Documents released on Monday reveal that B.C.’s climate plan under the previous Liberal government was drafted by the oil and gas industry in a Calgary boardroom, just as the province’s new NDP government moves to ban corporate and union donations to B.C. political parties.

The documents speak to long-standing concerns over the influence of political donations in B.C.’s political process. B.C. has long been considered the ‘wild west’ of political cash for placing no limits on corporate, union or foreign donations.

“I think this is deeply corrosive to our democracy and it encourages cynicism about politics,” Max Cameron, political science professor and director of the Study of Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia, told DeSmog Canada.

The documents, released to Shannon Daub of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives as part of her research with the Corporate Mapping Project, reveal that while the B.C. government under former premier Christy Clark hired a celebrated Climate Leadership Team and conducted public consultations, a parallel industry consultation process occurred behind closed doors in a boardroom of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

The BC Liberals have raked in cash from the fossil fuel industry, including more than $3.7 million from just the top 10 industry donors between 2008 and 2015.

Cameron said the documents, which include slides outlining industry working groups tasked with addressing carbon pricing and methane emissions, provide a much-needed glimpse into what exactly industry is paying for when making large donations to political parties.

“Reading these documents gives us some real insight into how it is that these kinds of donations can buy not just access to government but access to actually writing policy,” he said.

Clark’s Secret Consultations with Oil and Gas Donors Revealed As BC Introduces Big Money Ban #bcpoli @CCPA_BC https://t.co/nFjm9W8Vqx

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 18, 2017

Climate Leadership Team Unaware of Parallel Industry Consultations

B.C. handpicked a blue-ribbon team of 17 academic, business, environmental and First Nations stakeholders to form the Climate Leadership Team. That team made 32 official recommendations to the B.C. government, none of which were implemented in the province’s eventual Climate Action Plan.

Merran Smith, executive director of Clean Energy Canada, was a member of the team and said the fact that not a single recommendation was adopted “really says it all.”

Christy Clark’s government “allowed the oil and gas sector to write the climate plan for B.C. that is mostly status quo and has very little impact on B.C.’s growing climate pollution,” Smith told DeSmog Canada.

She added once the team made its recommendations to the government, their involvement in the crafting of the Climate Action Plan tapered off quickly.

“We had very few meetings with the B.C. government once the recommendations were created. It was clear that they actually had very little interest in doing anything with recommendations.”

Meanwhile, Christy Clark pointed to the recommendations at the UN Climate Summit in Paris as evidence of B.C.’s climate leadership.

Tzeporah Berman, a prominent environmental advocate in B.C. and member of the Climate Leadership Team said she had no idea B.C. was conducting parallel consultations with industry.

“I was shocked when I saw these documents,” Berman told DeSmog Canada.

“Consultation should be a transparent process and should be done with multiple stakeholders. These were secret meetings in Calgary where the oil and gas industry was rewriting B.C. policy. That's not consultation, it's corruption.”

Berman said the documents reveal an “unacceptable level of access and influence with the Liberal government.”

“They also help those of us from the leadership team understand how the climate plan that the Liberals put together really had no similarity to what the Liberals’ own climate team recommended,” she said.

The team worked hard for months to deliver a plan within a short timeframe and offered to meet with stakeholders to “problem solve any concerns” if that would help B.C. “ensure implementation” of the recommendations, Berman said.

But that offer was never taken up.

“From our end it was a bizarre process,” Berman said.

Fossil Fuel Companies Regularly ‘Craft’ Climate Plans

Laurie Adkin, professor of political science at the University of Alberta, said when it comes to government consultations with corporations, “secrecy is routine” and “transparency is the exception.”

“Even when governments reveal that they have met with representatives of private corporations, reporting on these meetings typically does not reveal which corporate representatives were in the room, or what their positions were,” Adkin told DeSmog Canada.

Adkin, who is a member of the Corporate Mapping Project, specializes in documenting corporate influence in politics and on university campuses.

Government consultation with industry is the status quo, Adkin said, while public consultation is meant to merely survey public opinion and “give the appearance that government has created meaningful opportunities for citizen input into policy decisions.”

“I do not believe that any climate change plan has been written, to date, in which the major fossil fuel corporations have not ‘directly crafted’ the plan,” Adkin said.

