is upstream development. I want to talk about cumulative impact. You've been talking about the oil sands here today. There are pulp mills; there are over a million head of livestock; there are communities; there's a proposed nuclear reactor up on Lac Cardinal on the Peace River side; you have the proposed Bennett Dam; and we have unknown things happening in the headwaters, on both the Alberta and B.C. side, in both the Peace and Athabasca, as the glaciers retreat and the snowpack diminishes because of global warming; and you have a huge lack of knowledge.
We're also very concerned about things from the air that are sifting down upon all our jurisdictions. You heard today about naphthenic acids, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, bitumen, mercury, and the heavy metals. A lot of that is airborne. You can read the literature. It blankets the Arctic.
We also have our own issues in the Northwest Territories. We're trying to get a better handle on how we proceed with development, be that pipelines or mines in general. We have a giant defunct mine on the edge of Great Slave Lake, which has 230,000 metric tonnes of arsenic trioxide stored in the mine shafts below the water level of Great Slave Lake--a billion dollar cleanup we will have to deal with. Another threat is the climate change impact from permafrost. The fire seasons are extending. Snowpack ice is disappearing. There are low water events across the land. In every community, the people will tell you that the land is changing, the water is changing.
Some of the challenges are because there's no national water strategy that allows the federal government to play a clear leadership role on an issue that touches every jurisdiction, without exception. These are challenges that affect every community, every Canadian.
We support the work and the efforts being put forward by the environment ministers and the federal government to get this national water strategy up and going. The last serious work was done in 1987, and not a lot has happened since then. There was a Senate panel that did a review, which was chaired by an Alberta Senator, Tommy Banks. It laid out all the issues: the lack of resources, the cutting of programs, the inability of the federal jurisdiction to do the work that's necessary for both surface water and groundwater.
At the same time, we have what has been, up until this recession, an unbridled rate and state of development, often moving far faster than the assessments were able to keep up. In our jurisdiction, we have a somewhat confused regulatory regime. Once again, the federal government has come in and set up a process that is often very difficult and frustrating for all concerned.
One of the challenges, as well, is the linking of traditional knowledge and the European sciences as we move forward in all the areas in the Northwest Territories where the aboriginal governments are one of the major land owners. No comprehensive research partnerships at all have been established to do a lot of the work that's necessary.
We have a Mackenzie River Basin transboundary agreement that has been quietly sitting, almost in neutral, that has not had any funding increases since 1997. They operate with a $250,000 budget. The ministers have yet to gather around the table. We see this as a mechanism that has tremendous potential if it's revitalized, if the players, led by the federal government, come to the table to talk about how we manage the water on an integrated watershed management approach in the Mackenzie River Basin. That has yet to happen.
You heard today, from all the panellists, about the issues of concern because of the lack of any mechanism to allow people to come to the table. Alberta looks after its interests within Alberta. Unless the federal government uses the legislation it has, there's very little opportunity to trigger the involvement of other jurisdictions. One of the communities in the Northwest Territories, Fort Resolution, tried to attend one of the hearings on the development in Fort McMurray, and it had a very difficult time to get any kind of hearing that was considered to be serious. It pointed out the need for us, as a government, to work with the aboriginal governments to come up with a plan and policy base that's going to allow us to deal with that issue.
I touched very quickly on the lack of research monitoring. It's an issue in the Northwest Territories, but it's an issue in the Mackenzie River Basin, right from the headwaters to the Arctic Ocean. There's the aquatic ecosystem health. Most jurisdictions in this Mackenzie River Basin agreement are silent on groundwater, yet a report released yesterday, referenced by Dr. Griffiths, states very clearly that it's a critical part of the hydrological cycle.
There are huge climate change issues. There are supply issues in jurisdictions. We all have to work together to monitor and manage them. We need to make use of traditional knowledge. People who have inhabited the watershed for thousands of years are telling us that things are changing, and not for the better.
