When the news broke this week that former B.C. premier John Horgan was taking on a new role with one of the most influential mining companies in the country, it inadvertently shone a spotlight on one of the province’s sorest spots: coal mining in the Elk Valley. 

It’s a strangely quiet story in B.C., given its Hollywood-level proportions: huge mountains are shaved down to nubs in bustling around-the-clock coal operations that go on unabated, 365 days a year. Enormous piles of waste rock — left exposed to rain and snow and wind all year long — send a constant trickle of contaminants throughout the watershed and into meandering rivers and creeks known for their prized trout populations. Starting in 2014, scientists warned the pollution, especially selenium contamination, could become extremely dangerous for fish and birds. And then fishermen began pulling severely deformed trout out of the rivers. 

But it gets much worse. Because the leaching is so difficult to control, selenium pollution is now a problem all throughout the watershed and even in the bodies of water that cross the B.C.-Montana border. You don’t have to watch Yellowstone to imagine how the good people of Montana feel about an uncontrolled stream of selenium contaminating their waters and poisoning their fish. 

Experts warn selenium could be a problem in the valley for hundreds or even a thousand years, especially given the colossal size of waste piles.

In the meantime, warnings issued by scientists about the danger of letting selenium build up in the ecosystem appear to be playing out, with fish populations collapsing in rivers immediately downstream of the mines. 

It’s bad enough the pollution in the Elk Valley, a place some British Columbians haven’t even heard of, was a focus of talks between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden during the U.S. leader’s first presidential visit to Canada two weeks ago. 

These are big problems. Monumental, even. So, it’s a wonder to read Horgan’s recent words as he takes up his new mantle on the board of Elk Valley Resources, a planned spinoff from Teck Resources to manage the company’s four coal mines in the valley (assuming a new takeover proposal doesn’t get off the ground). 

“I’ve got other things that I am going to be working on that may be more to the taste of those who would kick up some dust, but the people that are kicking up dust, oftentimes, kick it up for the sake of kicking it up,” Horgan told The Globe and Mail.

“I don’t have a lot of time any more, none in fact, for public comment on my worldview, or what I am doing with my time. I don’t want to be snippy about it, but there are others that are making policy decisions.” The article also mentions Horgan said he will work to ensure the company is respecting its obligations to Indigenous communities and the environment as well as mine workers and shareholders.

Horgan’s words are perturbing for those who were asking for greater accountability for Teck’s coal mines during the time he was, in fact, making policy decisions. That time, it’s important to remember, extended to mere months ago. 

Nasuʔkin (Chief) Heidi Gravelle of the Yaq̓itʔa·knuqⱡiʾit (Tobacco Plains Indian Band) told The Narwhal in late 2021 that “prior to the mines, people could drink out of the rivers.” But not anymore.

“Nobody will eat fish out of there because of the contaminants, which is sad,” she said. “That was a huge part of our history.”

“The mines have put some work into fixing the selenium problem. But it’s not enough. There needs to be stronger environmental regulations at the end of the day, and accountability — so raise the bar and if you don’t meet it, you’re done,” she said.

Horgan did not respond to a request for comment from The Narwhal by time of publication. 

Selenium pollution in Elk Valley increased during John Horgan’s premiership

During Horgan’s tenure, the Elk Valley saw an increase in selenium levels without any meaningful pushback from the province on Teck’s permits to operate. Although B.C.’s water quality guidelines say selenium levels must remain below two parts per billion to safeguard aquatic life, selenium levels in waterways across the valley are as high as 100, 200 and even 500 parts per billion.

The mines are permitted under a flexible regulatory arrangement called the Elk Valley Water Quality Plan that hoped to see selenium levels stabilized by 2023 and decreasing by 2030. 

Instead, selenium levels in waterways all across the Elk Valley continue to increase despite hundreds of millions of dollars invested by Teck for more than a decade into water treatment plants that have struggled to successfully remove selenium and struggled to keep up with the pure volume of selenium. There is still no credible plan in place to handle the ever-increasing selenium levels that are now creeping up in connected waterways as far away as Idaho. 

Yet this is despite the fact that selenium levels have become so high, they have threatened the safety of drinking water for communities in the Elk Valley, and both municipal and private wells in the region have at times been rendered unsafe for human consumption. 

And, although some federal fines have been issued for Teck’s pollution, Ottawa is limited in its ability to respond because Canada lacks federal regulations for coal mining effluent. Under Horgan’s watch, B.C. fought against the introduction of such rules because they would negatively impact industry. 

Rather than causing a reckoning for Teck, the company forged ahead with plans to expand its largest mine in the region.

Unpacking Horgan’s remarks about Teck’s metallurgical coal operations

In Horgan’s brief remarks to The Globe, he also suggested critics who might “kick up some dust” at his new role would be doing so under a false pretense, because he won’t be working for thermal coal but rather metallurgical coal, used to make steel. In doing so, Horgan is already falling into a false frame that overlooks the fact that Teck’s Elk Valley operations are an incredible source of carbon emissions.

According to Teck’s own disclosures, the company’s operational emissions in 2022 are estimated to be 2.8 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. That’s the same as 6.4 million barrels of oil consumed or the annual emissions from seven natural gas power plants, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas calculator.

But the lion’s share of Teck’s emissions come from the use of Teck’s steelmaking coal around the globe. According to Teck, based on the company’s 2022 sales, indirect emissions amounted to approximately 65 megatonnes, or the equivalent of more than 150 million barrels of oil or the annual emissions from 163 gas power plants.

It’s important to remember that Teck Resources is one of the most influential players in B.C.’s corporate-political landscape. For years before corporate and union political donations were banned in 2017, Teck consistently was one of B.C.’s top donors to political parties, giving out more than $1.5 million to the BC Liberals (now BC United) between 2008 and 2017. Teck donated $60,000 to the B.C. NDP, $50,000 of which came days before the 2017 election that saw the NDP take power. 

In the years since corporate political donations were outlawed, Teck has registered 26 lobbyists who since 2020 have attempted to influence policy on a range of issues including climate policy, coal mining regulations and biodiversity. Between July 18, 2017, the day Horgan became B.C.’s premier, and Nov. 18, 2022, the day he stepped down, Teck registered 167 lobbying reports, including 30 meetings or communications directly with the office of the premier. 

Horgan’s move is just the latest sign of Teck’s enormous clout. 

While the former premier may not welcome outside commentary or wish to hear from those inclined to kick up dust about selenium in the Elk Valley, it seems less-than-genuine for Horgan to simply throw up his hands at a problem that festered and grew under his leadership.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This article was produced with the support of the Local Journalism Initiative.

When Richard Wyman, president of Calgary-based Chance Oil and Gas, thinks about the Eagle Plains Basin in northern Yukon, he conjures images of a small, bustling oil and gas operation providing a region that’s remote with much-needed energy and jobs. 

That vision was in mind when Chance submitted a proposal to the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board for a workover of eight idle wells owned, but not currently operated, by the company. The maintenance proposal, which includes flow testing to assess the basin’s resource potential, could lay the groundwork for a new exploration program in the Eagle Plains, an expansive area of rolling hills between mountain ranges 400 kilometres north of Dawson City.

Wyman told The Narwhal upwards of 30 exploration wells could eventually be drilled in the Eagle Plains if there’s enough gas there to make it financially worthwhile.

The possibility of development in the sensitive area is reigniting concerns about the impact oil and gas development would have on the Porcupine caribou herd, one of the largest migratory barren ground caribou herds in North America, which over-winters on the plains. It’s also forcing Yukoners to address whether or not the territory should consider fossil fuel development in a time of climate crisis, the impacts of which are being felt more acutely in the North than in the rest of the world.

The Chance proposal comes in response to a nudge from the Yukon government to assess the suspended wells and either shut them up for good, in a process known as well abandonment, or convert them to active wells once again. Four of the wells are legacy wells bought by Chance that date back to the ’50s and ’60s. The other four wells were drilled by Chance in 2012 and 2013, before the territory introduced a 2015 moratorium on fracking (the company has so far been unsuccessful in its attempt to sue the Yukon government for $2.2 billion in claimed damages stemming from that ban). Now Chance is hopeful that, with enhanced flow testing, some of the wells might show signs of oil and gas resources that could be developed without the use of fracking.

But others say there’s no point in searching for resource potential in an area that should remain permanently closed to oil and gas development.

“It’s always been an extremely marginal project, which is why it’s not gone anywhere,” Sebastian Jones, wildlife and habitat analyst for the Yukon Conservation Society, told The Narwhal. 

“It’s a very remote area. It’s expensive to operate, the conditions are harsh. There’s never been any bankable resources there.”

Jones said oil and gas development in the Eagle Plains “risks causing damage and harm to the environment for no obvious reason.”

But Wyman says the full economic potential for development in Eagle Plains is currently unknown.

“The sedimentary basin has not been fully explored,” Wyman told The Narwhal. 

“If operations are allowed to proceed and the exploration program is successful, it could have a profound economic benefit, both to the territory and the north Yukon, where it’s economically depressed.”

Eagle Plains drilling a test for Yukon climate strategy

Wyman’s interest in creating jobs in the remote region is shared by some Yukoners and members of First Nations who have submitted public comments in support of potential development. Peter Charlie, from the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation community of Old Crow, about 195 kilometres northwest of the potential development area, said he supports the idea of oil and gas taking off in the region. “We need work. It would be good to have people working. There is not much happening up here [in Old Crow], right now,” Charlie said in a submitted comment delivered by phone. “Everyone is going through a hard time. We have to get jobs up here. A lot of young people are not even doing nothing up here. Everyone is talking about this project. We have to get something going here. The project would give us work. It would be good for young kids too.” 

The proposal, currently moving through a slow review process with the board, has also attracted a significant amount of criticism, notably for its potential to introduce ecological threats to a delicate northern ecosystem for a fossil fuel project that seems out of step with the territory’s own climate strategy. 

The territory’s emissions grew by 11.8 per cent between 2009 and 2017, the most recent year for which data is available. In its 2020 climate change action plan, the Yukon government emphasized the need for more renewable energy, especially for the territory’s remote and often diesel-dependent communities, to meet a goal of reducing emissions 30 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030.

There is very little oil and gas development in Yukon and the vast majority of the territory’s electricity needs are met by hydroelectricity. But many remote communities not connected to the territory’s grid rely on costly, and highly polluting fossil fuels that are imported from other provinces. The territory currently spends about $50 million annually on fossil fuel imports.

Wyman argues there’s an environmental advantage to developing oil and gas in the territory, pointing out that Yukon is heavily reliant on fossil fuels for energy generation that have a high emissions footprint because they have to be transported in from out-of-territory.

“However you want to slice it, there’s thousands and thousands of kilometres of supply line … with its own greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “If we were to find some hydrocarbons that were suitable for consumption in Yukon, we would significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the supply line. You’re going to get a net impact that’s positive.”

“The only question is going to be, does the Yukon give a shit about all the greenhouse gas emissions that are emitted outside the territorial boundary?”

Shortly after Yukon’s governing Liberals were voted into power in 2016, Ranj Pillai, Minister of the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, received a mandate letter directing him to “promote responsible resource development balanced with environmental management and demonstrable benefits for Yukon by promoting oil and gas development outside the Whitehorse trough and without fracking.”

Brigitte Parker, a spokesperson for the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, told The Narwhal in an email that Pillai’s letter continues to form the department’s mandate.

“Energy transitions take time and demand for oil and gas may continue into the foreseeable future,” she said.