Adkin and Cameron agree the documents are reflective of “institutional corruption.”

“Corruption isn’t just quid pro quo of privately benefitting from your public office, it’s also a corruption of the institution, when the public purpose of the institution is undermined by private actors in a way that diminishes our trust in those institutions,” Cameron said.

“The goal of public policy is to serve the public’s interest, not to serve particular private interests.”

Leadership Team Hopeful Under New NDP Government

Berman said the oil and gas industry has too much political influence in Canada, but said she is hopeful the new B.C. government will “design policy to benefit the people and not just polluters.”

“I was very glad to see the carbon tax increase in the last budget,” Berman said.

“I think the next step is removing all the subsidies that the Liberal government handed out to the gas industry. We shouldn't be spending taxpayers dollars to help the fossil fuel industry expand in the climate era”

Berman said she also looks forward to the new government moving forward on the zero emissions vehicles targets and strengthening the clean fuel standard.

Smith said she is pleased the Climate Leadership Team had the opportunity to craft the recommendations when it did.

“The silver lining is that we still have a good, solid set of climate action recommendations sitting there, and we now have a Premier and government who is interested in taking climate action and building a clean growth economy for the twenty-first century.”

Image: Former premier Christy Clark at a Woodfibre LNG announcement. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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It should come as no surprise that Petronas expects B.C. to cave in to its demands to expedite the process of approving its Pacific NorthWest LNG terminal and natural gas pipeline, lowering taxes and weakening environmental regulations in the process.

After all, Petronas has a well-established record of getting what it wants in the other countries it operates in, such as Sudan, Myanmar, Chad and Malaysia.

This week, the B.C. government did cave to at least one Petronas’ demands — cutting the peak income tax rate for LNG facilities from seven to 3.5 per cent, thereby slashing in half the amount of revenue it’s expecting to receive from the liquefied natural industry.  The government also introduced a standard for carbon pollution for B.C.’s LNG industry, which was hailed as a step in the right direction, but not enough.

In considering Petronas’ bid to develop B.C.’s natural gas resources, it is vital that we consider the company’s track record.

In 2011, I had the opportunity to witness the destruction caused by a Petronas pipeline, while working with the international NGO Global Witness. While staying with the semi-nomadic Penan people of Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo), I heard testimony of how the company had treated them in the course of constructing the pipeline.

Although I had travelled to Malaysia Borneo to document the impact industrial logging was having on these people, the ongoing clearance for the Petronas pipeline emerged as an immediate concern.

Petronas has faced fierce local opposition to its 500 km pipeline crossing Malaysian Borneo to feed its LNG terminal in Sarawak. Previously remote, semi-nomadic tribes of the Bornean jungle have now been violently thrust into an industrialized landscape that is foreign to them and hostile to their way of life. They resisted this invasion, erecting futile barriers made of sticks, and met bulldozers armed only with traditional bow and arrows. The project has been marked by secrecy, including details surrounding the location of the proposed pipeline, giving very little time for locals to voice their opposition through formal channels, or to scrutinize terms of the project.

The history of the Penan is a tragic one, marked by successive waves of industrial activity since the 1980s that has left them marginalized. Much of Sarawak has been converted to oil palm plantation, following decades of rapacious logging for valuable hardwoods for export. Increasingly they are no longer able to maintain their way of life, and this has made them all the easier to disregard in the construction of the Petronas pipeline.

I was struck by how wide a corridor had been cleared for the pipeline, and the brute force that had been employed in carving its way through the dense jungle. The clay-based Bornean soil, previously held together by the roots of majestic trees, eroded into muddy pools, and clumped heavily around my boots. I can’t help but think what Petronas’ pipeline though rugged northern B.C. will look like (Pacific Northwest LNG has contracted TransCanada to build the pipeline), or how it will affect First Nations and local communities. 

A Petrona pipeline cuts through the Sarawak jungle. Credit: Stefanie Wedeken.

It could be this “low bar” way of operating in developing countries that has led the CEO of Petronas, Shamsul Abbas, to conclude that B.C. is a “high cost environment" in comparison. "The proposed fiscal package and regulatory pace in Canada threatens the global competitiveness of the PNW LNG project," Abbas wrote.

Petronas has also defied a UN embargo against Sudan, providing fuel to its military, which is known to bombs civilians in Darfur. Others have pointed out the many corruption and bribery scandals that the company has been associated with in recent times.

