Though she grew up in Saskatchewan, Santana Dreaver stood out when The Narwhal began looking for a B.C.-based Indigenous Journalism Fellow. For one thing, Santana had spent time at CBC learning the fundamentals of journalism through its Indigenous Pathways program, accruing bylines and skills. But she also had a passion for journalism and a clear vision of the kinds of stories she wanted to tell: centring youth, grappling with ecological disasters and industry impacts, and rooted in sovereignty and traditional practices.

Here at The Narwhal, Santana will be spending 2026 learning about in-depth feature writing and reporting, and telling stories from across the province. You’ll see her byline on IndigiNews as well, which is a partner in this fellowship, and she’ll be receiving training and mentorship from the Indigenous Journalists Association. Santana has already racked up a few bylines at The Narwhal — covering B.C.’s critical minerals push and the women leading natural disaster response across Canada — but we’re thrilled to formally introduce her to you. You’ll be seeing a lot of her in the year ahead!

What inspired you to go into journalism? 

There were a few moments growing up that inspired me to be a journalist. I must have been five or six when my photograph and interview made the local newspaper — a group of us from the Kinistin Saulteaux Nation went to the Tisdale, Sask., airport to go on mini-airplane rides. My grandma was the school receptionist and had the newspaper clipping hung up in the staff room. I remember feeling pride seeing it there. 

When I was eleven, I competed in the Saskatchewan First Nation winter games, hosted in Saskatoon that year. I won two gold medals in badminton, in under-12 singles and doubles — my first big competition in the sport. Between matches a news crew came to the courts and my coach told me to go and interview. Being on TV for playing a sport I loved made an impact on me. 

Lastly, I grew up around storytelling my entire childhood. Stories are how culture is passed down from generation to generation. As a Gen Z Saulteaux and Plains Cree person, journalism always felt like a modern way for me to tell stories and practise that aspect of my culture.

You grew up in northern Saskatchewan on Kinistin Saulteaux Nation, and you’re a member of Mistawasis Nêhiyawak. Now that you’re in B.C., what’s something you miss about the Prairies? 

Without stating the obvious that I miss my family, what I often find myself missing is open and quiet spaces. The Lower Mainland can sometimes feel congested for someone who grew up in rural and northern Saskatchewan. 

I miss my connection with the sky — thunderstorms, the bright sunlight nearly everyday, star constellations, moon cycles and the Northern Lights are harder to see with the light and air pollution here. 

Something I never expected to miss is being around bison. My community has had bison since I was a child, housed in the fields behind our house, and my appreciation for these relatives only grew the more I learned about salmon in Coast Salish lands, reflecting on my own values and culture throughout the years. 

You served on former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s youth council — what was that experience like? 

Advising the former prime minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet for 2.5 years was a rewarding and challenging experience. In my personal life, I was branded as a Liberal when the position was non-partisan, and on the council I can say confidently I was one of the most vocal members to speak about issues affecting Indigenous people in Canada and overseas.

I felt immense pressure to use my access in government to push forward Indigenous Rights, and found myself wanting to quit from time to time. All of that said, I learned how to say the hard things when it mattered and my confidence grew realizing how much knowledge I carried forward to roundtables and consultations. 

Two highlights were attending an online safety symposium, surrounded by journalists and hosted by the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Canada’s first Indigenous Governor General, at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, where I ended up at dinner with people from TikTok Canada. The second was being invited to the Prime Minister’s Office for an invitation-only meeting following ongoing efforts to advocate for Palestine with fellow council member Ganiyat Sadiq.

You have a lot of experience in emergency preparedness work, including as an advisor to the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness, and a board member for Preparing Our Home, which is focused on emergency readiness for Indigenous youth. What drew you to that work? 

Just before the pandemic I attended Preparing Our Home in Osoyoos, B.C., as a youth participant. I was supposed to fly to New York City after the gathering to attend a conference at the United Nations when the city declared a state of emergency, cancelling what would have been my first time at the U.N. 

While the cancellation was disappointing, I felt grateful to be in Canada during the outbreak of COVID, and it made everything I learned at Preparing Our Home stick with me as one participant spoke about pandemic protocols in her Northern Ontario community.

After moving to B.C. by myself in 2021, disaster after disaster happened in the province. I lived on my own and had no emergency contact at the time, so educating myself about the lands I had moved to and how to prepare for its potential dangers became critical when I realized no one else was going to do it for me. 

What are your favourite stories to report?

My favourite stories to report on are emergency management stories, anything related to the land and Indigenous Rights, governance and policy. As for my favourite story thus far, it changes often, but one that stays top of mind is an Okanagan salmon restoration story that I wrote for CBC. 

I could feel how happy everyone involved was, and it stayed the top story on the CBC B.C. website for a few days. I don’t want to associate ratings with a personal favourite story, but that shows it was a special moment in the province for a lot of people, including myself. 

You spent a year at CBC in the Indigenous Pathways program, but before that, you worked for Sacred Earth, an Indigenous women-led organization focused on climate justice and energy transitions. What did you learn in that role about the challenges of tackling fossil fuel dependency?

Working for Sacred Earth, I learned that governments in Canada subsidize oil and gas companies, not leaving much incentive for corporations to transition to cleaner energy methods. General misinformation about clean energy, and oil and gas being the status quo for a century in the country is also a barrier in tackling fossil fuel dependency. The start-up and maintenance costs of transitioning is also a barrier, especially in rural and remote communities. 

You’re spending all of 2026 at The Narwhal. What’s one story you hope to tell before you leave? 

During my time with The Narwhal I hope to tell stories that matter to B.C. First Nations people. I am always thinking about the land I reside on, how British Columbia obtained it and how I, as a guest, can be back in a way that feels good to me, which I hope to do with my reporting. Early on after moving here I learned about the concept of witnessing in Salish culture, and I hope as a journalist I can be a witness to what local nations are doing and comfortable sharing.

The Narwhal’s 2026 Indigenous Journalism Fellowship is possible with support from the Sitka Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

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.

In September 2024, the Alberta Energy Regulator approved the transfer of hundreds of oil and gas wells and related facilities to MAGA Energy, short for Make Alberta Great Again, despite the company’s dire financial situation — and regulations meant to block struggling companies from taking over new sites. 

The company’s financial troubles are documented in a Jan. 24, 2025, email obtained by The Narwhal and sent by MAGA Energy’s vice-president of operations, Mark Ross, to a landowner.

MAGA has been in “survival mode over the last 14 months,” Ross said in the email, adding the company “has not been able to pay landowners and other vendors for many months.”

“MAGA is in difficult times right now,” he wrote, noting another company, Tidewater Midstream, which he said has processed 90 per cent of MAGA’s natural gas and oil, had shut their facilities in Acheson, Alta., in late 2023. “Our revenues have been chopped by 90 per cent as a result.” MAGA Energy declined to answer detailed questions from The Narwhal, including about the contents of the January 2025 email, and did not confirm or deny that it sent the email.

Nine months after MAGA lost its processor — and according to the email, most of its revenue — the regulator approved MAGA Energy’s takeover of 170 oil and gas wells, 30 related facilities and 47 pipeline licences from another company, Journey Energy.

The email, shared with The Narwhal by another disgruntled landowner and confirmed with the original recipient (who did not want to be identified) — raises serious questions about the regulator’s ability to prevent unstable companies from taking over more oil and gas wells. 

When financially struggling companies take over old wells, they may not be able — or may choose not — to pay landowners land lease payments, cover cleanup costs or pay municipal taxes. MAGA’s email outlining its financial struggles was in response to the landowner reaching out about missing land lease payments they claimed were owed.

