By Charles Mandel. This article originally appeared on the National Observer.

Ecojustice, on behalf of a group of prominent Canadians, filed a complaint Thursday with the federal Competition Bureau, asking it to investigate false and misleading representations made by climate change denier groups.

In their application to the Commissioner of Competition, the group called for “a thorough rigorous inquiry of the denier groups and their climate science misrepresentations.”

The group is also pressing for the commission to refer their application to the Attorney-General of Canada for criminal charges against the denier groups.

Ecojustice filed the complaint of behalf of Stephen Lewis, the former Canadian Ambassador to the UN and chair of the 1988 World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere; Tzeporah Berman, author and adjunct professor at York University; and Thomas Duck, an atmospheric scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Other complainants are David Schindler, the Killam Memorial professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, and Danny Harvey, an University of Toronto professor and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author.

The complaint cites The Friends of Science, The International Climate Science Coalition and the Heartland Institute for misleading billboard advertisements, website representations and a poster made available as a free download on a website.

“These groups attempt to discredit the established scientific consensus that global warming and climate change are real and caused by human activity,” Duck said in a statement. “The reality, causes and consequences of climate change are well understood.”

Canada’s Competition Act prohibits the making of materially false or misleading representations for the purpose of promoting any business interest such as fossil fuel development.

Friends of Science billboard in Ottawa, 2014. Photo: Friends of Science

In its application, Ecojustice states that it believes the case should be referred to the Attorney General as a criminal matter. Potential prosecution can take place if it can be demonstrated that there’s clear and compelling evidence that accused knowingly or recklessly made false or misleading representations to the public.

The competition bureau must also be satisfied that criminal prosecution would be in the public interest.

The application notes that two Friends of Science billboards were the subject of 96 complaints to Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) during their display in Montreal in 2014. The council reviewed the billboard ads against the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards and determined they were false and misleading advertising.

The Friends of Science appealed the ruling, but it was upheld. Just months after the decision, the Friends of Science put up a new video billboard making climate science misrepresentations in Montreal and in November 2015 put up more billboards in Edmonton and Calgary.

The application alleges that the Friends of Science’s continued display of climate science misrepresentations after numerous consumer complaints and a former censure by the ASC is clear and compelling evidence that the group knowingly or recklessly made such misrepresentations.

“When combined with the overwhelming public importance of the context in which the climate science misrepresentations are made — including the effect of climate change on the Canadian economy, and the negative effects of climate science misrepresentations on competition in key markets for stimulating the transition to a low carbon economy in Canada — we believe the Commissioner’s inquiry should proceed on the criminal track,” the application states.

Ecojustice and the individuals it represents allege that the climate change denier groups misrepresent climate change science to promote their own business interests and those of their anonymous funders.

“While the denier groups do not publically disclose the identities of their funds, available public information suggests their funding comes at least in part from individuals and corporations with business interests in the production and use of fossil fuels,” the application to the Competition Bureau alleges.

Friends of Science video billboard on display in Montreal in 2015. Photo: Friends of Science

The application states that Talisman Energy Inc., a Calgary-based oil and gas exploration and production company, donated $175,000 to Friends of Science in 2004 to fund the production of a specific video and other activities.

Mike De Souza, an environmental journalist then with the Ottawa Citizen, wrote in 2012 how the energy company, contributed to a pair of trust accounts at the University of Calgary in 2004 to produce a video and engage in public relations, advertising and lobbying activities against the Kyoto Protocol and government measures to restrict fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

The accounts were formed at the request of Friends of Science, whom de Souza described as “retired oil industry workers and academics who oppose the Kyoto Protocol and reject the validity of peer-reviewed science on the causes of climate change observed in recent decades.”

In an earlier submission to Alberta’s Privacy and Information Commissioner, Talisman said that an university audit turned up nothing to suggest that the school was aware of its own funds “being used for political purposes,” De Souza reported.

A Talisman spokesperson told De Souza that “the donation was a decision made by the company’s former president, who had ‘different views on climate change science.’

“Today, Talisman’s position is quite different and Talisman does believe that [greenhouse gas emissions] pose a significant risk to the industry,” the spokesperson said.

In its application, Ecojustice states that climate science misrepresentations are inherently harmful to the proper functioning of markets in Canada. “The confusion they sow makes low-carbon technologies less competitive and distorts capital investment toward high-carbon industries, risking a carbon bubble.”

The Competition Act gives the commissioner investigatory powers to examine witnesses and order the production of documents, such as lists of donors, to advance an inquiry. If the information gathered by the commissioner shows the act has been violated, the matter may be referred to the Attorney General of Canada for prosecution or civil proceedings before the courts.

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.

It’s no surprise, after California’s five-year drought that is now creeping northwards, experts have water on the mind.

The drought-plagued forests that burned across the continent this summer offered a glimpse of our future world, according to retired scientists David Schindler, who told an audience last week that the ash-laden air and sepia skies of summer 2015 are to become the new normal in a hotter and drier world.

Schindler, a Rhodes Scholar and professor emeritus at the University of Alberta’s Department of Biological Sciences, spoke at The Walrus Talks in Victoria, an event that brought together authors and experts all with stories to tell about our most overlooked resource: water.

“When I agreed to give a Walrus Talk last spring on the topic of climate warming and fresh water I couldn’t have known that the summer of 2015 was going to be a poster child that would display most of these symptoms that I’ve been studying for 25 years or more,” he said.

“In this part of B.C. you enjoyed the summer of water rationing and red suns set in a grey sky with air quality that you normally wouldn’t see outside of Beijing. You’re getting a good idea of quality of life that we’re facing ahead if we continue to operate as business as usual.”

Schindler said Canadians have been “lulled into thinking that Canada has so much freshwater, we can always squander it and be sure there will always be some more waiting for us.”

“We’re assured by politicians and media that we have lots of water.”