This all leads to the question: does the B.C. government know how to use Google? Even a cursory background check would have revealed this company has a questionable track record. Either the B.C. government didn’t do its due diligence to find out who they were dealing with or they did, and ignored it, which is worse. Given the secrecy with which these and other LNG deals have been negotiated, this could very well be the case.

British Columbians have every right to scrutinize the companies that wish to exploit our natural resources, and to uphold the environmental and social safeguards that make this province a great place to live.

Petronas has set a deadline of the end of October for the company to reach an agreement with government officials on ways to reduce the cost of the project.

Natural gas is a finite, non-renewable resource that Canadians depend upon and that, despite what British Columbia’s Environment Minister Mary Polak may say, is not a global climate change solution.

What’s the rush?

Main image: The Penan people blockade the Petronas pipeline in Sarawak. Credit: Stefanie Wedeken.

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Barrick Gold's shareholders will be greeted by a familiar sight in Toronto this morning: protesters are once again gathering outside the Annual General Meeting of the world's largest gold mining company to denouce the corporation's human rights and environmental abuses.

Sakura Saunders, of Protest Barrick and one of the demonstration's long-time organizers, told DeSmog that this year's AGM is happening amidst a “perfect storm” of controversies for the company.

“Everyone's angry at Barrick right now. Everyone's mad at [Barrick Chair and founder] Peter Munk because of botched deal after botched deal, fraudulent activity due to their Pascua-Lama mine, and they're also being sued in the British High Court for the killings that have happened with regularity at their North Mara mine,” she said in a phone interview.

The perfect storm

Top of the list for Canada's most prolific mining company is a $6 billion class action lawsuit – totalling over a quarter of Barrick's market capitalization – from shareholders alleging fraud over the company's Pascua-Lama mine, located on the border between Argentina and Chile. Pascua-Lama was meant to be the company's flagship operation at the centre of the largest stock offering in Canadian history in 2009. Slated to start production in 2013, the project has instead been shuttered after ballooning costs and the Chilean government's decision to suspend the mine's license for violating environmental regulations.

The lawsuit, which still needs certification as a class action by the courts, alleges Barrick executives knew and hid information about these environmental concerns from shareholders, causing them to eventually lose millions of dollars in investments.

Barrick is denying the allegations, and has said it will “defend itself against any lawsuit vigorously.”

Contravening environmental rules in Chile is just part of the accusations that human rights and environment activists have levelled against the company.

In Tanzania, there have been repeated shootings and killings of people in proximity of Barrick's North Mara mine by police who double as security. The company's subsidiary African Barrick Gold is now being sued in British courts by the families of men who have been killed by security agents, on the grounds that they used excessive force. And in Papua New Guinea, communities next to Barrick's Porgera mine are demanding the company pay for their resettlement after run-off and pollution from the site have made their villages unlivable.

With all these serious, documented abuses abroad, Saunders has mixed feelings about the fact that it is shareholders who are able to seek retribution in the courts, but not those directly impacted themselves.

“I just hope that these lies [about Pascua-Lama] expose the pathological culture at Barrick Gold. Which of course have many other consequences outside of shareholder value,” she said.

An early Barrick Gold demonstration in Toronto took place on April 24, 2014. Photo by @liezelhill via Twitter.

Shareholder activism

MiningWatch Canada is also working to bring awareness to Barrick Gold's activities. This past March they issued a notice to investors about the company's actions in Tanzania. In it, they document various shootings, killings and rapes that have allegedly been committed by security forces and police in and around the mine. They are urging shareholders to recognize the harm being committed by the company and to pressure executives at the AGM.

“[Shareholders] need to pay at least as much attention to the accusations of ongoing human rights abuses and severe environmental damage at Barrick sites around the world, as to the financial predictions of the company’s management based on reserves, pipelines and costs of production, as these severe harms caused by the company result in local-level conflict, opposition and legal action that presents real risks to their investment,” said Catherine Coumans of MiningWatch by email.

Driving this point home, Saunders and Protest Barrick organized a pre-AGM event on April 28, to "help investors bankrupt Barrick." The group distributed information detailing how to join the class action lawsuit. 

End of an era

Barrick's outspoken and controversial founder and chair Peter Munk will also be retiring this year, signalling what some have called the end of an era.