In the email, Ross said the company expected to be on solid footing by the middle of 2025 and then directed the landowner to a government tribunal that uses tax dollars to reimburse landowners when oil and companies don’t pay their leases. 

“In the meantime,” he wrote. “I have advised landowners to contact the provincial government’s Land and Property Rights Tribunal where you can put in a claim for the outstanding rental payments.”

“The government will then ensure that they get paid by MAGA in due course as they have many ways of ensuring that the funds will be recovered by MAGA.”

Data shows the government fails to collect those funds more than 99 per cent of the time, and, instead, taxpayers foot the bill.

Meanwhile, MAGA, which has also dipped its toes into Bitcoin mining, has missed hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to landowners, according to an Alberta government tribunal.

“I don’t know how many companies are like MAGA — they’re not the only ones, they can’t be,” Jennifer Stephenson, a landowner with four MAGA wells on her property, previously told The Narwhal.

“We’ll get paid through the government, but that gets to be a moot point.” Stephenson said of the government using tax dollars to pay landowners. “I’m paying myself.”

Government collects less than one per cent of missing lease payments

A database of tribunal decisions shows the government has covered hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of what it found to be unpaid leases for MAGA Energy. The database contains 175 individual tribunal decisions related to MAGA Energy, which The Narwhal sorted through one by one, as the Land and Property Rights Tribunal declined to provide a detailed breakdown of how much it has paid out on behalf of the company.

It also said it was not responsible for trying to collect the money from delinquent companies. 

The tribunal did say wait times are down sharply this year and that the situation is expected to improve as it updates its services, including a pilot project to streamline repeat applications.

“Under this pilot, landowners will no longer need to submit a new application to the Land and Property Rights Tribunal for each year payment has not been made,” Mike Hartfield, the executive director of the tribunal, said by email.

“In prior years, due to the large volume of applications being received, decision timelines extended to one year or longer, so we’re seeing some considerable improvement in that regard,” he said.  

The tribunal has paid $27 million so far in 2025-26.

Treasury Board and Finance, the ministry that oversees Crown debt collection, did not respond to questions from The Narwhal by publication time.

But MAGA isn’t the only company to have its obligations covered by the province.

Previous reporting by The Narwhal showed the government doled out almost $150 million to cover leases from oil and gas companies in the province between 2010 and 2024. The government only recovered $1.4 million from oil and gas companies in that same time — less than one per cent. 

In 2024, the government paid $30 million to cover the lease obligations of private companies, a 4,500 per cent increase since 2010.

Data obtained via a freedom of information request shows just $167,000 — less than half a per cent of the total paid out in 2024 — was recovered from the companies that missed payments.

The issue of lease payments, however, is just one factor the regulator is supposed to consider when approving a transfer of licences.

Alberta Energy Regulator has a system that’s supposed to stop delinquent companies from taking on new wells

The Alberta Energy Regulator approved the transfer of wells, pipelines and facilities from Journey Energy to MAGA Energy on Sept. 13, 2024. Transfer documents from the regulator show MAGA is the majority owner of all but one well transferred from Journey and all of the facilities.

According to the regulator’s own policies, a licence transfer is supposed to trigger a “holistic licencee assessment of both the transferor and transferee.” The regulator can also demand a security deposit prior to the approval of a transfer if it deems there’s an increased risk. 

A ministerial order issued to the regulator by former Alberta Energy Minister Peter Guthrie in 2023, which was in effect at the time of the MAGA transfer, prevents the regulator from approving the transfer of licences to or from a company that owes more than $20,000 in unpaid municipal taxes. An updated order maintains that threshold.

According to the minutes from a Sturgeon County council meeting, MAGA Energy owed the county almost $400,000 in taxes in July 2023 and was denied its request for a monthly payment plan, but the company and the county came to an agreement for repaying its taxes in September of that year.

A spokesperson for Sturgeon County said MAGA was required to pay its outstanding 2023 taxes in full. 

“MAGA Energy made a portion of the payment back to the county; but there was still an amount owing,” according to the county.

“The breach of the agreement was reported to the Alberta Energy Regulator on March 15, 2024, as part of the regular quarterly oil and gas reporting. MAGA Energy has not made any further payment towards the arrears, nor have they paid any current taxes for 2024 or 2025. MAGA Energy continues to incur penalties on these amounts.”

The county confirmed the amount owing exceeded the $20,000 threshold set out in the ministerial order. 

The company is not on a list of companies that have failed to pay taxes in Brazeau County, where Stephenson lives and where MAGA has a cluster of wells, revealed in a council agenda package in 2025.

A spokesperson for Leduc County said they were unable to share any information about whether MAGA was in arrears.

The Alberta Energy Regulator said any licence transfer would have to comply with the ministerial order in place at the time, which can include a payment plan for overdue taxes. 

“In this case, MAGA Energy Ltd. met the requirements to proceed,” according to an unsigned email from the regulator. “Details of the evidence MAGA provided is not public information; it is between MAGA and the municipality or municipalities in which the arrears existed at that time.”

The regulator did not immediately respond when asked about the amount outstanding with Sturgeon County.

In June, the regulator suspended MAGA’s ability to acquire new licences due to its failure to meet its annual liability spending quota — the amount a company must pay to safely shut down and clean up old facilities. The regulator could suspend MAGA’s operations if it doesn’t provide a security deposit to satisfy its obligations.

It’s unclear why the September 2024 transfer was approved when the company was in financial distress, or whether that information was available to the regulator at the time of the transfer. It’s also not known if the regulator asked for a security deposit for this transfer. 

The regulator did not answer specific questions from The Narwhal regarding the licence transfer to MAGA Energy, aside from the question of municipal taxes, and instead pointed to links on its website regarding regulatory oversight for transfers.

Shaun Fluker, a law professor and executive director of the Public Interest Law Clinic at the University of Calgary who has extensively studied energy regulation in Alberta, said there are serious questions about what information the regulator actually collects and how it uses that information.

“If you just read the Alberta Energy Regulator’s materials, it sounds like they’re doing a fabulous job, it says all the right things,” he said. “The problem is there’s real doubt that they actually do this work. And even if they do, there’s real doubt that they use it.”

Fluker said there is a lack of transparency that prevents scrutiny of the regulations and their application in the real world, including whether the regulator demanded security in the case of transfer to MAGA Energy in 2024. 

At the end of that line of regulatory decisions are landowners.

Landowners say they are out money — and out of patience

Karl Zajes says he too is owed money from MAGA for wells on his property in a rural area of Alberta west of Edmonton in Leduc County. He said he filed his claim with the Land and Property Rights Tribunal in February and is still waiting for compensation. 

Several landowners who spoke with The Narwhal, representing five different properties with a dozen MAGA wells between them, said there’s been a lack of communication from the company and they are frustrated with having to go to the tribunal for payment.

Collectively, the group says they are owed approximately $40,000 since the cheques stopped coming at the beginning of the year. 

Stephenson, who lives near Zajes in Brazeau County, said she is owed more than $17,000 for MAGA wells on her property and is angry the company was allowed to take over the sites.

“Up here, 99 per cent of the time they’re super, super good,” she said of oil and gas companies operating in the area. “And there is that one per cent that, it shouldn’t happen.”

She questioned why the transfer from Journey to MAGA went through and said problems started soon after the change in ownership. 

“Why are you allowing that to happen?” Stephenson asked.

The Alberta government did not respond to questions from The Narwhal by publication time.