Assessing the impacts of Eagle Plains drilling to Porcupine caribou

Chance first floated the idea of commercial oil and gas development in Eagle Plains in 2014, but a regional office of the Yukon assessment board determined that the company’s proposal to drill 20 new oil and gas wells could have significant adverse effects for the transboundary Porcupine caribou herd, one of North America’s last healthy caribou populations, which has come under increasing threat from oil and gas development in a thawing north.

According to an evaluation report conducted at the time, the impacts on the herd would have included habitat loss, injury and mortality.

The Chance project proposal area falls within the territory of Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, which is currently undertaking renewed analysis of how Chance’s current proposal could affect the herd.

Erika Tizya-Tramm, director of natural resources for Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, told The Narwhal the Vuntut Gwitchin and Yukon governments “are working together to determine both the state of the herd and what those possible impacts could be and what the implications are” in response to Chance’s proposal. Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, Tr’ondek Hwech’in, Inuvialuit and other nations harvest the Porcupine caribou for subsistence.

In its maintenance proposal, Chance noted it would only be able to carry out its work in the winter months, when the ground and snow conditions would be conducive to heavy trucks and machinery moving around on access roads. But the winter months are when the Porcupine caribou are most likely to be nearby. 

Chance said if more than a dozen caribou are observed from the project area, or if caribou show up and hang around for more than three days, then the company will engage a qualified environmental professional to determine if site-specific mitigation measures are needed.

That plan struck members of the public and even Environment and Climate Change Canada as insufficient. 

In response to Chance’s application, the federal department requested the company “describe the site specific mitigation measures that would be implemented in response to observations of more than a dozen caribou or caribou remaining in place for greater than three days.” 

Environment Canada also noted Chance should describe the specific measures it would take should caribou show up. 

The Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Board also wants to see more from Chance when it comes to assessing and planning for impacts to the herd. In April the board sent 21 specific questions to Chance, including a request for more information about the scientific foundation of the company’s plans.

Among other things, the board says it isn’t clear why Chance chose the threshold of more than a dozen caribou, or the need to establish mitigation plans if caribou linger for more than three days. 

“It is not clear why these numbers have been chosen as thresholds or the conditions and triggers that would result in the need for site-specific or tailored management measures,” the board wrote to Chance.

Amelie Morin, manager of the board’s Dawson designated office, said numerous public comments have noted concerns about impacts to Porcupine caribou. 

“We have seen comments through our seeking views and information period that identified potential impacts to Porcupine caribou and linking that to proposed activities … we’re certainly aware of that and will consider that in the evaluation,” Morin told The Narwhal. 

Tizya-Tramm said there is a lot more work to be done when it comes to understanding how Eagle Plains oil and gas development could impact the herd and to ground mitigation plans for Chance in stronger analysis.

“We’re working to produce more materials around caribou, including safe operating distances and determining significant numbers of caribou that would trigger oil and gas development work to stop or continue.”

In its proposal to the board, Chance did not clarify how its project proposal was informed by engagement with the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation or identify how the nation would be involved in cleanup activities should an accident or spill take place, according to the First Nation’s submitted comments.

“We need to be at the table every step of the way,” Tizya-Tramm said.

Waste injection, flaring at Eagle Plains also a concern

Before full-scale development can even be considered in Eagle Plains, Chance would have to submit a formal application to receive permits for that level of development. 

Wyman said in the meantime, Chance needs to conduct this currently proposed work to determine if there are, in fact, resources available in the basin. 

“There is no certainty that all this work will happen,” Wyman told The Narwhal. “The actual amount of drilling and seismic data acquisition will depend on results as the program unfolds.”

“At this time, we do not have specific locations where we will drill or where we will gather more seismic data.”

“The idea would be to get some more information about well capabilities, reservoir performance and help provide more insight as to what a development might look like with those wells,” he said. 

To get that information, Chance hopes to perform extended flow testing, an activity that involves measuring volumes of natural gas and any associated liquids, such as propane, that may be produced from specific wells. 

“All of this is relevant for designing development plans and engaging potential purchasers of natural gas and any associated liquids,” Wyman said.

He said the wells would be returned to a suspended state following the tests.

According to the company’s project, the tests would involve flaring for roughly six weeks. Flaring is used to dispose of any natural gas that may be produced during testing.

Jones said flaring would cause “considerable disturbance” for wildlife in the area.

“When you burn the gas off, it doesn’t just vanish,” he said. “There are byproducts from burning — carbon dioxide is obviously one of them. There are going to be fallouts of soot and chemicals and stuff like that onto the land around there. It’s also pretty noisy, it’s also pretty hot, it’s also pretty bright.”

Wyman said flaring stacks would be tall to mitigate potential environmental impacts. “The risk of doing anything untoward to the surface should be pretty limited,” he said.

Chance’s proposal also identified another opportunity to use some of the wells for waste disposal. 

Two wells in particular “represent opportunities for deep zone injections,” Wyman said.

Injection wells, which are used primarily to dispose of certain fluids, including propane and waste water, are not readily available in Yukon.

“Rather than taking fluids 2,000 kilometres to a disposal site in British Columbia, which has its own environmental risks, we’d just dispose of them locally,” Wyman said, noting he wants to see the wells already drilled in Eagle Plains put to good use for local communities, either now or in the future.

“This [proposed] project is to protect assets that are viable for future use,” he said.

Wyman said any future exploration work would be done intentionally to be smaller in scale and span a longer period of time, “partly to minimize environmental impacts, but also to help develop local capacity to participate.”

The exploration program has been presented on “several occasions” to affected First Nations, including Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and the Gwich’in Tribal Council, he said.

But many wonder if extended flow testing or flaring ought to be permitted under the auspices of a well maintenance proposal. 

When asked if flow testing is considered an aspect of well maintenance, Morin from the Dawson designated office told The Narwhal, “I can tell you extended flow testing is an exploration activity. It’s related to exploration. It’s not related to the maintenance activities.” 

Chance Oil and Gas was unable to respond to all of the board’s requests for additional information by its May 10 deadline. The company indicated it would answer those questions within a one-year timeframe.

Chance has until Feb. 22, 2022, to provide responses to the board’s questions. 

— With files from Julien Gignac

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Bolstering Indigenous-led conservation will be critical if Canada wants to follow through on its climate, biodiversity and reconciliation promises. So what are the best practices? How can we get this right? And what we can learn from similar, longer-running efforts in Australia.

Four brilliant experts helped answer these questions and more during The Narwhal’s latest webinar.  Watch it below.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Investigative reporting can be dull. 

While we see the flashiest bits of investigative journalism in scandal-ridden headlines, the truth of the matter is digging for information in mostly-redacted PDFs and maintaining an Excel spreadsheet to track Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and delays is a high form of drudgery. 

For that reason, it takes a special kind of tenacious reporter to chase down the big stories and bring to light the documents governments don’t want the public to see. 

The Narwhal’s B.C. investigative reporter Sarah Cox has just that kind of stick-to-itness and on Thursday her work to expose secrecy around B.C.’s Site C dam was recognized for excellence by the Canadian Journalism Foundation.

The foundation shortlisted Cox’s ongoing investigative reporting on Site C — including an investigative feature which found top B.C. officials were worried about the “significant risk” of geotechnical problems at the dam more than a year before that information was made public — for the Jackman Award, which honours news organizations that “embody exemplary journalism and have a profound positive impact on the communities they serve.”

“The Site C project is a classic illustration of the importance of investigative journalism,” said Cox, who appealed to the B.C. Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner to have thousands of pages of documents released under freedom of information legislation after legal deadlines had passed. “From who is getting multi-million-dollar direct award Site C contracts to who-knew-what-and-when, the public deserves to have answers.”

The Narwhal published all 2,247 pages of those documents. They can be accessed at the following links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Cox’s investigation prompted an explosion of reporting on geotechnical problems at Site C in major media outlets across Canada, including The Globe and Mail and CBC. 

The Site C dam is the most expensive hydro dam in Canada’s history but  not nearly the biggest. Ongoing slope instability issues have played a significant role in the project’s escalating price tag, which has grown from $6.6 billion in 2010 to $16 billion (and counting) in 2021. 

“The publicly funded Site C dam has been shrouded in secrecy from day one,” Cox said. “Important information about the project has been withheld from the public at every step of the way, including information about profound geotechnical issues and the astronomical cost.”

“I’m truly honoured to have my work acknowledged in this way and so grateful for The Narwhal,” Cox added. “Behind every story you read is a team of amazing people: doing editing and layout and finding photographs, devising social media strategies and reaching out to readers to become monthly members so we can continue to report on the Site C dam and other important issues of public interest.”

The Narwhal is an independent, non-profit publication supported by more than 3,000 readers and as Canada’s first English-language Registered Journalism Organization can now issue charitable tax receipts to those who support our work. 

The Narwhal’s reporting on Site C is shortlisted among other small newsroom finalists for the Jackman Award, including CANADALAND for its reporting on the WE organization scandal, Open Canada for an investigation into Syrian refugees and the politics around sponsorship and settlement, The Tyee for an investigation into the RCMP’s Project Wide Awake surveillance program and Waterloo Region Record for an investigation into Canada’s last suspected Nazi war criminal. 

In the large newsroom category, finalists for the Jackman Award include CTV News Calgary, The Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette, the Toronto Star/Investigative Journalism Bureau and the Winnipeg Free Press.

Winners of the award will be announced at the virtual CJF Awards ceremony on June 9 at 4 p.m. PT/7 p.m. ET.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Without hesitation I can say this past year has been the most challenging stretch of The Narwhal’s existence. It has also been our most rewarding and, dare I say, our most impressive.

Exactly one year ago today our small team of just four full-time staff was busy supporting photographer Amber Bracken while she was embedded for The Narwhal within Wet’suwet’en territory. There, RCMP officers in tactical gear were raiding land defender encampments to enforce a Coastal GasLink pipeline injunction.

Bracken was one of just a handful of journalists on the ground, ready to document the arrests of Wet’suwet’en matriarchs. The RCMP threatened Bracken and other journalists with arrest for being inside a police-mandated exclusion zone, a position the RCMP softened after pushback from The Narwhal, the Canadian Association of Journalists and other news organizations. As Bracken hunkered down through long winter nights, capturing one of the most important Indigenous Rights stories in the country, our team wrote appeals to the RCMP, urging them to respect press freedom, and sought legal counsel all while publishing breaking news, photo essays, investigations and in-depth features to give readers a deeper understanding of the ongoing crisis.

Bracken spent close to a month on the ground, documenting this major news event. Our reporting on the crisis was read by hundreds of thousands of Canadians. Along with a small cadre of other journalists on the ground, Bracken was awarded the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Charles Bury President’s Award for her moral courage and outstanding contributions to journalism.

Freda Huson, Unist’ot’en spokesperson and founder of the Unist’ot’en healing centre, sings in ceremony as RCMP approach to arrest her during their enforcement of a Coastal GasLink court-ordered injunction against those blocking work on a gas pipeline on Monday, Feb. 10, 2020. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

What a way to start the year. 

Then the global pandemic hit. 

When COVID-19 arrived and became the only story worth reporting on, our team wondered aloud what role our publication could and should play in the emergence of a deadly global health crisis. It wasn’t long before we realized the environment and stories about humanity’s relationship with the natural world are deeply entwined with this viral outbreak. And we soon discovered the importance of keeping a close eye on Canada’s major industries as companies took advantage of extraordinary circumstances to advance their interests and put workers’ safety at risk.

