This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

When a tailings pond broke at the Mount Polley gold and copper mine in south-central B.C., spilling millions of cubic metres of waste into a salmon-bearing stream, B.C. Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett called it an “extremely rare” occurrence, the first in 40 years for mines operating here.

He failed to mention the 46 “dangerous or unusual occurrences” that B.C’s chief inspector of mines reported at tailings ponds in the province between 2000 and 2012, as well as breaches at non-operating mine sites.

This spill was predictable. Concerns were raised about Mount Polley before the breach. CBC reported that B.C.’s Environment Ministry issued several warnings about the amount of water in the pond to mine owner Imperial Metals.

With 50 mines operating in B.C. — and many others across Canada — we can expect more incidents, unless we reconsider how we’re extracting resources.

Sudden and severe failure is a risk for all large tailings dams — Mount Polley’s waste pond covered about four square kilometres, roughly the size of Vancouver’s Stanley Park. As higher-grade deposits become increasingly scarce, mining companies are opting for lower-grade alternatives that create more tailings. As tailings ponds grow bigger and contain more water and waste than ever before, they also become riskier. The average height of a Canadian tailings dam doubled from 120 metres in the 1960s to 240 metres today. Alberta writer Andrew Nikiforuk likens increasing mining industry risks to those of the oil sands.

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Open ponds of toxic slurry aren’t the best way to manage mining waste. Although there’s no silver-bullet solution, and more research funding on alternative technologies is needed, smaller underground mines are finding safer ways to deal with waste by backfilling tailings. Drying tailings or turning them to a paste before containment are two other options. Safer solutions cost more, making them less popular with profit-focused corporations. But surely B.C.’s $8-billion mining industry can afford to pay more for public and environmental safety.

The government allows the mining industry to choose the cheapest way to deal with waste, and companies often lack adequate insurance to cover cleanup costs when accidents happen. Imperial Metals admits its insurance will likely fall far short of what’s required to repair the damage at Mount Polley.

The mining industry and provincial and federal governments must do a better job of managing risks. But how can this happen when we’re facing unprecedented dismantling of Canada’s environmental regulations and decreased funding for monitoring and enforcement?

Although the B.C. government rightly appointed an independent panel of three top mining engineers to review the cause of the Mount Polley breach and report back with recommendations, the lack of an environmental or cultural perspective on the panel makes it unlikely we’ll see meaningful industry reform. And even the most thorough reviews remain ineffective without implementation commitments — a point made clear by the federal government’s failure to act on the Cohen Commission’s 75 recommendations on the decline of Fraser River sockeye.

Canada’s mining industry must also work more closely with First Nations, some of which are challenging industrial activity in their territories. The Tahltan blockaded Imperial Metals’ nearly completed mine in the Sacred Headwaters, and the Neskonlith Indian Band issued an eviction notice to an Imperial subsidiary, which proposed an underground lead-and-zinc mine in Secwepemc Territory in the B.C. Interior. With the Supreme Court’s Tsilhqot'in decision affirming First Nations’ rights to land and resources within their traditional territories, we’re likely to see more defending their lands against mining and other resource extractions.

The Mount Polley tailings spill threatens two of B.C.’s most valued resources: salmon and water. As one of the largest sockeye runs enters the waterways to spawn, we must wait to find out the long-term repercussions for Polley Lake, Quesnel Lake and aquatic life further downstream.

This disaster has eroded public trust in the mining industry and regulations governing it. If risks are too high and long-term solutions unavailable or too expensive, the only way to ensure that toxic tailings are kept out of our precious waterways and pristine landscapes may be to avoid mining in some areas altogether.

As the government rallying cry of “world-class safety standards” echoes in our ears, it’s time we lived up to our self-proclaimed reputation.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Communications Specialist Jodi Stark.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image credit: Photo by Carol Linnitt. Sludge from the spill carries out into Quesnel Lake. 

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There has been a lot of discussion around Canada’s “War on Science” over the last two years, prompted by a major gathering of scientists in Ottawa during the summer of 2012 who announced the “Death of Evidence” in the country. The scientists marched in response to the infamous Budget Bill C-38 that killed funding for numerous federal science positions and research labs coast to coast. The rally’s lead organizer, scientist Katie Gibbs, says the Death of Evidence protest made way for a whole new breed of young Canadian scientists who are eager to stand up and defend their laboratories. It’s about more than just science, says Gibbs, it’s really all about democracy.

