By Breanna Draxler. This story originally appeared in YES! Magazine and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

As COVID-19 continues its deadly sweep across the world map, Canada stands out. The country has markedly fewer cases than, for example, the U.S. As of April 20, Canada had roughly 37,000 cases to the United States’ 766,000. Despite the difference in response and scale, the virus is a major disruption to Canadians and their economy. And disruptions, as historic examples reinforce, create opportunities for positive change.

Courtney Howard is an emergency doctor in Yellowknife. She serves a patient population that, so far, has only seen five cases of COVID-19 but is living in one of the most rapidly warming climates in the world. Howard’s emergency department serves the entire High Arctic in the Northwest Territories, including many Indigenous and frontline communities experiencing climate change firsthand. This has huge consequences for health, including food security, cultural sharing, and mental health. She sees the response to coronavirus and the resulting investments as the perfect opportunity to address both new and longstanding threats to health.

The Canadian government, for example, has announced plans to fund the cleanup of abandoned oil and gas wells, which are a toxic risk to communities and would employ oil and gas workers who have been laid off. Such actions, Howard underscores, must support people’s health now, improve resilience to crises that may happen in the future, and decrease the risk of those crises occurring. 

Here she shares her experiences from the COVID-19 crisis and insights on how the outcomes can and should inform conversations on climate. Howard says prioritizing mental health is key to tackling both of these tough issues, which is why she conducted this interview while cross-country skiing.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: How does being an emergency doctor influence your response to crises?

A: I have gut-level reflexes around the need to act quickly in the case of fast-moving illness. I’ve had really discreet experiences of both having acted quickly enough and saved the patient, and having acted in a way that later I went back and said, “That patient died. Could I have done something differently? Could I have been faster? Could I have called in help earlier?” Those are by far the most difficult experiences of any doctor’s career. They’re the ones you remember in the pit of your stomach and keep you awake at night. And so eventually, you end up with an almost Pavlovian response to a time window.

Half of the doctors on my board right now, of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, are emergency doctors, and I think it’s because we really can’t sit still if we see that lives are at risk and it’s a time-dependent situation. And so, the need to act quickly within time windows and situations where the factors are outside of your control has been shown to be super key in COVID and it’s equally true in climate. 

Q: How so? Can you speak to how climate is going to exacerbate future crises and make them more frequent?

A: I was thinking today, imagine if the Australian wildfires had happened a couple of months later. Or this pandemic had started a couple of months earlier to coincide with the Australian wildfire season. We could have had two incredible crises at the same time. That could easily happen, so we need to look at these increasing weather-related disasters, wildfire-related disasters, and the increasing possibility of further infectious disease related pandemics.

Q: Can you talk more about the commonalities that the coronavirus has revealed?

A: It’s an event that at first seems unrelated to climate, but it has a lot of consequences for the conversation around climate and health. 

I have gotten involved quite early in a movement called “planetary health,” which is the health of human civilization and the state of the natural systems upon which it depends. It turns out that only about 20 per cent of overall health status comes from the work we do inside health structures. What determines the rest are ecological determinants of health — things like soil, climate, water, biodiversity. You can think of those as a nest underpinning everything else, because that has to be stable for us to have the concentrated resources we need to be able to do things like build roads and hospitals and schools and homes. Those financial and economic systems give rise to what we term the social determinants of health, which are things like housing and income and education. Those have direct impacts on our health, and they also are the things we need to have functioning health care structures. 

The whole coronavirus outbreak is a giant wake-up call in terms of planetary health, because what it’s saying is, “Hey, there’s a lack of care at the intersection of humans and the natural world, and that’s what allowed a zoonotic virus to make a jump into humans.” 

Q: What about mental health; what is the impact there?

A: Before this started, I was doing a lot of work around eco-anxiety and ecological grief, so heading into this, a lot of people are really, really worried and grieving the changes that we’re anticipating and already seeing in the natural world.

From what I’m seeing online, and also what I’m seeing in the emergency department, people are really anxious right now, too. This is a time when the COVID crisis is demanding a lot of us in terms of buffering different worries and stresses and changes. We’re going to emerge from this really tired, and some of us will be traumatized, and some of us will be grieving. We’re going to look up and realize that “Oh, phew. Now we’re through that crisis, but the other crises didn’t go away.”

That’s the reality: Sometimes there are two emergencies happening at the same time, or more than two, and you have to deal with them both at the same time. Now, I think we are appropriately focusing most of our energy on this problem that needs us the most, but those other emergencies are in the background. And we need to realize that when we lift our eyes up from the COVID emergency, we’re going to be tired and we’re going to hope that those other emergencies are as optimized as possible.

Amid coronavirus pandemic, some B.C. communities brace for flooding as well

Q: What do you mean by optimized?

A: Given that we’re in this situation where the economy requires stimulus, this is a chance where we can help solve two crises at the same time. We absolutely need to do that. Every bit of public funds ought to be allocated with health in mind. That means attention to all of the determinants of health — the ecological determinants of health, the social determinants of health, and actual health systems. 

What I think is super important right now is making sure that the stimulus funds are going toward the things that both increase our resilience to future disasters and that make them less likely.

Q: How do we make sure that happens?

A: The book I’m reading right now is Joseph E. Stiglitz’s People, Power, and Profits. What he points out, with regards to the U.S. system, is that a concentration of wealth inevitably results in a concentration of political power. Power comes up every once in a while, as a word, but the concept of inequality and the different ways that that impacts our health in a really dangerous way is something that I think we need to talk more about, because, especially looking at the U.S. context right now, it’s really hampered the pandemic response. 

The thing is, a pandemic is something that shows that we’re all in it together. So if people can’t access health care and they can’t get tested, not only are poor people affected, but rich people too. There are all sorts of studies that show that inequality is bad for everybody’s health, not just the people at the bottom, but the whole society. One of the ways that is becoming clear is in terms of access to political power and decision-making power. We need to start talking more explicitly about that, because that will bring us closer to solving the problem. 

Q: You mentioned building resilience to deal with future crises. What might that look like?

A: Things like phasing out coal-fired power plants, that’s a win-win. We transition from coal to healthier energy supplies, and it reduces air pollution, which the World Health Organization has calculated is killing 7 million people a year. Compared to how many people have died of COVID so far, it’s a lot.

What we really need to focus on is this: We’ve been working with this “your house is on fire” narrative as a climate community for a couple years. I think that was appropriate for a time when people weren’t in crisis. But coming out of this [COVID crisis], people are not going to have the energy to talk about that. If we describe a path of safety in a compassionate and inclusive way, we can really make a huge contribution. 

Life after coal

Q: That is such a different visual than your house being on fire.