The website for Natural Resources Canada demonstrates this point exactly: “Overall, Canada may be considered a freshwater-rich country: on an average annual basis, Canadian rivers discharge close to nine per cent of the world’s renewable water supply, while Canada has less than one per cent of the world’s population.”

But this way of thinking about Canada’s freshwater is misleading, Schindler said, because what sustains that water supply is runoff. With climate change already affecting Canada’s glaciers and increasing incidents of drought, our freshwater supply is in danger.

“You can’t talk about water without talking about climate change,” Schindler said. “We know that the snow packs in these mountain ranges are dwindling as last winter gave us a good example of. The glaciers supply a tiny amount of the total annual flow of a river but it comes at a critical time of the hot, dry summer.”

Schindler said the Bow River Glacier can supply up to 50 per cent of the river’s water during dry spells. But he said, over the last century, the Bow River Glacier has dramatically retreated threatening water supply for cities like Calgary as well as the cold water necessary to sustain the river’s famous cold water fish species during the hotter months of July to September.

Wildfires, Both Cause and Outcome of Climate Change, Consume Freshwater

The millions of hectares of forest that burned across Canada this year were the victim of the “deadly combination” of pine-beetle infestations, drought and high temperatures, Schindler said.

He added that wildfires further exacerbating the problem of climate change by releasing huge amounts of emissions.

Although models for determining how much forest fires contribute to overall emissions are still being developed, Environment Canada estimates an average acre of burnt forests releases 4.81 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

But this figure can be higher for peatland, common in the boreal forest, which is estimated to hold 30 per cent of the world’s terrestrial carbon. According to new research it turns out boreal forests are burning at greater rates than at any time in the past 10,000 years.

According to Environment Canada, it’s estimated that in an average year, fires across Canada release 27 megatonnes of carbon. For reference, in 2012 Canada released 699 megatonnes and is on track to release 727 megatonnes of carbon emissions annually by 2020.

But in a bad year, those emissions can skyrocket. According to Schindler wildfire emissions in one of these hot and dry spells can approach the emissions output of Canada’s industrial sector, the country’s number one emitter of greenhouse gasses.

And because saltwater can corrode fire fighting equipment, a freshwater is required to fight all these fires and is at times mixed with chemical fire retardants or foam concentrates. A spokesperson for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection recently told NPR that firefighters facing severe drought conditions this past summer were forced to draw water from nearby swimming pools.

No government websites list the total amount of water used to fight Canada’s forest fires, although a single fire near Banff, Alberta this summer consumed an estimated ten thousand litres of water per day from nearby rivers and creeks.

Federal Politicans Must Consider Costs

It's easy to see the high costs of climate change and the high value of water, Schindler said. The amount of money put into fighting forests fires plus the value of lost forestry quickly escalated into the billions this summer. B.C. alone spent nearly $300 million fighting forest fires in 2015 although the province only budgeted $63 million for the task.

Schindler said it's time to be more honest about these costs.

“How is it that we can have three leaders debating economics in the run up to the election — talking about figures of the same magnitude — without talking about this side of the ledger?"

“They talk about jobs, they talk about big industry — how about the costs? Don’t you guys know that there are two sides to the ledger?”

Schindler ended by saying the value of water and the cost of a warming climate can’t be kept separate from any grand promises about the economy.

“Before we can have an economic action plan we need to have a climate action plan,” he said.

Image: University of Alberta

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.

A group of scientists from across North America are calling on the governments of Canada and Alberta to impose a moratorium on future development of the Alberta oilsands.

The recommendation is the result of a consensus document that surveys scientific literature related to the oilsands from across research fields. The clear outcome of the research — as it relates to climate, ecosystems, species protection and indigenous rights — is a need to end oilsands growth, the group states.

“As scientists we recognize that no one can speak with authority to all aspects of this complex topic, which is why we came together to synthesize the science from our different fields,” Wendy Palen, professor of biological sciences at Simon Fraser University, said.

The group of scientists, which include 12 fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, 22 members of the U.S. National Academy of Science, five recipients of the Order of Canada and a Nobel Prize winner, released their consensus position on a website, www.oilsandsmoratorium.org, Wednesday. A ful list of the scientists supporting the moratorium can be found here.

“These decisions are complex,” Palen added, “they transcend national boundaries and national interests and they are far broader than any single scientific study or economic assessment.”

Canada’s Carbon Budget

“Within our carbon budget we have high emission sources such as oilsands and unconventional sources of oil and coal that cannot be developed,” Mark Jaccard, energy and climate economist at Simon Fraser University said.

“Therefor while the existing output of the oilsands should not be shut down tomorrow — we’re not talking about harming the Alberta economy or the jobs that are there now — what the research shows, and that’s why we’re calling for it, is that we shouldn’t be doubling down or quadrupling down on the oilsands,” he said.

The oilsands industry produced just over 2 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) in 2014. The most recent projections released this month from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers projects oilsands production to grow to more than 4.2 million bpd by 2030.

In 2013 Canada’s National Energy Board forecasted 5 million bpd by 2035, although falling oil prices have altered most projections.

Jaccard said other forecasts see production skyrocketing to 6 or 9 million bpd.

“None of this needs to be done,” he said.

Alberta Taking on Too Much Risk

Thomas Homer-Dixon, Professor at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo said the call for a moratorium shouldn’t been see as an “attack on Alberta.”

“The risks are largest for Alberta in particular continuing on this path,” he said. “This is an ultimately economic dead end because the climate is changing and because there will be, in time, some kind of North American or global pricing regime for carbon.”

Homer-Dixon said a path to “alternative routes for economic development” would involve less risk for Alberta.

“Rather than assuming what we’re suggesting is a risky alternative fraught with uncertainty — which it is in some respects — it’s actually less risky and less fraught with uncertainty in many respects than continuing down the current pathway of doubling down on oilsands extraction.”

This week G7 leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, released a declaration calling for a total decarbonization of the global economy by 2100 and a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Although Canada agreed to these goals in principle, many are left wondering what concrete steps will be taken to reduce Canada’s emissions. The Alberta oilsands are the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.