“Crises and disasters have long been used to benefit private interests and at The Narwhal we believe our responsibility to our readership means remembering this, even as we brace for the worst impact of the pandemic,” we wrote at the beginning of the pandemic.

At that time, as people around the world braced for social and economic uncertainty, something extraordinary happened: more of our readers than ever before took the step of becoming monthly members of The Narwhal.

There are many important ways we measure success at The Narwhal. Incredibly, none of these have to do with how we generate ad revenue (we don’t run ads) or how we please shareholders (we don’t have any). Instead, our success is entirely measured by the impact of our journalism, the growth of our audience and the depth of our relationship with our readers. 

The key to The Narwhal’s ability to function as an independent, non-profit newsroom is our membership program, which in 2020 grew by a staggering 129 per cent.

The Narwhal now counts 2,500 monthly members who give whatever they can afford to help make our journalism possible. Chart: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

That growth means our pod has blossomed to 11 full-time staff, at the same time as many newsrooms have cut operations and hemorrhaged reporters. 

Our membership growth points to this incredible fact: more and more of our readers are finding our work and mission so valuable, they want to sustain it. Our members don’t join to get exclusive access behind a paywall — the value comes  in knowing they’re the force behind one of Canada’s fastest-growing publications, one that exists solely to serve the public interest.

The Narwhal’s readers are young and they value longform, in-depth reporting

There are a lot of other exciting ways we can measure our growing success: over the last year our website audience grew by 65 per cent, our newsletter audience grew by 127 per cent and our Instagram following grew by more than 100 per cent.

We make special efforts to reach audiences where they are, on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and, yes, Zoom, where our last event drew 1,000 people.

And we’re proud to report that the 25 to 34-year-old demographic comprises the largest segment of our audience. About 50 per cent of The Narwhal’s readers in 2020 were under the age of 45. 

We find that particularly encouraging because it dispels another common myth: that millennials and gen-Zers are consumed by trivial matters, apathetic or simply tuned out. 

This support from our readership has given us a clear mandate to continue to do what we do best by providing in-depth, context-rich reporting on Canada’s natural world that readers won’t find anywhere else.

Case in point: a year-long investigation by Alberta reporter Sharon J. Riley into faulty reclamation of oil and gas wells in Alberta. Drawing on inside government sources and freedom of information requests, Riley revealed a hidden government report that indicated oil and gas well sites weren’t actually being reclaimed in the long run. Her reporting was cited by CBC, The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star and was raised in the Alberta Legislature on multiple occasions.

A tip from a member was actually behind our most ambitious investigation of the year, which looked at workplace abuse of fisheries observers — the people who are responsible for monitoring the West Coast trawl fleet. Whistleblowers in the industry revealed how their company fails to protect them, resulting in the waste of millions of dollars of fish.

Fisheries observers are responsible for monitoring bycatch on industrial trawlers off the B.C. coast. Many of these individuals feel not enough is being done to protect them from intimidation and harassment while at sea. “It’s a very dangerous thing for observers to be out there,” one whistleblower told The Narwhal. “You’re out there alone, often without cell service or contact.” Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Our readers’ support of investigative reporting also helped inspire B.C. reporter Sarah Cox’s explosive investigation into the Site C dam, which revealed senior officials in the B.C. government knew about deepening geotechnical and financial problems at the project more than a year before the public was informed. Through dogged efforts to acquire documents via freedom of information requests, Cox broke this major story, which has been referenced by The Globe and Mail, CBC and Vancouver Sun. 

But we do more than just report on what’s going wrong. In 2020, we managed to publish more solutions-oriented and good news stories about the environment, Indigenous Rights, clean energy initiatives and conservation efforts than in any preceding year. 

One of our crowning achievements was the publication of an eight-part series, Carbon Cache, which explores the remarkable role Canada’s carbon-rich landscapes have to play in the fight against climate change. This ambitious solutions-oriented series, entirely conceived and executed during the pandemic, was read by nearly 100,000 Canadians.

The Narwhal’s positive ripple effect

The impact The Narwhal is having isn’t just being felt here, at our own publication. 

Our longform, photo-rich features piqued the interest of The Big Story podcast, which dedicated an entire week to featuring our reporting on the front lines of the environmental crisis.

We also teamed up for an international collaboration with the U.S.-based non-profit publication Environmental Health News to tell the story of legacy industrial pollution in two cities that straddle not just a river but the Canada-U.S. border.

In August, the Ryerson Review of Journalism recognized The Narwhal’s unique business model and surprising success story by publishing a longform feature documenting how our combination of investigative journalism and investment in photography is re-energizing environment coverage. 

The Ryerson Review of Journalism’s feature on The Narwhal included the voices of several experts who praised our publication for filling a void in media coverage.

“I think mainstream journalism often underestimates its readers or listeners or viewers. One of the great things about The Narwhal is that it does not do that,” retired Mount Royal University journalism chair Ron MacDonald told the Ryerson Review. “It regards its readers as intelligent, concerned, committed, engaged people and it writes to them.”

Even as a fledgling magazine, The Narwhal received the third-largest number of nominations for excellence in the 2020 Digital Publishing Awards, alongside legacy media heavyweights like The Globe and Mail and CBC-Radio Canada.

Although we’re still a young organization, our early success is pushing us to look farther afield to see how we might have a meaningful impact on the journalism landscape as a whole. The Narwhal doesn’t want to simply fend for itself. 

In 2020, we made a special effort to help young journalists by participating in the Canadian Association of Journalists’ mentorship program. We offered three student practicums and created an Indigenous Journalism Fellowship. Already this year we’ve launched three fellowships for photojournalists who are Black, Indigenous or people of colour in partnership with Room Up Front.

We’ve also invested significant time and energy into helping other digital startups. In particular, our editor-in-chief and executive director Emma Gilchrist helped found Press Forward, a new association that provides a unified voice for independent media.

We were just reminded of the stark reality many journalists in Canada face as Bell Media laid off droves of reporters. The news of reporters being given 30 minutes to clear their desks came with a particular sting because Bell Media had recently received $122 million in COVID relief funds through the federal government’s wage subsidy program. Maybe it stings a little more to know that Bell Canada Enterprises reported a quarterly profit of $889 million one week prior to the layoffs.

News like this is disenchanting to all Canadians worried about the state of Canada’s media. It’s also a reminder of why The Narwhal’s success — built on a renewed relationship between journalists and the public they serve — is so important to hold on to.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

You don’t need me to tell you what the seven years of 2020 have been like. 

But if the pandemic has revealed anything to us, it’s that when the world breaks down, it breaks down differently for each of us. 

Much of the great journalism resulting from these unprecedented circumstances has revealed anew the troubling nature of disasters: they often benefit the wealthy and powerful while making the lives of the vulnerable more precarious. 

The Narwhal has covered those stories, too, over the past year. But something unexpected happened for our team amidst the long doldrums of lockdown: we told some of the most powerful good news and solutions stories ever to surface on the pages of The Narwhal. 

With enough heaviness to last us seven more years, we wanted to take a moment to highlight 20 of our stories from the last year that are guaranteed to bring warmth to your self-isolated hearts. 

1. The Canadian farmers fighting climate change

For many years, farming has been lambasted as being a significant contributor to climate change: the industry has been accused of emitting large amounts of methane from cattle, heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers, stripping the land and trending toward increasing industrialization on ever-larger farming operations.

But in recent years the role of farming in reducing emissions — and stewarding the carbon sequestration potential of farmland and ranch land across the Prairies — has been getting more and more attention.

Bob Lowe, president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, says ranchers are ahead of the curve when it comes to climate change mitigation, in part because they’re stewards of carbon-rich grasslands. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

2. The incredible scientists devoted to saving Western Canada’s only endangered tree

The tree is whitebark pine, the first and only tree in Western Canada to be designated an endangered species and the only coniferous tree in the country with the designation. Facing the combined threats of habitat loss, climate change, the mountain pine beetle and an invasive fungus called blister rust, these scientists recently hand-harvested hundreds of thousands of whitebark pine seeds to bring the tree back from the brink.

3. The B.C. First Nations who are helping bring caribou back from the brink

In 2014, with just 16 caribou remaining in the Klinse-Za herd, Saulteau First Nations and West Moberly First Nations decided to take matters into their own hands, building a pen for pregnant cows atop a remote mountain. Six years later, the herd is up to 95 caribou, including eight calves born in the pen this year.

Saulteau First Nations guardian Julian Napoleon holds onto a baby caribou born in a maternity pen high on a mountaintop in the Misinchinka mountains. The caribou are provided 24/7 armed security to protect them from predators. Caribou herds have experienced dramatic declines in B.C.’s Peace River region, where First Nations are leading this costly maternity penning effort to bring the Klinse-Za herd back from the brink. Photo: Ryan Dickie / The Narwhal

4. The man who took on Canada’s largest oil refinery and won

When Gordon Dalzell learned the Irving Oil refinery’s air quality permit was up for review, he got to work.

In the quiet of winter, Dalzell, a Saint John-based clean air activist, hunkered down with his research and a blue pen, detailing his findings in sweeping cursive, hoping his words would impact the actions of one of the country’s biggest polluters. They did.

5. These incredible Indigenous collaborators who saved Manitoba’s last free river

The Seal River is Manitoba’s only major waterway that hasn’t been dammed — and five Indigenous communities have banded together to keep it that way by establishing a 50,000-square-kilometre protected area that’s about the size of Nova Scotia. 

6. The people who have come up with a visionary conservation financing plan to save B.C.’s last remaining old-growth forests

Despite decades of protests, petitions and campaigns, only 2.7 per cent of B.C.’s original high productivity old-growth forests remains — and more than three-quarters of that small fraction is slated to be logged. First Nations leaders, conservationists, scientists and several politicians have put forward a new plan to finance old-growth forest protection in the upcoming B.C. and federal budgets and COVID-19 economic recovery plans.

7. The scientists who have brought one of the rarest mammals in the world back from the brink of extinction

The Vancouver Island marmot, Canada’s most endangered mammal, is only found in the wild on Vancouver Island mountains. Following intensive recovery efforts, the wild population has increased eight-fold, to just over 200 animals. Today, these marmots are found on more than 20 mountain sites compared with five sites in 2003.

Malcolm McAddie holds a hibernating Vancouver Island marmot at the Mount Washington marmot recovery centre. Photo: Ryan Tidman

8. The Cree Nation fighting to save the Broadback forest

This 1.3 million hectare forest in Quebec has never been logged or known the incursion of roads. It’s also one of the most carbon dense places on the planet, holding twice as much carbon as the Amazon per hectare, but community members fear “the loggers are coming” and have been asking the province to introduce new protections. Some of those new protections came in just this month and the community is committed to fighting for even more.

9. The First Nations who voluntarily paused fishing and helped rebuild a wild salmon population

The Wet’suwet’en First Nation and others voluntarily closed their food fishery or limited the catch of declining sockeye salmon for two decades to help rebuild populations. This year, those sacrifices paid off big-time with a salmon return 50 per cent higher than what they saw in 2017.

A Wet’suwet’en food fisher catches a sockeye salmon in the canyon in Witset, a village in northwest B.C. Photo: Marty Clemens

10. The Alberta First Nation that built Canada’s largest remote solar farm

An Indigenous corporation owned by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Mikisew Cree First Nation and Fort Chipewyan Metis Association launched a 2.2-megawatt solar farm just north of the Alberta oilsands. Electricity from the project in conjunction with another solar farm and a battery system, which together make up the largest remote solar farm in Canada, will begin flowing to the community grid in January.