We are working together to develop an NWT water strategy called Northern Voices, Northern Waters. We want to have a strong northern voice. We recognize that if we're going to be effective in a jurisdiction of 42,000 people, we have to work shoulder to shoulder with the aboriginal governments to develop a plan that will allow us to look more clearly at resource development as we negotiate agreements with Alberta, Saskatchewan, B.C., the Yukon, and the federal government.
We have to be clear about what's entailed in negotiating a very complex agreement. It's not just flow and quality. There is a huge number of other issues. It's not just surface water. We want to be prepared to deal with everything. We see a clear link in the issue of natural capital, which has become a topic of some discussion here. We recognize that there is a value to the intact ecosystems. It's not just overburden to be stripped away to get at the oil, diamonds, gold, and other minerals. Aboriginal people have been telling us this for decades through traditional knowledge. We've come to recognize that they are right. It is not only a spiritual, cultural, and social value; you could also put an economic value on it now in a language that everybody understands, including business. We are trying to build that into our approach.
What we are recommending is a revitalizing and strengthening of the transboundary mechanisms through the Mackenzie River Basin Waters Master Transboundary Agreement. They speak of an integrated watershed management approach, which we support. We support the federal government's being involved and providing a leadership role. This is a national issue, not just one for the Northwest Territories or individual jurisdictions. We all have an interest in this.
We have to come up with ways for downstream jurisdictions to be more effectively involved. Consulting 12 kilometres below site C, say, does not constitute adequate consultation for anybody. We need timely and clear notification when there are things that go wrong, as they invariably do. Most of the time, we find out about things in the newspaper or on CBC Radio.
We want to recommend that this committee support and push for a national water strategy in which the federal government can play a leadership role in bringing the jurisdictions together. We believe there is a place in this for traditional knowledge along with western science, as we look at the watersheds across the land and deal with people who have thousands of years of experience that we do not have.
There has to be more money spent on research. We cannot make informed decisions without research. Without research, we are forced to rely on the precautionary principle, which means we go with the best information we have. This invariably leads to problems; however, we need to commit. I was recently at a conference in Canmore with all the specialists and scientists who measure water and snowpack in glaciers. They said that there is a significant dearth and a gap in our systems.
Groundwater, surface water, we are all facing these challenges, not only in the Northwest Territories but throughout the Mackenzie River Basin. As northerners in the Northwest Territories, we see things happening upstream from us, and we are particularly concerned that wise decisions be made in the Mackenzie River Basin.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I have to apologize for the quality of my voice. I am struggling with a cold virus that I can't get rid of. No, I'm not spreading it, and it is not the swine flu. Don't go back to Ottawa and say I did it.
With your permission, Mr. Chair, I have a presentation here, but I'll skim through it to allow more time for questions. It shouldn't take more than five minutes. I will be discussing challenges to the oil sands development.
Page 2 of the presentation talks about why the oil sands are very important for the economy of Alberta and Canada. It is very important for the citizens economically, and also for the prosperity of future generations. You must have heard a lot about that in the last little while, so I'm not going to repeat it. But if you look at the numbers on page 2, you can see a very large number of direct and indirect jobs, and revenues to the government.
There are two methods of extracting oil sands. One of them is in situ and the other is surface mining. Both of them have their own particular challenges. They both have impacts on the land, on the air, and on the water. These impacts vary depending on the method of extraction, but they are significant and we must deal with them.
On page 4, there is a diagram showing the water use in the oil sands in surface mining. Page 5 shows it for in situ. In the diagram on surface mining, we'll start with the 100 units--whatever units you would like to use. Of these 100 units, 74 are recycled, and 26 are entrained in tailings, which makes them very difficult to get rid of under normal circumstances. We have 74 units coming back, so we must make up the 26 units from other sources. There's water that comes with the ore, which is the four units, and where it says “River” here it's a misnomer; it actually should be fresh water coming from the river, and runoff and all of that, making up 22 units. Evaporation is about four units and precipitation is about four units. So this is neutral here. The 26 units are equivalent to three to four barrels of water per barrel of bitumen.