MAGA Energy also received federal funds

It’s not just lease payments that are outstanding from MAGA Energy, nor is it the only time the government has covered the company’s costs.

The company received at least $650,000 in well remediation help from the federally funded site rehabilitation program, which was administered by the province. Data for the first three rounds of funding were never released, so that figure could be higher. It also doesn’t include any money the company may have received for its previous wells on the Enoch Cree Nation that received site rehabilitation funds.

As a private company, assessing its operations is difficult and there is no publicly available financial information, but Ross’s email to the landowner said MAGA was negotiating with “a major financial funder that will enable the gas plant and battery to be restarted and thus enabling our production to resume.”MAGA Energy did not respond to multiple requests for interviews over the span of a week. The Narwhal visited the company’s headquarters in downtown Calgary to hand-deliver a list of questions and spoke with Ross.“We’ve been talking about this today and how we approach this, because we’re not sure there’s a win in it for us,” he said, before declining to speak on the record prior to reviewing the questions. 

Ross contacted The Narwhal the next day and said the company was unable to respond prior to publication time, but would provide answers at a later time.

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.

Dennis Byrne and his wife Barb built a good life. He flew passenger jets around the world, she practiced physiotherapy. He harvested their fields, too, cultivating the land for years and occasionally grumbling about the oil access road that crossed his property.

He’s older now: 82. Not much time in the tractor and his knees only bend as far as he took his post-surgical recovery, which means they don’t bend very far. But the Byrnes were smart. They saved and they budgeted, intending to stay in their home, one hour west of Edmonton near the agricultural community of Warburg, Alta., until the end. 

“I told everybody, if they can’t find me, walk down to that creek there. I’ll be leaning against a tree somewhere, that’s as far as I’m going,” he says, pointing to the stand of trees downhill from an old oil well.

Byrne says he retired with a “damn good pension,” but money is still tighter all of a sudden. The access road leads to that old well that now sits idle. Across the way on the other side of his property, another well, the one he calls “a mess,” sits overgrown, inactive and dismantled. Byrne says the lease payments stopped coming a few months back for both wells, and the company isn’t returning calls.

“We’re short,” he says. “Barb figured we’re short three cheques, but up until just this last little while, everything was fine, and then all of a sudden they just quit coming.”The Byrnes aren’t alone. 

Up the road, Karl Zajes, the tireless organizer of the local surface rights group, has two sites for which he says he’s owed money. A little farther up, Russell and Joanne Liba have one. To the south, Jennifer Stephenson has four sites and her neighbour Cindy Terrabain has three. 

All of them are owned by MAGA Energy, short for Make Alberta Great Again, which bought 170 wells, 30 facilities and 47 pipeline licences in the area in September 2024. Some of that infrastructure is still in use, some is inactive, but many landowners say they have been left in the lurch, forcing them to go to a government tribunal to ask for tax money to cover the missing payments. They’re still waiting to hear from the tribunal.

It’s a familiar story across Alberta, a province where landowners aren’t allowed to refuse oil and gas wells on their properties, but are paid by the companies that own the wells for the loss of land. The history of faltering companies cutting off those lease payments, however, is long, thanks to an equally long history of regulatory failure and a lack of government oversight. 

Regulations meant to keep financially strained companies from acquiring new wells aren’t working as they should, and the criteria used by the energy regulator to determine the financial health of a company aren’t public, making it difficult to assess the effectiveness of the process.

“Whatever oil they’re bringing up, they’re paying royalties on it, so the government is kind of still making a little money,” Byrne says. “We kind of go by the wayside.”

Frustrated landowners are in the heart of Alberta oil country

The Byrnes are among a number of landowners that are increasingly frustrated with MAGA Energy in Brazeau and Leduc counties, an area that stretches south of Edmonton and west almost 200 kilometres — a place of industry and commerce that houses an international airport and warehouses, but that drifts into largely agricultural stretches as it moves toward the mountains. Travelling its grid of highways, township and range roads leads from fields to forest, almost all of which is sectioned off, dotted with homes, lives and livelihoods. 

Neither county is a traditional hotbed of anti–oil and gas activism.

Residents have long had relationships with companies that help offset costs with regular lease cheques. Family members work in the oilpatch. Oil and gas is the primary industry in Brazeau, followed by forestry and agriculture, and more than 10,000 wells dot its rural landscape, not to mention thousands of facilities and pipeline segments. In Leduc — home of Leduc No. 1, the well often credited with kicking off Alberta’s oil boom back in 1947 — there are now more than 4,000 wells, hundreds of facilities and thousands of kilometres of pipelines. MAGA has a cluster of hundreds of sites that straddle the two counties where disaffected landowners live. The company’s strategy, like many smaller oil and gas companies, involves buying up older wells, often at a steep discount, in hopes of wringing enough wealth out of the ground before the reservoirs are exhausted. The wells are often cheap to acquire because they come with closure and cleanup liabilities. 

A since-deleted explanation on MAGA Energy’s homepages, retrieved through the Internet Archive, says the company’s first priority “is to resume production of shut-in wells and develop the by-passed oil and gas potential.”

Regulations require the province to assess a company’s financial health before transfers are approved, and prevents transfers when taxes are owed to municipalities. Critics, however, contend those regulations are not always enforced. 

And as conventional production wanes, areas like Brazeau and Leduc are contending with operators who don’t have the funds or the desire to cover their legal cleanup obligations and lease payments. As of June, MAGA is now restricted from acquiring new licences for failure to pay its mandated annual cleanup quota.

“I don’t know how many companies are like MAGA — they’re not the only ones, they can’t be.” Stephenson says.Her land sits off a gravel road, an open space with licks of forest nearby. Two pumpjacks are visible if you walk down the driveway toward the horse corral. Like the Byrnes, her family has been careful. “We’ve just been lucky, and we’ve worked really hard,” she says. 

Her family has and continues to benefit from oil and gas. Her husband works in the industry and so does her son. Stephenson says the previous owner of the wells, Journey Energy, paid its leases on time aside from a bad stretch during the pandemic, but even then the company’s representative called to explain the situation and settled its outstanding bills quickly. 

And while she thinks there need to be conversations about weaning society off fossil fuels, she also thinks oil and gas is serving a need and will continue to do so for some time. You can’t just turn off the taps. 

But she says when MAGA stopped paying, she got mad, not least because there isn’t that communication and respect. Stephenson believes you ought to live up to your obligations. If not, you should be able to take accountability.

“It’s right or wrong,” she says when asked what’s motivating her. “There’s black and white.”

When an oil and gas company doesn’t pay its leases in Alberta, landowners can apply to the Land and Property Rights Tribunal, the arm’s-length government body, to have the outstanding money paid with tax dollars. In theory, the government then collects that money from the company, but that rarely happens. 

Since 2010, the government has paid almost $150 million to landowners and has collected $1.4 million back from the companies obligated to cover the lease payments — less than one per cent. 

The government funds also take months to appear, once landowners go through the tribunal process. Mike Hartfield, the executive director of the tribunal, told The Narwhal average wait times this year are 113 days for uncontested landowner claims and 143 days for contested claims, a sharp decrease from the previous year. He said $27 million has been paid so far for the 2025–26 fiscal year. 

“We’ll get paid through the government, but that gets to be a moot point at a certain point in time, you know what I mean? Because you’re paying me and I’m paying myself,” Stephenson says of the government using tax dollars to pay landowners. “And I don’t think that many people understand that.”

But her concerns go deeper than missing cheques. There are weeds growing in fields, mounting cleanup costs and more.  