11. The people saving Canada’s native grasslands — and storing a ton of carbon in the process

In the face of climate change, grasslands have a major role to play in sequestering carbon, storing as much as 180 tonnes of carbon per hectare, equivalent to the annual emissions of 39 cars. Some estimate the uncultivated grasslands of Western Canada may store two to three billion tonnes of carbon. 

While government incentives exist for crop farmers, historically there has been little compensation for those retaining grasslands. But that’s changing, with a bevy of projects looking at the potential for carbon markets to play a role in saving Canada’s grasslands with the help of landowners.

Mickenzie Plemel-Stronks is a cattle industry liaison for Ducks Unlimited Canada. Plemel-Stronks is working to help preserve and repair native grasslands in Alberta. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

12. The doubling of renewable energy projects in remote communities

The number of renewable energy projects in Canada’s remote communities has doubled since 2015, with the majority of those new projects coming on in the past two years. The projects are helping remote communities use less diesel fuel, which is costly and highly polluting.

13. The scientists who are saving and re-flooding marshes to fight climate change and protect communities from sea level rise

Salt marshes have long been overlooked as important ecosystems, vital habitat for species and major carbon sinks that can help in Canada’s fight against climate change. But in order for marshes to play their role, they need to be better understood, protected and rebuilt. Meet the scientists who are rolling up their sleeves and getting to that important work.

14. These family woodlot owners saving the Acadian forest from logging

The endangered Acadian forest is one of the most diverse temperate forests in the world but less than one per cent of the original carbon-rich forest remains. Community Forests International found restoring the Acadian forest has the potential to store 20 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over the next few years — three times more than the country produces every year.

Forestry ownership in Eastern Canada is unique, with 45 per cent of forest land in the Maritimes belonging to private woodlot owners. That means protecting and restoring the remains of this forest comes down to thousands of families who may rely on logging for their income. Check out the innovators who are dreaming up ways these families could earn revenue from protection rather than destruction.

Mi’kmaw artist Melissa Labrador runs her hand through the grass on the edge of the forest along the Wildcat River where she harvests medicinal plants in the Wildcat community of the Acadia First Nation near Kejimkujik National Park in Nova Scotia. Photo: Darren Calabrese / The Narwhal

15. This Yukon First Nation using native plants to remediate old mine sites

Old and unreclaimed mine sites litter the territory of the Kaska First Nation. The Ross River Dena Council launched Dena Cho Environmental and Remediation Inc. to bring those old mine sites back to life with native species. The plan could not only help clean up and restore some of Canada’s most contaminated sites, but also bring back natives species that have been lost through the industrialization of landscapes.

16. These Indigenous communities bringing back the lost art of cultural burns

Beyond the pandemic, this has also been a year where countries across the planet were ravaged by wildfires. The practice of cultural burning by First Nations was outlawed by Canada’s colonial governments. But now First Nations are reclaiming these lost practices, reviving their traditions and important ways of protecting lands from the devastation of wildfires in a climate-changed world. As a good-news bonus, this story was produced by The Narwhal’s first Indigenous Journalism Fellow, Kelly Boutsalis, with support from the Readers’ Digest Foundation.

17. The reason geothermal energy is finally gaining ground in Canada

It’s long been touted as an important baseload form of energy for Canada, yet geothermal has struggled to get off the ground due to the country’s historic focus on oil and gas. But this year Canada’s first commercial-scale geothermal electricity plant in Saskatchewan finished up its feasibility studies and expects to be generating geothermal power by 2022. The project represents a breakthrough for the industry, which could soon be harnessing geothermal energy from old oil and gas wells — putting hazardous industrial sites to good, renewable energy use and re-employing oil and gas sector workers in the process.

18. The First Nations who leveraged Great Bear Rainforest protections to launch a sustainable, Indigenous-owned scallop company

The concept of establishing sustainable Indigenous-led businesses on the West Coast was a prominent part of the Great Bear Rainforest Act, an agreement between the B.C. government, the Coastal First Nations and other First Nations whose territories are within the area. As part of these plans, the provincial and federal governments each contributed $30 million to support conservation and sustainable economic development projects, matching $60 million contributed by philanthropists and conservation groups. 

The donors, governments and First Nations agreed to set up a trust called Coast Funds to administer the money to Indigenous projects that meet the goals of the agreement. The Indigenous-owned company Coastal Shellfish was the first project Coast Funds supported. Coastal Shellfish’s scallops are now helping clean the water near Prince Rupert and are quickly becoming a sought-after item in high-end Vancouver restaurants. 

19. The people who used coronavirus as an opportunity to clean up remote B.C. beaches

Most of B.C.’s exposed coastline is rugged, remote and subject to dramatic weather conditions. Cleaning it up requires knowledge of the area, technical skill, good timing and extremely hard work. The B.C. government’s Clean Coast, Clean Waters Initiative Fund provided $3.5 million dollar to 

ecotourism businesses struggling during the pandemic to remove 61 tonnes of debris from the rugged B.C. coast. 

“This isn’t walking down beaches and picking up a chip bag or something,” says Neil Shearar, lead captain with Bluewater Adventures, a company that participated in the cleanup. “This is on an industrial scale, in really harsh environments.”

A helicopter delivers debris to a barge to be shipped down the coast. Photo: Simon Ager

20. The Indigenous people Canada declared extinct finally got their day in court

The Sinixt tribe, which the federal government declared ‘extinct’ in 1956, has been looking for ways to gain recognition in B.C. for decades. After a very lengthy legal battle, Rick Desautel, who is Sinixt, finally brought his case to the Supreme Court of Canada in October. Because of COVID, Desautel wasn’t allowed inside the courthouse with his lawyers, but the implications of his case could have far-reaching effects for Indigenous Peoples whose lands cross the Canada-U.S. border. It could also deter Crown lawyers from arguing Indigenous people abandoned their lands during colonization.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Photographer TJ Watt has seen more than his fair share of clearcuts through his work for the Ancient Forest Alliance. 

Still, the sudden transformation of an old-growth forest in the Caycuse watershed on Vancouver Island into a “bleak grey landscape” caught Watt off guard.

His before and after photos, published on Instagram and featured in The Guardian, also struck a nerve with the public. 

“I think it’s just with the before and after it’s very plain and simple: you can clearly see what was there and what was lost,” Watt told The Narwhal. 

“These photos are going around the world now,” he said, adding he’d just sent a gallery off to a newspaper in France.

In an Instagram post that has received more than 8,900 likes, Watt noted the photos are a series he hoped to never complete. The Ancient Forest Alliance has campaigned for months, asking the province to introduce immediate and long-term measures to protect the last remaining old-growth in the Caycuse watershed around Haddon Creek, south of Lake Cowichan.

Watt said the Caycuse watershed was heavily logged in the 80s and 90s, “save for a few last groves on these slopes in the upper regions of the valley, where there they’ve kind of stood, alone, for the past 10 years or so.”

Now that those groves have been logged by company Teal-Jones and he has completed the photo series, Watt said he hopes the images will serve as a stark reminder of what is at stake when endangered old-growth forests are left without protection.

“This is essentially what we stand to lose, every time there is more talk and log and delays from the government,” Watt said.

Before and after images of Watt standing beside a large twinned old-growth cedar that he later photographed as a stump in a clearcut.  Photo: TJ Watt

While the province has failed to protect B.C.’s last remaining old-growth, the pace and scale of logging has become better understood as a key driver of flooding, habitat loss and species extinction.

In response to growing public concern, the province launched a panel to perform a strategic review of old-growth forestry. The resulting report, released in September, called for massive overhaul of how B.C. manages its remaining ancient forests. 

The review panel made 14 recommendations to the government, including short-term deferrals in areas with trees greater than 500 years old near the coast and greater than 300 years old inland. So far, essentially none of the panel’s recommendations have been put into action by the government.

The report noted old forests carry an intrinsic value for all living things and should be managed for ecosystem health, not for timber. It also emphasized that unique ancient forests are irreplaceable, even if trees are replanted.

Watt echoed the sentiment: “When you log an old-growth forest, it’s not coming back. Trees may come back … but old-growth forests are essentially non-renewable resources.”

Watt said the forest in the Caycuse watershed is exactly the type of forest the panel recommended protecting through immediate deferrals.

Unfortunately that recommendation is “too little too late for this forest,” Watt said.

The remaining old-growth in the Caycuse watershed is as grand and as beautiful in other treasured Vancouver Island forests like Avatar grove and the Walbran valley, Watt said. Photo: TJ Watt

When old-growth forests are logged, they cannot be replicated with tree replanting. “Old-growth forests are essentially non-renewable resources,” Watt said. Photo: TJ Watt

Watt estimates some of the trees recently cut down in the Caycuse watershed are between 800 and 1,000 years old. Photo: TJ Watt

While the province committed to temporarily defer logging in nine forests containing old-growth, critics were quick to point out little to no harvesting was expected to take place in those areas recommended by the panel. They also noted some of the deferral zones contained forests already protected in parks or forests that had already been logged.

These deferrals did not offer any protection to some of B.C.’s most quickly disappearing old-growth located in the northern boreal forest, a rare and endangered interior temperate rainforest and on Vancouver Island.

Watt stands at the remains of a large, old-growth cedar in the Caycuse watershed. Photo: TJ Watt

The province also claims 23 per cent of B.C. forest — about 13 million hectares — qualifies as old-growth.

But a study published in June found just three per cent of B.C. is capable of supporting large trees and within that small portion of the province, the report’s authors found only 2.7 per cent of the trees are actually old. The authors note, “old forests on these sites have dwindled considerably due to intense harvest.”

“We’ve basically logged it all,” Rachel Holt, one of the authors of the study, B.C.’s Old Growth Forest: A Last Stand for Biodiversity, told The Narwhal in June.

Read more: B.C. old-growth data ‘misleading’ public on remaining ancient forest: independent report

Watt said he’s disappointed the province continues to talk up its old-growth strategy, while failing to do more to protect forests like the one in the Caycuse watershed.

“When you see a tree that is 800 or 1,000 years old, reduced to this graveyard of stumps, you realize that every day, every week, every month that there is further delay in action on these endangered ecosystems, the losses we face are huge and are permanent.”

Before and after images show the extent of clearcut logging on the slopes of the valley. Photo: TJ Watt

Forestry machinery on a logging road leading to a new clear cut in the Caycuse watershed. Photo: TJ Watt

Watt said industrial logging in B.C. often happens out of sight and out of mind of Canadians and yet the stakes are so urgent when you realize how little old-growth forest remains. 

“That’s what I’m trying to get across. I’m trying to bring these remote places into people’s living rooms, onto their phones, so people can see what is happening, speak up, contact their elected officials, their MLAs, to demand an end to the logging of endangered old-growth forests.”

Communities dependent on logging deserve a sustainable transition plan, so they’re not left hanging when protections are put into place, Watt said.

Increasingly, conservation groups and First Nations are asking the provincial and federal governments to create financial incentives to protect, rather than harvest, forests.

Read more: ‘Put away your power saws’: First Nations leaders, conservationists have a new plan to protect old-growth

Forests that are highly productive in terms of timber yield are often forests that contain the greatest biodiversity, species habitat and store the most carbon.

The province needs to turn its attention to transitioning forest management from old-growth logging to sustainable and value-added forestry practices, Watt said.

“It’s critical the government put forward funding to support Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas and support for communities that are looking to transition away from old-growth logging,” he said.