Munk has been ardent in his defense of the company's work, and in his refusal to take action to remedy the impacts of their mines, said Saunders. At the same time, neither she nor Coumans feels his leaving will mark much of a change at the company. “Maybe the company will finally agree to resettle people,” said Saunders. But the problem isn't Munk, she said, “it's that this company continues to operate.”

And while he may be out of the building, the 86-year-old's presence will probably continue to be felt, said Coumans. “[Munk's] influence is likely to continue through his hand-picked co-chair, who will now become chair, and possibly through his son who is also on the board of directors,” she wrote.

Accountability problem

While the biggest and often most visible violator of rights, Barrick is simply a reflection of problems in the mining industry. “Many of the negative impacts Barrick is causing locally, through human rights abuses and environmental degradation, and nationally through tax evasion and avoidance are quite widespread in the sector,” explained Coumans. “Because of Barrick’s sheer size and exposure globally, it is possible to expose a wide range of these harms related to one company, but we are seeing the same negative impacts by other Canadian mining companies.”

And at the root of this widespread problem is the question of accountability. Canada has the largest mining sector in the world, in part because of weak disclosure laws and no legislation for trying Canadian companies for crimes committed abroad.

In an historic ruling last year, a case against Canadian mining company Hudbay for negligence leading to rapes and murders committed by its security personnel at its Fenix mine in Guatemala was allowed to go ahead by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. But there are still no laws on the books clearly granting victims of Canadian companies' abuses abroad the right to sue them in Canadian court.

This has led to the Open for Justice campaign, started in 2013 and spearheaded by the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability, to have Canadian parliament adopt legislation making it clear that Canadian companies can be sued by both Canadians and non-Canadians for offenses committed abroad, and the creation of an Ombudsperson to receive complaints and verify the compliance of Canadian extractive companies with legally-binding corporate accountability standards. It's only by bringing in this new legislation that Canada's mining sector – including Barrick – will be pushed to change their actions, said Saunders.

While waiting for legislation with more teeth, though, the plans are to continue protesting, which has seen success at pressuring Barrick and changing the debate on mining in Canada. Over the past few years, Saunders says she has seen her and fellow organizers' concerns go from fringe and rejected, to being seriously discussed in the mainstream press.

“Each year we've come, Barrick has had to admit to what we are saying,” she said. “Each year I feel a lot of validation regarding the accusations against Barrick that have finally been accepted in the mainstream.”

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A new campaign for transparency is pushing British Columbia to become the first province to require mining, oil and gas companies to reveal what they pay to domestic and foreign governments. The initiative, led by Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Canada and Publish What You Pay (PWYP), a group that campaigns for full disclosure from the Canadian government, asks Canadians to send a postcard, reading “Information is Power,” to B.C. Finance Minister Michael De Jong.

The groups hope to hand-deliver more than 500 postcards to the Minister on May 1st.

“When citizens can follow the money generated by the natural resources their country supplies to the world, they can ensure their government is using these revenues to improve their communities, rather than lining the pockets of people in power,” the groups state on the campaign’s website.

The TRACE campaign, or TRancesparent & ACcountable Extractives, advocates for accountability in the global extractive industry, starting with B.C.

“The TRACE Campaign is currently focused on increasing transparency, by making it mandatory for extractive companies registered in Canada to disclose all payments they make to governments, at home and abroad,” the groups write.

These TRACE campaign postcards with the message "information is power" will be hand-delivered to Minister De Jong.

“B.C. can help make this happen by requiring the 1200+ mining companies registered in the province to publish what they pay to governments in Canada and around the world.”

Samantha Burton, advocacy manager with EWB, argues “it’s impossible to talk about the global mining industry without taking about Canada,” in a recent op-ed.

“With 60 per cent of the world’s publicly traded mining companies listed in this country, 70 per cent of international mining equity raised on Toronto stock exchanges and a presence in more than 100 countries, the importance of Canada’s role in global mining in unparalleled.”

Canada is slowly moving towards more transparent disclosure guidelines for the extractive industries, with new transparency regulations – that require companies to disclose all payments to governments over $100,000 – to be enacted in April of 2015.

The TRACE campaign looks to put mining profits and decision-making power back into the hands of the country’s citizens by requiring full disclosure of financial payments.

