Ottawa, province to unveil oilsands monitoring strategy
Ottawa and Alberta are announcing a new strategy today to monitor the environmental impact of the oilsands.
Critics say the announcement is a long time coming since it was more than 18 months ago that scientists published a report showing flaws in the monitoring program in the oilsands.
A scientific panel released a 102-page report last June calling for a science-driven, independent environmental monitoring commission for the oilsands region and province as a whole.
The Alberta Environmental Monitoring Panel report also called for an interim board to be established within “a matter of months.”
The panel report said the province should work with Ottawa to ensure there is no duplication of effort.
Other recommendations included the creation of a publicly accessible system and increasing input from First Nations.
Oilsands monitoring has been a controversial issue in the province since 2008, with government officials denying claims of health and environmental impacts and rejecting scientific reports that slammed the existing industry-funded monitoring system.
University of Alberta water scientist David Schindler and colleagues published a study in August 2010 saying the oilsands industry increases the amount of pollutants in the Athabasca River, contrary to claims made by industry and government.
His and other studies prompted the creation of both federal and provincial panels aimed at improving environmental monitoring in the oilsands.
Panel chair Hal Kvisle, a former president of Transcanada Corp., said Thursday that there appears to be strong co-operation between the provincial and federal governments on this issue. He said the long-term success of the monitoring program will depend on whether it has a scientific focus and a strong organization in place.
“We need a system that is operationally excellent,” Kvisle said.
There must also be transparency so that the data is readily available, he said.
For more than a decade, the monitoring has been undertaken by the much-maligned Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program.
NDP MLA Rachel Notley says that program was badly flawed and partly why the oilsands have taken such a beating internationally.
“We obviously have jeopardized the economic future of the province by being so hapless and negligent when it comes to how we deal with the environment,” she said.
“We don’t have a good record and so people aren’t going to take us with good faith. What we propose has to be real. It can’t be smoke and mirrors that they have been relying on. To do otherwise is to jeopardize our jobs and the future of the industry.”
Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman suggested the government is making the announcement today to get the benefit of pre- election publicity on an issue where it has been criticized.
“It’s all to make the government look good in situations where they are not doing good work,” she said.
Blakeman said Alberta has a huge problem in allowing the industry to monitor itself and it must undertake the monitoring or establish an arm’slength agency to do it.
“Every day that goes by in oilsands development and conventional oil and gas development in this province there are gaps in what our baseline monitoring is,” she said. “All we get is a PR campaign from the government. We don’t get anything that is worthwhile.”
Jennifer Grant, the oilsands program director for the Pembina Institute, said it is important the monitoring program includes “science-based limits” on pollutant levels.
The environmental thinktank also wants assurances the data collected from the monitoring program will be used to inform government policy. “It’s important to have a credible monitoring plan in place, but it should be linking to actual decisions on the ground,” Grant said.
The announcement will be made by Federal Environment Minister Peter Kent and Alberta Environment and Water Minister Diana Mcqueen at the University of Alberta.
Alberta’s environment minister said recently that spring is an important monitoring season for gathering such data.
“I don’t want to see us lose this monitoring season, as well,” Mcqueen said. “I’m committed to moving in a very timely manner.”
Ottawa blamed the long Progressive Conservative leadership race in Alberta, which culminated in Alison Redford’s victory last October, for the delay in releasing the plan.