A: Yeah, totally. When people were complacent, I think that probably was appropriate. But right now, in the emergency department, I’m seeing stress-related headaches, stress-related stomachaches, stress-related neurological disorders. I’m seeing physical trauma, suicidality. And we’re only, what, a month in? We only have one case so far in the Northwest Territories, so that’s just the result of people being at home and worried. [Editor’s note: As of April 21, Northwest Territories has seen a total of five cases.]

Part of what I would invite people to do is to be really, really diligent about self-care practices right now, because if we bring a centred self to the table at this moment of incredible change, we’re going to be able to make decisions strategically, as opposed to out of emotion, and that’s going to help get the outcome that we’re hoping for. 

Essentially, we’re in a generational tipping point. Things have been disrupted, so now we have this opportunity: How can we apply the lessons that we’ve learned to saving lives this century and into the next?

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By Vanessa Corkal, policy analyst, and Aaron Cosbey, senior associate, at the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

In times of unprecedented crisis, government leadership means being bold. But as Canada and its provinces prepare to roll out record-breaking emergency responses to help the newly jobless and throw lifelines to drowning sectors, it’s becoming clear that not all support is created equal.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has said unemployment could rise to at least 25 per cent, or upwards of 500,000 workers. To bolster Alberta’s economy, he called for the federal government to commit at least $20 to $30 billion in liquidity for oil and gas producers. This came on the heels of the province’s announcement of almost $8 billion in equity infusion and loan guarantees for the Keystone XL oil pipeline. There have also been calls for the federal government to purchase oil and gas sector accounts receivable at a discount.

There’s no question that people across Alberta need urgent help. In the accommodation and food service sector alone, nearly 100,000 workers have already lost their jobs, and similar numbers seem likely in retail trade. The oil and gas sectors have seen thousands of layoffs and postponed labour as the province’s companies limit production and shelve all plans for expansion, upgrades and maintenance.

But is injecting tens of billions into oil and gas corporations the right kind of help? As well as addressing immediate needs, strategic emergency response should have two critical features:

1. It should address the root causes of the crisis and reduce vulnerability to future crises;
2. It should take advantage of the dynamism that crisis creates to build back better and achieve important public policy goals that may have been harder to reach in more settled times.

Would the proposed assistance address the root causes of the crisis? Alberta’s economic hardship started before COVID-19 and is grounded in over-dependence on those inherently cyclical commodities. But rather than pursue diversification that could shelter Albertans from the pain of future shocks, these sorts of investments double down on the status quo, hitching the wagon firmly to volatility and uncertainty.

There will be future shocks, whether it’s another 2008-style financial crisis, a climate-induced crisis such as the 2016 Fort Mac fires, or — dare we say it — another COVID-19-style pandemic. Placing heavy bets on the oil and gas sector nearly guarantees we will be here again, with similar social and economic pain for people across the province.

Bets like these assume the oil and gas sectors will return to business as usual after COVID-19, that demand will be strong for decades in spite of increasing climate change mitigation efforts, that pipelines will be built despite sustained opposition or political delays, and that Saudi Arabia and Russia will back down and reverse measures designed to do exactly what they are doing — squeeze out high-cost producers like the U.S. and  Canada.

Even if all those assumptions prove right, and the bet pays off, that success doesn’t address the underlying problem of over-dependence — it aggravates it.

Would the proposed assistance take advantage of the opportunity to build Alberta back better? We know that, whether through market forces or government policies, Canada’s oil and gas sector will eventually decline, hopefully to be replaced by more diversified and sustainable economic drivers. As the head of the International Energy Agency, the United Nations Secretary-General and others have recently argued, our response to the current crisis must accelerate this urgently needed transition. If Alberta is to rebuild its damaged house after this unprecedented crisis, why not build a stronger house?

For Alberta and the federal government, this should mean investing tens of billions of dollars in sectors that can bring long-term prosperity for Alberta’s workers and families, such as hydrogen, health sciences, renewable energy, clean transport, sustainable agriculture, innovation in oil and gas well reclamation, and prevention of fugitive methane emissions, building on the province’s world-class institutions and infrastructure, and the strengths of its people.

The coming economic downturn will swallow up the unprecedented torrents of fiscal support we’re assembling, and still call for more. But let’s remember that this spending can be a historic force for positive change to ensure that when we come out the other end, our society is more equitable, sustainable and resilient — ready for whatever the future might throw at us.

10 things you need to know as a barrel of Alberta oil is valued at less than a bottle of maple syrup

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By Tegan Hansen, forest campaigner at Stand.earth.

When the United Nations created the International Day of Forests, they did so for good reason: forests are essential to our future, but they continue to be degraded and destroyed at a mind boggling scale. 

Canada has a disproportionate role to play in forest protection, because it is home to almost a third of all the world’s forests, including the largest intact forest on Earth — the boreal — and the towering old-growth rainforests in British Columbia, which are among the planet’s most carbon-rich.

But federal and provincial governments in Canada are not taking our role seriously. About a million acres of boreal forest are logged each year, for everything from building material to toilet paper. The long-term impacts of clearcutting have created a carbon debt in Canada, as large tracts of forest are unable to recover.

While old-growth forest continues to be clearcut in B.C., a fundamental lack of adequate monitoring and oversight means that even the government is unlikely to know exactly what is being trucked off the land. Species that signal the broader health of forest ecosystems, like woodland caribou, continue to disappear.

If forests are our future, then the future is fragmented, overrun and on the brink of collapse.

Our communities depend on forests locally and globally: we look to woodland ecosystems for everything from jobs and recreation to clean water and air.

Forests are being used to fuel crises when they can be a key part of the solution to global problems. As toilet paper makes headlines this week, top brands like Charmin continue to source fibre from endangered caribou habitat and carbon-rich forests. 

And Canada is making forests a new battleground in the global rush to curb our addiction to coal. Wood pellets are being exported from Canada to countries like the U.K. and Japan, where they’re burned in coal-converted power plants under the guise of renewable energy. But in reality, biomass energy creates more carbon emissions at the stack than coal. 

A logging truck enters Pacific BioEnergy’s pellet plant in Prince George. Photo: Dominick DellaSala

We’re heading into an uncertain time. Where I’m sitting, on the banks of the Kootenay River, the region is at a heightened risk of flooding. A large snowpack, changing weather patterns and massive clearcuts in watersheds are contributing to a dangerous situation for communities in B.C.

Elsewhere, extreme flooding is already a reality. Just this week, Indigenous people in the Amazon have lost homes, schools, and other vital infrastructure to severe flooding along the Bobonaza River. Resources to address this disaster in the middle of a pandemic are limited. 

Indigenous Nations in the Amazon have been battling forest destruction and climate change, two drivers of these massive floods, for years. Indigenous territories in Ecuador and Peru are being targeted for massive expansion of oil drilling in the Amazon Sacred Headwaters, which is home to 75 million acres of the most biodiverse forest on the planet. If expansion plans move ahead, an area about the size of Texas will be opened to drilling.