Katie Gibbs was known around the lab as the graduate student who cared deeply about the implications of her science. “While I was doing my PhD, I was kind of the rabble-rouser on the floor. You know, I always had volunteers coming to the lab to pick up posters, or storing protest signs under my desk, that sort of thing,” she told DeSmog Canada.

Most of the professors she worked with didn’t participate in any kind of advocacy, she said. “My supervisor, in particular, he wouldn’t even write a letter to the editor.”

In the summer of 2012, however, it wasn’t Gibbs pushing for the Death of Evidence rally, the event that forced Canada’s science crisis into the public eye. Instead a group of professors at the University of Ottawa began organizing a public event and turned to Gibbs when they realized they needed someone brave to be the face of the march.

“What was interesting was that it was a group of professors that started thinking around the rally. My supervisor poked his head into my office one day and said a bunch of professors were meeting to talk about doing something in response to the Omnibus Budget Bill. He said, ‘does anybody want to come,’ and I was like ‘hells yeah!’” Gibbs said, adding she became lead organizer after that meeting.

Gibbs says her professors’ involvement was an indication of how concerned the traditional scientific community was with the changes that were being made through new legislation under the Harper government.[view:in_this_series=block_1]

Generally scientists shy away from any form of advocacy, or even perceived advocacy, Gibbs explained. But given the current crisis of science in Canada that is changing with younger students, she said.

“The younger generation of scientists doesn’t seem to have the same hang ups around science advocacy that the older generation of scientists does.”

In order to channel the momentum of the scientific community after the 2012 rally, Gibbs launched Evidence for Democracy (E4D), an advocacy group dedicated to keeping science linked to decision-making in the country.

Part of the work of Evidence for Democracy consists in creating a distinction between advocating for policy and advocating for science itself, Gibbs explained.

“Normally in science when we talk about science advocacy we’re talking about: you do some research that shows A would be a good policy versus B, so you become an advocate for A and try to actually get that policy put in place.

Whereas what we’re advocating for is one step before that, in that we’re just advocating for science and for decisions to be made based on science. So it’s kind of less political or less polarizing than even traditional advocacy.”

For Gibbs, there is still some resistance to the very idea of science advocacy within the scientific community, but supporters are increasingly convinced of its necessity.

“I still feel scientists are hesitant but my argument is ‘if you’re not willing to advocate for the crucial role of science in public policy decisions then who is going to do that?’ That really has to come down to scientists,” she said.

The job of convincing the younger generation of scientists to get involved, however, has been much easier, Gibbs said. 

Katie Gibbs speaking at the Stand Up for Science rally in Ottawa. Photo by Kevin O'Donnell. 

“All the graduate scientists I worked with, they absolutely see the need for scientists to engage in that way and they have such a strong desire for their science to be relevant and for it to get out in the public space,” she said.

“Even for us [E4D] we have a ton of volunteers, most of them graduate students and it’s because we offer most of them the chance to work on policy outreach. They wouldn’t really get the opportunity to work on those kinds of issues in their traditional academic experience.”

Gibbs said younger scientists are choosing to study in the sciences because they are passionate about the outcomes of the science, rather than merely curious or passionate about the process. While more traditional scientists consider themselves separate from the policy outcomes of their research, younger scientists see themselves as a part of the larger complex of society, politics and policy.

“I know that was my case as well,” Gibbs said. “I was only interested in doing policy-relevant science. I enjoyed doing the science but my main passion was that it be used, rather than doing it just for the sake of doing it.”

As she sees it, this way of viewing science is politically “empowering.”

“I see evidence as really being the only way to hold governments accountable for their decisions,” Gibbs said. “Unless we actually know what information they are using to make decisions, we have no way of judging the quality of the decision.”

When it comes to the relationship between science and democracy, Gibbs said, it all comes down to evidence-based decision-making and accountability.

“I often say…that facts are a check on political power.”

Image Credit: Katie Gibbs by DeSmog Canada.

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After the release of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, professor Sheldon Solomon, experimental social psychologist and co-creator of ‘terror management theory,’ suggested human responses to news of impending social and ecological collapse have nothing to do with climate science and everything to do with death.