“We’re not special, it happens a lot,” she says. “Why is the [Alberta Energy Regulator] allowing these licences to go through?”

The Alberta Energy Regulator, which laid off the majority of its communications staff — including media relations — in September, did not answer detailed questions from The Narwhal regarding the transfer of licences and regulatory oversight. It would only provide links to existing regulations and its website.MAGA Energy did not respond to multiple requests for interviews over the span of a week. The Narwhal visited the company’s headquarters in downtown Calgary to hand-deliver a list of questions and spoke with Mark Ross, VP of operations for the compnay, who declined to speak on the record prior to reviewing the questions.

The next day, Ross contacted The Narwhal and said the company was unable to respond prior to publication time, but would provide answers at a later time.

Make Alberta Great Again?

MAGA Energy certainly isn’t an outlier, nor is it the norm.

There are more than 500,000 licences issued by the regulator to approximately 3,500 companies for pipelines, wells and facilities. The majority of those companies meet minimum expectations, including paying leases to landowners, but also required spending on cleanup.

According to the regulator’s annual liability report, 91 per cent of companies were compliant with required spending quotas to shut down old wells, but that means 134 companies did not meet that threshold. Ninety eight companies also didn’t pay their share of the Orphan Well Association levy — an industry-funded organization that cleans up wells with no solvent owner. 

Companies who don’t meet those obligations are often the same companies unable to pay leases to landowners, taxes to municipalities and cover invoices from contractors. That’s hundreds of millions in unpaid taxes, billions in liabilities and more.

The regulator’s own figures show $5.5 billion in environmental liabilities are in the hands of companies that are either in financial distress, or under strain. 

Estimates for how much it would cost to close and clean up all of Alberta’s oil and gas sites is approximately $38 billion, not including the oilsands. But those estimates are conservative and the regulator itself has said liabilities could exceed $130 billion. 

Even the companies that do meet those requirements tend to have sizable inventories of inactive wells, which can sit rusting or leaking, sometimes for decades. 

There are currently more than 150,000 inactive and marginal oil and gas wells across Alberta. Inactive wells have not produced any oil or gas for months (or years). Marginal wells have a very low production. Taken together, they make up more than a third of all the wells in Alberta.

In addition, municipalities are owed $254 million in outstanding property taxes from oil and gas companies, while another $200 million has been written off in the past decade, never to be collected. According to the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, more than $100 million of the outstanding taxes are owed by 201 companies that are still operating. 

As environmental liabilities rise and municipal taxes and leases go unpaid, much of the immediate impact is on landowners. 

Karl Zajes has been pushing back against those impacts for decades — 47 years to be precise — through his involvement in surface rights groups, advocating for landowners to ensure they get fair treatment if an oil and gas company comes knocking. 

“Make it honest and sincere to the landowners, instead of taking advantage of them,” he says of his motivation to keep fighting.

Zajes is 84 now, but you wouldn’t know it — he’s a short coil of energy who never seems to stand in the same spot for more than a minute. Meeting him in the parking lot of an abandoned restaurant and gas station to start a tour of wells and properties means rolling down your window to say a quick hello before he’s off down the highway, heading to the first stop. It’s the only MAGA site on the tour with pumpjacks bobbing and oil flowing. 

On his land, just down the road from that first site, an old well pad sits amidst overgrown weeds in an area tucked back from the highway. Zajes says he is owed more than $4,000, but that will double in January when the next payment is due.

Standing in his field, he talks of another landowner in the community who showed him a lease from another company for $4,000, with some fine print that said the lease would be reduced to $100 after the first year. 

“I thought I’d get a copy of it to show people what the oil company landman and sperm have in common — one in three million turns out to be a real human being, the rest are just a bunch of slime,” he says, taking a characteristically fast moment to enjoy his own quip. 

But the issue is a serious one for Zajes, who’s been organizing increasingly well-attended meetings at the Warburg Community Hall, southeast of MAGA’s regional cluster of sites. Frustration has been boiling over in those meetings, at the current state of regulation and at the government’s latest plans to tackle those failings.

“What the government is doing … they want the companies to produce even if they’re not paying you the rent that you’re supposed to get, as long as they’re getting a royalty,” he says. “So it’s, ‘Okay, you go rob the bank, we won’t charge you, you just give us a bit of it.’ ”

Anger over Alberta’s ‘stinking pile of shit’

To say the Alberta government relies on the money it gets from oil and gas is an understatement. The provincial budget swings wildly based on the price of oil in particular — a one-dollar change can swing the budget by $750 million. Non-renewable resources accounted for almost 27 per cent of provincial revenue in 2024–25. 

The untold billions that pour into government coffers represent a power imbalance that is difficult to comprehend. Landowners in Brazeau and Leduc are starting to chafe at the perception that oil and gas companies can break the rules, while residents are expected to abide. 

Those frustrations boiled over at a recent meeting organized by Zajes, featuring Alberta’s energy minister’s chief of staff, Vitor Marciano, as the invited speaker.

Marciano was in Warburg, which sits near the border between the two counties, to pitch the government’s latest plan to deal with a mountain of problems in Alberta’s current oil and gas regulations, including inactive wells, environmental liabilities and companies not paying their share. 

In a room bristling with resentment, Marciano struggled to connect.

“Let’s be clear, in Alberta the energy companies pay as much taxes in many years as all Albertans combined,” Marciano told the crowd. “They’re the taxpayers too.”

Stephenson, who says she is owed money by MAGA for those pumpjacks just up from her horse corral, stood up to confront Marciano about a lease-payment system she says is unfair, too slow and which ultimately uses public dollars to cover private debts. 

“I’m saying you’re right,” Marciano said after a heated exchange. “I’m also saying that bad companies will be put out of business, and I’ve got to be careful not to say much more than that because I could get in legal trouble. Bad companies will be put out of business and if you’re owed surface payments by MAGA, please file with the Land and Property Rights Tribunal.”

The government’s plan, the Mature Asset Strategy, has been controversial since it was first leaked to the media in March. Particularly controversial has been the possibility of creating a government entity — or entities — that would take ownership of aging wells owned by derelict companies.

Marciano said those wells would either be transferred to the Orphan Well Association, sold to different private operators to run or be taken over by one of the new organizations to wring whatever wealth is left in the ground, with the goal of funding their cleanup.

The report’s author, David Yager, joined Marciano at the meeting and described the current state of oil and gas regulations as a “stinking pile of shit,” an assessment that Marciano and even Premier Danielle Smith agree with.

“We’ve got to get the bad actors out of the industry, and that is what we’re trying to solve,” Smith said when asked about Yager’s comments at a news conference in September.

“It is a bit of a mess. I’ll use less colourful language. It’s been a mess for a long time.”

Critics, however, say the strategy shifts all the risk onto taxpayers.

Alberta’s Mature Asset Strategy is met with skepticism

Phillip Meintzer has been touring the province talking about what he sees as the risks tied to the Mature Asset Strategy with the Coalition for Responsible Energy, meeting landowners and organizing town halls. 

He points to the two potential government bodies that would take over aging wells — dubbed ClosureCo and HarvestCo — as two of the greatest concerns, as well as the possibility that more public dollars will be used to clean up the pollution left behind by private companies. 

“The Mature Asset Strategy is a 50-page document for 21 pretty sweeping recommendations,” he says. “So there’s not a lot of clarity.”

The government previously said it has accepted 20 of the recommendations in the strategy, but hasn’t identified which one it rejected. It’s also unclear when any of the recommendations could be put into place, but Marciano told the crowd in Warburg that it could be as early as this fall, and the energy minister’s new mandate letter calls for coordinating the “government-wide implementation” of the strategy. 