From the boreal to the Amazon, the work to defend forests and forest communities is linked. On this International Day of Forests, we’re contending with the disasters that we have been warned about for decades: fires, floods and economic crisis.

Good forest policy can make these problems less severe. Intact, old forests can mitigate floods and fires and protect access to clean water. Well-managed forests can provide access to timber and recreation across generations.

So far, governments in Canada have failed to act in the ecological and long-term interests of forest communities. With old forests on the brink, we only have a handful of years to reverse this trend. The policy choices that we’re making now will resonate for a long time.

In April, the B.C. government will receive a report from an independent old-growth panel, recommending action for the future of our oldest remaining forests. British Columbians will not see these findings for another six months, and concrete action could take even longer. Our forests and communities simply cannot afford that delay.

In their responses to COVID-19, governments and policy-makers have shown the scale of action they are prepared to take to address an emergency. But more importantly, our communities have shown their true value, as neighbours step up to protect each other and ensure our collective wellbeing. 

That’s the key lesson that forests share with us: roots don’t grow deep, they spread wide. We need to chart a more hopeful path for forests, one that builds a resilient, community-oriented and abundant future.

Canada’s forgotten rainforest

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As scientists at the forefront of endangered species research, we are concerned that government backpedaling on endangered species legislation will be a major setback for threatened species, their wild spaces, and the benefits that we derive from them.

British Columbia has a whopping 1,807 species of animals and plants at risk of extinction, more than any other province or territory in Canada.

And yet B.C. is still one of the only provinces in Canada without legislation dedicated to protecting and recovering species at risk.

B.C.’s NDP party platform included the creation of the province’s first endangered species law, and Premier John Horgan reinforced this in the mandate letter to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, George Heyman.

We welcomed this announcement and have worked over the last year to advise the government so that the new law is based on strong science.

But recently, Premier Horgan appeared to back-track on his promise and his ministries’ efforts to build ‘made in B.C.’ legislation, stating: “There’s no significant species at risk legislation on the docket for the foreseeable future here in B.C.”

This potential reversal comes as a result of backlash from parties concerned about how habitat protection for southern mountain caribou could affect their bottom line.

Let’s be clear about what’s going on: particular parties that are highly invested in the status quo of habitat loss and degradation have persuaded cabinet that they will make job loss an election issue in retaliation for strong conservation.

But the evidence is abundant that — contrary to popular belief — protecting the environment doesn’t undermine net job growth. If anything it boosts it, by redirecting and encouraging economic growth towards less damaging practices.

The bottom line for caribou and many other wildlife species is crystal clear: without timely and meaningful protection and restoration measures, including a provincial endangered species law, these creatures will be lost forever.

Mountain caribou in southern B.C. where three herds have been declared extirpated or locally extinct. Photo: David Moskowitz

Over half of B.C.’s 52 surviving caribou herds are at risk of disappearing. A dozen of those herds now have fewer than 25 animals. Three herds have no reproducing individuals left.

Southern mountain caribou were listed under the federal Species at Risk Act in 2003. Sixteen years later, B.C. still does not have sufficient habitat protection to recover caribou. Instead, efforts focus on culling predators and protecting mothers and baby caribou during calving season.

Without meaningful habitat protection, these measures are band-aid solutions, treating the symptoms but not the underlying issues.

But it’s not only the fate of caribou that is at stake.

Wildlife species nearing the brink of extinction include plants and animals of southern B.C.’s Garry oak ecosystems, many runs of sockeye and chinook salmon, and the iconic southern resident killer whales.

Allowing this situation to continue is simply not acceptable — delayed decision-making leads to extinction.

Poor decisions about resource use in the past still haunt us today.

For instance, between 1955-1969, thousands of giant basking sharks were slaughtered in B.C. waters with the aim of reducing commercial salmon losses resulting from the shark’s entanglement in fishing nets.

Fifty years since that eradication program ended, basking sharks are still largely absent from B.C. waters. In other countries, revenue from eco-tourism to view the basking shark’s relative, the whale shark, generates over $100 million per year.

B.C. lost this opportunity when we killed off basking sharks.

We hope that one day, people will come to B.C. to see thriving herds of southern mountain caribou and admire killer whales feeding on a bounty of wild salmon.

The social, economic, cultural, and environmental return on investment from habitat protection and species conservation programs has been shown to be three-fold. Few other industries can compete with these types of economic returns.

B.C.’s economy is changing.

Our future lies in sustainability and the protection and ecologically responsible use of our resources. Protecting nature is also our best strategy to fight climate change.

We urge the B.C. government to show leadership and live up to its promise of creating a B.C. endangered species law.

This critical legislation would show that B.C.’s environment and wildlife matter. It would be a legacy for generations to come.

Signed:

Tara Martin, Professor, Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia

Arne Mooers, Professor, Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University

Brian Starzomski, Ian McTaggart Cowan Professor, School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria

Chris Johnson, Professor, Ecosystem Science and Management Program, University of Northern British Columbia

Cole Burton, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia

John Reynolds, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University

Julia Baum, Professor, Department of Biology, University of Victoria

Kai Chan, Professor, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia

Karen Hodges, Professor, Department of Biology, University of British Columbia Okanagan

Marco Festa-Bianchet, Professor, Département de biologie, Université de Sherbrooke

Peter Arcese, Professor, Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia

Sally Otto, Professor, Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia

Shaun Fluker, Associate Professor of Law, University of Calgary

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By Amy Lubik, Ben Parfitt and Grand Chief Stewart Phillip

Just two days before B.C. Energy Minister Michelle Mungall announced a completely inadequate “independent scientific review” of fracking in our province, an international team of scientists issued a stark warning about the human health risks associated with the natural gas industry’s rampant use of this brute force technology.

“Our examination…uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health,” concluded the scientists, who were affiliated either with the Concerned Health Professionals of New York or the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group, Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Tellingly, the scientific review just announced by the B.C. government will expressly not investigate the human health impacts of fracking.

Fracking involves pressure-pumping immense quantities of water, sand and chemicals underground with such force that earthquakes are frequently triggered. Northeast B.C. has the dubious distinction of being home to some of the most powerful fracking operations on earth, and much of the resulting damage occurs on Indigenous territories.

The evidence reviewed by the scientists included nearly 1,300 peer-reviewed articles. That fact alone tells you something. The “science” on fracking is already in.

And here’s just a smattering of what it says:

People living near gas drilling and fracking operations are more prone to asthma. Pregnant women living near drilled and fracked gas wells face elevated risks of giving birth to newborns with congenital heart defects. Workers servicing gas well sites are exposed to high levels of silica, diesel exhaust, and volatile organic compounds that raise concerns about higher incidence of occupational lung diseases, including silicosis, asthma, and lung cancer.

