Canada-Alberta Oilsands Monitoring Portal Online, Environmental Groups Skeptical

After several months of delay, the federal and Alberta governments have finally followed through on their promise to release tar sands monitoring data to the general public. The Canada-Alberta Oil Sands Environmental Monitoring Information Portal came online Monday in time for Earth Day.

The portal aims to provide information on air, water, wildlife contaminants and biodiversity. It includes an interactive map with links to monitoring activities all over the province. The site will use satellite measurements to estimate emissions of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide but it will not provide data on carbon emissions. 

Environment Minister Peter Kent touted the website’s launch as evidence that Canada is contributing and doing its part to protect the environment.

“With this portal, our respective governments are actively encouraging informed discussions and analysis on the impacts of oil sands development based on high-quality scientific information.”

While University of Alberta ecologist David Schindler told CBC news he was on board with the move, Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Canada was less optimistic. "We're a little skeptical, as the system won't be fully implemented until 2015 and yet the two levels of government continue to approve new projects in the absence of reliable data on cumulative impacts," he said.

Indeed, many of the sections promise data that “will be released in the coming months.” 

“The section on biodiversity is focused on more monitoring to determine the problems, when it is already well known what the problems are,” Helene Walsh, boreal program director at the Northern Alberta chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) said via e-mail.

She pointed to a 2009 report that found without “immediate and sufficient action” the boreal caribou would be gone from the landscape within two to four decades.

“Except for recent protection of small portions of two caribou ranges, nothing has been done to meet the needs of caribou in the oil sands region,” she said. “This is an excellent example of monitoring that has been well done, but then no action taken to deal with the results because any meaningful action would require a restriction on oil sands development to protect and/or restore habitat.  Alberta does not ‘balance’ economic with environmental as they would like people to believe.”

She says that as petroleum production in Alberta has risen there has been a corresponding decrease in the caribou population. 

Edmonton-based Greenpeace climate campaigner Mike Hudema told the Vancouver Observer that, although “good data is better than bad data, there is still little plan to act on the data.”

“There is no indication of when, or even if, this will become a truly independent monitoring regime as recommended by the federal government’s scientific panel," he said.

CBC newsreaders also expressed misgivings as to whether the information the portal presents is being accurately interpreted. Statements such as the following from the site’s introduction show a notably reassuring tone in its assessments:

“To date, the results of environmental monitoring show that low levels of oil sands development-related contaminants are present in both air and water. In almost all water and air samples, levels of oil sands development-related contaminants are below relevant environmental guidelines, and levels decrease with increasing distance from oil sands development. Overall, the levels of contaminants in water and in air are not a cause for concern.”

Scientists and activists have consistently identified the Alberta and federal governments’ tendency toward framing facts in misleading terms.

“Anyone with any common sense knows you can't take two years of good monitoring and forecast to find out what changes there have been in the environment,” Schindler recently said of Premier Alison Redford’s attempts to advertise her province’s environmental record during a trip to Washington.

Although there is no direct author cited in the analysis sections, the portal assures that, “data being released has been subject to quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) procedures, and the information has been approved by the Assistant Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, Environment Canada and the Assistant Deputy Minister of Science and Monitoring, Alberta Environment and Water.”