The prospect of violence, drought, famine and species extinction – all prominent aspects of the recent IPCC report – force individuals to confront feelings of mortality which we try to suppress by doubling down on our cultural worldviews. That means our own fear of death makes us more likely to strengthen and affirm our belief systems. So if you already don’t agree with climate science, the latest IPCC report isn’t likely to change that.

In fact, says Solomon, it’s “tough to get people to dispassionately and rationally consider the facts.” This may actually be more true for “very educated and scientifically literate people,” he says.

“I say that for two reasons. One is what psychologists these days call motivated reasoning, and there’s a whole set of studies suggesting people tend to view this kind of information in ways that confirm and fortify their preexisting beliefs. And so folks that are pro-environment will be apt to uncritically embrace these facts and become more ardently so and climate change deniers will discount them by generating counter arguments and disparaging the credentials of the scientists who produced the report.”

The second reason, he says, has to do with our human response to fear-inducing information, what Solomon studies under a rubric he calls terror management theory.

“This kind of information is daunting,” Solomon says, “because it conjures up both conscious and non-conscious reactions to the fact that we will some day die.”

Solomon points to one of the basic arguments made in Ernest Becker’s book the Denial of Death: “humans share with all forms of life a basic predisposition towards self-preservation in the service of survival and reproduction.”

But beyond the drives of other creatures, humans have the unique capacity to think abstractly and symbolically, he says, leading to a sense of self-consciousness. We can also reflect on both our past and our future and this, “makes us aware that we can die some day and that our death can come for reasons we could never anticipate or control.”

Such reflections can lead to “unwelcome realizations” that “give rise to paralyzing terror that we assuage through the development and maintenance of cultural worldviews.”

Ultimately, Solomon says, in these moments of terror we want to tell ourselves that we participate in and are valuable members of “a meaningful universe.”

This desire, to position ourselves within a meaningful universe, can have undesirable consequences, however.

When confronted with the looming image of our mortality, we usually end up doing one of two things: “One is to just get the images of death out of our minds. We tend to do that through suppression and distraction: watching television, consuming massive amounts of drugs and alcohol, going to Walmart to save a buck on a chainsaw and a lemon."

He added, "the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard called this being ‘tranquilized by the trivial.’”

The other involves constructing defenses – especially ones that affirm our worldview – that keep unwelcome thoughts of death from coming to mind.

“This has to do with bolstering faith in our cultural worldviews. So we may become more devoted to our career, more supportive of charismatic political leaders, even more concerned about the success of our favourite sports team.”

Ultimately a terror management theory perspective would suggest we need to “create conditions that will make people more receptive to dispassionately considering the facts,” Solomon says.

We can do this by “undercutting motivated reasoning and helping folks recognize how efforts to deny death can foster maladaptive defense reactions.” If we can anticipate our own desire to do away with unwelcome thoughts, perhaps we can find more productive ways of coping with our anxieties.

The recognition of our own death denial is the first step to confronting it: “I think if we can do that we can nudge folks in a productive direction.”

Yet there is still a significant barrier to overcoming inaction on issues like climate change: political polarization.

“We’re going to have to kind of go to extraordinary lengths to depoliticize these issues,” he says.

The thing to remember, according to Solomon, “is that left and right are both beside the point.” Open-mindedness and compromise, from both sides, may well be the only own avenue out of our current political deadlock.

“Conservatives might have to acknowledge, as Naomi Klein points out, that there may not be market solutions to these kinds of difficulties. Liberals may have to consider, as Stewart Brand points out in his book Whole Earth Discipline, that there might be a role for nuclear power and genetically modified foods in constructive solutions as we move forward.”

The challenge is to overcome the denial that prevents us from having these important – even if difficult – solutions conversations in the first place.

Image Credit: Jeffrey Smith via Flickr

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This is a guest post by distinguished climatologist Michael Mann. The article originally appeared on .

The scientific community has long warned that environmental issues, especially climate change, need to be a global concern. Climatologist Michael Mann argues that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s administration is purposely obstructing the research that needs to take place to solve these problems.

In early 2013, the government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper introduced new science communications procedures that threatened the publication rights of an American scientist who had been working in the Arctic with Canadian researchers since 2003.