“A moratorium makes a lot of sense”

Homer-Dixon said a carbon-constrained future could have severe effects on Canada and Alberta’s economy if we don’t move into low-carbon sources of energy.

“Far sooner than most Canadians expect we may have trouble selling our fossil fuels to the world,” he said.

David Keith, professor of applied physics and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said there’s a “there’s enormous, direct self-interest here from people who care about a sustainable Alberta economy.”

“I’ve got kids and my own interests here,” he said. “But the more we grow the harder the fall is going to be.”

“If you don’t want to see a crushing downturn and want to see some sort of gradual turn for Alberta —where there’s a healthy Albertan economy when I’m old and my kids are grown — then a moratorium makes a lot of sense, even from a purely self-interested point of view.”

Keith added he doesn’t see a moratorium as the responsibility of industry.

“The fundamental onus is not on proponents,” he said. “The onus is on the regulatory system — the government of Alberta, the government of Canada — to act in the long-term interest of the people they serve.”

Thinking the Oilsands Beyond Climate and Economy

David Schindler, professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, said the group of scientists are making arguments for a moratorium that extend beyond the scope of climate.

The group lists a total of 10 reasons that support a moratorium including broad support for alternative energy and the treaty rights of first nations.

“If you take the focus off carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses for a minute and look at the other points among our 10, oilsands are really a poster child for unsustainable development,” Schindler said.

He added an additional major concern is the risk pipelines destined to carry diluted bitumen to the British Columbian coast pose to salmon stocks. “They cross hundreds of river channels and particularly in winter when those rivers are covered with ice, you cannot remove spilled oil from under ice.”

He said small spills have caused major problems in the Athabasca River. “The technology for removing that oil from under ice doesn’t exist.”

He said caribou are also disappearing from the oilsands region and expansion of development and pipelines will further exacerbate their recovery.

Ken Lertzman, professor at the school of resource and environmental management at Simon Fraser University, said social justice is yet another reason to support the moratorium.

Lertzman said the production of oil in Alberta and its transit across North America “violates the treaty rights of many indigenous peoples.” He added much of the oilsands development occurs on the traditional territory of First Nations, many of which are still dealing with unresolved land claims.

Both the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Beaver Lake Cree First Nation have been involved in protracted battles with the Alberta and federal governments to protect their treaty rights and territorial lands from the cumulative impacts of oilsands development.

“Indigenous peoples live on the frontlines of energy development; it’s their rights, livelihoods, health and cultures that are most at risk,” he said.

Image Credit: Kris Krug

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.

It has been 10 days since the tailings pond holding billions of litres of mining waste breached at the Mount Polley mine near Likely, B.C. sending arsenic and mercury-laced water and slurry into the Hazeltine Creek which feeds Quesnel Lake, a major source of drinking water and home to one quarter of the province’s sockeye salmon.

Yet local residents still have no idea when clean up of the spill site might begin.

On a recent trip to the spill site, DeSmog Canada learned no cleanup crews are currently working on removing the tremendous amount of mining waste clogging up what used to be the Hazeltine Creek and spreading out into Quesnel Lake.

David Karn, media relations with the ministry of environment, was unable to provide information or comment on an expected cleanup date or who would be performing the cleanup, industry or government.

Imperial Metals, also reached out to for comment, was unable to respond by the time of publication.

On Tuesday, August 12, representatives from the Cariboo Regional District (CRD) announced a local drinking water ban placed on Quesnel Lake and the Quesnel River would be lifted after sampling showed the water was safe for consumption.

A water use ban remains in effect for 100 metres surrounding the debris field at the convergence of the Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake.

Coralee Oakes, local MLA and minister of community, sport and development told DeSmog Canada that regular water testing will continue and that sample results will be made available online. The CRD will continue to supply residents and tourists with free drinking water and temporary showers at a forestry camp.

But community members have expressed concern over the remnants of the spill, which sit leaching into the lake, and a large cloudy plume of suspended solids in the water, visible from the air.

Richard Holmes, fisheries biologist with Cariboo Envirotech and local resident for 38 years, said sophisticated equipment is needed to survey the extent of the spill underwater.

“We’re talking with industry about getting some underwater cameras in there,” he said.

Holmes is working with the Soda Creek First Nation to ensure First Nations are involved in cleanup efforts, once they begin.

In the meantime, locals are left to speculate about lingering contaminants in their water.

Despite the recently-lifted drinking water ban, many residents admitted they will not drink the water.

Freshwater expert and biogeochemist Dr. David Schindler said random, localized sampling of contaminated water “may not detect the damage done.”

“I understand that considerable arsenic, mercury, cadmium, lead and copper were among the elements released,” he said. “All are extremely toxic.”

Schindler said he suspects the biggest long-term threat lies in areas where sediment from the spill overlaps with spawning and rearing habitat for fish.

“In the St. Lawrence River, most of the contamination of fish with mercury occurs at a few sites where contaminated sediment is deposited and [which] fish also use for feeding or nursery habitat,” he said.

But detailed knowledge of spill sites is usually scant, he said. “Unfortunately, there is not this basic sort of information available for most sites and the sampling done after an accident is more or less random.”

“Our monitoring of habitats around all industrial sites in important aquatic systems in this country is in serious need of upgrading,” he said. “Without background information on fish populations, habitats and toxic concentrations, it is almost impossible to determine how much damage is done.”

“Sometimes it is hard to believe that the lack of pre-accident information is not deliberate,” he said.

This article is part of a joint-venture between the Vancouver Observer and DeSmog Canada.

Image Credit: Carol Linnitt

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.

As production in Alberta's oilsands continues to expand, waste byproducts continue to build up as well, from petcoke piles to tailing ponds. Now the energy companies behind the oilsands boom are planning to dump their growing volumes of toxic wastewater into man-made lakes, in the hope that they eventually become natural habitats.