We try to make it very succinct so that at least we're talking about the same issues.
In situ, we selected the SAGD, which, as you might have heard, is steam-assisted gravity drainage. Again, if we start with the steam, which is 100 units, the steam goes into the reservoir. Ten units stay behind, and 90 units are recycled. Sometimes you need some water treatment for that. You have to get fresh water, so you need 10 units of fresh water. This is the balance between 27.6 units of fresh and salt water...[Inaudible--Editor]...to treat it, and you lose about 17.6. So the balance is 10 units.
The 10 units are equivalent to about 0.7 barrels of water per barrel of bitumen, or many estimates say it is about one barrel for the in situ.
I refer you to page 6.
We believe that technologies are the only way you can resolve some of these challenges. We must have technologies to address water challenges in surface mining. We have to squeeze out the water in the tailings, and when this water comes out it is not in ideal condition sometimes. So you have to treat it, and improved water treatment is important.
In situ gets around the water problem by using less water, by using technologies that use this water like solvent-assisted SAGD, or air injection and combustion, and so on. Again, you need water treatment in this case.
The tailings ponds have been in the public eye for a very long time because of their enormity and because of other recent circumstances that highlighted the tailings ponds issue.
Again, at the very beginning of the mining process, the tailings ponds were estimated to be much less than that because they was based on the number of fines, the number of very fine particles, and no attention was paid at the time to the nature of the fines. The fines immobilize water around them, so a lot of water is immobilized, not based only on the size of the particles but because of the nature of the clays, and so on.
Understanding that will help a lot. It can help more if we pay more attention to it.
We put together a research consortium in the late eighties. Almost everybody in this consortium was a researcher from the provincial or federal government or the universities. They worked for five years for $25 million and they came up with a lot of conclusions that have been applied in the field.
I have a summary of these conclusions. The industry called that the silver bullet. They referred to it a lot, and I would say it focused information here that can be used. You got the companies, NRCan, and the Alberta government. We all contributed to that, and so did two universities.
This was the beginning. I think there's a lot to be done, and we should pay attention to various technologies.
Again, another issue that has recently had more attention paid to it is the volatile organic compounds, which come out from the tailings and the mine face and so on. I would say it affects both health and the environment. It has some GHG components to it. Again, some work has been done in different places on understanding what these compounds are and how to characterize them and how to look at their influence on the environment.
In summary, the oil sands are very important. We cannot abandon them. Improvements are made, but you have to keep in mind that if you have improvements in one area you have to look at other areas these improvements may impact, either positively or negatively. So we have to look at this as a whole rather than as one individual unit. It's very important, and we are committed to working toward a resolution to make it a responsible resource.
Thank you.
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Before I start, Mr. Chair, I brought some samples with me just to show what our technology looks like so that everybody has a hands-on view in front of them. Our technology is essentially based around these organic polymer beads that are an absorbent for the hydrocarbons. This is the residual sand from our process.
In these jars.... We have one here that we haven't disturbed, but this is essentially what we could end up looking at in terms of treatment, where bitumen is on the beads and you have clear water and residual solids at the bottom, which are settled. With this one, we can go ahead and see how fast the settling is by just turning it upside down. We'll see that the settled solids in a water column do become somewhat trafficable. They settle and they've compacted. They're not moving around.
This is a solution that we are proposing. It's based on the laws of Mother Nature, which I'm going to go ahead and expose here with my documentation.
Mr. Chair and distinguished members of the committee, my name is Thomas Gradek. I am the inventor and developer of a leading Canadian technology. My small company, Gradek Energy Inc., is based out of Montreal, with operational headquarters in Calgary. Gradek Energy proposes to eliminate tailing streams from the oil sand operations and over time eliminate the existing tailing ponds at no cost to oil sands operating companies. Our objective is to reclassify oil sands production as clean oil. The key is RHS technology.