“The world is watching B.C. right now,” Watt added. “Unfortunately it took these images to capture people’s attention. We’re not going to let them get away with this.”

Watt said he is going to continue traveling to remaining ancient forests that can still be protected. He hopes he won’t have to publish more before and after photos.

“I’m going to keep going out there. Otherwise this would still be happening. No one would know. No one would care.”

Watt said he wants to see the B.C. government commit funding to the transition to sustainable forestry. Photo: TJ Watt

Watt walks down a Teal-Jones logging road. Photo: TJ Watt

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

When B.C. unveiled its signature CleanBC plan in 2018, onlookers noticed something suspicious: it was full of holes.

Although the plan included a specific target — to reduce emissions 40 per cent below 2007 levels by 2030 — it only laid out the measures to get about three-quarters of the way there. 

By its own admission, the province had a climate plan but no credible pathway to implement it. 

And while B.C.’s NDP government promised to fill in those gaps on a tight two-year timeframe, that deadline came and went on Dec. 5, 2020, without so much as a mea culpa from officials.

What gives?

Two words: fracking and LNG. (Okay, one word and one acronym…)

How is the CleanBC plan affected by fracking and LNG?

Both fracking and the development of liquified natural gas, or LNG, are incredibly carbon intensive. 

Fracking is an energy intensive process used to extract natural gas from shale deposits deep underground. The process releases enormous amounts of methane gas, a potent greenhouse gas with a climate warming potential 25 times that of carbon dioxide on a 100-year timescale. Although B.C. has promised to tackle fracking’s methane problem, an explosion in fracking operations, necessary to feed B.C.’s growing LNG industry, is making that impossible. 

There are currently seven LNG facilities in various stages of planning, proposal and construction in B.C. 

LNG Canada, the province’s largest LNG facility currently under construction, is expected to double fracking operations in B.C., according to the government. The much smaller proposed Cedar LNG facility is expected to require 5,276 new wells to be fracked in northeast B.C. over the next 30 years, based on calculations from the Wilderness Committee.

But high emissions from fracking isn’t the only factor behind B.C.’s climate gaps: LNG facilities are also extremely large emitters. 

The first phase of the LNG Canada project in Kitimat will emit four megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually, according to the provincial government — the equivalent of adding 856,531 cars to the road.

The Pembina Institute, however, has pointed out that when both phases of the project are built, the LNG Canada project would emit 8.6 megatonnes of carbon per year in 2030, rising to 9.6 megatonnes in 2050.

To put that into the context of B.C.’s CleanBC plan, the province has committed to reducing emissions to 38 megatonnes by 2030. And during his reelection campaign, Premier John Horgan vowed to make B.C. carbon-neutral, or have net-zero emissions, by 2050. 

B.C.’s emissions for 2018 totalled 67.9 megatonnes, putting the province 14 per cent further away from its 2030 target than it was in 2007.

B.C.’s vow to make progress on these climate targets while also pursuing its fracking and LNG ambitions has left analysts, climate experts and environmental organizations scratching their heads. 

And this question has put a spotlight on CleanBC’s missing measures.

“B.C. has missed every climate target it has set for itself and now is refusing to come clean on the impact of LNG on meeting its 2030 — let alone 2040 and 2050 — targets,” Andrew Gage, staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, said in a recent statement.

Gage said the CleanBC plan as well as B.C.’s Climate Change Accountability Act, which requires the government to give bi-annual progress reports, were “supposed to put an end to this cycle of broken promises.”

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a climate warming potential 25 times that of carbon dioxide on a 100-year timescale. Global efforts are underway to curtail methane emissions, and as a part of Canada’s international commitments, B.C. set a goal of reducing provincial methane emissions 45 per cent by 2025, compared to 2014 levels.But trying to meet that target at the same time as pursuing B.C.’s LNG ambitions is near impossible, experts say. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

How LNG subsidies and support poked holes in the CleanBC plan

Here’s another important part of the story: B.C. has bent over backwards to attract the LNG industry. 

One of B.C.’s biggest lures to attract multinational LNG companies was the introduction of a new suite of giveaways making fracking, gas liquefaction and export more profitable. 

That 2018 fiscal framework, introduced just months before the CleanBC plan, offered LNG developers temporary relief from the provincial sales tax, new emissions standards so they had to pay less to pollute, the elimination of an LNG income tax and rebates for any penalties paid under the carbon tax if the facility met what B.C. deemed best-in-world standards (basically using more electricity).

This broad gesture of support for LNG did the trick. Just months later, LNG Canada — owned and operated by Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsubishi Corp., Malaysia’s Petronas, PetroChina Co. and Korean Gas Corp. — formally announced it would go ahead with a final investment commitment.

At the time, Shell Global’s Maarten Wetselaar said “the governments of Canada and British Columbia have helped to ensure that the right fiscal framework is in place to make sure that the pie is divided in a just and fair way.”

“And that fiscal framework leads to why we believe LNG Canada is in the right place.”

But that framework, so attractive to these corporations, cost British Columbia $5.35 billion dollars.

This support has further undermined B.C.’s climate credibility in the minds of critics.

Sven Biggs, Canadian oil and gas program director at the environmental organization Stand.earth, pointed out the province “gave almost a billion dollars in subsidies to the oil and gas sector in 2019 and 2020, twice what the government spent on their plan to fight climate change.” 

A recent Stand.earth report found B.C. is “second only to Alberta in providing subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.”

“Fossil fuel subsidies have grown by a whopping 79 per cent during Premier Horgan’s term in office,” Biggs said in a statement released by a coalition of environmental organizations to note B.C.’s missed Dec. 5 deadline. 

“It is difficult to see how this government will ever achieve their climate targets if they continue to heavily subsidize the very projects that are driving the increase in our emissions.”

Just the emissions from LNG Canada alone will make it very difficult for B.C. to meet its climate targets. Graph: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Do B.C.’s oil and gas royalties have anything to do with missing CleanBC climate targets?

Canada has promised to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies by 2025, a commitment that includes subsidies from provincial governments. 

In recent months, and in the lead-up to the last provincial election, a new spotlight was shone on B.C.’s royalties regime when it comes to the oil and gas industry. 

The B.C. government describes royalties as a portion of the profits earned by a producer of a resource, such as natural gas. 

“Royalties differ from, say, corporate income taxes, in that they reflect a return to the provincial treasury when private development of a public resource takes place,” explains a March 2020 report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In B.C., royalty rates are largely based on the price of natural gas, which means the royalties collected by the government are lower when the price of gas is low. 

While natural gas production increased significantly between 2008 and 2018, low gas prices were a “critical factor” in the decline in royalties collected over that same period, according to the centre’s report.

Royalty credits also played a role.

B.C. has a number of royalty credit programs, including the deep well royalty credit, which offers lower royalty rates to help offset the higher costs of producing gas from far below the surface, and credits for less productive wells to incentivize companies to keep those wells in production for longer.

These credits allow producers to reduce the amount of royalties they are required to pay the government, meaning the public is ultimately earning less from the production of its natural resources.

Read more: B.C. should disclose what fracking companies pay for publicly owned resources

The B.C. government was expecting to collect $153 million in natural gas royalties in the 2019-2020 fiscal year after accounting for royalty and infrastructure credits, which reduced payments by $381 million. The deep well credits accounted for $318 million of that reduction. 

The total allowable deductions for royalty revenue in 2019-2020 was listed as $567 million.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report notes that credits can also be saved and used to offset future royalty payments. According to the 2019-2020 report from the Ministry of Finance’s comptroller general office, there are $2.9 billion in outstanding deep well credits that can be used to reduce future royalty payments.

The oil and gas industry argues these royalty programs are good for business. 

“Royalty credit programs, similar to other government programs such as the film and production tax credit program, are intended to maintain competitiveness, stimulate additional investment, and build a strong sustainable provincial economy,” the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers says in an August 2019 publication.

But that’s exactly the problem that some observers have with royalty credits — that they’re largely aimed at growing the industry, rather than phasing it out.

“If we’re going to be consistent with the Paris Agreement, we have to stop trying to do climate action on the one side and expand the oil and gas industry on the other side,” said Marc Lee, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and co-author of the centre’s report on phasing out B.C.’s fossil fuel industry.

“The amount of gas we produce must move toward zero, essentially, by mid-century, if not sooner,” he said.

Could B.C. use oil and gas incentives to reduce, rather than grow, emissions?

Some of the royalty credits B.C. offers help offset the costs for oil and gas companies to reduce their emissions, such as the clean infrastructure royalty credit.

Lee said these measures amount to the government “paying for the companies to clean up their act by taking less royalties” and that methane emissions reductions should be handled by regulations. 

But Sara Hastings-Simon, a senior research associate at the Payne Institute for Public Policy and research fellow at the University of Calgary’s school of public policy said in general, “it’s definitely fair to differentiate between subsidies that have strong green strings or even that are directly for emissions reductions … (and) general subsidies to increase production.”

It then becomes a matter of determining whether there’s a particular reason to make a public investment in emissions reductions, such as legitimate barriers that would prevent companies from taking those measures on their own, or just a case of transferring the costs of those reductions from industry to the public.

Another way to look at it is “the carrot versus the stick philosophy of emissions reductions,” Hastings-Simon said.

“You can give companies an incentive to reduce emissions. Of course, the government can also simply regulate them and require them to reduce emissions,” she explained.

But in cases where there may be political pushback against a certain regulation or ‘stick’ policy, governments may opt for the ‘carrot’ approach.

B.C. has promised to conduct a royalty review, but so far hasn’t moved forward.

— With files from Ainslie Cruickshank

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Two years ago at this time I had just returned from a reporting trip in B.C.’s scenic Elk Valley, where I had seen the region’s coal mines — the largest in the province — with my own eyes for the first time. 

Selenium pollution in the Elk Valley watershed, which is linked to fish and bird deformities and the collapse of treasured trout populations, is on the rise. And because the Elk Valley watershed drains into the Koocanusa reservoir, which crosses the B.C.-Montana border, the province’s selenium problem is now raising the ire of our neighbours to the south. 

When the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty was signed between Canada and the U.S. to protect our shared waters, it would have been hard to imagine the kind of industrial-scale natural resource extraction we now see in the Elk Valley. And yet, more than 100 years on, these two nations are forced to confront the challenge of co-managing ecological tapestries that know no such thing as a border. 

So when things like selenium levels start to get out of hand, who do you call? The members of the International Joint Commission (IJC), for starters. The commission makes decisions on projects that can affect water levels and flow and can investigate, monitor and recommend against pollution in boundary waters shared between Canada and the U.S.

As the world awaits a transition of power after the recent U.S. election, The Narwhal spoke with one Canadian commissioner, Merrell-Ann Phare, and one American commissioner, Rob Sisson, about the role the International Joint Commission can play in reimagining the way North America manages its shared watersheds.

Carol Linnitt: Merrell-Ann, can you talk about what exactly we mean when we say transboundary watersheds? Where should people’s brains be going on the map?

Merrell-Ann Phare: Think of everywhere the Canada-U.S. boundary is. Either a water that flows from one side to the other side or that’s actually situated on the boundary. The Great Lakes are a perfect example of that.

For practical purposes, plain language, if you think about everywhere the boundary is, you’re looking at the land that those rivers and lakes across the boundary, the land that they’re situated in, including the people that are there, the ecosystems that are there, the plants and animals and various aspects of water health, including quality and quantity rate of flow, surface water, groundwater.