Jeremy van Loon of Business Week writes that Syncrude Canada, Royal Dutch Shell, and ExxonMobil affiliate Imperial Oil "are running out of room to store the contaminated water that is a byproduct of the process used to turn bitumen–a highly viscous form of petroleum–into diesel and other fuels."

By 2022 the monthly output of wastewater from these companies "could turn New York's Central Park into a toxic reservoir 11 feet deep, according to the Pembina Institute," writes van Loon.

To accommodate the growing volume of byproduct, the energy companies have reportedly "obtained permission from provincial authorities to flood abandoned tar sand mines with a mix of tailings and fresh water." According to van Loon, this would "transform northern Alberta into the largest man-made lake district on earth."

Syncrude's Base Mine Lake, on which work began last summer, will measure 2,000 acres when complete, and is expected by the company to "eventually replicate a natural habitat, complete with fish and waterfowl."

Non-profit environmental group Pembina describes these end pit lakes as "high-risk and experimental," noting that "historical data about using end pit lakes as toxic waste dumps are insufficient to determine whether or not they are a safe, long-term tool for reclaiming tailings waste as no example of a functional end pit lake currently exists."

There are about 30 end pit lakes planned for the Athabasca Boreal region, according to Alberta's Cumulative Environment Management Association.

"There's no way to tell how the ecology of these lakes will evolve over time," said Jennifer Grant, director of oilsands at Pembina. "It's all guesswork at this point. It's reckless."

"We're playing Russian roulette with a big part of an important ecosystem," said David Schindler, an ecology professor at the University of Alberta. "Nothing is going to grow in that soup of toxic elements except perhaps a few hydrosulfide bacteria. And all of the unforeseen events are being downplayed."

Syncrude began creating an end pit lake 30 miles north of Fort McMurray this summer, filling in a mine with fresh water from a dam to a depth of 16 feet to keep toxic tailings down at the bottom. According to company spokeswoman Cheryl Robb, trials involving "test ponds" resulted in naturally occurring ecosystems, with microbes helping to break down pollutants.

However, van Loon writes that the "largest test pond was 4 hectares–roughly 1/200th the size of Syncrude's lake."

"The big question we have is how long will it take before the water is clean, how long is it going to take before the littoral zones develop and the shoreline vegetation builds up?" said Robb. "But we're confident in the technology."

One of the major concerns surrounding end pit lakes is the possibility of contaminated water seeping into the boreal ecosystem. In October, "communities bordering Canada's Athabasca River were cautioned not to drink from the waterway after a breach in a coal tailings storage pond dumped 1 billion liters (264 million gallons) of contaminated water into an area west of Edmonton."

According to Pembina, the exact amount of seepage from tailings in Alberta is "either not known or has not been made public," but modelled estimates suggest that "11 to 12.6 million litres of tailings leak from tailings ponds each day."

Image Credit: WhitneyH / Flickr

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

This is a guest post by David Schindler, Killam Memorial Professor of Ecology emeritus at the University of Alberta. His 50-year scientific career has included 22 years as a federal government scientist. 

Most scientists are by nature introverts, happiest in the field or the laboratory, willing to talk about their work if asked but not inclined to be self-promoters. But on Monday, they demonstrated in public in several Canadian cities to protest the muzzling of government scientists and the de-emphasis of government environmental science.

That scientists would take the time and effort to demonstrate publicly should be deeply disturbing to Canadians. It indicates some dramatic and important changes in the purpose of government science departments.

In the 1960s and 1970s, government scientists were encouraged to speak publicly about their work. The resulting science-based policies were the envy of scientists and policy-makers around the world. Canada was the first country to regulate phosphorus in sewage and detergents, leading to the recovery of many lakes from algal blooms. Much of the science behind that decision was done by government scientists. It was welcomed by policy-makers eager to anchor their policies in solid science. Canada also led global efforts to decrease emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals, resulting in the Montreal Protocol.

A decade later, the transparency in government science began showing the first signs of weakening. Scientists were no longer encouraged to speak publicly on their work, but they were not prevented from doing so. They were warned to avoid directly criticizing government policies, even environmentally harmful ones. Rebukes were mild for a scientist who challenged his political masters. At worst, a scolding letter was “put on your file.”

Such tightening of public communication was one reason I left government science for academia. In ensuing years, control over science and scientists has been slowly tightened by politicians and bureaucrats under both Conservative and Liberal governments, who feared that science would challenge their ideology and their policies.

Even so, there were successes, such as policies to control acid rain, based largely on science from government departments. But there were also failures, as bureaucrats and politicians ignored science and silenced government scientists to make weak policies that collapsed the cod fishery and compromised the salmon runs of the Nechako River. Despite repeated budget cuts, government science staggered on, doing sometimes remarkable work, using clever liaisons with scientists in universities and other countries to make important work publicly known. During this period, I gave many lectures warning that government science was on a dangerous path. No one seemed to notice.

It remained for the Harper Government to deliver the coup de grâce to government science. Shortly after it took office, scientists were told they must have permission from bureaucrats to speak publicly. Bureaucrats and communications officers issued “speaking lines” that must be used to avoid criticism of policies. The permitted lines were often so inane that most scientists chose to remain silent rather be embarrassed by using them.

Often, obtaining permission took so long that the opportunity to speak had passed. On issues of particular international sensitivity such as greenhouse gases, scientists were accompanied to public meetings by communications “handlers” to ensure that they did not utter any words that would embarrass policy-makers. Scientists were advised to avoid the media if possible, using tactics copied from training in bear avoidance “walk slowly away, maintaining eye contact.” Similar tactics were used by the Soviet Union to suppress scientific communication during the Cold War, when KGB agents shadowed scientists participating in international meetings.

Other actions were taken to ensure there would be less pesky science done by government departments to challenge the Conservatives’ pro-development agenda. The government divested itself of the Experimental Lakes Project, government contaminants programs, climate projects and the Arctic PEARL project. The Fisheries Act and the Navigable Waters Act were changed to provide less protection, while expediting large industrial developments.