“In many countries rich in natural resources – like oil and gold – the majority of citizens remain in poverty. Mining, oil or gas operations in their country generate billions of dollars of revenue, which should be used to improve people’s lives and livelihoods,” the groups write. “But too often, this doesn’t happen.”

According to EWB development profits are all too often “lost to corruption and mismanagement.” And a lack of public transparency, they argue, “breeds mistrust and conflict.”

EWB reports most citizens of resource-rich countries are unaware that there are more than 1100 companies extracting resources in their country at a given time. Citizens often don’t know what is being extracted, how much is being collected in the industrial or government sectors, or where the profit goes.

“Without this knowledge, it is very difficult for communities to ensure they receive full social benefits (such as investment in healthcare, education systems, infrastructure) from the extraction of their natural resources.”

With the help of this campaign, EWB hopes to push B.C. and Canada take the initiative to create a more accountable extractive sector.

“Canada is demonstrating real commitment to improving extractive sector transparency,” says Burton, “but global leadership does not come from a single policy. Canada became an international force in the mining business by demonstrating consistent, proactive leadership across the sector.”

“It’s time for our government to become a global leader in responsible mining practices by doing the same.”

Image Credit: Photo from Pricewaterhouse Coopers report Staying the Course.

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1. Bill C-13, ‘Cyberbulling’ Legislation. Introduced under the thinly disguised banner of anti-cyberbulling measures, the new bill will amend key parts of the criminal code in order to extend police power—streamlining the process of obtaining warrants to intercept private communications, enabling the tracking of individuals if a crime is suspected, and expanding wiretapping from telephone data to any digital activity. In short, bullying tragedies are being exploited to push through previously struck down legislation (such as Bill-30), that will force Internet Service Providers to surrender our personal information to government agencies with absolutely no civilian oversight.

2. Bill C-56, The Combating Counterfeit Products Act. Championed as a measure to protect intellectual property, closer scrutiny reveals that the bill is but an attempt to push the extensively discredited Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)—an agreement rejected by EU member countries for its invasiveness—in through the backdoor. Attempting to cover everything from pharmaceuticals to art, the bill would legislate new invasive border measures including seizure powers without court oversight in instances where a government official ‘reasonably’ believes there may be some risk to a dangerously flexible conceptualisation of ‘public safety.’

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Blame Canada is a four part series revealing how Canada has become a wealthy, fossil-fuelled energy superpower and an international climate pariah. Part 1 reveals Canada's emergence as a Petrostate, part 2 outlines Canada's climate crimes, and part 3 shows how energy 'wealth' contributes to the nation's poverty.

Canada's opposition to anything that might help developing countries is “mind-boggling” a delegate from Mali told me during a UN conference to slow the widespread extinction of species. “Canadians are known to protect the environment, I cannot understand why they are pushing policies that are clearly unsustainable," he said.

Only a few days before Prime Minister Stephen Harper told delegates that losing wildlife was an urgent and alarming issue. Then as nearly 190 nations made plans to take action, Canadian delegates blocked those plans with legal and technical manoeuvres.

“Do Canadians know what their government is doing here? You must tell them.”

That was in 2008. Since then at environmental or development gatherings around the world I've been asked dozens of times “what has happened to Canada?” And it's not just me.

“Wherever I travel in Africa people ask me, ‘what happened to Canada?” Joanna Kerr told the Globe and Mail March 30. Kerr, a Canadian, heads the global anti-poverty organization ActionAid.

It's no secret what's happened to Canada.

"Oil wealth has changed the culture of Canada, but there is no discussion about any of this,” says Alberta journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, author of the award winning book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent. His latest book is The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude.

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Canada's media have avoided the issue or acted as cheerleaders of the energy sector. The tar sands are already too big and have had enormous impacts on Canada's politics, economy and environment, Nikiforuk says.

Energy Prosperity? Canadians earn only $100 for every $165 spent

All of Canada's newfound oil and gas wealth has ended up hurting most Canadians as documented in Part 3: The Bigger Canada's Energy Sector Gets the Poorer People Become. Canadians are poorer – one in seven children live in poverty – and hold enormous personal debts. Last year for every $100 earned, Canadian households spent $165. This is highest debt ratio in Canadian history.