This was the first time the Canadian government’s draconian confidentiality rules had infringed on the scientific freedom of an international academic – or, at least, it was the first time such an incident had been made known. Professor Andreas Muenchow from the University of Delaware publicly refused to sign a government agreement that threatened to “sign away [his] freedom to speak, publish, educate, learn and share.”

To many of us American scientists, this episode sadly came as little surprise. We have known for some time that the Canadian government has been silencing the voices of scientists speaking out on the threat of fossil-fuel extraction and burning and the damaging impacts they are having on our climate. I have close friends in the Canadian scientific community who say they have personally been subjected to these heavy-handed policies. Why? Because the implications of their research are inconvenient to the powerful fossil-fuel interests that seem to now run the Canadian government.

This is really just a page from the George W. Bush administration’s playbook, used to muzzle government scientists in the United States only six years ago. In his book Censoring Science, for instance, Mark Bowen details the Bush administration’s efforts to silence James Hansen, then director and leading scientist of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The Harper administration has made it clear that all research related to Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), even that conducted with the help of outside parties, is “deemed to be confidential.” According to its new policy, no involved party “may release such information to others in any way whatsoever without prior written authorization of the other party.” Silently released behind the doors of the DFO, the new protocol only came to light after an anonymous researcher published the document online.

The new restrictions constitute just one of many new protocols that the Harper government has introduced since 2006 that restrict the flow of scientific communication, not just in Canada, but within the global scientific community. And those rules are paired with severe monitoring and oversight of federal science employees.

Federal government handlers often chaperone Canada’s scientists at international scientific conferences, monitoring their public-speaking engagements and presentations and participating in interviews with the media to limit any unsanctioned chitchat. These policies are disturbingly reminiscent of the George W. Bush administration’s attempts to censor the views of U.S. government scientists speaking out on the threat of fossil-fuel burning and human-caused climate change.

Government interference in scientific research in Canada extends well beyond message control. Numerous scientific institutions and research stations across the country have been shuttered, including the world-famous Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), home to groundbreaking research on freshwater ecosystems and the effects that industrial pollutants have on them.

My own experiences at the center of the climate-change debate, which I’ve recounted in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, began a decade and a half ago, when I published what is now popularly known as “the hockey-stick graph.” The graph clearly showed the unprecedented nature of the recent rise in temperature, and was a threat to entrenched fossil-fuel interests. That placed me in the crosshairs of industry front groups and hired guns that attempted to discredit the science by attacking individual scientists like myself.

Sadly, Canada is the latest front in the expanding battlefield, as Chris Turner indicates in his new book, The War on Science:

A war on science, after all, is ultimately a war on scientists … Canada has become a place where the best and brightest scientists are less and less likely to feel welcome … Who would want to work in an environment so anxious and chaotic, under an authority so arbitrary, for a nation so contemptuous [of] certain kinds of science that it seems to have all [but] reneged on its commitment to the Enlightenment itself?

The Harper government’s efforts to chill scientific discourse are part of a larger war on science conducted by well-funded special-interest groups that value short-term profit over the long-term public good. Recognizing this, it is important not only that Canadians fight back in an effort to restore the nation’s scientific integrity, but also that Americans, who understand all too well what is at stake, do all we can to support them in this battle.

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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

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This is a guest post by Paul Beckwith, originally posted on Sierra Club Canada.

On March 23, 2013, I made the following prediction:

“For the record—I do not think that any sea ice will survive this summer. An event unprecedented in human history is today, this very moment, transpiring in the Arctic Ocean.

The cracks in the sea ice that I reported in my Sierra blog and elsewhere have spread. Worse news is at this very moment the entire sea ice sheet (or about 99 percent of it) covering the Arctic Ocean is on the move (clockwise), and the thin, weakened icecap has literally begun to tear apart.

This is abrupt climate change in real-time.

Humans have benefited greatly from a stable climate for the last 11,000 years (roughly 400 human generations). Not anymore. We now face an angry climate — one that we have poked in the eye with our fossil fuel stick — and have to deal with the consequences.

We must set aside our differences and prepare for what we can no longer avoid: massive disruption to our civilization."

Serious Stuff: Adult Discussion Time

My prediction above was based on understanding of the inter-related Artic/climatic system obtained through in-depth research conducted as part of my Ph.D. studies on abrupt climate change, and through my academic work as part-time professor in climatology/meteorology at the University of Ottawa.