For Indigenous people living in fracking zones, the impacts of fossil fuel industry operations only add to the disproportionately poor health statistics they already face.

A preliminary scientific study published this January by health scientists at the University of Montreal, for example, found that pregnant women in northeast B.C. have elevated levels of benzene metabolites (benzene is a carcinogen) in their blood. The 15 pregnant Indigenous women in the study had levels six times higher than the Canadian average.

For these reasons and others, the organizations we represent and 14 others last fall called for a full public inquiry into all aspects of fracking operations in our province. We made that call because of abundant evidence that fracking in northeast B.C. was intensifying and that B.C.’s energy industry regulator, the Oil and Gas Commission, was failing to provide reasonable checks on fossil fuel industry excesses.

In issuing our collective call we said then — and we restate now — that a scientific “review” will not deliver meaningful changes. The people who live in the northeast, who drink the region’s water, who breathe its air, deserve nothing less than a full public inquiry into all aspects of fossil fuel industry operations.

It must also fully addresses the question of free, prior and informed consent, a cornerstone of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Michelle Mungall and all her Cabinet colleagues are tasked by Premier John Horgan to implement.

Now, sadly, we have even more reason to oppose a “scientific review.” Here’s why.

The review will be extremely narrowly focussed. Minister Mungall has tasked three scientists to look at water usage in fracking operations, examine earthquakes triggered by such operations and determine what methane may be vented into the atmosphere during fracking operations themselves. The panel is to make “recommendations” on how to “minimize” environmental risks.

Troublingly, at least one senior member of Mungall’s ministry (an assistant deputy minister) communicated with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) well before the panel was struck. Consequently, the association, which represents the very companies that are fracking in the province, received generous forewarning that the review would not look at the human health impacts associated with fracking or at the fossil fuel industry’s ballooning greenhouse gas emissions.

(A recent study in Alberta found emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, were 15 times greater than what fossil fuel companies operating in the Red Deer area were reporting to the provincial government).

Not only was CAPP forewarned about the limited B.C. fracking review, but it was encouraged well in advance of anyone else to get going on lining up its “expert” witnesses.

The public interest is clearly not being served here. Instead, the interests of an industry with a vested stake in maintaining the status quo are.

In just two years, Encana, one of the major companies drilling and fracking for natural gas in northeast B.C., says it will double its natural gas production and quintuple its gas liquids output, much of which will be destined for Alberta’s tarsands. That translates directly into increased health risks for the region’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents.

British Columbians deserve better. What’s needed are comprehensive changes to public policy. A full public inquiry could provide a needed roadmap. The government’s science panel most certainly will not.

Amy Lubik is a health researcher with the B.C. Chapter of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip is president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs.

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Elizabeth Dubois, University of Ottawa and Grant Blank, University of Oxford

“Information warfare” may be a top concern in the next Canadian election cycle, as a report on a workshop by CSIS suggests, but some fears about how people get their political information and the impact of social media are overstated.

In a recently published study, we show that fears about an “echo chamber” in which people encounter only information that confirms their existing political views are blown out of proportion. In fact, most people already have media habits that help them avoid echo chambers.

There is a common fear that people are using social media to access only specific types of political information and news. The echo chamber theory says people select information that conforms to their preferences.

A related theory about “filter bubbles” claims social media companies are incentivized to prioritize likeable and shareable content in an individual’s feed, which in turn puts people in an algorithmically constructed bubble.

The democratic problem with these supposed echo chambers and filter bubbles is that people are empowered to avoid politics if they want. This means they will be less aware of their political system, less informed and in turn less likely to vote — all bad signs for a healthy democracy.

People who like politics aren’t immune either. They might become increasingly polarized in their views since all they see are people confirming their own beliefs. While a lot of the current work is theoretical, a few studies have shown that echo chambers and filter bubbles could exist on Twitter or Facebook, for example.

People get information from many sources

But people don’t consume political information and news from only one source or channel.

Individuals have access to a wide range of media, from traditional news outlets on television, radio and newspapers (and their digital versions) to a wide range of social media sites and blogs. This means studies that focus on any one single platform simply cannot speak to the actual experiences of individuals.

We wanted to solve this problem by conducting a study examining the media habits of individuals. We wanted to understand what social media they use on a daily basis, what political information and news sources they incorporate in their daily lives, and whether they do things that might help them avoid echo chambers.

To do this we conducted a nationally representative online survey of 2,000 British adults. This is part of the larger Quello Search Project that examines the formation of political opinions and the digital media habits of adults in seven different countries. Unfortunately no similar Canadian data set exists at present.

Our analysis suggests that people are rarely caught in echo chambers. Only about eight per cent of the online adults in Great Britain are at risk of being trapped in an echo chamber.

Individuals actively check additional sources, change their minds based on information they find using search engines and seek out differing views. All of these are ways individuals can avoid that echo chamber effect.

Importantly, political interest and media diversity — how many sources of information and how many social media a person uses — both help people avoid the threats of echo chambers.

People who have more than one source of political information are far more likely to act to avoid echo chambers.

They encounter different perspectives, they verify information and they sometimes change their minds. Even people who are not interested in politics are likely to do things that help them avoid echo chambers as long as they have a diverse media diet.

There are widespread fears that so-called echo chambers and filter bubbles are leading to political polarization that poses a danger to democracy. But are the fears unfounded? https://t.co/wAaNMLzE3k

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 14, 2018

Fact-checking is crucial

Worries about political polarization are also dampened based on these results.

We fret about polarization, but in fact those who are politically interested are more likely to have encountered different opinions, checked facts and changed their minds about a political issue after searching for more information.

This means that most people are already on the right track for avoiding echo chambers. It also means that media literacy programs that emphasize incorporating multiple sources into your daily routines, and fact-checking, are crucial.

Social media platforms also have an important role to play.

Facebook and Twitter could still be home to communities that exchange information in a way that confirms existing beliefs and opinions. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s important to remember that people rarely get all their political information from just one place.

That said, social media companies can help promote media literacy in the very design of their platforms, for example by making sources of news content visible, explaining how their personalization algorithms work and offering suggested content that helps users find new perspectives.

Happily, some of this experimentation is going on within social media companies already. Facebook has experimented by tinkering with what shows up in news feeds and how content is flagged as false. Twitter recently announced a program to examine the health of conversations. So far there have been varying levels of success and criticism.

While we do not have access to data about the Canadian population, preliminary results from our U.S. data set, and from work others have been doing in different national contexts and with different samples from the U.K., suggests we should expect the same trends in Canada.

Most people have media habits that help them avoid echo chambers. When it comes to our elections, our democracy or information warfare, the threat of social media-enabled echo chambers is not a major concern.