While Canada's GDP has nearly tripled in the last 15 years, more than half a million manufacturing jobs vanished largely due to the high Canadian dollar amped up by energy revenues.

The huge amounts of money generated by the energy sector don't seem to stay in Canada given the evidence of huge governments deficits. Even oil-rich Alberta has had deficits the last six years. The federal and Alberta government response has been to make major cuts in public services like health care, education and environmental protection.

What's happening in Canada is the sacrifice of forests, rivers, wetlands and wildlife so one industry can profit by selling products that are polluting the global climate. In a mock trial at the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the CEOs of oil companies operating in the Alberta tar sands were found guilty of the international crime of ecocide for deliberate and extensive damage to the environment.

That verdict should not be surprising. As documented in Part Two: Canada's Plan to Get Rich by Trashing the Climate, the world's new energy superpower is betting its future on profiting from dumping two billion tonnes of climate-wrecking carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere by 2020 (Total emissions from extraction, processing and burning).

That's two billion tonnes of CO2 from Canada's energy sector alone. Add in emissions from all other sources of roughly 500 million tonnes and that's far more than India's total emissions, a country with 1.2 billion people and the world's third largest emitter.

You'd think it'd be hard to claim Canada takes climate change seriously.

“Canada is a global environmental leader … and yes, that includes the oil sands,” said Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver last March in address in Chicago.

The Alberta and Federal government seem to think no one reads George Orwell's 1984 any more

What Canada has actually become a leader in is gutting environmental protections and muzzling scientists. Stuffing gags in the mouths of government scientists was among the first things a Stephen Harper minority government did when they were elected in 2006. Scientists and other experts were told they had to get permission from the Prime Minister’s communications office to talk to media. Even when studies by Environment Canada scientists are publicly available in scientific journals, reporters have to file their science questions with the communications office who decide if scientists will answer.  The process takes days and sometimes weeks.

By 2010 media coverage of climate change in Canada declined by over 80% according to internal government documents obtained by the Climate Action Network (Canada), a coalition of 80 non-governmental organizations. Incidentally only weeks after Harper's election the coalition's funding was eliminated.

Even scientists in universities and independent research institutes hesitate to speak out. Thomas Duck, an atmospheric scientist at Halifax's Dalhousie University said he'd never again get federal funding for his research after speaking to me about the recent gutting of Environment Canada.

In 2011 the Harper government claimed financial hardship and slashed $200 million from Environment Canada's budget. The programmes targeted were those informing Canadians about the state of the environment and will have a direct impact on the health and welfare of Canadians, said Duck.

"I'm speaking out because these cuts will be very bad for my children," he added.

The muzzling of Canada's scientists has been widely criticized by international science organizations. This week Canada's Information Commissioner launched a formal investigation.

It may now be risky for ordinary Canadians to speak out in one of the world's most lauded democracies. The Harper government considers environmental activists potential threats to national security. Tar sands, gas wells, coal trains and pipelines are now conflated as essential to national security based on analysis of documents obtained by the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario

Those documents show that the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) view activist activities such as blocking access to roads or buildings as "forms of attack" and depict those involved as national security threats

It's the “new normal” for Canada's security agencies to keep a close eye on the activities of environmental organisations. Greenpeace Canada's executive director Bruce Cox, has had recent meetings with the head of the RCMP but Cox insists that it is “governments and fossil fuel industry who are the extremists, threatening the prosperity of future generations."

The world is finally figuring out what's happening to Canada.

“The Harper government's decisions reflect the narrow interests of Canada’s fossil fuel industry,” said Christoph Bals, policy director of Germanwatch, a German NGO focused on development and global equity.

Bals was referring to decisions to pull Canada out of the Kyoto Protocol, the only international climate treaty and last week's decision to abandon the UN organization fight to reduce drought and land degradation (UNCCD).

“That decision and the UNCCD decision do not reflect the majority of Canadians, in my opinion,” said Bals.

Perhaps the growing concerns by people outside of Canada will finally force more Canadians to cut through the curtains of corporate and government propaganda and ask themselves: “What has happened to my country?”

Image Credit: Tar sands refineries in Fort McMurray by Kris Krug, used with permission.