You’re really trying to look at the whole package in order to make a good decision in the thing that we have jurisdiction over, which is the boundary.

Rob Sisson: The attention [to] groundwater is increasing. I think there are five or six major aquifers that straddle the boundary between the two countries as well.

Carol Linnitt: It’s interesting to think about since this commission was founded and some treaties were signed, not only has our understanding of ecological impacts and ecological systems really evolved but so too has our sense of who ought to participate and who should have a voice in the way that watersheds are managed and the way that projects and their impacts are measured.

Merrell-Ann Phare: I have worked in these issues my whole life and feel strongly that the solutions to our water issues flow from having the people at the table … that both have rights and have the knowledge and are impacted by the waters.

Indigenous Peoples are key peoples that have been excluded from that decision many times, most of the time in the life of the IJC. We many years ago — long before any of the current commissioners were on the commission — had begun a whole number of projects with Indigenous people.

Some of the most interesting ones that we can talk about are for example, in the Rainy River-Lake of the Woods area, where we partnered to do some fascinating studies, incorporating Traditional Knowledge and Western science together to figure out better ways to manage, for example, in that situation, hydro dams — how to change the flows and which time of year in order to protect sturgeon spawning grounds and which are critical to the treaty rights of Indigenous people there and are part of their sustainable livelihoods.

That’s a good example, and that work has been going on for some time. I think what the commissioners are also interested in … is thinking consistently across all of our cohorts and across our programs: how do we be systematic, consistent, transparent about the role of Indigenous Peoples in the decision-making?

Rob Sisson: If I can add to that, one of my dreams for the IJC, I don’t think it’ll happen during my tenure here, but hopefully, we’ve planted the seed that the governments will eventually give the IJC the ability to create international watershed boards across the entire transboundary so there’s not one inch on the boundary where we don’t have a presence.

I see those boards as a fantastic way to bring Indigenous voices to bear on our work and on the management and protection of water along the entire transboundary. I’m very excited about Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

We’ve been dominated at the IJC and elsewhere by Western science. The more I learn about Traditional Ecological Knowledge, the more I’m just amazed at what I didn’t know, and the wisdom that Indigenous people can bring to the table.

Read more: Meet the scientists embracing traditional Indigenous knowledge

Carol Linnitt: Our readership is really familiar with the ongoing problems with selenium and other pollutants in the Elk Valley watershed. It looks like that contamination is going to be making its way into that watershed and ecosystem for potentially hundreds of years. What is the commission’s role and how does the commission view and understand that problem right now?

Merrell-Ann Phare: I can start with just the role of the commission, and then maybe Rob can talk more specifically about his views on the situation. In that situation, of course, a company like Teck [Resources] would be regulated by the federal and provincial government in Canada. The IJC has no jurisdiction over that. 

What we do though, is we become involved under the treaty if there’s an impact on waters along the transboundary or from one side to the other, and that is the case here.

We have only certain levers in our toolkit at the IJC because we’re not a government. We’re created by governments. Our levers are we can alert governments to problems that we see, we can recommend that we be given a reference that helps.

A reference is a process where we are asked by governments to study the issue and come back with recommendations to try to solve the problem or prevent conflict. That’s usually a multi-year process, very expensive but it really gets at the science and Traditional Knowledge.

Knowledge is behind the issue and it gives us an opportunity to involve basically all of the local people and provide a final report to government that sets out research, findings and recommendations.

We have asked for a reference to deal with mining issues and water quality issues [in the Elk Valley] … and we’re waiting to hear on that.

We would be very interested in doing a study that encompassed this and other mining issues to try to deal with this vexing issue, but have yet to be asked.

Rob Sisson: Yes, the Elk River — coal mining has been there for a long time. As with a lot of industrial processes, we didn’t know what issues might occur or might be there because we just forged ahead … and obviously we know now that selenium could be an issue.

We just released a long-awaited document on the human health impact of selenium, not targeting the Elk River valley or Teck, but just in general what selenium impacts on human health could be. We do know in that watershed, it’s having an impact on fish reproduction and populations and we also know and I want to stress that the two governments are working very closely on this.

I’m an angler. I love fly fishing and the Elk River-Kootenay system is close to where I live and so that’s something I keep an eye on. I think this is one of the watersheds where we could benefit from a watershed board because when you have a situation like this, there’s a lot of distrust: is the other side doing enough? Are they paying attention? Are they sharing with us all the information? Does the company really care or not? 

I think if you had a watershed board in place, if we had one in place historically, there’d be relationships already built, trust lines of communication built where I think this would flow a lot easier and there might be less controversy, less anger and more — my favourite phrase — more rowing the boat in the same direction to try to find a solution and implement it.

Carol Linnitt: I’m curious even myself: what exactly do you see a board doing? If there was a board that was designated to work on these kinds of issues, how would that board intervene in the Elk Valley in particular?

Rob Sisson: In general, a Kootenay-Elk River system board … would have local community leaders and members, NGO representatives, hopefully someone from the mining industry involved, state, local, federal government officials all together and citizens who are concerned. Primarily it would be communication- and relationship- building because that’s how you address problems.

“Because of the tailing piles, this problem could be with us for 1,000 years.”

Specifically, in this case, if the governments someday give the IJC a reference here, they could ask us to consolidate and manage or oversee the water quality testing to give everyone confidence on both sides that the measurements are accurate and true and protocols are being followed.

Because of the tailing piles, this problem could be with us for 1,000 years. They could give the IJC a reference at some point, just sort of a permanent bi-national body that’s keeping an eye and monitoring the situation hopefully for centuries.

A pile of waste rock at a Teck Resources’ mine in B.C.’s Elk Valley. Waste rock piles leach selenium into the watershed, leading to pollution problems that have caused fish deformities and the contamination of drinking water. Photo: Callum Gunn

Merrell-Ann: In terms of Indigenous governments having a role and Indigenous peoples having a role, that’s a huge piece. But remember, part of the reason we’ve suggested a reference on this topic is because there may be governance reform that’s required in order to prevent these kinds of problems in the future, particularly given the role of local governments, the role of Indigenous governments, et cetera.

Thinking about it from the scientific and Indigenous Knowledge side … what is the science actually telling us and what can we do? There’s a technology aspect to it, but there’s also a governance aspect. … A reference could help us frame out the key things that a watershed board would do.

Normally our boards, particularly the old ones … look at water quality and quantity. They don’t really look at anything beyond that. This is a much more complex and diverse problem. That’s where watershed boards come in because they have a mandate to look at all the aspects of the problem and to try to protect transboundary waters.

Carol Linnitt: It’s interesting to bring up the governance element of these problems. I’m thinking of another transboundary watershed shared between B.C. and Alaska up in the northwest. One of B.C.’s probably most infamous mines, the Tulsequah Chief, has for 60 years been leaching pollution into a river that flows directly into Alaska, a salmon-rich river.

“I look at salmon as this century’s version of bison from the 1800s.”

Rob Sisson: Last year we went on a fact-finding trip to Southeast Alaska and British Columbia because [people] in Alaska had contacted us and said, “Hey, you need to come look at this because we think this could be a big problem.”

We went up, we met with the State of Alaska, federal and local officials, NGOs and we went across and met with British Columbia and Canadian federal officials. We’ve met with mining company officials, too, to gather facts.

We don’t have a reference in the area but we used our alerting function to let the governments know that the Tulsequah Chief mine is leaching into the watershed. [The Mount Polley mine], which did not directly affect international waters or shared waters, is the example that I think a lot of people in Alaska are worried about with the bigger mines in British Columbia that would feed into the Taku, Unuk and Stikine rivers.

The ‘Grand Canyon’ of the Stikine River, near major mining projects in B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

I think people on both sides are talking about those laws and regulations to better protect the watersheds. I have faith that British Columbia and the Canadian federal government will continue to make progress in that.

For me, I look at salmon as this century’s version of bison from the 1800s. Now in the 1800s in the U.S., the U.S. government made the conscious decision to try to eliminate bison in order to basically control and stamp out Indigenous culture.

We are absolutely not making the conscious decision to try to impact salmon negatively but in my mind, standing by and not being proactive in pulling out all the stops to protect the really rich salmon rivers and waters could end up doing the same thing.

If one river system loses its stability to reproduce salmon we’re going to see entire Indigenous cultures disappear — Tlingit, Haida communities along those rivers and coastal areas. It’s something I’m very keenly aware of and spent a lot of time thinking about.

Hopefully, it will never rise to an IJC reference because the governments through regulation — whether that’s a carrot or stick — will resolve it before it becomes a problem.

Merrell-Ann Phare: If I could take this step out of my IJC hat for one moment and say, IJC certainly does not weigh in on domestic legislation and … whether it’s out of date and needs to be reformed or not.

As Rob said, what we can really do is alert to a problem and, if asked, to have a reference and do a study in that area and provide some recommendations. 

I would say that I know there are some Indigenous nations in that region who work with the mines that are in support of mining. There’s not 100 per cent consensus on what is the best path here and, to me, that’s the sign of the need for governance reform domestically. I think finding out how to build legislation or rely on Indigenous laws to better protect the salmon in accordance with what their worldviews are plus British Columbians — that’s the governance reform moment that is the reconciliation moment.

That’s the conversation I think that needs to be had. I would agree with Rob that from what we know and from our investigations, Canada and B.C. are talking at length about this on an ongoing basis. Like Rob, I really hope they are very successful in that but I think those conversations must also have to involve the Indigenous nations that are directly impacted as well at a governance level, sort of a government to government table, to try to truly resolve this issue.

This conversation has been edited for brevity.

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Canada Action, a non-profit organization that bills itself as a “grassroots movement” in support of the country’s natural resources industry, received a $100,000 payment from a major oil and gas developer, according to disclosures made to the Government of Canada.

The funding from ARC Resources, a conventional oil and gas company with operations in Western Canada, was listed in a company report submitted to Natural Resources Canada in May.

The sources of funding behind Canada Action and the organization’s prominent founder and spokesperson, Calgary-based realtor Cody Battershill, have been in question since the group began generating attention in 2015 for its vocal support of Canada’s extractive industries — including its t-shirts and stickers displaying the slogan “I love oilsands.”

While our previous reporting identified deep ties between Canada Action, the oil and gas industry and conservative party campaigners, this is the first time industry funding of the organization has been publicly disclosed.

Canada Action is part of a growing chorus of industry advocacy groups that frame Canada’s environmental movement as anti-Canadian and motivated by foreign financial interests. In its early stages, Canada Action was described as a citizen-led initiative. A 2014 National Post article called Battershill a “one-man oilsands advocate” in a “PR war” to defend the country’s energy sector — which was facing growing scrutiny amid evolving social and environmental values, particularly in regards to Indigenous rights and climate change.

These new details about the finances of Canada Action come to light as attacks on the environmental movement are moving from the fringes to the mainstream, with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney facing scrutiny for investing $30-million into a so-called “war room” to combat misinformation, target environmentalists and defend the province’s energy industry.

In response to questions from The Narwhal regarding how much funding ARC Resources has provided to Canada Action, ARC Resources’ senior vice president of finance Kristen J. Bibby said: “This was a one-time payment to support Canada Action’s initiatives to promote Canadian energy.”

A screenshot of a document filed by ARC Resources showing a payment of $100,000 made to Canada Action. Click here to see the report in full.

Canada Action and Cody Battershill did not respond to multiple requests for comment by publication time.

Bob Neubauer, researcher with the Corporate Mapping Project, told The Narwhal the disclosure of industry funding behind Canada Action has the potential to “shred their credibility.”