Elizabeth Dubois, Assistant Professor, University of Ottawa and Grant Blank, Survey Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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By Melina Laboucan-Massimo, David Suzuki Foundation Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change Fellow. This piece originally appeared on the David Suzuki Foundation website.

On International Women’s Day, I doubt industrial projects like Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline are top of mind for most. But there is a direct link between natural resource extraction and violence against largely Indigenous women and girls, which serves as an important reminder: violence against the land begets violence against women.

Along with pipelines and the extractive economic engines they support — like Alberta’s oilsands — come so-called “man camps.” Located near extraction sites, these are where mostly male workers live in close quarters for weeks or months at a time.

Most are outsiders to the region, lured in by the prospect of making a lot of money in a short time. Many must leave their families and communities to find work in the oilsands, when their preference would be to stay put, due to economic downturns at home. They seldom have ties to neighbouring First Nations communities.

It’s not surprising that some workers turn to drugs, alcohol and sex to blow off steam during days off. Studies show that demand for sex work accompanies intensive resource development due to the high number of male workers with excess income. This creates a dangerous mix for women in nearby communities, as the transience of the mostly male workforce means few are held accountable for what they do in or near camp.

A recent Amnesty International study confirms what I and many other Indigenous Peoples have known for a long time: Indigenous women living near these camps suffer disproportionately high rates of violence.

In 2016, Amnesty’s Out of Sight, Out of Mind report found that resource extraction in northern communities puts women at risk. It spoke to women in B.C.’s Peace River region, like Helen Knott, who has experienced gender-based violence by workers serving Canada’s resource economy.

In the report, Knott alludes to the sense among many workers that their economic power allows them to express sexist and racist beliefs they would otherwise withhold. To justify violence, Knott adds that some workers would assume Indigenous women and girls were “drunk, easy and wanted it anyway.”

The problem plagues Indigenous women and their communities wherever resource extraction takes place. In North Dakota, a 2010-13 oil boom resulted in a dramatic increase in gender-based violence toward Indigenous women living in and around the Fort Berthold Reservation.

Research compiled by Honor the Earth found that the number of reported rapes increased as man camps more than doubled the region’s population, supporting the Bakken oil boom.

Indigenous women and girls already suffer the highest rates of violence in Canada. Development of environmentally destructive projects like pipelines only heightens the risk.

A 2015 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report on murdered and missing Indigenous women documented how, “the police have failed to adequately prevent and protect indigenous women and girls from killings, disappearances and extreme forms of violence, and have failed to diligently and promptly investigate these acts.”

Violence against Indigenous women has systemic causes that are colonial in nature, dating back to racist policies that included separating Indigenous children from their parents and forcibly placing them in residential schools.

We need to unpack the patriarchal, racist and colonial mentalities of Canadian society to ultimately address the reasons why Indigenous women’s lives are not valued in Canadian society as much as the lives of non-Indigenous women. This was so clearly exemplified in the recent court case regarding the murder of Tina Fontaine.

As tensions flare in British Columbia, Alberta and across Canada around the future of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, the largely ignored consequence of further injustice and abuse toward Indigenous women and girls is yet another reason — on a growing list — to shelve the project once and for all.

If we are serious about social equity for all women and girls — especially Indigenous mothers and sisters — then this International Women’s Day, we must recognize that violence against Earth is violence against women. The path toward a cleaner, safer and more just world means reconciliation with all women, girls and Mother Nature alike.

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.

By Candis Callison, Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Journalism, University of British Columbia and Mary-Lynn Young, Associate professor, Graduate School of Journalism, University of British Columbia

What can the events surrounding Colten Boushie’s death, the trial verdict and its media coverage tell us about the role of journalism and journalists in relation to Indigenous concerns in Canada? All too much.

There is a well-documented history of Canadian newspapers’ complicity with colonialism and state-sponsored violence against Indigenous people from pre-Confederation forward. And despite the last several decades of front-page coverage that includes the uprising in Oka to Idle No More and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, mainstream media are only doing marginally better than they have before.

Why race matters

Instead, Indigenous scholars, activists and community members are largely doing the important work of situating Colten Boushie’s life and death within the colonial context, answering not if race was a factor, but how and why it matters.

For those countering more than a century of journalism in Canada, the work requires looking at news media’s embedded and interwoven relationship with colonialism. In their book, Seeing Red: A History of Natives in Canadian Newspapers, Carmen Robertson and Mark Cronlund Anderson argue that Canadian media have — since before Confederation —continually reproduced stereotypes in which Indigenous people are found wanting morally, physically, mentally, historically.

This “othering” helps to “promote a nation,” an “imagined community” of Canada, in Benedict Anderson’s terms, in which Indigenous people are seen as on the margins and the brutality of settler colonialism is seen as natural and normal.

Indigenous journalists and public intellectuals do this work on social media, where trolls attack freelancers and not-for-profit media outlets, and the legal and institutional supports afforded to mainstream media are limited or unavailable.

This work entails articulating over and over the impact of white supremacy, colonialism and the indifference of Canadians about Indigenous peoples, and the enduring injustices and structural inequities they experience.

Some of these issues include: Missing and murdered women, youth suicide, poverty, lack of safe drinking water, inter-generational trauma from residential schools, lack of access to high school education in northern communities — a right of all other youth in this country — and the resilience required in the face of these and many other injustices.

With all of the rhetoric around journalism as a public service, it is a wonder that journalists haven’t produced more reporting and analysis that might work towards transforming the systems that continue to be stacked against Indigenous people, including youth like Colten Boushie.

How the Media Failed Colten Bushie https://t.co/c2S0r2Qias via @candiscallison @marylynnyoung @UBCJournalism @ConversationCA #JusticeForColten #media #indigenous #journalism #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/z0QUis2r9f

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 16, 2018

Public interest in Indigenous issues

Despite a surge of reporting on Indigenous issues over the past five years as a result of both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Idle No More movement, as well as the broad public interest in Indigenous issues as newsworthy, mainstream media are often late to coverage or they don’t show up at all.

Recent coverage of the trials related to the killing of Tina Fontaine and Colten Boushie illustrate exactly how problematic mainstream media can be when they do show up. That’s in part because Canadian journalists are largely abdicating their role in both understanding and articulating for their audiences “what happened” about an event involving Indigenous concerns in a way that accounts for colonialism and structural disparities.

Common critiques of media inlude: Persistent racialized stereotypes, lack of Indigenous voices and experts, an over-emphasis of conflict between two parties instead of multiple parties and perspectives, a lack of complexity and historical context and ignoring fly-over or rural communities.

Enduring whiteness of Canadian journalism

As researchers and journalism educators examining and teaching the relationship between journalism, gender, technology and colonialism, we continually encounter a lack of resources and an underdevelopment of Canadian journalism and journalism education when it comes to these issues.