Meintzer says the reception at the meetings has been positive, with landowners concerned about impacts to their land, and curious to learn about the strategy. 

Turning those concerns into action is another goal of his organization. 

“The challenge is trying to figure out ways for people to organize, to push back, because a lot of people feel tired, exhausted, beat down,” he says. “Whether it’s the companies on their land, whether it’s the regulator, they just feel exhausted by fighting these battles on an individual level — at the household level or at the property level.”

“I think the only way that we can, let’s say, discourage the Government of Alberta from pushing some of this stuff through, is if those who are directly impacted speak up in unison and do it loudly.”

‘How are people going to justify this money coming out of their pockets?’

Before we meet in September, Zajes suggests Saint Francis, Alta., for the start of our tour of MAGA wells. “Do you know it?” he asks over the phone. 

The meeting spot is more of an intersection than a location, a collection of a few homes east of the crossroads and an old restaurant and gas bar — The Place to Eat — that is shuttered and broken, the ground littered with newspaper pages from 2005.

It’s a symbol of how easily a place can be forgotten, or ignored, even if it’s only an hour from the capital.

But with Marciano warning the crowd in Warburg that the problem is going to get worse before it gets better, the pain suffered by landowners living off gravel roads could come into focus for more people, including those in the capital. 

Stephenson doesn’t think enough people understand what’s happening, that the government is helping to pay oil company debts with public funds, after lax regulations allow bad companies to take over licences. 

“I don’t understand why people in the cities [don’t care about this.] Like, it’s not a problem until it’s a problem for you individually,” she says. “I think if more people knew, and especially going into these next few years and a recession, how are people going to justify this money coming out of their pockets?”

The Mature Asset Strategy could only exacerbate that issue, with a lack of clarity around the use of public funds to clean up wells and a proposed insurance program for operators that could be backstopped with public funds. 

Back at the Byrnes’ property, Dennis has the air of someone who has no interest in the drama. He wants to live out his years in peace and get what’s owed to him. He reluctantly showed up at Zajes’ meeting in September, but left early when tempers flared. 

He, like Zajes, has had the wells in question on his property since 1982, with various owners prior to MAGA, but he says it’s been about seven or eight years since the last time the well — still outfitted with a newer pumpjack — operated.

“They came, full crew, pulled the rods, did everything, set it back up, ran it for about a month and it’s never run since,” Byrne says of the site just up from the creek where he might lean against his last tree.

Since then, he says the only thing that’s happened is a new sticker was slapped on the fencepost sign with MAGA’s name on it. 

Byrne wasn’t as involved in fighting oil companies over the wells when they were first drilled decades ago, but others, like Zajes, were. Still are. 

“Now, here we are again, the same bloody wells,” Byrne says. “We’re fighting them all over again. I mean, it’s literally, it’s been going on that long.”

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If Vitor Marciano, the chief of staff to Alberta’s energy minister, thought he was going to get a warm reception at a recent meeting in the village of Warburg, he was mistaken. 

Marciano faced jeers and doubt as he tried to sell a largely rural crowd on the government’s latest plan to deal with a cascade of problems caused by the oil and gas sector. 

Around 100 people were in the Warburg Community Hall on Sept. 9 to hear Marciano talk about the Mature Asset Strategy. It’s a series of recommendations the government says will help with the oil and gas industry’s unpaid taxes and leases, which include tens of thousands of inactive wells and environmental liabilities of almost $38 billion, according to the Alberta Energy Regulator. 

He was joined, unexpectedly, by the author of that strategy, Dave Yager, a board member of the regulator and a special advisor to Premier Danielle Smith. Yager was not advertised as a guest.

“The mature asset strategy will not give companies taxpayer dollars to clean up their assets,” Marciano said, summarizing his message to the crowd.

“It will,” came a voice from the back of the room.

“The mature asset strategy will not end or diminish the Orphan Well Association,” Marciano said, referring to the industry-funded association meant to deal with wells left behind by bankrupt companies. 

“It will,” came the same voice. 

“The mature asset strategy does not violate the polluter-pay principle,” Marciano continued.

“It will,” came the reply. 

That disagreement set the stage for the night, though it was one of the quieter exchanges, with the crowd often interrupting and arguing with Marciano. The level of frustration was high, with what many see as regulatory failure and government complicity — a view that Marciano himself largely agreed with, but which he promised would change. 

Many in the crowd remained unconvinced, and Marciano’s own presentation didn’t help. 

Twice in the early stages of his talk, Marciano was interrupted by audience members representing organizations that were mentioned in Marciano’s slides. They did not agree with his characterizations of facts. 

Surface rights groups were involved from the first meeting to discuss a path forward, according to Marciano. Not true, according to William Heidecker, a rancher and the president of the Alberta Surface Rights Federation, who said a request to be included was rebuffed. The Rural Municipalities of Alberta are working on solutions within the new strategy to tackle unpaid taxes, according to Marciano. Not true, according to Wyatt Skovron, the general manager of policy and advocacy for the association, who made clear the organization wants nothing to do with the new plan. 

Jennifer Stephenson, a local landowner, sparred with Marciano over not receiving a company’s lease payments on her land. Marciano said she needs to apply for reimbursement from the government. 

“It’s still our tax dollars,” she said. “That’s not good enough.”

In the room, there was palpable anger with the government and with the regulator for not enforcing existing rules. Grievances included wells being transferred to financially unstable companies, inspections that don’t happen, wells that aren’t closed and cleaned, payments that aren’t made, as well as the complaint that licences aren’t pulled and bad actors removed. 

Many in the room are also fighting to get land lease payments — the money owed to farmers and landowners by companies with wells on their land. 

Marciano and Yager’s message was: yes, mistakes were made. Now, please trust that we’re going to fix them. 

Proposed strategy to deal with oil and gas wells would see government take over old wells itself

It wasn’t just locals at the meeting, a sign of the scale of Alberta’s problems and the controversy of the government’s plans.

Rakhi Pancholi, deputy leader of the Alberta NDP was there, as was Paul McLauchlin, the former president of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta. There was Susanne Calabrese, a lawyer for Ecojustice who is pushing for an ethics investigation against Yager, along with her client Dwight Popowich, and more.

Municipalities are owed $254 million in outstanding property taxes from oil and gas companies, while another $200 million has been written off in the past decade, never to be collected. According to the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, more than $100 million of the outstanding taxes are owed by 201 companies that are still operating. 

There are nearly 80,000 inactive wells scattered across the province, some of which haven’t produced any oil or gas for decades, often leaching pollution in the ground and the air. 

Landowners with failing companies on their properties have to wait months for the government to reimburse unpaid leases. The government paid more than $150 million to cover lease obligations for private companies between 2010 and 2024 and in that time has recovered less than one per cent from those companies. 

The mature asset strategy — developed to respond to many of these issues — has been controversial since it was first leaked to the media in March. Particularly controversial has been the possibility of creating a government entity that would take ownership of aging wells owned by derelict companies, dubbed “HarvestCo.” That and other proposals in the strategy could be government policy this fall.

Those wells would either be transferred to the Orphan Well Association, sold to different private operators to run or be taken over by HarvestCo to wring whatever wealth is left in the ground, with the goal of funding their cleanup. 

Critics say it shifts all the risk onto taxpayers, while Marciano argues it would be an effective way for the government to reap financial rewards from old wells and help pay for cleanup. He said it would also help shut down bad operators, even if the process would seem to copy the business practices of companies that buy up cheap wells to reap profit and then disappear.