“Canada Action has always made their claim to fame by saying, ‘hey, we’re just a bunch of grassroots concerned citizens’ … The fact that they’re receiving a hundred thousand dollars from industry — it torpedoes their own descriptions of who they are and what they do.”

Who is — and who funds — Canada Action?

For years, questions have swirled around the presumed corporate sponsorship of Canada Action — questions the organization has always, in one way or another, successfully dodged. 

In a 2015 interview with the program Conversations That Matter, Battershill offered this by way of explanation for Canada Action’s support: “I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars out of my own pocket.”

“There is nothing astroturf or fake about my passion for my country,” he told interviewer Stu McNish. “I’ve put my money, my time and my actions where my mouth is.” McNish did not directly ask Battershill whether or not he received industry or political funds.

In my own reporting, when I asked Battershill directly about the sources of funding behind Canada Action, he told me: “We accept donations from individuals and we sell Canada Action merchandise to support our campaigns.”

In early 2019, earth scientist Dave Hughes pressed Canada Action to disclose its funding in a column published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Hughes wrote: “When Canada Action was asked for funding sources … it provided no response.”

Yet onlookers have noted Canada Action’s impressive rise since it was formally registered as a non-profit society in 2014 and publicly launched at the Woods Buffalo Brewing Co. in Fort McMurray. 

“The oil crash of 2014 to 2015 created such a massive problem for the industry and such a massive level of unemployment, it created a crisis not just for industry but for communities that are dependent on industry,” Neubauer, who is also a lecturer in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, told The Narwhal. 

Canada Action took hold of a broad public narrative — espoused by pro-industry groups across the country — that oil and gas is good not only for these communities but critical to maintaining the Canadian way of life.

Neubauer said that, along with other researchers tracking the influence of pro-industry groups with the Corporate Mapping Project, he saw Canada Action “cultivating factoids and turning that into memes and talking points and promoting the heck out of that online and directing people to take action.”

Canada Action is prolific in its production of memes disseminated through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It has published more than 150 posts on Facebook since the beginning of the year, and while many feature photos of individuals sporting the group’s for-sale t-shirts, the vast majority are sleekly designed and branded graphics that emphasize some specific benefit to Canadians from industry while stoking a sense of national pride.

The group has more than 100,000 followers on Facebook, 18,000 on Instagram and nearly 27,000 on Twitter. Yet some of Canada Action’s proxy groups, which include Pipeline Action and Oilsands Action, have gone on to overshadow the original audience — Oilsands Action now boasts more than 315,000 followers on Facebook and close to 70,000 on Twitter.

A screenshot of Canada Action’s Instagram page.

Starting around 2015, there was a proliferation of advocacy groups organizing industry support both online and offline, Neubauer said, using familiar tricks of political campaigning that are “kind of close to the environmental movement’s ladder of engagement,” he said. 

Many of these groups, such as Canada’s Energy Citizens, which is a project of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, were easily identified as “astroturf” or fake grassroots organizations manufactured by the oil and gas industry to have the appearance of citizen-led initiatives.

“But with Canada Action, we didn’t have any proof of industry funds so we didn’t call them astroturf — but they were playing the same game,” Neubauer said.

The ‘about us’ section on Canada Action’s Facebook page says the organization was first conceived in 2010 and “is dedicated to changing the narrative about our world-class natural resource industries.”

“Canada is a leader in protecting people and the plant [sic] — we should be proud of our record from coast to coast,” the statement reads.

“Our mandate is to encourage Canadians to take action and work together through fact-based, non-partisan and positive conversations to get the message out far and wide in a proactive manner.”

“The world needs more Canadian energy.”

But beyond the pro-industry mantra, Neubauer said, Canada Action has played a very vocal role in criticizing the environmental movement and furthering conspiratorial narratives about how the environmental movement is funded.

In a 2019 opinion piece published on EnergyNow.ca, Battershill said his organization responds “rapidly and regularly to false statements of many activists,” including David Suzuki, Tzeporah Berman, Bill Nye, Leonardo DiCaprio, Neil Young and Jane Fonda.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0CvfF4A3CY/

“Writing a false or misleading narrative attacking the Canadian oil and gas industry might cause some initial confusion in the minds of the public” and can have long-lasting effects in the “political consciousness,” Battershill wrote.

Neubauer said the new revelations about Canada Action’s industry funding paints their criticism of the environmental movement in a new light. 

“They’ve been spinning the notion that environmental issues in general are a conspiracy by the well-heeled elite and celebrities and the United Nations and trying to destroy the lifestyle of the working class,” he said.

“The fact that they spend a lot of their time talking about shady funding … I think the funding pipeline, excuse the pun, for the environmental movement is far more transparent than what you’re looking into right now.”

ARC Resources funding of Canada Action disclosed unintentionally

Canada’s little-known Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act (ESTMA) came into force in 2015, requiring natural resource companies like ARC Resources to disclose payments made to governments in relation to the extraction of oil, gas and minerals.

According to documents filed by ARC Resources to the ESTMA database on May 27, 2020, a payment of $100,000 was made to Canada Action Coalition under the category of “bonuses.”

The disclosure appears to have been made unintentionally, according to Tommy Morrison, data associate with the New York-based Natural Resource Governance Institute.

“Canada Action Coalition doesn’t fit the description of an eligible payee under ESTMA’s preparation guidelines, and no reporting company in Canada has ever named it as a payee,” said Morrison, who analyzes data disclosed within the database.

“Among all the data we’ve collected as part of ResourceProjects.org, it is irregular to see disclosure of a payment to a non-governmental payee,” Morrison told The Narwhal. “We do not have a position on transparency of industry funding of non-profits in Canada, but generally we recommend greater openness in the sector.”

Non-profits are not required to disclose their sources of funding, even if they are registered as non-profit societies with the federal government, as is the case with Canada Action. 

(The Narwhal is a registered non-profit society in British Columbia and voluntarily discloses all donations over $5,000.)

In the disclosure documents, the Canadian government is listed as the “payee” for the $100,000 amount and Canada Action Coalition is listed as the agency that received that payment. 

Michael Grainger, policy analyst with Natural Resources Canada, which manages and maintains the disclosure database, also indicated the disclosure was made in error. While companies are required to list payments to governments in the form of taxes and royalties, payments to Canada Action would not have to be disclosed, even though the non-profit is a society registered with the federal government. The $100,000 payment appears to have been listed in a case of over-disclosure.

“The Canada Action Coalition is not associated with the Government of Canada, and NRCan may have accepted the report in error,” Grainger wrote in an email to The Narwhal. 

He added that Natural Resources Canada contacted ARC Resources “and asked them to amend their report as soon as possible. An amended version should be posted online shortly.”

Grainger said that any inquiries pertaining to payments to the Canada Action Coalition should be directed to ARC Resources.

On its website ARC Resources describes itself as a “Canadian oil and gas producer committed to delivering strong operational and financial performance and upholding values of operational excellence and responsible development.”

The company was founded by ARC Financial Corp., a Calgary-based private equity firm “specializing in the Canadian energy industry.” ARC Financial is also behind the ARC Energy Resources Institute which describes itself as “dedicated to researching complex, interrelated trends that influence the energy business, including financial, political, environmental, technological, social and economic forces.”

William Carroll, sociology professor at the University of Victoria and one of the leads of the Corporate Mapping Project, said he describes the networks linking industry with Canadian finance, think tanks and so-called citizen groups are called “a regime of obstruction.”

“What we’re trying to reference there is the multifaceted nature of corporate power and influence. It extends in different ways and certainly funding Canada Action is important — as is CAPP’s project Canada’s Energy Citizens — all of these extractivist, populist elements are one kind of initiative that speaks to a certain audience, in terms of mobilizing a kind of grassroots base.”

Industry funding behind initiatives that are positioned as citizen-led or grassroots is often hidden from or not made apparent to the public. 

“It’s not a genuine grassroots initiative and yet it appears that way and I think a lot of ordinary folks concerned about jobs and drawn into this kind of discourse accept it as a kind of people’s movement,” Carroll said.

Canada Action evolves to support more than oil and gas

In recent years, Canada Action has branched out from its base support for the energy industry to champion other major natural resource sectors including mining and forestry as well as pipelines and agriculture. 

T-shirts with the messages “I love Canadian forestry,” “I love Canadian pipelines” and “I am Canadian energy” can now be purchased on the organization’s website.

A Canada Action graphic taken from an email showing the organization’s broadening support for Canadian industries.

According to Canada Action the organization’s campaign influence has grown steadily, too. According to an end-of-year newsletter sent in December 2019, Canada Action was behind “the largest pro-oil and gas rally in Canadian history” that brought out “some 4,000 supporters.”

The group claims it hosted more than 30 “resource rallies” across Canada and “proudly participated in the first ever Indigenous-led pro-pipeline rally for Trans Mountain held in Vancouver on June 18, 2019.”

Canada Action also says the organization is focusing its efforts on central Canada, “particularly on young Canadians who are keen for credible, balanced and non-partisan information on Canadian energy and natural resources.”

Neubauer said there is a confluence of factors that have led to the current moment, where an organization like Canada Action can dramatically impact public narrative around the natural resource industry.

“The economy is toast, their finances are toast, they’re hurting — but they’re also looking for someone to blame. It’s attractive to blame someone like David Suzuki, Naomi Klein and Greta Thunberg because that’s part of a broader pro-oil, conservative narrative,” he said.

That conservative discourse dovetails with a broad resurgence of populism, especially right-wing populism around the world, Neubauer said, pointing to the work of groups like Canada Proud and Alberta Proud and their efforts to influence elections. 

“I think in some ways people like Battershill and groups like Canada Action are kind of leveraging the popularity of the same types of political forces and feelings of dislocation, and also just resistance against change, that motivates the politics behind Donald Trump and Brexit — you’re seeing these groups using powerful, emotionally charged, populist narratives about who is coming to get you and take your good life.”

Editor’s note: The Narwhal received funding from the Corporate Mapping Project in 2019 to report on industry disclosures made in the Extractive Sectors Transparency Management Act database. That reporting included a feature on the challenges oil and gas communities face when considering a clean energy transition, an explainer on the profits made by oilsands giants even amid oil-price drops and an investigation into shortfalls in oil and gas revenue faced by rural municipalities . As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the Corporate Mapping Project did not have any editorial influence on our reporting and, as part of our donor transparency policy, the funding was disclosed.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Back in February, Canada was in the midst of a different reporting storm about state power and violence against Indigenous People than the one we’re in now. 

The RCMP had arrived on the territory of the Wet’suwet’en to enforce an injunction against opponents of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. The story catapulted the Canadian media into a paroxysm of coverage that gave rise to a rigorous debate about how to refer to the individuals the police had been dispatched to arrest: protesters or land defenders? 

The conversations swirling around in newsrooms (including our own) at the time were about language, yes, but were in a much deeper way hitting up against an exposed nerve of Canadian history. The Wet’suwet’en had never ceded their territory to any colonial government.

Could these Wet’suwet’en members, Hereditary Chiefs and matriarchs who refused to allow an unwanted project on their own land be rightfully, fairly designated protesters?

“I got interviewed by a number of mainstream media organizations and some smaller organizations as well which were really trying to think about how we consider these terms,” said Candis Callison, Tahltan member and University of British Columbia associate professor of journalism. 