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The Canadian government is working hard behind the scenes to cover up the negative effects that tar sands extraction is having on the local environment, wildlife, communities and the global climate. According to Access to Information documents obtained by Postmedia's Mike De Souza, the Stephen Harper government has actively suppressed the release of vital information regarding the spread of tar sands contamination by muzzling federal scientists.

The gag order, according to De Souza, came on the heels of a newly researched government report in November 2011 which confirmed the findings of University of Alberta scientists Erin N. Kelly and David Schindler. The scientists discovered concentrations of toxics such as heavy metals were higher near tar sands operations, showing a positive correlation between tar sands activity and the spread of contaminants in the local environment.

The government of Canada and the government of Alberta denied the correlation, saying local waterways tested showed no signs of toxic contamination and reports of mutated and cancerous fish downstream from the tar sands were unfounded.

The document uncovered by De Souza shows that federal scientists who could confirm the University of Alberta results were restricted from speaking to the media: "If scientists are approached for interviews at the conference, the [Environment Canada] communications policy will be followed by referring the journalist to the media relations…phone number. An appropriate spokesperson will then be identified depending on journalist questions."

Federal scientists were also given a list of scripted responses, explaining government tests in the spring of 2010 showed no toxics in the Athabasca River and established no links between contaminants and abnormal and sick fish.

Scientists were also directed to avoid questions regarding environmental monitoring of the tar sands and the role Environment Canada plays in the region with this scripted line: "I am a scientist. I'm not in a position to answer that question but I'd be happy to refer you to an appropriate spokesperson."

David Schindler, co-author of the 2010 University of Alberta study commented, "it is a good study, and [the author] is a very fine young scientist, who should be trusted to comment on her own results."

"Similarly, Derek Muir, her supervisor and co-author, is one of the world's top contamination experts, and Canadians should be ashamed that he cannot discuss results directly with the public, but must go through an official spokesperson."

In 2010, the results of Kelly and Schindler's contaminant analysis caused an uproar in Alberta and federal governments. Eager to promote expansion in the tar sands, the Canadian government failed to install a sound and independent monitoring system for the region.

Any data used to support the government's official position, that no contamination had occurred, was supplied by the oil and gas industry.

Schindler conducted a basic analysis of waterways in the region, sampling water both upstream from tar sands operations, and downstream. What Schindler and his team discovered was a considerable accumulation of pollutants in water downstream from tar sands development which includes open-pit mining and refining.

Most notably, Schindler discovered that airborne pollutants were being deposited on land, far from contaminated waterways like the Athabasca River. It was Schindler who first recognized the role snow was playing in the transportation and depositing of tar sands pollution.

These land-based pollutants mirrored contamination of waterways. Schindler found that "embryos of fish exposed to oilsands' water and sediment have very high rates of mortality, and among the survivors, there are very high rates of deformities."

His research confirmed the concerns of local communities, First Nations and environmental groups that the fast-tracking of tar sands expansion without careful monitoring was having negative effects on the environment and those living downstream.

The findings also contradicted research conducted by the industry/government group Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP), a group Schindler claims "violated every rule" of long-term study.

In perhaps one of Canada's most scandalous moments in recent history, Dr. Schindler was publicly discredited by the provincial and federal government. His research and his credibility were called into question when the Alberta government went on record to say his study – which was published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – was biased and that contaminants in the region's watershed occur naturally and not as a result of industrial activities.

The treatment Schindler received as a result of his research concerned scientists across Canada, many of whom felt the federal government was conduction a 'witch hunt' to silence information that might fuel opposition to the tar sands.

Schindler's experience was just one of many reasons why scientists from across Canada held a mock memorial this summer on Parliament Hill, mourning the "Death of Evidence," caused by the muzzling of scientists by the federal government.

The motto of the event was clear: "Stephen Harper Hates Science."

To this day no clear environmental monitoring program is in place to track and analyze the effects that tar sands extraction and refining has on the local environment. Last month the Alberta government announced the creation of a new scientific body to monitor the impacts of development, which Diana McQueen, the province's Environment Minister, suggests will be 'credible' and operate at an 'arms-length' from industry and government. The plan, however, has yet to take any real shape.

"This is yet another plan to develop a plan," said Greenpeace energy and climate campaigner Mike Hudema. "There is still no funding commitment and no clear governance model to ensure independence. The province should stop approving new projects based on flawed data and incomplete information until this gets sorted out."

Image credit: Jodi Stark

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