The Canadian public is beginning to see the problem, as scientifically misleading and downright fallacious statements are made by ministers on issues from greenhouse gas emissions to oilsands and protection of fisheries. Most people are aware that a functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate. Most also know that we, the taxpayers, pay the bills for government science and endure the consequences of the environmental policies, whether they are grounded in good science or not. We deserve to know what we are paying for.

We must take government science back from politicians who would twist or hide science that reveals flaws in their policies. We deserve to know the truth about the impacts of proposed developments on our environment, in order to avoid mistakes that will be costly to future generations.

Government science once provided this information, and it must be changed to do so again. The health of not only our environment, but of Canadian democracy, depends on it.

Originally published in the Toronto Star.

Image Credit: Zack Embree

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.

Once upon a time, in the beautiful land of Alberta there were magical machines that could turn sand into oil, that drew the toxins from the land and left the air and water clean and clear. It sounds like a fairy tale, but this is more or less what politicians like Premier Alison Redford and Environment Minister Joe Oliver are selling on their trips to Washington, according to scientist David Schindler.  

The founder and former director of the recently endangered Ontario Experimental Lakes Area was the keynote speaker at Carleton University’s Community Engagement Celebration on Friday. In a speech focusing on the environmental “propaganda war” Canada is facing, he said that believing in clean tar sands development is akin to believing in “magic fairies.”

“Why are people allowed to lie to the public like this? I just don’t understand this. We have to challenge them,” he said. “Obviously the people who used to challenge them, the civil servants, are no longer allowed to.

“If you got towns around the world to nominate the village idiot from every town and flew them over the oilsands, and asked them: ‘Yes or no, is this a significant impact?’ I think I know what the answer would be.”

Schindler spared no words in his assessment of how this might affect our reputation down beyond our borders. “It gives you an indication of how stupid this must seem to people in Washington. They must think we’ve all just fallen off a turnip truck … We’ve had premiers and prime ministers and ministers of the environment spouting this stuff.”

Now the Killam Memorial Professor of Ecology at the University of Alberta, Schindler teaches limnology, the philosophy, sociology and politics of science/science and public policy in Canada, and environmental decision making. He became the centre of a controversy in 2010 when he and a team of researchers set out to test the effects of the tar sands on the surrounding environment. They found contamination in the Athabasca River watershed from both airborne and waterborne sources.

A federal commission set out the check the findings and later confirmed that it was even worse than they had thought. They observed contaminants up to 100 km away, representing a footprint “four times bigger” than even Schindler’s team observed.

Given the seriousness of these verified findings, its not surprising that Schindler might be a little insulted by claims like those made by Premier Redford during her recent speech to the Brookings Institution that tailing ponds are almost a thing of the past.

Over the phone from his office at the University of Alberta, Schindler likens the situation to the old tale, the Emperor’s New Clothes. “Emperor Oil Sands has no clothes,” he says.  

He points to politicians’ continued touting of Alberta’s excellent environmental monitoring systems as one of the most egregious examples. “We had no fewer than six expert panels say the monitoring until two years ago was substandard,” he says. “And 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.”

“It annoys me that we have politicians going down spouting these things that make Canadians look like a bunch of absolute idiots,” he says.

Schindler acknowledges that in this day and age, not all scientists can be as candid as he is about environmental issues. During his 25 years as a public servant, he saw government scientists become progressively more silenced.

“We're supposed to listen to these politicians and accountants tell us what's happening with fisheries and the environment,” he says. “They don't know any more about the subject than the average ditch digger in Canada, so I don't know why Canadians would trust what they say, especially when it's well-known that what they're saying is politically motivated.”

He praises his home institution for its support of his right to speak out on issues like this. “Their view is if you have the science to back up what you say, you should be allowed to say it,” he said.

However, he fears that the current wave of massive spending cuts at Alberta post-secondary institutions might cripple this kind of science in the future. “I worry about a general decline in quality of the science that goes on here,” he says.  “I see people getting very discouraged about the prospect. I notice a drying up of pools of people who would normally be applying to graduate school because the feeling is there won't be jobs for us.

“They don't seem to realise that, while they view these things in short term, the results are not short term. Scientists aren't like cab drivers or bulldozer operators. You don't have a two-month short course and have them put back as many as you need.”

He finds it particularly discouraging that the provincial government continues to spend money on "propogandizing the oil sands" even as they cut funding for post-secondary institutions and medical doctors. "This is not sending a very good message about this country," he says.

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

This is a guest post by writer, journalist and documentary filmmaker Michael Harris and was originally published on iPolitics.

These days, I am beginning to think that George Orwell was the greatest whistleblower of all time.

After all, it was Orwell who lifted the curtain on how the end of free thought was creeping across western democracies. In the end, stripped of the very language needed to form ideas, future citizens would be shuddering under a government colossus whose most efficient agency was the Thought Police.

The central premise of Orwell’s horror-scape dystopia, 1984, is that the facts are mutable.

Simple really: if there are no objective facts, there is no knowledge. That leaves it to a vastly empowered government to impose whatever ‘facts’ are required — and then to change them in the bat of an eye if necessary. Think of Stephen Harper on income trusts. Only the masters of Doublespeak can deny a flip-flop.

In 1984, dissent was not only impossible, it was a crime. The highest civic virtue in that secular hell? Orthodoxy through and through, orthodoxy for power and profit, orthodoxy all the way to absurdity and abject submission. Only the orthodox got real coffee and chocolate, and avoided a trip to Room 101.

Not for nothing were the only scientists in Oceania the ones who built new weapons, the last outlet for speculative and creative thinking in 1984.

But we are in Lawrence Martin’s Harperland, not yet 1984. Scientists in this country still pursue knowledge on its own terms, or at last try to. There was a good example of that this week. The attempt was mildly heroic, quaint and, in all likelihood, futile.