Even though many Canadians are finally beginning to recognize the colonization and genocide that undergirds the foundation of this country, it might surprise you to know that there is only one full-time Indigenous journalist at a national Canadian newspaper in 2018: Tanya Talaga at the Toronto Star, the author of Seven Fallen Feathers.

There are more Indigenous journalists in public broadcasting in Canada, which is in part a result of the specific regulatory environment that requires greater attention to issues of equity and inclusion. APTN provides an important platform as part of its mission and mandate.

Journalism education isn’t much better than Canadian media institutions. One of us is among the few Indigenous professors at a school of journalism in Canada. Journalism schools also rely on working journalists such as the CBC’s Duncan McCue to come in as adjunct professors to teach students how to report in Indigenous communities.

In addition, most journalism schools in Canada are often in separate units from their communications school cousins, which may result in journalism students having less access to important critiques of structural power relations and inequities — and how media representations can further those inequities.

This is not a surprise given the many studies that have reported on the persistent whiteness of Canadian journalism:

• A 1998 study by scholars David Pritchard and Florian Sauvageau, referenced in this report, showed that the vast majority (97 per cent) of journalists in Canada were white from a survey across media.
• A 2006 study of diversity at Canadian newspapers by John Miller at Ryerson University found that visible minority journalists accounted for 3.4 per cent of the workforce.
• A 2011 study of journalists and diversity in the major journalism organizations (text and broadcast) in the Toronto GTA by Wendy Cukier, John Miller, Kristen Aspevig and Dale Carl found that 4.8 per cent of media decision-makers were visible minorities.
• The CBC’s 2016 employment equity annual report identified that Indigenous employees accounted for two per cent of permanent staff, while visible minorities were 10.5 per cent.

These gaps are particularly problematic because of both the long history of getting it wrong on Indigenous people and the implications this has for rights, land, shared histories and the many systems that govern everyday modern life. Not only that, Indigenous communities are a vital aspect of Canada’s media audiences, and they are paying attention as the outcry over recent media coverage demonstrates.

Digital media has played a role in enabling talking back through platforms like Twitter and independent Indigenous media. These media counter news agendas, engage with audiences and encourage a transformation of perspective that allow us to see various colonial histories and varied Indigenous perspectives.

However, even as strides have been made to represent Indigenous concerns, journalism must do better.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Mark Winfield is professor of environmental studies at York University and co-chair of the university’s Sustainable Energy Initiative. This piece originally appeared on Policy Options.

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Dwight Ball announced in late November a public inquiry into how the economically disastrous Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project was approved.

In reality, there is little mystery.

The project was strongly supported by the governments of former premiers Danny Williams and Kathy Dunderdale. A very limited economic review was permitted by the province’s Public Utilities Board, and the federal-provincial environmental review panel established in relation to the project was barred from examining its economic viability.

Both the board and the panel, to their credit, questioned the need for the project, but their advice was ignored.

A similar story has been unfolding on Canada’s west coast. The new British Columbia government of Premier John Horgan found itself faced with the question of whether to continue the construction of the controversial Site C hydro dam project. In the end, the B.C. government determined that it had no choice but to proceed, given the costs of cancelling the project.

ICYMI: NDP Government’s Site C Math a Flunk, Say Project Financing Experts

The story behind Site C is very like that around Muskrat Falls.

The project was strongly supported by the government of former premier Christy Clark, and the normal economic review process before the B.C. Utilities Commission was bypassed. The joint federal-provincial environmental assessment process that did occur was deeply constrained, and it remains the subject of long-standing criticism from the affected First Nations and communities.

The stories of these projects in B.C. and in Newfoundland and Labrador stand in contrast to the process that occurred in Manitoba over the same time period.

That province had proposed a massive hydro project of its own: the 1,485-megawatt Conawapa Dam.

However, Manitoba’s approach was fundamentally different from that taken in B.C. and Newfoundland. Rather than short-circuiting the normal assessment and approvals processes for these types of projects, the government of Manitoba undertook a substantial public review of the economic rationale and environmental and social impacts of the project.

This included consideration of the need for the project and the availability of alternative ways of meeting the province’s electricity needs.

Given the opportunity for a proper review, the Manitoba Public Utilities Board determined that there was no economic justification for the project. The dam did not proceed as a result.

Although several smaller related projects did still go ahead, notably the controversial Bipole III transmission project, the outcome of the review saved Manitoba residents from the kinds of catastrophic costs now faced by people in B.C. and in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The story, however, does not stop there.  

If B.C. and Newfoundland and Labrador had followed the type of comprehensive public review undertaken by Manitoba for its hydro megaproject, they might well have avoided the disastrous situations they now find themselves in. https://t.co/gmBrjD2nkl

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 24, 2018

In central Canada, the government of Ontario has embarked on an energy megaproject of its own: the reconstruction of 10 nuclear reactors at the Bruce and Darlington nuclear power plants. If everything goes according to plan, the projects are estimated to cost in the range of $26 billion. Many critics suspect, based on the outcomes of the province’s previous nuclear refurbishment projects, that things will not go according to plan.

The costs could be tens of billions of dollars higher than the province’s estimates.

There is even less excuse for the behaviour of the government of Ontario, which seems poised to condemn its residents to decades of massive electricity debt as well.

Surprisingly, particularly in a province where rising hydro rates are the number one political issue, Ontario’s nuclear reconstruction projects have been subject to even less meaningful public review than the Site C and Muskrat Falls projects.

There have been no public hearings at all before the province’s energy regulator on the need for these projects, their likely costs or the availability of alternatives to them. It has been reported, for example, that Hydro-Québec has offered Ontario firm, long-term deals for electricity exports at a fraction of the best-case estimates of the costs of the nuclear refurbishments.

There has been no formal public examination of this option, or of the need for the refurbishments in the context of the province’s current electricity surplus.

The lessons that flow from the experiences of these four provinces seem clear. If B.C. and Newfoundland and Labrador had followed the type of comprehensive public review undertaken by Manitoba for its hydro megaproject, they might well have avoided the disastrous situations they now find themselves in.

There is even less excuse for the behaviour of the government of Ontario, which seems poised to condemn its residents to decades of massive electricity debt as well.

The federal government is not without blame in these events. All these projects were subject to some form of federal approval and environmental assessment.

In each case, the federal government deferred to the wishes of the projects’ provincial sponsors, limiting the scope of federal reviews and avoiding unwelcome questions about need, alternatives and economic viability.

Justin Trudeau’s government was elected two years ago in part because of promises to reform the federal environmental assessment and regulatory review processes that apply to these types of projects.

So far, the Trudeau government has produced a discussion paper, which in large part proposes to leave in place the existing processes, established in their current form through former prime minister Stephen Harper’s 2012 “responsible resource development” initiative.

ICYMI: Is Trudeau Quietly Turning His Back On Fixing Canada’s Environmental Laws?