In effect, Marciano said, this would be a government-sanctioned organization mimicking what he called “industry stripper companies,” referring to companies that buy wells cheaply and pull as much profit from them while shirking responsibilities including taxes, leases and cleanup. Too often, Marciano added, the companies function as “pump and dumps.”

The government, Marciano believes, could do it better.

‘Gigantic problem’: top political staffer acknowledges issues in Alberta oil and gas sector

Marciano repeatedly said past governments have ignored what he called a “gigantic problem” in Alberta’s oil and gas sector. He said there are good companies, but there are also bad ones inching along and not paying their dues. 

Listening to stakeholders while crafting the report, he said, showed the government that “trust was broken and the trust had to be repaired.”

But Marciano also repeatedly warned the problems are going to get worse before they get better. 

“Folks, companies are going to go down, and more companies are going to go down over the next few years than have gone down in the past,” he said. 

The regulator is going to be more aggressive at shutting down failing companies and preventing them from buying up wells in the first place, he said. The government strategy could include a sort of security deposit to clean up wells, but that might not actually involve cash and could include the government as a sort of insurance backstop. Details are still unclear. 

“We owe it to it to rural Alberta, to the jobs, to the taxpayers, to the economic opportunity, to make sure that the cleanup of these assets is done as efficiently, as intelligently as possible, while recognizing that there are companies that need to be put out of business, and they’re going to get put out of business,” Marciano said. 

Yager was more straightforward about the problem. 

“I think I can say this in this town — I now refer to it as the giant stinking pile of shit. This is a mess. It always has been a mess,” he said of the issues facing Alberta.

Yager, who was hired to review the regulator and find solutions to its shortcomings, said when he arrived in 2023, the liability department, which tries to prevent bad companies from taking over wells, was not effective. It was using old data to try and predict if companies were failing. He said he was “mortified.” 

Renato Gandia, a spokesperson for the Alberta Energy Regulator, did not respond to questions asking for reaction to Yager’s comments, or whether the liability department has changed the way it operates. 

“Any changes to the Alberta Energy Regulator would need to be led by the Government of Alberta,” he said by email. “We encourage you to reach out to them directly.”

The regulator, an arm’s-length agency which Yager’s own review said should be more independent of government, did not reply to a follow-up email, but instead forwarded the request to the government — specifically, to the office of Energy Minister Brian Jean.

“Minister Jean has long acknowledged that the issues around some oil and gas companies not paying their municipal taxes or surface leases have not been dealt with to the satisfaction of all stakeholders by previous governments,” wrote a spokesperson, in response to the forwarded request. “We have confidence that the mature asset strategy process and other reforms undertaken by the Alberta Energy Regulator will begin to deal with these issues and result in the Alberta Energy Regulator being able to improve its ability to assess licencees and to act more effectively on those that are not regulatorily compliant.”

Marciano didn’t respond to a follow-up call by publication time.

Yager said he wants to ensure indicators, such as companies not paying contractors or surface leases, are considered. 

“There’s going to be material changes coming out of regulatory enforcement on all of these files, because now they are capable of doing something,” he said.

What that “something” is still needs to be ironed out. Yager said it’s a work in progress. 

Regulators should ‘do their damn job’: landowner

While Yager and Marciano promised better enforcement and action on the issues plaguing Alberta, and rural Alberta in particular, many in the crowd were frustrated with being asked to wait. 

Many wondered why the government needs to completely overhaul the system instead of simply enforcing the regulations already in place.

Heidecker, with the surface rights federation, said the regulator already has the ability to pull licences when companies don’t pay their leases, noting there are rules in place to crack down on bad actors and those rules aren’t being enforced. 

“What we need is regulators to do their damn job,” he said. “Let’s get some things done.”

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When Wade Grant was eight years old, he went to visit his mom at work. She was one of the first woman chiefs of Musqueam Nation and Grant found her in the band office having a meeting. When he opened the door, he saw her speaking with the mayor of Vancouver at the time, Gordon Campbell, who later became premier of British Columbia.

“In my mind I was like, oh my God, it’s the first person I’ve ever seen on television, and my mom was talking to him,” he says over the phone from his home in Musqueam territory in Vancouver near the mouth of the Fraser River. That was the moment he first wanted to enter public service.

To witness his mom “break a glass ceiling” in her role as chief and see her meeting with “the most powerful person in Vancouver — it really got my political blood flowing at a young age,” he says. In April, he was elected member of parliament for Vancouver Quadra — another first for a member of the Musqueam Nation.

When he was older, Grant learned that First Nations people only gained the right to vote in 1960 — only 18 years before he was born. It makes him think of his grandfather, a Musqueam chief, who died in 1964.

“He got to vote in Canada for four years,” Grant said. “That just blows my mind.”

“And here I am now.”

Here he is — representing 115,000 people in parliament in a riding that includes his home Musqueam reserve as well as the University of British Columbia and some of Vancouver’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. It’s a riding that brings together students, affluent residents, families who have lived in the area for generations and the people who have stewarded the mouth of the Fraser River for millenia.

Grant served on Musqueam council for 10 years, getting to know how the power structures between different levels of government work. Now he’s focused on putting that experience to work on his priorities of climate change, housing and health. His years serving on council taught him accountability in a profound way.

“Nothing can be tougher or more scary than being a councillor for a First Nation, because the decisions you make are affecting your grandpa, your aunt, your uncle,” he says. “If they don’t like it, they’re just two doors down, and they can come knock on the door.”

Why environment is a top concern for Vancouver Quadra residents

Grant did a lot of door knocking during his campaign and says one of the top priorities he heard about was the environment. That contradicts a narrative that argued that while climate change was a serious concern in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, polling suggested it was a lower voter concern this year, with people distracted by cost of living and Canada-U.S. relations.

“Seeing salmon stocks dwindle on the Fraser River is a key component of this riding,” Grant says. “The rising temperatures over the last 25, 30 years is undeniable and is something that is very, very concerning.”

Justin Trudeau will be remembered as the prime minister that bought the Trans Mountain pipeline for a final price tag of $34 billion, leading to one of many intense standoffs over industrial projects. During his time in power, multiple United Nations rapporteurs and committees called on Canada to stop criminalizing Indigenous people peacefully defending their land and water.

But in some ways, Trudeau led the most environmentally conscious federal government in Canada’s history. It brought in carbon pricing and legislation that mandates the federal government to come up with national emissions reduction targets every five years, with the goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

They also committed to protect 30 per cent of lands and oceans by 2030, and have earmarked over $1 billion for Indigenous-led conservation. Newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney says he remains committed to the goal, but the most recent data shows there’s a long way to go. In 2023, 13.7 per cent of land was protected and 14. 7 per cent of marine areas. The protected areas need to double in less than five years to meet their international commitments.

When asked how the Liberals will reach this goal in a short time frame, Grant points to the new Liberal government’s commitment to create at least 10 new national parks and marine conservation areas, along with 15 new urban parks. He wants the federal government to work with municipal, First Nations and provincial governments to establish new protected areas.

While campaigning, he spoke with many high school and university students who were voting for the first time, and who told them they were concerned about the environment. The number one priority that he heard from his constituents is cleaner energy — meaning a move away from fossil fuels.

“I think there’s a lot more we can do,” he says. “We’ve announced that we want to invest in greener technologies, but we’re in a state of transition. I know that we need to move forward at a pace so that our next generation can inherit something that’s more robust than it is today.”