Scientist David Schindler wrote a letter to fight the good fight on behalf of pure research against the corporate lobby that goes by the name of the federal government these days. His was a reasoned plea to save the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), which for all practical purposes ceased to be a federal facility on March 31.

Standing up for science has been a losing battle under this prime minister. Scientific facilities have been closed, grants reduced and, in many cases, funding completely removed.

Federal scientists who still have a job have been muzzled by their political masters. Stephen Harper’s favourite finger-puppet, John Baird, famously declared that the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, for example, was vaporized not because it got things wrong, but because the Party didn’t like the advice it was giving. It preferred mutable facts.

In Harperland, there is no weed as noxious as independent facts. If possible, they are pulled up by the roots. Science is just another corporate enabler as far as the PM is concerned; if it’s not that, then it’s a potentially dangerous source of independent public information. But David Schindler is not as easy to silence or ignore.

After all, when someone sends you a picture of tumours, lesions and spinal deformities, the probability is that they are seriously unhappy about something.

Picture of deformed Walleye that accompanied Schindler's letter to Minister's Kent and Ashfield. 

When they include a letter pointing out that fish downriver from the tar sands development in Alberta are exhibiting mutations very similar to those of deformed marine life in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico after the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters, they are sounding an alarm.

And when that same person advises you that in order to understand the impact of petroleum pollution on freshwater and the aquatic life it supports, you must ditch your plans to close the ELA, they are offering a very rare thing — a second chance to get it right.

What a pity David Schindler’s letter was addressed to a pair of palace eunuchs, Keith Ashfield and Peter Kent. He should have known that they answer all criticism of the PMO’s decisions about their departments with Big Brother arithmetic: two and two are five. Few decisions are made at the ministerial level anymore. The guy who cuts the PM’s hair at 24 Sussex has more influence than Harper’s ministers do.

Few decisions are made at the ministerial level anymore. The guy who cuts the PM’s hair at 24 Sussex has more influence than Harper ministers do.

But absolute power comes at a price. It is largely for that reason that Stephen Harper is sitting at a personal disapproval rating of 57 in the latest Forum poll done for the National Post. He has simply run out of omniscience. Like a drugstore blonde, his corporate roots are showing.

And while a few are still calling him the great leader of a major historical shift — including pollster laureates, a Harper-struck national columnist or two and the usual crowd of upwardly obsequious party hacks — even a few Tory MPs are now saying control is one thing, duct tape over the mouth is something else again. At least Brigette DePape got to hold up a sign.

In a nutshell, here is what David Schindler’s letter and photographs come down to. As the Killam Memorial Chair of Ecology at the University of Alberta, and a world-famous freshwater researcher, Schindler wants to identify the chemicals that are giving Albertans mutant fish in the Athabasca River.

Once the culprits in the “chemical soup” are known, then the engineering of the solutions can begin. Stephen Harper, world renowned aquarium-owner, has decided pink slips and bulldozers are a better answer to the ELA than dealing with its inconvenient science. What are a few misshapen fish compared to economic development?

It should be noted that Schindler’s public dissent has been preceded by a much broader action on the ground by former scientists at the ELA, including PhD student Diane Orihel. For five months last year, she told the country what would be lost if the ELA were closed. It seemed like a very poor way to shave $2 million a year from the federal deficit, when the PM was spending $10 million on panda bears.

This week, Orihel returned to the place where she and her husband had worked for ten years, leading a CBC camera crew into the doomed facility in order to leave of a record of what will be lost if the Harper government doesn’t agree to Schindler’s request to keep the ELA open. For those who saw the footage on the National, it was not the full story — for she had much more to say — but it was thanks to Orihel that any kind of record exists. Otherwise, it would have been down the Memory Hole for the ELA.

While Orihel was documenting what she could, the Council of Canadians briefly occupied the ELA, camping by Lake 468. As Mark Calzavara put it, his small band of protesters was making the point that the world-famous facility, which made the Canada/U.S. treaty on acid rain possible, “belongs to the people of Canada.”

According to a poll done for the Council, 60 per cent of Conservative voters oppose the decision to close the ELA.

With the polls indicating that any Liberal leader would be more popular than Stephen Harper (some say Justin Trudeau might even trounce him) the Tories have rolled out the familiar artillery: the ever reliable and equally deplorable attack ad. My colleague Lawrence Martin says it must be answered in kind or Trudeau will go the way of Dion and Ignatieff. He may well be right.

If so, the question is still there to be answered: Is fact by decree, and the two minutes of hate, any way to run a country?

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.

MICHAEL HARRIS is an award-winning author, investigative journalist, and documentary filmmaker.

The Harper government knows and cares as much about science as it knows and cares about telling the truth.

That’s what the recent decision to close Canada’s world-renowned Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) tells anyone who is paying attention.

It also tells us that Environment Minister Peter Kent would have been a great witness at the Scopes Monkey Trial – for the prosecution. We shouldn’t bother jetting this guy to Earth Summits like Rio + 20 just to have him pick up the latest Fossil Award. Put the airfare into the Bev Oda VIP Transportation and Orange Juice Fund and ask the international organizers to mail in our Booby Prize.

I offer these observations after taking a close look at the decision by the federal government to shutter the ELA, yet another deconstruction and downgrading of government science in Canada.

Even Harper acolytes with a picture of Dear Leader in their wallets next to the kids should have a problem with this one. How many independent information bearers does this government have to cut down before even the Harper Moonies start worrying about the Gulag? What does it tell you about someone when they’re always telling other people to keep their mouths shut or else? Isn’t that what Edward G. Robinson does in gangster movies?

Let’s begin at the beginning, or should I say the end? On May 17th of this year, there was an emergency meeting called at the Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg. For those who have not been recently canned, these group terminations are as ritualistic as a firing squad. Before the killing shot, the boss reads from a prepared script. As soon as that script comes out, you can be pretty sure that the smell of toast in the room is your career going up in smoke.