In March, when I made the prediction, NASA had just released a video of extensive sea ice cracking (at the time of year when the ice should’ve been at its strongest). Since then, I have become even more confident about my prediction of total Arctic sea ice destruction in 2013. The increased likelihood of this event arises from recent developments observed in U.S. Navy satellite data (which measure sea ice thickness alongside ice speed and drift direction from May 14th to June 10th). I generated an ANIMATION to help illustrate the significance of the new data.

In previous years, when cyclones (low pressure storm systems) moved over sea ice, there was little noticeable effect. However, last August (2012) — like a giant blender — a massive cyclone invaded the Arctic Ocean basin and smashed around sea ice for roughly 8 days. In the end, a staggering 0.8 million square kilometres of sea ice was lost (a roughly 20% reduction from the year before). By mid-September the icecap was at a record low volume (best illustrated in this YouTube video titled “Arctic sea ice minimum volumes 1979-2012”).

Within the last few weeks, cyclonic activity has returned and once again caused substantial thinning and weakening of the sea ice near the North Pole. Ice near the center of cyclonic activity, recently 2 to 2.5 metres thick (light blue in my animation), has thinned to roughly 1.25 metres (dark blue in my animation). This in less than 2 weeks: unprecedented so early in the melt season. More significantly, in the last few days a gaping “hole” has appeared in the much thicker ice just north of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Ice that was recently 3.5 to 4 metres thick (yellow in my animation) is now less than 2 metres thick in the hole.

The hole is likely due to a combination of divergence of the ice away from the rotating cyclone center, and the upwelling (churning up) of warm, salty sea water below. The most rapid melting and ice deterioration is occurring below the surface (where the cold surface air temperature can’t slow melting).

The magnitude of the most recent cyclonic activity is not unusual, although the persistence is. What is also new in the equation is the ability of these common cyclones to degrade the ice, and do so very early in the melt season. Also new is the substantial increase in amplitude, frequency and duration of cyclonic activity in the Arctic Ocean basin. The thinning ice cover not only breaks up easier now (even by relatively small and weak cyclones), more open water leads to an increase in melting and storm intensity.

It’s for all these reasons I find it extremely difficult to comprehend how any sea ice will be left after this year’s summer ‘melt season’. If you want to watch the car-crash in real-time just occasionally Google “Arctic sea ice graphs” and you can find satellite imagery and daily updates from experts and climatologists (like me) around the world.

Throw Out the Old Model Folks

I acknowledge that my sea ice-collapse timeframe is considered ‘out-there’ when compared to mainstream climate models (predicting sea ice will remain until 2050’ish), but I’m not alone in challenging the old playbook. For example, the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) volume trends suggest 2015 or 2016 will be the first year of a sea ice-free Arctic.

I am just looking at the “big-picture” using all available data while considering feedbacks that have been incorrectly considered (or unidentified) and in the context of abrupt changes that are CLEARLY documented in climate paleorecords.

I really hope I’m wrong folks but I just don’t see it any other way. Time will tell…but, in any event, we need to have that ‘adult discussion’ ASAP. As you can see around you the times they are a-changin’ and, as I wrote in my last blog, oil profits won’t protect you from Climate 2.0.

Paul Beckwith is a Ph.D. student with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology, department of geography, University of Ottawa.

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“If people don’t speak out there will never be any change,” says the University of Victoria’s award-winning climate scientist Andrew Weaver. 

And the need for change in Canada, says Weaver, has never been more pressing.

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On April 1, 2013 Canada will lose its sole marine contaminants research program. The loss comes as a part of a massive dismantling of science programs at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans announced in May of 2012. 

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On December 18, 2012, Shell Canada, along with the British Columbia government and the Tahltan First Nation announced an agreement to impose a permanent oil and gas development moratorium in the Sacred Headwaters, a vast networked watershed giving rise to three of British Columbia’s salmon rivers, the Stikine, the Skeena and the Nass.

After nearly a decade of opposition, local residents, First Nations, conservationists and scientists breathed a sigh of relief. One of the province’s, and for that matter, the world’s last remaining wilderness areas would be spared the industrial incursion associated with unconventional gas development and fracking.

Sacred Headwater images used with permission of Carr Clifton Photography.

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