“My answer as a kind of expert voice was to say, ‘Well, land defender is an absolutely appropriate term because it points to the long relationship that Indigenous People have with their land.’ ”

That moment stands out in Callison’s mind as an example of the critical role journalists play in contouring public narratives and, beyond that, influencing the way Indigenous lives and interests are represented or, more often, misrepresented in media coverage. 

The term protesters casts a delegitimizing light on the Wet’suwet’en in their standoff with the police. But to use the term land defender draws in a whole history and way of being that points to Indigenous Peoples’ particular relationship with the land. 

“I think that’s still a relatively new concept,” Callison said. “Especially here in British Columbia, there has been so much talk and coverage of land claims and land rights and at the same time I think the general public has a hard time understanding what that means and what that’s about.”

For Callison, the move from conceiving of the Wet’suwet’en as protesters to land defenders holds the opportunity for a fundamental shift in thought.

“So journalists moving to new understandings of Indigenous People as in a relationship with lands, with waters, with nonhumans, as thinking about nonhumans as a part of their communities and as relatives — that is a major shift that might provide an added dimension to thinking about political structures and the ways in which things need to change in relation to Indigenous People and access to justice.”

Callison, along with co-author and fellow UBC associate journalism professor Mary Lynn Young, contends with the role of journalism in shaping broader narratives about race, culture and reality in their recent book Reckoning: Journalism’s Limits and Possibilities. 

As scandal, uprising and high-profile firings rock the journalism industry across North America in the midst of ongoing demonstrations to protests police violence against Black and Indigenous People, we spoke with Callison, who is a member of The Narwhal’s board, about what this moment’s reckoning should mean for journalism in Canada.

Authors of Reckoning: Journalism’s Limits and Possibilities, Candis Callison, left, and Mary Lynn Young, right. Photo: UBC Journalism / Twitter

There is a lot of attention being paid to social disorder right now. But for a former journalist and scholar of journalism who is skeptical of the idea of order, how do you understand the role of disorder in exposing and disrupting the status quo?

One of the arguments we make in the book is about how journalism, despite its claims to objectivity and being outside both culture and the social mores of its time, actually participates in propping up social order and preserving the status quo. The story journalism tells itself is that it has fought for justice.

In some cases that is true — journalism has done great work and good interventions. But oftentimes journalism also is basically amplifying dominant narratives and dominant voices. I think this moment is really interesting because there are so many digital platforms that are not only holding media accountable for the kinds of narratives and the language that is being used and the kinds of voices that are being amplified but also highlighting the gaps in media not only in terms of who is in the newsroom but in terms of what kinds of stories are being told and basically how the present moment is being narrated.

Part of the argument we make in the book is that journalists need to think beyond just reporting on events as one-offs and think about how histories and structured systems are a part of what events can reveal. Events are often intersections of many things colliding. 

Instead of thinking of this moment as one of disorder, we need to think about how it reveals the social orders that have preserved and kept injustice in place, that have propped up systems that have systematically dispossessed, disenfranchised and excluded some communities.

I think the challenge in thinking about social order is it’s kind of a nebulous thing, but once you really recognize it, you recognize the way in which media have tended toward certain kinds of voices, certain kinds representations and have created a sedimentation as a result in which even new journalism has to contend with the way Indigenous communities have been represented, the way Black communities have been represented. 

This is a moment of reckoning because of that sedimentation being present, because there are so few Black and Indigenous and People of Colour in the newsroom. 

You talk about the need to move from the falsehood of presumed objective journalism that is dislocated to a form of journalism that is intentionally located in social histories, social relations and our responsibilities to one another. What does that look like?

Objectivity in journalism really comes out of a moment in time for the profession when it was trying to gain legitimacy. Historians generally look at the period of the 1920 as the time when objectivity emerged as a professional good, a professional norm. 

We’re 100 years past that point and there have been enormous changes in the way society operates and our cultural points of view — our sense of what’s ethical, what’s good and what’s right has also changed, to a certain extent. 

Journalism really borrowed from science back in the 1920 in adopting this “view from nowhere.” [While] science has been critiqued by feminist and postcolonial scholars, by Indigenous scholars who thought closely about the way that science and colonialism have walked hand in hand … journalism hasn’t kept track. It’s only been over the last 20 years that we’ve seen some of that move into critiques in journalism. 

I think to me the work for individual journalists is to locate themselves within a profession that has problematically supported a status quo, supported colonialism with or without realizing it. And to recognize their own personal histories are also relevant. The kinds of questions that individual journalists think are important, that editors think are important, are informed by media practice, existing media narratives, but also their knowledge, how they come to know what they know.

One of the core questions of the book is, how do journalists know what they know? How do we decide what’s good journalism? And who gets to decide? 

The kind of inherent power relations in narrating what our present is, and deciding what’s relevant, who the relevant and expert voices are and what is considered news are all questions journalists aren’t thinking about when they’re out there reporting the news. 

I think this is the real challenge: journalism has very much been event focused and has not thought about the larger narratives that it’s participating in, that it’s continuing to repeat and the ways in which broader questions — that challenge the status quo and serve very diverse audiences — need to be asked.

Some might argue that bringing one’s personal experience and humanity to the practice of journalism will negatively affect their objectivity. But you actually see personal experience and history strengthening objectivity. Can you explain how that comes about?

In the book we draw from feminist and Indigenous scholars who have actually thought about how important it is for certainly scientists, but we apply this to journalists, to consider themselves on the same plane as the people they’re reporting on, investigating and trying to understand. 

So locating yourself in your own social history and social situation becomes really important for understanding the people you’re reporting on. I would argue based on that scholarship that you have actually a stronger objectivity if you are considering yourself as well. 

There are good and better and best ways of checking your facts, of making sure you have well-supported perspectives and narratives on events that occurred. But as a journalist you are always going to be contending with multiple perspectives and multiple truths of what really went on in a situation. In situations of conflict that becomes an even greater challenge. 

So recognizing that you are coming from somewhere becomes essential to becoming aware of what kinds of questions you should be asking, what kinds of questions you think are important, who are the experts that can help you shed light on a situation, whose voices need to be heard more than others.

As journalists we know that facts — say with climate science, what they can tell us and what they can’t — are important. They matter. But your previous work, How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts, points to how these facts come to matter and why it’s important we pay attention to that element of mattering as much as the facts themselves. Why?

When I started researching climate change, it was in the early 2000s, and one of the things that piqued my interests was that so much of the blame at the time for the public not caring, not being engaged with and not even knowing about climate change was put at the feet of media. My contention at the time was, ‘Hey, you’re putting way too much at the feet of journalists — they can inform you about an issue, but they can’t make you care about it.’

That was me starting to think about climate change and media.

As I got deeper I started encountering these interesting social movements. I came across the Inuit Circumpolar Council and at that time Sheila Watt-Cloutier was bringing a human rights case (to seek relief from the impacts of climate change on the Inuit) before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Then I encountered American evangelicals who were trying to get 30 million American evangelicals engaged in climate change especially when it had been so associated with a left-leaning political stance and evangelicals were associated with a right-leaning political stance. 

The other group was the corporate social responsibility group. They were thinking about how Wall Street could become engaged with climate change and they turned [climate change] into climate risk to really think about it. 

These different ways of coming at climate change helped me start to realize that there were different ways of talking about it, there were different languages and vernaculars and a different way of making sense of the world that is behind how you talk about climate change.

This is how I began to think about the subtitle of the book: The communal life of facts. Facts have a social life. They get taken up in different ways, they enter into language in different ways, they get put into other moral and ethical codes, such that they come to have meaning, such that people have a rational to act on an issue. 

To me there’s only so much work that journalism can do around issues like this that do have to be taken up by social groups. Climate change has to be invested with meaning, ethics and morality in order for people to come to be engaged with it as an issue and to make changes in their personal life and push for political changes. 

In the 20 years almost that has elapsed, you see how some of what I thought back then has been borne out: you see young people taking climate change up, talking about it in their own terms and making it meaningful.

This still speaks to the prominent role that journalism can play, but there are also many different social influences and affiliations that inform how people think about the facts and information that they get from news sources, from works of journalism. 

We often hear about the crisis in journalism as being the outcome of digital disruption and plummeting ad revenues. But in your work you identify another, often-overlooked aspect of the crisis. What do you see as the crisis of journalism?

I think a lot about crisis, both because of the climate crisis and also because of the way that journalism has described itself as being in crisis especially because of economics and technological change. We have seen enormous changes in journalism.  

The last 20 years that I’ve been working in or studying journalism, you see how vast the changes are and the kinds of news sources and opportunities for experimentation and opportunity for an organization like The Narwhal to emerge. This is an incredibly rich time. At the same time we’re seeing the demise of longstanding news organizations at the regional and national level, we are seeing a decline in the size of newsrooms and the reach of big media.

So scholars, industry people, everyone is talking about this as a crisis. In the book we are thinking about this as a much more profound crisis, because if you take into account also the way scholars, Indigenous and Black and other communities of colour have critiqued and been misrepresented or not represented … you really see there is a need for a much more profound change.

I think some of the newer media represents an emergence of what we call “multiple journalisms.” There are multiple ways of doing journalism right now and multiple ways of getting journalism funded and that is a real challenge and at the same time a real opportunity because you are seeing publications like The Narwhal and these new experimental relationships with audiences and thinking about who audiences are.

This is a really interesting moment where especially in the last week and a half where you see journalists having conversations that … I couldn’t have anticipated even five years ago, like these open conversations about who is in the newsroom, about what journalism is doing and what it thinks it’s doing and who it is accountable to. And also the question of how we reckon with the past, of sedimentation, representation and narratives that haven’t served publics that now have a strong voice on Facebook and Twitter and other platforms.

Canadians are still reckoning with this country’s history, especially when it comes to Indigenous Peoples. We see great strides being made to at least acknowledge that history through means like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and yet it feels like the heavy lifting of truly understanding and contending with the nation’s past has yet to occur. What do you think needs to happen for that to take place?

In the book we quote my fellow Narwhal board member Tanya Talaga as saying before Idle No More and before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there wasn’t a lot of fair and non-racist reporting on Indigenous communities. And I think that’s a fair summary comment on the state of media.

I think there is still a fairly profound and ongoing reckoning. I think you see that for example in events like the Wet’suwet’en land defense that recently happened. 

I have such deep respect for the Wet’suwet’en People not only because they brought one of the most important cases to the Supreme Court — Delgamuukw — but because when it came down to Unist’ot’en, the people who were there hung red dresses, they connected Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls to what was happening to our lands, to resource companies coming into their lands. The state of Indigenous People is connected to the long history of colonialism and to the way the state has imposed certain structures and made access to justice very difficult for many Indigenous People.

Red dresses hung at the Unist’ot’en Healing centre as police prepared to make arrests while enforcing a Coastal GasLink injunction in February 2020. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

I think this is the challenge for journalists who maybe aren’t aware of that history and maybe aren’t aware of how deeply impacted Indigenous People are by various aspects of colonialism.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was such a major contribution to a mainstream society thinking about what happened to so many generations of Indigenous People and how important it was for survivors and those of us who have been affected by intergenerational trauma to speak and to be heard. At the same time this was already a history that Indigenous People knew intimately. We didn’t have to be told because so many of us — myself included — had parents who went to residential school. This wasn’t new history for us. 

But having it integrated it into Canadian awareness and consciousness of history, this question of “what is our shared history” really came to the fore in the reporting and the report that came out of the commission.

I think there is still a lot of work to do to think about what that means in everything from decision-making about resource development to how we set up health systems to how we respond to COVID.

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