At that meeting of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ Central and Arctic Division, the person reading the script to 17 hapless employees of the ELA was Michelle Wheatley. The news stories will tell you that she is the Regional Director of Science. What the news stories will not tell you is that she was crying as she broke the news.

With good reason. Her message was as bleak as the first road that was blazed into the then embryonic ELA in the winter of 1968: The installation would be shut down by March 2013; everyone would receive “affected” letters (they did within 24 hours); no new research could be started; and scientists had to get their equipment out of the lakes, all 58 of them – and the labs as soon as possible.

And then, of course, there was the cone of silence that the prime minister expects everyone to wear like a dunce cap after they are “streamlined”. All employees were explicitly warned not to speak with the media. Instead, media requests had to be forwarded to what was risibly referred to as DFO Communications. That is the branch plant of the Ministry of Truth in the PMO that casts the appropriate lights and shadows over the facts for the government and still manages to sleep well at night. You know, the Ignorance is Strength/Freedom is Slavery crowd.

How far has the government been prepared to go to smother the facts surrounding the ELA? For starters, DFO declined all requests from the media to speak with scientists. Being an equal lack-of-opportunity employer, DFO also turned down all requests from its scientists to speak about their work to Canadians. Remember, these are the same people who sent “minders” with scientists to a recent scientific conference in Montreal, lest they stray from the government line in public. I am beginning to suspect that the government line is based on believing that 10,000 years ago Brontosaurs were cropping grass in the back forty.

You will be comforted to know that DFO extended the ban on ELA information to federal MPs. The department turned down MP Bruce Hyer’s request to visit ELA with an ELA scientist. When an outraged university scientist conducting research there offered to take Hyer – who was elected as an NDP MP but now sits as an independent – on a tour of the facility, DFO threatened to cancel his research privileges. Any wonder that acclaimed international scientist Ragnar Elmgren said that this was the kind of thing you would expect from the Taliban, not the government of a western democracy?

Yes, the Harper government decided that the end has come for one of the great scientific enterprises in Canadian history. Consider the record.

Forty-four years ago, a natural freshwater laboratory was created out of a pristine lake system in northwestern Ontario. It was an epical experiment. Although it was about fresh water, not the universe, it was a scientific enterprise of the magnitude of the Hubble Telescope. No other fresh water research station in the world could do what the ELA could in a “whole-environment” research setting. As David Schindler himself put it about the kind of work done at the ELA “This needs to be done in a controlled setting, not in the Athabaska garbage can.”

And what a lot was done.

When DFO itself was amongst the host of visionaries who couldn’t see acid rain, and politicians like Ronald Reagan were publicly questioning the scientific basis for the need to take action, it was the ELA under Schindler that worked to provide the irrefutable evidence that lakes were dying. The work went on from 1976 to 2004. As a result of the findings of Canadian scientists, the EPA in the U.S. took action and new international treaties were established.

The “Metallicus” experiment established a link between atmospheric mercury deposits and mercury in fish. That is a vitally important connection to understand given that 80 percent of the lakes listed in the Guide to Eating Ontario Sport Fish are currently under mercury consumption advisories. ELA research on this deadly neurotoxin and endocrine disruptor has been used by the EPA to design new regulations to control the atmospheric emissions of mercury from coal-fired plants.

Very often, it was the immense scale of the ELA’s outdoor lab that made crucial scientific breakthroughs possible.

That was the case in understanding excessive algal growth in lakes. Small scale studies suggested that carbon was responsible. ELA whole-lake experiments corrected that erroneous conclusion and identified phosphorous as the principle culprit. As a result, governments around the world now restrict phosphorous inputs into lakes. Several countries have banned outright the use of phosphorous in detergents.

Similarly, standard laboratory studies suggested that acidity was directly toxic to lake trout at a pH level of 5; whole-lake experimentation discovered that pH is indirectly toxic to lake trout at -6, or at a rate that is ten times less acidic than previously believed. Why? Because their food source, shrimp and minnows, disappear at the lower levels and the trout starve.

From investigating the role of nitrogen in promoting blue-green algae blooms to the environmental impacts of freshwater aquaculture, from the impacts of hydro reservoir development on greenhouse gases and mercury cycling, to the effects of artificial estrogen on fish populations, ELA has been there. Its scientists have been in the vanguard of original research that has benefitted companies, this country, and the world time after time after time. You don’t get the First Stockholm Water Prize and the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering for goofing off.

So why, unless you had a fetish for killing off Canadian success stories, would the government decide to close the ELA? Why would it leave incomplete original work on the effect of Nano-silver on lakes, (Canada has no specific policies for managing nano-materials in the environment) on growth and survival of fish that escape into the wild from aquaculture facilities, or climate impacts on lakes and their watersheds? None of that work will now be completed. Some innocent souls went to Manitoba Conservative MP Joyce Bateman for the answer, since the Freshwater Institute is in her backyard.

Sadly, there was enough space behind her wide, partisan eyes to park a double-decker bus. Bateman didn’t even know the operational budget for the ELA, and wasn’t aware of its internationally acclaimed work on acid rain, reservoir studies, and nuclear contaminant pathways. Yet she asserted erroneously the facility was no longer productive, parroting lines no doubt given to her by Fisheries minister Keith Ashfield. As Diane Orihel, a PHD candidate in science and the Central Canada Leader for the Coalition to Save ELA put it after her own meeting with Bateman, “I was shocked by her complete and utter ignorance of science and what we do.”

The Opposition didn’t fare much better trying to get answers from Environment Minister Peter Kent. He tried to justify this attack on science by pretending that he just wanted to move our scientists further west “to examine acidification of lakes in western Canada.” Sounds reasonable, right? But the stuff in Kent’s political teleprompter is more head static from mission control. Like his colleague from Manitoba, Kent is operating light years beyond his competence. The research he is talking about has already largely been done and you might be able to guess where – at the ELA.