The minerals required for electric cars and solar panels are now at the centre of heated debates as provinces and the feds have passed legislation to fast-track approval of industrial projects, including mines. The laws are purportedly to bolster Canadian sovereignty as U.S. relations are tense — but First Nations are raising the alarm that these bills could mean bypassing Indigenous rights and leading to costly legal challenges.

Grant hopes to have ‘most educated caucus ever’ when it comes to Indigenous Rights

To Grant, pushing climate action forward means engaging with Indigenous Peoples. He pointed to how Musqueam Nation has worked with federal, provincial and local governments to successfully reintroduce salmon and restore habitat. Musqueam Creek is currently the only wild-salmon bearing creek in the City of Vancouver.  

“First Nations across the province of British Columbia have been traditionally stewards of the land. They know how to protect it,” he says. “They want to ensure that they protect it for future generations, not just for their communities, but for all.”

For six years, Grant served on the First Nations Health Council in B.C., four of them as chair. Continuing to transfer health decision-making from the federal government to First Nations is central to the council’s 10-year strategy and Grant plans to push this forward in his role.

Grant knows that one of his challenges will be countering misinformation around Indigenous Rights: lately, residential school denialism has even been spread by the provincial MLA in his own riding. “It’s unfortunate that we still have people that approach First Nations in … such a negative light,” he says. “People have to understand that Indigenous Peoples in this country — First Nations, Inuit and Métis — have been fighting in the Canadian courts to prove their place in this country. Title has been proven by the Supreme Court of Canada.”

People can rely on unreliable sources, like opinions online — and “lash out,”he says. And some of the responses he’s gotten after engaging with anti-Indigenous posts on social media have been dark, racist and volatile.

“It’s disheartening that people are applauding such divisive comments that sets reconciliation back generations,” he says.

Grant says he doesn’t want to see people regressing to challenging the existence of Indigenous Rights and long court battles that cost millions.

“Having the opportunity to educate the public, but also my fellow colleagues, will be something I’ll take great pride in, for sure — to ensure that we have the most educated caucus ever when it comes to First Nations, Inuit and Métis Title and Rights.”

He chooses to focus his effort on young people, ensuring they are exposed to Indigenous histories and cultures in their communities. To Grant, it’s promising that “we’re in the first generation where First Nations, Inuit and Métis history is actually being taught in a more robust and accurate way in schools.”

He wants to include youth in policy conversations — especially when it comes to climate change. Grant is inspired by his two children, 16 and 14 years old, who he says told him “people always say the youth are our future, but actually the youth are the present.”

“Why do we always have to wait until the youth are 25, 30, 35 years old before we actually listen to them?” he says. “We need to have a more robust approach to how we are listening to the next generation before it’s too late.”

Being a ‘bridge-builder’ on divisive issues like climate, housing

Grant’s bringing that collaborative approach to conversations about housing affordability, one of the Mark Carney government’s biggest challenges. 

Grant guesses he’s probably the only one of six or seven people from his high school class that still live in the riding. The others didn’t stay — “not because they didn’t want to, but because they’ve been priced out.”

The re-elected Liberals have committed to doubling the pace of construction to build 500,000 new homes per year. The party campaigned on improving housing affordability when it was elected in 2015 — but by 2021 housing prices had increased 97 per cent. New builds have not kept up with demand, and Trudeau admitted to the CBC the government “should have, could have moved faster” to address housing prices. 

Like climate change and Indigenous Rights, development is a divisive topic — one that requires balancing the need for housing with the environmental considerations of building, and servicing a growing population. But Grant wants to be one of the people that helps illustrate what people have in common and how they can learn from each other. He wants to be a “bridge-builder” that brings different groups together.

Grant has had to navigate difficult conversations as a Musqueam councillor, and while serving on the First Nations Health Council and the Vancouver Police Board. He draws on something his parents told him when he was a child: that while their ancestors may not always have come to consensus, they would try to agree on most things and find ways to move forward despite the small per cent of things they disagreed on.

“I always try to listen, ensure I’m listening first before I speak,” he says. “I’m usually the last person that will speak.” He tries to bring together varying opinions and point out to people that “We’re not actually that far apart. Let’s work on what’s bringing us together.”

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Mike Leon leans over the water to point out a salmon redd — a “little fish nest, I call it,” he says. It’s easy to miss in the gravelly riverbed of the sánəsaʔł stáʔləw (Alouette River) in q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie) territory, also known as Maple Ridge, about an hour’s drive from Vancouver. 

The Alouette Dam, not far upriver, means the water in ánəsaʔł stáʔləw is lower and slower than it would be naturally. Leon, lead guardian for q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie) First Nation, says slow water makes it more likely silt will settle on salmon eggs, which can smother them.

q̓ic̓əy̓ is raising the alarm that the river’s ecology has been severely eroded by the dam. The nation commissioned a report that found the river’s flow has been reduced by 86 per cent since the river was dammed in 1928. But the situation has grown more urgent as the Fraser River region experiences increasingly dry conditions and summer heat nears.

A tremendous amount of water is diverted to Stave Lake for hydroelectric power, flowing through the Alouette Tunnel at a rate of 53 cubic metres per second — enough water to fill an Olympic swimming pool every 47 seconds. 

“That’s our matriarch they’re bringing over there. That’s the water that should be flowing through here, for life,” Leon says. Mist rests among the tree tops and the sound of the river fills the air as he looks at the water with q̓ic̓əy̓ councillor Rick Bailey.

While much of B.C. experienced high precipitation in March, it can take a while to make up for deficits. The Fraser snow basin is about 76 per cent of its normal depth and the average snowpack provincewide is 71 per cent of normal according to data from May 1. Low snowpack, warm weather and lingering drought impacts have B.C. preparing for “elevated drought hazards” this year, according to a bulletin from the provincial government.

“We’ve got drought coming,” Leon says. If water gets too low and warm it can be lethal for salmon.

The nation is pushing for BC Hydro to let more water through and build a fish ladder to allow fish that are currently blocked by the dam to pass by it unimpeded. For its part, BC Hydro says it is working to increase water flow by updating infrastructure and that fish ladders were not technically feasible, instead proposing a hatchery.

“It boils down to money,” Bailey says. “BC Hydro comes up with all kinds of reasons why it can’t be done.”

Meanwhile, the nation is also looking to expand habitat restoration and improve access for its people to their territory. Part of that work has involved enhancing their Guardians program — the people who act as the nation’s “eyes and ears” on the land. In the past year the nation has built up their team from three to eight guardians, in addition to Leon as the lead, and has been working with BC Hydro to do habitat enhancement.

Bailey, a fisherman, hunter, father and grandfather, has been working on the river since he was first elected in the 1990s. 

“This is just one little place to some people. It may not seem important. But we didn’t just come here. We went to all the little creeks throughout our whole territory,” he says. “It’s a different world today. We call the salmon part of our family — we want our family to have a good place to come home.”

Central to all their plans for the river is reconnecting people to the water. In administrative meetings, Bailey says he hears over and over again from other nations along the Fraser that “we just need to get out on the water.” 

“It doesn’t matter if we go out there to catch a fish — it’s to just be there,” he says.

Nation wants BC Hydro to build a path for fish to pass, and let more water through dam

q̓ic̓əy̓ means land of the moss, a reflection of the close relationship between the nation and the rivers and wetlands of their homelands and with the non-human relatives who share them. Leon and Bailey both speak softly as they look at the water passing by.

Sockeye have fed the nation for countless generations. Fish carcasses feed the ecosystem — providing food for creatures from insects to bears, and bringing nutrients to soil and plants. 