Gradek Energy is developing a hydrocarbon capture technology, called RHST, for application in any media. RHST has been proven through extensive testing in the laboratory, and Gradek Energy is designing a pilot project with oil sands operator participation to prove its performance in eliminating hydrocarbons and tailings streams that proliferate massive ponds.
Present technology of air flotation is adversely affected with fines and dissolved minerals, which alter the chemistry of water into slurry. As such, the inefficiency losses leave bitumen attached to the fines. Those fines remain in suspension in the water, hence the need to have tailing ponds for long-term settling of those fines.
The oil sands industry has invested billions of dollars into building their present production facilities and has spent decades doing it. It is of necessity that the industry focus on its production. Gradek Energy's business model takes the tailing liability off-line to build, own, and operate the tailing streams and ponds through a mediation plant, all off-line, and internally finances a profitable and sustainable enterprise, having no risk impact on the existing operations.
What is the technology? The illustration of the bitumen-coated beads in clear water with settled solids is the result that can be obtained with our technology. As you can witness with the samples that I have brought to the session, the bitumen-free fines readily settle.
How does it work? The beads are essentially a better air bubble and, as such, are more efficient in attaching the bitumen. This is an applied nanotechnology that uses the laws of nature to selectively capture the hydrocarbons. Equilibrium is reached with the hydrocarbon on the bead's surface, at which point the bitumen is at its minimum free-energy level. Afterwards, the solvent wash is used to remove the bitumen from the bead and produce a quality dilbit.
This slide shows the bitumen extraction process and demonstrates the use of fresh tailings blended with tailings pond sludge to obtain our optimum temperature of about 40° Celsius. The blended slurry is introduced into the mixer with the RHS beads, and then contact is made between the bitumen-coated particles and the beads. The bitumen migrates onto the beads. The slurry is then moved into a second compartment in which the clean water and solids are removed, and the bitumen-coated beads are directed into a solvent wash unit. There the beads are washed with a solvent to produce the dilbit. Then the beads are recovered, dried, and can be reused.
The RHST project is a planned two-phase piloting program. We are in the design stage of the first phase of the program at present. The first pilot phase will demonstrate the continuous-flow operation feasibility. The second phase will demonstrate the scalability of the process for ultimate commercial-scale operations.
This slide shows how demonstration and validation of the technology involved various institutions and facilities. The multitude of tests undertaken during the development stages have been numerous and with successful results.
The benefits of the RHS technology described in the following slides, numbers 12 through 16, are summarized as follows:
Environmental performance: RHST has the potential to reduce the environmental impact of the oil sands operations overall.
Social performance: it has the potential to provide a healthier environment by reducing the effects of effluents and their emissions.
Economic performance: it has the potential for overall improvement on operational costs by eliminating tailings management expenses and future liabilities.
Technological issues: RHST has the potential to enable the operators to achieve their bitumen recovery efficiency obligations with the ERCB.
Political issues: RHST has the potential to facilitate compliance with U.S. regulations and policy on transportation fuels.
As a result of implemention of the technology, RHST addresses the proliferation of tailing ponds by recovering the residual bitumen attached to fine particles such as clays and oxides. RHST is a no-cost solution for the industry. It results in water that can be directly treated and recycled, and soil ready for reclamation that is trafficable.
It's also a process that addresses U.S. regulations directly and completely. Reduced carbon intensity overall is in accordance with the low-carbon fuel supply act, greenhouse gas emissions are eliminated from tailing ponds in accordance with the climate change act, and waste fuel designation with a RIN value is in accordance with the renewable fuel supply act.
The oil sands present a tremendous economic opportunity for Canada constrained by an environmental impasse. Implementation of the RHS technology will help the Government of Canada and the industry balance these competing interests. Funding from government sources is essential to accelerate the piloting phases of this project. The entire country can benefit from the economic activity generated by our solution. Implementation will reduce and eventually eliminate tailing ponds, and the RHS technology promises to be an expanding and diversified export opportunity.
Mr. Chair, I thank you for the opportunity and I welcome your committee's questions.