The situations that are now emerging in British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Ontario make it clear that those approaches are not good enough.

Federal and provincial assessment and review processes need to ensure that there are meaningful, public evaluations of the economic rationality and social and environmental impacts of energy and resource projects before they proceed. It remains to be seen whether Canadian governments will draw the same conclusion.

Canada’s taxpayers and energy ratepayers should hope that they do.

Image: Early Site C construction along the Peace River, 2016. Photo: Garth Lenz | DeSmog Canada

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Amid continued controversy, Kinder Morgan is poised to break ground on its $7.4 billion Trans Mountain Expansion Project. When the pipeline is complete, it will triple the volume of diluted bitumen, or Dilbit, that reaches Canada’s Pacific shoreline to 890,000 barrels per day.

The Trans Mountain pipeline has been in operation since 1953. It crosses numerous waterways as it snakes its way from Edmonton to Burnaby, B.C., including the lower portions of the Fraser River — North America’s primary salmon-producing river system. The pipeline expansion has raised concerns about how its failure might have an impact on these fish.

It is efficient and cost-effective to transport oil by pipeline, and leaks have been infrequent and usually small in Canada.

Yet catastrophes do occur.

Just ask residents of Marshall, Mich., about the 3.2 million litres of Dilbit that contaminated the Kalamazoo River in July 2010 after an Enbridge pipeline failed.

Salmon are integral to Canada’s West Coast

Pacific salmon are deeply ingrained in the fabric of Canada. They are a key link between aquatic and terrestrial food chains, connecting marine algae to bears and forests. They are a central element in First Nations cultures and economies. And they generate more than $500 million in revenue annually through the combined activities of sport fishing, commercial harvest and tourism.

As a biologist, what fascinates me most about Pacific salmon is their remarkable life cycle.

Take sockeye, for example, an iconic and abundant species of Pacific salmon. Sockeye eggs develop slowly during the winter months, buried in the same gravelly river sediments once occupied by their ancestors. After hatching, they spend up to three years swimming through inland lakes before transforming into silvery, salt-tolerant fish that escape to the Pacific Ocean.

Years later they return by the millions for a single chance to spawn in their birthplace streams. Afterwards, their bright red bodies decorate the riverbank, becoming a staple meal for bears and eagles, and an essential nutrient source for the forest ecosystem.

How do we prepare for a “worst-case scenario” — a pipeline failure that contaminates sockeye habitat? via @salderman80 https://t.co/fChyYqhRI4

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 22, 2018

In recent years, the number of sockeye returning to spawn has decreased dramatically, and this is especially true for populations of the lower Fraser River. Many factors, like urbanization, have contributed to this decline, and it is clear that the survival of the salmon’s early life stages and its successful ocean migration are key to the long-term stability of Fraser River sockeye.

Understanding how a Dilbit spill would affect sockeye during these early life stages can help prepare us for a future we hope won’t happen.

What is Dilbit anyway?

Bitumen is Canada’s black gold. It is a heavy, viscous type of crude oil found in vast quantities in Canada’s oilsands. Extracted bitumen is blended with lighter hydrocarbons (diluents) to relax its tar-like consistency into a flowing liquid ready for transport. The blended products are called Dilbit, short for diluted bitumen.

Diluting raw bitumen has another advantage besides allowing it to flow. It lowers the heavy oil’s density to below that of water, meaning that any Dilbit released into the aquatic environment should float.

But the behaviour of spilled Dilbit in water depends on many things, such as water flow and turbidity. Not to mention that the diluent evaporates rapidly, taking its added buoyancy with it. So the possibility that spilled Dilbit will sink is a valid concern — and sunken Dilbit is hard to clean up.

Four years after its spill in the Kalamazoo River, Enbridge was still dredging river sediments for sunken bitumen.

What would a spill mean for sockeye?

Like all crude oils, Dilbit is a mixture of hundreds of chemicals, and we know that many of these are toxic to fish.

One consequence of crude oil exposure in developing fish is the damage it can cause to the heart. Much of this toxicity is blamed on a single class of chemicals in crude oils called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs for short. Fish embryos exposed to individual PAHs or to crude oil, at real-world concentrations, can develop heart deformities that affect cardiac function.

Often, and perhaps not unexpectedly, this cardiac toxicity can lead to reduced swimming performance. For a sockeye, that’s a scary thought. These aquatic athletes depend on their strong hearts to complete two rigorous migrations.

So how do we prepare for a “worst-case scenario” — a pipeline failure that contaminates sockeye habitat?

Using science to plan ahead

For the past four years, I have been working with experts in cardiovascular adaptations, oil toxicity and salmon physiology to build a comprehensive understanding of Dilbit toxicity to early life stages of salmon. Our collaboration is part of an ongoing commitment by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to support research on environmental issues related to the oil and gas industry.

In controlled laboratory experiments, we expose salmon to low and environmentally relevant concentrations of Dilbit over realistic exposure times. We test fish at a variety of early life stages and look for sub-lethal effects that might indirectly affect their survival.

So far, our research shows that spill-like exposure conditions can impair the swimming performance of juvenile fish by as much as 10 per cent and lead to pathological changes in heart tissue.

This is a big deal. It means that persistent Dilbit contamination in a young salmon’s environment could conceivably reduce their chance of successfully migrating out to the ocean, and contribute to further population decline.

Our current work will determine if swimming performance can be recovered and if the heart pathology is reversible once the fish move to clean water.

We are also working towards developing blood biomarkers of Dilbit exposure. Blood biomarkers are a valuable diagnostic tool, and could be used to monitor and manage the health of wild salmon following a spill.

A take home message

All eyes are on Kinder Morgan now, but the Trans Mountain pipeline is just one branch in transport network that delivers oilsands products across the continent. Like it or not, our world still runs on fossil fuels and Canada’s vast bitumen reserves are a difficult resource to ignore.

But there is a silver lining to this story.

At the lowest concentrations we tested, and at the shortest exposure times, the salmon’s swimming performance was not impaired. A rapid response to contain a Dilbit spill is therefore crucial to minimizing the effects on sockeye.

More importantly, the federal and provincial governments must rigorously enforce pipeline regulations to make sure that companies like Kinder Morgan build and maintain their pipelines to the highest standard.

Sarah L. Alderman, Research Associate in Environmental Physiology, University of Guelph

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Illustration: David Seibold via Flickr

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.

By Edward Struzik

This article was originally published on The Conversation Canada.

Northwest Territories Premier Bob McLeod was right when he issued a “red alert” in November and called for an urgent national debate on the future of the Northwest Territories. His peers, the premiers of Nunavut and the Yukon Territory, would be justified in calling for the same thing.

As housing, poverty and unemployment statistics show, Northerners are at a crossroads in their efforts to find a balance between a traditional way of life that puts country food on the table and one that provides basic goods, luxuries and economic opportunities that most southerners take for granted.