Most of what the government needs to know about acid rain in the oil sands area was discovered in the early work by David Schindler in Ontario, and reinforced by the work of those who followed him. It is interesting to note that that the original work was funded by the Alberta Oil Sands Environmental Research Program. AOSERP funded the research precisely because the water chemistry of boreal shield lakes in Northern Saskatchewan and Alberta was very similar to the ELA lakes. In other words, the research data collected in northwestern Ontario is a moveable feast. You don’t have to move the scientists.

Not only that, but the minister didn’t understand that earlier ELA research doesn’t need to be replicated at another facility and is actually ready to be applied in the oil sands. That’s because during Schindler’s tenure, the ELA established the biological and chemical thresholds where acidification becomes problematic. The fact that we can now conduct responsible monitoring in the oil sands is a direct result of invaluable research done long ago in northwestern Ontario. The lion’s share of what governments have to do now is bring in responsible monitoring at the oil sands based on ELA research, not reinvent the wheel.

But Minister Kent did get one thing right when he was giving non-answers about this insupportable decision to kill the ELA to the Opposition in the House of Commons early in June. Under questioning from Lac-Saint-Louis Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia, Kent crowed that unlike the previous Liberal government, the Harper government isn’t just paying lip service to the environment. But why not use his own ringing words: “We are getting things done.”

And they are. But only if you count gutting the Fisheries Act, killing the ELA, cutting the Institut Maurice-Lamontagne (the only francophone research centre at Fisheries and Oceans), eliminating the water resources strategy group at Environment Canada, and ending groundwater modeling. Even Tory Kool-Aid drinkers would admit that this is an odd way to come up with a national water strategy.

The unkindest cut of all. The federal government talks glibly about finding another operator for the ELA, perhaps a university. Just sell them the millions of dollars worth of upgraded facilities for a dollar. There is only one problem. The major source of funding to Canadian universities that might have supported the ELA has itself been cancelled via the moratorium on NSERC Major Resources Support Program.

The death sentence the government has pronounced on the ELA has nothing to do with the reasons stated. Contrary to claims by people like Kent and Ashfield, the work of the ELA is aligned with departmental priorities in both Fisheries and Environment.

If the main priorities of DFO, for example, are: fish populations, community productivity, habitat and population linkages, climate change and variability, and ecosystem management, all of these are studied at ELA.

It is false to say there is a similar facility in the world, let alone in northern Saskatchewan. There is only one ELA.

It is false to use cost savings as the rationale for the cut. Most of the research cost of the ELA are not paid for by government.

The costs of the installation, divided between EC and DFO according to a 2007 Memorandum of Understanding, are embarrassingly modest – $2 million annually, including approximately $650K for operating costs and the balance in salaries.

And here is a truly shameful number. How much do you think each of the four ELA/DFO scientists receives annually to cover their research expenses? Two thousand bucks. Bottom line. Canadians pay ten times more for the PM’s security detail than they do for this world class science facility. They paid ten times more for the celebration of the War of 1812. For the price of a single F-35, ELA’s operational budget could be financed for the next 150 years.

That’s why there’s not a chance that the Harper government will take David Schindler up on a very reasonable request. If you are going to wipe out 44 years of work, spark a scientific diaspora from the federal government, and create a white elephant out in the wilderness that will cost untold millions to “remediate”, do the intelligent thing and conduct an audit this summer to see if the facts support that course of action.

The government won’t do that because it is all about putting independent voices out of business, voices that if heard might persuade the public that Harper doesn’t necessarily know best. The PM believes in strategic communication – the amassing of friendly facts and pseudo facts and big fat lies that advance a chosen agenda. His approach to governance is like a bad PhD thesis. Science is about applying empirical tests in controlled situations with predictive validity aimed at finding the facts. The two schools are natural enemies, as antithetical as William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow.

Stephen Harper does not believe in funding any organization that might become a critic, even inadvertently, in pursuit of the facts. So he probably will look with favor on a suggestion by a Winnipeg-based money manager who has a plan to save the ELA.

Tim Burt is the chief executive officer of Cardinal Capital Management. He has written a letter to the heads of six oil companies asking that they assume the funding of the ELA previously provided by Ottawa. It turns out that he is also the riding association president for Winnipeg South Centre Conservative MP, one Joyce Bateman. Fortunately, Mr. Burt assures one and all that there is no political motive behind his suggestion.

Of course not, Tim. What could be political about handing over the funding for an independent scientific institution to the very private sector owners whose industries would be most affected by its investigations?

Now if only Suncor, Cenovus, and Imperial see the light.

Image Credit: PMO Image Gallery.

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.

Dr. David Schindler, the scientist who sounded the alarm on tar sands contamination back in 2010, has suddenly found his research backed by an Environment Canada study recently published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The federal study, which confirmed Schindler’s hotly-contested research, has reignited concerns over the pace and scale of development in the Athabasca region, an area now beset with a host of ecological and human health concerns. 

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.

If you ask an Environment Canada media spokesperson about contamination resulting from tar sands operations, they will not tell you the federal government has failed to adequately monitor the mega-project's effects on water.

They most certainly will not say outright that the federal government has failed to monitor the long term or cumulative environmental effects of the world's largest industrial project. They won't say it, but not because it isn't the case. 

The tar sands are contaminating hundreds of kilometres of land in northern Alberta with cancer-causing contaminants and neurotoxins.

And although federal scientists have confirmed this, they are prevented from sharing information about their research with the media. 

The result is an overly-monitored process that causes burdensome delays in media-scientist interactions. The overwhelming consequence is that the media has stopped talking to the country's national scientists.

No federal studies have researched contamination in furbearing mammals living near the tar sands, although species decline – as is evident in the disappearance of caribou – is becoming an increasing problem.

The Alberta Cancer Board confirmed in 2008 that higher than normal rates of rare cancer were present in the small community. The government refused to remove the charge of alarmism from O'Connor's file until late 2009, despite express wishes from the residents of Fort Chipewyan to have the accusation dropped.

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.