“They’re an amazing relative,” Leon says, smiling.

But these relatives have been especially impacted by the dam. Some got trapped above the dam when it was installed, while others couldn’t reach their traditional spawning grounds. Every year BC Hydro catches sockeye, transporting them by truck to the other side of the dam and releasing them to spawn. In a statement, the energy utility told The Narwhal annual returns from this program have varied from zero to 103 sockeye per year.

Dam affected wider ecosystem in the watershed

The nation published a cumulative effects report last October, which was partly funded by BC Hydro. It calls for enhancing water quality protections to address agricultural runoff and human waste from sewage overflow and houseboats, along with habitat restoration, especially in the face of climate change. It emphasizes the importance of future management decisions being guided by q̓ic̓əy̓ law and knowledge. It recommends re-establishing seasonal water flows and reconnecting the slough system for wildlife. Leon and Bailey hope these actions will support otters, trout, mink, eagles and wolves — and bring back a functioning ecosystem that brings wealth, stability and sustenance. 

“Being a good ancestor is having the next generations come along and say, ‘Our ancestors fought for more water in the Alouette. Our ancestors fought so that our salmon families could pass the dam.’ That’s what makes more sense for wealth,” Leon says.

Pre-contact the nation’s territory was rich with ponds, wapato (Indian potato), cranberries and fish.

“That’s what it was about — richness,” Bailey says. “Nothing about money. That was our grocery store.” 

With diking and water reduction, wapato and bog cranberry nearly disappeared — two core pillars of food security for q̓ic̓əy̓, who also traded the foods with neighbouring nations.

In 2008, BC Hydro developed a seven-step process to look at fish passage restoration in the sánəsaʔł in partnership with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the province, but according to its website it’s still at stage 3 and 4, looking at environmental and technical feasibility. The website says more than $1.8 million has been spent addressing dam impacts on fish and wildlife in the Alouette River Watershed since 1999, including $825,000 for sockeye restoration.

Comparatively, BC Hydro revenue for 2023 to 2024 was more than $7 billion — and more than $8 billion the prior year.

Guardians act as ‘voice for Katzie’ on the land

In q̓ic̓əy̓ law, punishment is not central, Bailey says. If someone does something wrong, they are educated, not penalized. To him, that’s central to the role of guardians — educating others.

The guardians have been working with BC Hydro to do habitat enhancement, and are leading a survey to take inventory “of those little salmon babies,” Leon says, as well as monitoring water quality and educating the public. 

Leon wants to work with partners to mount signs and have guardians be the “voice for q̓ic̓əy̓” on the land. But he adds all q̓ic̓əy̓ people share the responsibility.

“We hold the title but everybody in q̓ic̓əy̓ are Guardians,” he said. “From our Elders right down to our littlest grandchild.”

Until late last year the guardians were contractors, but the roles are now permanent under the nation. 

The guardians are one way the nation exercises its governance, Leon says. The nation’s laws are equal to Canadian law, he adds, and they want to use q̓ic̓əy̓ science and Western science “side by side, rather than one above the other.”

BC Hydro says new structure may increase flow

In a statement, BC Hydro spokesperson Kevin Aquino told The Narwhal that monitoring by the energy utility found sediment levels are “suitable” for salmon spawn. He said the dam releases water at a steady rate during the spawning period, meaning there is less risk of salmon redds drying out than in unregulated rivers. He also said salmon deal with natural storm runoff and so they are “accustomed” to temporary changes in river levels.

But Leon and Bailey say they still see the effects of inconsistent flow play out on the riverbank.

“One day it’ll be up here and fish will spawn right on the bank here. The next day, the water’s down there, so those eggs are in the dry,” Bailey says. “The fish will die, trapped.”

Currently, water can flow into the sánəsaʔł via a spillway and a pipe. Aquino said BC Hydro is replacing the pipe and the new structure will be able to allow more water through. He said BC Hydro is submitting an application to the comptroller of water rights for this structure later this year, which includes recommendations for higher and seasonable variable flows to the river. If the application is accepted, BC Hydro expects the daily average flow into the south Alouette to increase by about 40 per cent once the new structure is completed.

As for fish passage, Aquino said “installing fish passage at large, earth-fill dams like Alouette is technically complex.” He said there is a large elevation change, meaning “traditional fish ladder structures may not be technically feasible.” 

He said the utility did an analysis of fish passage options and “large, complex designs” are necessary to meet the technical requirements, such as flood control and seismic safety. He said the designs were “unlikely to be suitable for sockeye,” but did not elaborate. He said data suggests these sockeye have low ocean survival rates and fish passage may not lead to improved returns, and that’s why BC Hydro has proposed a hatchery. But hatcheries are not without controversies of their own, as some scientists worry they may increase competition with wild populations.

Aquino said BC Hydro can’t estimate when fish passage solutions may be reached, but said the utility is actively engaging with the nation.

‘It’s part of us — the water, the trees, the mountains — and we’re part of it’

The sánəsaʔł area has been the nation’s fishing, gathering and hunting grounds for thousands of years — “now we’ve got to ask permission,” Leon says. BC Hydro has gated off some areas, restricting the nation’s access to their traditional territory. 

Aquino said the utility recognizes qic̓əy̓’s desire to access their territory gated by BC Hydro and is in discussions with the nation to “meet shared interests in a fair and safe manner.” He said the utility is also working with qic̓əy̓ to “understand and incorporate” recommendations from the cumulative effects report.

In 2022, the nation filed a lawsuit against BC Hydro, alleging breaches in contractual obligations to mitigate the dam’s impacts on the nation’s use of the river for food and culture. Bailey said the case is on pause as the nation and utility try to negotiate. 

In addition to fish, the river and surrounding area provided hunting for deer, elk, waterfowl and mountain goats, as well as picking berries and medicines. As a kid, Bailey remembers fishing when “the early Chinook were just treasured.”

“They’re just so delicious,” he says with a chuckle.

The lowlands began to be diked and drained for agriculture in the late 1800s, which had frequently flooded seasonally before. This disrupted traditional means of travelling by canoe. The Canadian Pacific Railway reached the area in 1884, leading to increased logging and export of timber from the area, affecting the nation’s access to plants like devil’s club and cedar. 

Over time, the area was developed into the urban centre it is today. Animals like beaver and muskrat decreased while effects like pollution increased, and it became harder for q̓ic̓əy̓ members to pass down intergenerational knowledge about how to live with the land.

Today, it’s a hub for recreation. Part of the land falls within the popular Golden Ears Provincial Park. Leon sees people ride their motorbikes across this riverbed through the gravel that may be home to salmon nests. It’s a spot he brings his grandkids.

“You try to govern — but it’s so hard with garbage and beer cans,” he says. Not just for people, but for the sockeye and their eggs, too. 

“All that hard work — our relatives come up, spend four years out there to come back here and have their redds destroyed by a quad or a motorcycle.”

Bailey’s voice is full of concern as he argues climate change makes everything more urgent. “Extreme weather, floods and drought. … I hope and pray climate change is not so drastic that our salmon family can’t survive,” he says.

Still, they are doing everything in their power to connect people with the territory as part of their solutions. The nation has also bought a piece of land to build a treatment centre, surrounded by the mountains and water. Central to all their plans is bringing people back to the water.

“Just being out there on the water does something for us internally, like spiritually, culturally,” Bailey says. “When I come back out, I’m revived.”

“It’s part of us — the water, the trees, the mountains — and we’re part of it.”

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.