McLeod, however, was wrong in complaining about a “colonial” attack on the future of oil and gas development in the Arctic.

If the past tells us anything about the future, forging the Arctic’s future on fossil fuel development is not the way to move forward.

Leading energy experts have been saying this since 2006, when international energy consultants Wood Mackenzie and Fugro Robertson questioned “the long-considered view that the Arctic represents one of the last great oil and gas frontiers and a strategic energy supply cache” for the U.S. and Canada.

Sliding into the sea

In Canada, Arctic oil and gas has offered no significant returns since the late 1960s when the Canadian government engineered a plan to consolidate the interests of 75 companies with holdings in the Arctic. As a major shareholder in Panarctic Oil and Gas, and then Petro-Canada, the government used its resources, regulatory control and taxpayer money to encourage oil and gas exploration in the region.

Since then, government subsidization of Arctic oil and gas development has continued unabated at a very high cost.

In 2008, the federal government launched a program to bring petroleum geologists to the Arctic each year. To date, this program has spent nearly $200 million of taxpayers’ money to help the energy and mining industries find new sources of fossil fuels and minerals in the region with very limited success.

Another $16 million was spent to find ways to extract natural gas from methane hydrates in the Mackenzie Delta, a resource the energy industry has showed little interest in because of the technical and economic challenges associated with extracting it.

The recently completed $300 million Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway, built on rapidly melting permafrost, is another example of this misguided government strategy. According to a study done by the Northwest Territories government, it promises to save the town of Tuktoyaktuk $1.5 million in cost-of-living deliveries, and increase tourism — a good thing if it weren’t for the fact that the town of 900 is sliding into the sea.

Its main purpose, however, was to support energy development. It promises to deliver between $347 million and $516 million in increased cash flows from transportation savings over 45 years to resource companies operating in the Arctic.

The problem is that none of this Arctic oil and gas has ever made it to market, with one exception: A few shiploads of oil that Panarctic sent out from Melville Island in the 1980s.

Canada's North Needs Many Things, But Oil and Gas Drilling Isn't One of Them https://t.co/LMTMHR6Cb1 via @ConversationCA & @Kujjua #cdnpoli #arctic #climate

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 3, 2018

What does the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry Have to Do With This?

Many have blamed the failure of Canada’s Arctic oil and gas strategy on Justice Thomas Berger’s Mackenzie Valley Pipeline inquiry in the mid-1970s.

Berger’s report recommended a 10-year moratorium on pipeline construction in the Mackenzie Valley so that First Nations could resolve their land claims with the federal government. It also led to the creation of a complex permitting process, which has slowed approvals for a more recent pipeline construction project.

The inquiry cast Berger as a symbol of environmental and social justice with his recognition of Indigenous rights.

But the real reason why Arctic oil and gas has never made it south is because of the high cost of piping it over land or shipping it by sea to market.

The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Project that Justice Berger considered in the 1970s was touted as “the biggest project in free enterprise history..”

Had it been built, it would have been an economic disaster. Bob Blair, the Calgary-based entrepreneur who wanted to build one of two proposed pipelines, suggested as much years later when he wondered why anyone would try again to ship Arctic oil and gas south.

The second Mackenzie Valley pipeline would have fared even worse. First proposed in 2004, the pipeline would have required gas prices to be in the range of $6 to $8 to break even.

That looked good in the years that followed when gas prices temporarily soared to nearly $15 in June 2008. Since then, however, the price has sat largely in the range of $2 to $6. The cost of the $20 billion pipeline would now need gas prices to triple from current rates to recoup its cost. That’s why Imperial Oil, its main proponent, received permission to delay the project until 2022 at the earliest.

In the meantime, Canadian governments have seemed oblivious to the fact that human-caused climate change — largely due to the burning of fossil fuels — is ending the Arctic as we know it. Since the 1970s, air temperatures in the Arctic have risen by as much as 5℃ and sea ice area has declined by about 12 per cent per decade.

The ripple effect

A warmer and shorter ice season means some polar bears have less time to hunt seals, and mosquitoes and flies have more time to take their toll on caribou, whose populations are at a historic low.

As sea levels continue to rise, powerful storm surges are causing massive saltwater intrusions, imperilling the freshwater lakes, wetlands and deltas that support tens of millions of nesting birds.

Soon low-lying coastal Inuit communities such as Tuktoyaktuk, sitting on rapidly thawing permafrost, will have to be relocated, like residents of the Alaskan community of Shishmaref have voted to do.

We are already seeing the rippling effects of some of these changes throughout the Arctic ecosystem.

Capelin, not Arctic cod, is now the dominant prey fish in Hudson Bay. Killer whales, once largely absent from the Arctic, are beginning to prey on narwhal and beluga, important food sources for the Inuit. Polar bears at the southern end of their range are getting thinner and producing fewer cubs. Trees and shrubs are overtaking tundra landscapes. Sub-Arctic forests are burning bigger, hotter and more often.

What the future holds for Inuit and First Nations peoples of the north, whose cultures grew out of a close association with this frigid world, is a puzzle.

Those cultures are already in a state of rapid economic reorganization and social readjustment. Most of these people continue to live in overcrowded houses. They have stopped or reduced their consumption of caribou, walrus and other Arctic animals, not because they prefer store-bought beef and pork but because the caribou populations are collapsing, and the receding sea ice makes it difficult for them to hunt marine mammals.

Steered by Northerners

What will the future Arctic look like? That is a wide-open question that can only be answered by debates steered by northerners.

Here’s a list of topics worth discussing. Oil and gas development isn’t one of them.

The Canadian Arctic needs an affordable and efficient air and road network that can bring in tourists and investors.

It needs museums to display artifacts — such as those in the recently discovered Franklin ships — that have been routinely shipped south.

It needs food security that goes beyond subsidizing the transportation of southern foods to the North.

It needs renewable energy to replace diesel, which is prohibitively expensive and polluting.

It needs a better form of post-secondary education that combines traditional knowledge with western scientific knowledge — and a way to convince its best students to stay home, instead of relocating to the south.

It needs a forward-looking ecological conservation plan that will ensure a future for polar bears, caribou, walrus, narwhal, beluga and other Arctic species.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to temporarily ban future oil and gas exploration in the Arctic in December 2016 was a good start to setting a new course for the North.

So was Mary Simon’s report “A New Shared Arctic Leadership Model.” It makes 40 recommendations, many of which have been made several times in the past four decades.

Now it’s time to find new ways of moving forward with a road map to the future that will lead to economic advancement and improvements in the quality of life that Northerners long for and deserve.

The oil and gas industry has has tried and failed for more than 40 years to make a contribution. It doesn’t deserve to be part of this future.

Edward Struzik is a fellow at Queen's Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy in the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University.

Image: Edward Struzik

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